By Gaia Gardener: On Our Hall of Denial Mirrors

Read the whole speech. It was pretty good. He made some good points and it’s pretty ominous what he thinks the US’s next steps will be. I think he’s correct that the US is happy to throw Europe under the bus. It was interesting to see he didn’t call out Germany, which makes me wonder if he thinks the Germans will switch sides at some point.

There’s obviously propaganda in this speech as well. For example, Russians are not innocent when it comes to colonising. The way the state treats non-ethnic-Russians is questionable. And he’s a bit of a hypocrite pointing the finger at Western elites for stealing wealth from the common people, when he and his mates do a pretty good job stealing wealth from the actual Russian people they pretend to care about.

Following is an article by Pentti Linkola titled “A Glance At Vegetarianism”:

So many passionate opinions float about vegetarianism, that tackling it may well equal to poking a bee hive. But the subject is too important to pass in ecological thinking. And besides, calculations of ecological balance an d saving recommendations raise anger originating from bad conscience on whatever the area of life.

But let us examine vegetarianism first as a question of health. A perceptive expert on the field, Leena Vilkka, recently described an international vegetarist conference in Juha Rantala’s small Elämänsuojelija-magazine [Guardian Of Life], and told that the health effects of vegetarianism were on the forefront there.

By his build, teeth and bowels man is certainly not a carnivorous predator, and not in any case a pure herbivore. Biologically man is an omnivore, like the bear, badger and rat are.

It is an equally simple truism that a doer of strenuous physical work (like the writer of this), whose life-lasting health problem is the battle against threatening thinning, cannot manage with “grass and salad”, but more like has to strive to get enough high-calorie animal fats.

But, but… Man’s ways of living change, change even so much that the natural biological essence of man becomes questionable. The doer of modern mental work is at its purest a so thoroughly different being from a ditch digger or saw-wielding lumberjack, that these can be seen as part of the same species only with difficulty. Light vegetables and fish fit the new human type without question better than heavy, nutritional warm-blooded animals.

A similar leap in mind has to be gone through by the generation that had experienced war and depression (60 years old or older at the moment), who couldn’t comprehend in their early youth that any dab of meat or piece of fat could have been left uneaten, if one was just able to get hands on such – and who had never heard of vegetarians. Also we elders have to accept now that the new population must “play with food” for the sake of their health – unless they heal their living habits, which is then a much more complicated matter.

But first of all, the problem of man’s sustenance is even still quantitative and not qualitative. One must be capable of eating not too little or too much. What one eats is less important, as long as one doesn’t swallow sharp shards of glass or badly bent nails.

Leena Vilkka lists various vegetarian diets: 1) vegetables, milk products, eggs and fish, 2) the latter but no fish, 3) no products of animal origin in nutrition, 4) a diet of living food, no dead ingredients in it, 5) a diet of solely fruits, 6) veganism: nutrition as in the third entry, no animal-based materials in clothes, medicine and the like.

Reasons for these choices may base not only on health, but also animal protection and ecology. Those of animal protection represent high ethics that must always be valued: an animal must not be killed, suffering must not be brought upon it nor must it be imprisoned to an environment incompatible with the animal’s value.

These factors are hard to shoot down, especially so that a vegan would be assured. Hunting and fishing are man’s primeval livelihood, basic humanity. I, for example, fully agree with this. Yes yes, says the vegan: the slave institution was man’s pristine culture and form of economy… It has been, or is, old tradition and custom in many cultures to burn too wise women in pyres as witches, to force little children to full-day work, to mutilate genitals… What about wars and tortures, then, they are fundamental humanity if anything? And so approved without objections?

I admit it is respectable and excellent in the vegan ideology that the animal’s absolute value is generally noticed, that these great questions are contemplated upon. Even something positive new does shimmer in the atmosphere of our period of horrifying distress!

Nevertheless, there are many counter-arguments. For starters, I’d put my marginal note to that subsection of animal suffering. To me, cattle glows with satisfaction on pastures, and similarly I experience, seeing with eyes and hearing with ears, the happy chewing and mooing in a wintry, warm cowhouse. Besides, creamy full milk is the most divine of nature’s gifts to me, the pinnacle of my life’s pleasures.

