Alpha Bêtes

Terrible to cover such a beautiful place with slaughterhouses. Our only home.  But if we really treated it like a home, we would never fill it with buildings of bloodletting. For who would make a home out of screams and suffering? That would be to turn a home into a monument to mercilessness. 

One of the most disturbing things about so many foodies is their treatment of the rarified culinary experience as an inherent good in and of itself, as though the choices made in pursuit of "fine dining" and haute cuisine do not participate in a moral realm: the fetishizing of the sensual over the ethical. If foodies could take off their roast colored glasses for a moment, they might recognize that when you needlessly rob an animal of its life, it's equally selfish, equally violent, and equally wrong whether you turn his stabbed body into "bacon-wrapped éclairs au chocolat," or a BLT. This attitude, that fetishizes the products of completely unnecessary violence toward animals, and that celebrates the enslavement and killing of animals, has no place in a progressive moral framework; moral progress always leads us in the direction of causing less harm. Demanding that sentient individuals be brought into this world simply to be hacked apart like so much timber is not a morally neutral position. It is willed violence, deliberate harm. The glorification of "local meat" and self-congratulatory labels like "humane slaughter" is nothing more than the celebration of indefensible brutality toward the most helpless and vulnerable among us. Bacon: A Day In the Life

A love story.

"As in my own will-to-live there is a longing for wider life, and for the mysterious exaltation of the will-to-live which we call pleasure, with dread of annihilation and of the mysterious depreciation of the will-to-live which we call pain; so is it also in the will-to-live all around me, whether it can express itself before me, or remains mute." -Albert Schweitzer

standing. -Aracelis Girmay

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner... There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known." -Carl Sagan

"A human is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives."

The Australian Peacock Spider. (photo by Jurgen Otto.) Many more images of this incredible creature here.

Also, climbing! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g-zmU_D-e8

Like all mammals, cows only produce milk to feed their young. Humans are able to consume all the milk and dairy they want (but don’t need) only by keeping cows pregnant and lactating, then taking away the calves for whom the milk is intended. In natural herds, the powerful bond between mother and calf persists long after the calves have matured. But on all dairy farms, big or small, organic or free-range, calves are forcibly taken from their mothers within a few hours of birth. This cruel separation is devastating for both of them. Male calves are killed for veal, while female calves are kept separated and fed milk substitute until they are old enough to replace their mothers. Dairy cows are slaughtered for ground beef at a fraction of their natural lifespan. There is no such thing as humane dairy. Please read more here: http://woodstocksanctuary.org/learn/our-health/milk-myths/ And for a list of great dairy alternatives, check out Go Dairy Free: http://www.godairyfree.org/dairy-substitutes/how-to-substitute-milk-skim-low-fat-whole

"For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” Henry Beston 

photo: Melody Martinez

Here's a piece I wrote on what life is like for most of the 46 million Thanksgiving turkeys slaughtered in America each year, with important information on "free-range" and "cage-free" birds as well. Is this something to give thanks for? Please let others know what these gentle individuals go through. Full text here.

-from "The Darkling Thrush," by Thomas Hardy