Of course, a modern yard byre is even more of a paradise, and certainly the cowhouse is only a winter home. It is obvious that the long summer (here from the beginning of June to October) is spent outside on forest- and meadow pastures. The ban on keeping animals inside summertime should be one of the first articles in the animal protection law. And I certainly agree with every vegan and animal protector about the cage-growing of fur animals and poultry.

I think the taming of domestic animals was one of the most splendid inventions of mankind, if not the only brilliant one. I’ve gathered that the vegan generally accepts pets – even though they don’t live a fully natural life. But I continue the list with the bovine, horse, pig, sheep and chicken, without which human life would be unspeakably poorer at least here in the arid North – poorer than without, say, music, art or books. I don’t suppose even a vegan argues that domestic animals should be kept – with what resources? – without any compensation; meat, milk, eggs, wool, leather, work effort? A strict vegan does demand that these animals were not at all. Would cows, horses and sheep vote in the favor of this decision?

I’ll yet put an interjection here for vegans. Many of them do not even attempt to persuade the whole population behind their ideology; do not strive towards rooting the economy of domestic animals. But the vegan has chosen his own way to protest against the cruel forms of performance economy. And surely there is a tremendous difference whether it is protested against the gigantic McDonald’s- or beef cattles of the former virgin forests of Brazil, or against a Finnish small farm, which few cows are almost like family members and calves named after children – even though they will be slaughtered eventually, ending their rather comfortable life.

Vegetarians think that their strongest ecological argument is that when grain and such vegetable nutrition is changed to meat, man’s food reserves drop down to a tenth. One truly encounters hopeful thinking that a multiple population could be provided for on the globe with grain, resigning from meat production.

That line of thought is anyhow altogether unsustainable ecologically. First it must be noted that large areas on earth are suitable only for the growing of cattle fodder, and through it for producing meat and dairy products. Even in Finland approximately the area north from Jyväskylä-Vaasa would be marked off from notable production of human sustenance – when also game and fish would be boycotted by vegans. Ecologically that case would outstanding in itself, when it was held to the ecological basic principle that the population of every major region have to produce their own food. It would be admittedly brilliant if Central and Northern Finland would be left without human settlement, for binding carbon and producing oxygen. Though, I’ve understood that vegans do not want this.

That whole vegetarian plan begins from a completely wrong end and grounds certain destruction. All powers must be focused, not on increasing food reserves, but for the suppression of the population explosion and – according to the deep ecologic principles of Naess – decreasing the number of people. If the globe’s population is first grown with grain nutrition, we end up in a really wretched circle.

In the short run, hunger as such isn’t the worst bottleneck in the battle for the preservation of man, even with the current level of food production. At least for now there are the elements of other ecocatastrophes to deal with, brought by the large amount of people and their way of life; disruptions, collapses and depletions, pollutions and emissions, desolations and pavements at earth, water and air. Hunger is seemingly in control perhaps for some time. But the horrid strain of rebuking hunger is that there are huge badly not self-sufficient populations here and overly self-sustaining peoples there. And the massive transportation of food even to the other side of the world means a terrifying increase in transfer equipment, route networks, construction of storages, harbors and airports, and energy usage.

Then, that overt self-sufficiency is based on effective agriculture strung to its tightest, which will unavoidably lead – and not so slowly, either – to the depletion of soil, field erosion and crashing of production. Maintaining the production capability of fields comes evermore desperate if cattle manure is left out of the equation. The advantage of increased field acreage, which is given by releasing them from growing feedstuff for meat animals, will be transient.

The worst thing is that population growth along with its all emissive and deserting effects, caused first by moving to breadstuffs production, will quicken the climate change. It leaves vast areas of cultivation out of order – both when coastal plains submerge in sea and the earth’s drought zones move over the most lucrative of granaries, like climate prognoses tell.

Decimating or shrinking the huge masses of cattle would obviously help the ozone dissipation of the upper atmosphere in regards to methane gas. Destruction of the ozone layer is however the only grave problem of ecocatastrophe that is estimated to be surmountable anyway.

There are also other weaknesses in “the ecology of vegetarianism”. Many very unproductive and poorly nutritional vegetables demand immoderate acreages for cultivation. In fact, only few vegetables are sufficient (peas, beans, cabbages), and few fair (grains) as main nourishment.

Some of the most witting vegans have noticed the severe error in the ecological balance of vegetarianism, that food imported from faraway countries and continents is eaten. They strive to either fully, or as domestic food as possible, and call themselves fennovegans. I have a funny memory about this subject from the last summer. I was conversing with a young farmer, Antti Ilola, at my home village, who began talking about vegetarianism. He was quite knowledgeable about vegetarianism, but was wondering what was the meaning of the term “fennovegan” he had snatched from somewhere. I explained the origins of the word “fennia”, and the principle of nutrition’s ecological nativity. Antti thought for a while and thought then that it too will lead to expensive carriages; shouldn’t that food be wholly produced at one’s own farm. And instantly came up with a name for these truly orthodox people: hemmavegans! So, in honor of Antti Ilola, I would like to complement the aforementioned list by Leena Vilkka: 7) fennovegans, 8) hemmavegans.

We have yet to touch another pivotal principle in addition to ecological balance: cherishing the diversity of nature. Lets take an example from own country’s nature. A very large part of Finnish fauna and flora are part of a biocenose born during thousands of years, which prerequisite for life is the soil shaped and fertilized by domestic animals. Small-scale human settlement and agriculture based on home animals has hugely enriched nature at a time. Now all this falls into ruin as large domestic animals disappear.

A field of crops, a plain growing wheat or barley, even underdrained and doped with pesticides, is by far the poorest habitat of our plot of land. Its population is many times more indigent in regards to both species and quantity than even the centrum of a metropolis. A friend of nature is hardly ever a vegan, as fine and noble the principles of veganism are from one point of view.

And is anything else fitted into human life, other than eating? Is there room to consider man’s aesthetic world of experiences? If there is, I shall ask, is there a sight more dreadful than a torn open grey-black crop field of September-November or April-May? And is there a cultural landscape more delightful than a green grass lawn and meadow pastures, on which motley bovine cattle, horses and sheep walk about and frolic? Or is there a more lively yard than one where smart and inventive chickens potter freely? At last: if the pig (undeniably the worst fellow by its ecological balance) is removed, sheep is kept for wool, chicken for eggs, cow for dairy products and the horse perhaps as a steed, what shall be done with an aging animal and all bull calves and rooster chickens? A natural death by old age or an injection by veterinarian, and then into a hole? What ecological balance or nation’s economy could withstand such squander of nutrition? When all attempts to avert ecocatastrophes fall down, in the future, very soon in fact, we have to cancel the taboo of using human flesh – whether this destiny is arrived at by temporarily moving onto vegetable sustenance or through the traditional economy of mixed food, which prevails nowadays.

Under the following link you can find his only book translated into English called “Can Life Previal”

Click to access Pentti%20Linkola%20-%20Can%20Life%20Previal%20%282011%29.pdf

Hi Rob, that was very well presented and I enjoyed digesting your thoughtful and balanced offering. I join you wholeheartedly at the table with thanksgiving for whatever sustenance is before us, and all the more blessed if it is our own choice which assumes we have an abundance to choose from. If only more could experience that comfort and assurance! As we have all worked so hard to un-deny, that cornucopia will only be more equally shared when there are less to go around, and expressly, less of those who already had more.

I am getting used to sore muscles, and the catch-22 is the more one works, the hungrier one gets, so the more one needs to work!

I favour ending fossil fuels completely, but I am under no delusions about what this would mean for all of us 😐

Thank you Rob for curating this very thoughtful essay to be juxtaposed to my own not unrelated musings–I must admit I was a bit bemused this morning (like seeing yourself in a fun mirror) to realise you’ve started a new page with yours truly, but I’m hopeful for interesting discussion and so far, that’s already materialised.

As for what the squirrel, newt, and nuthatch would say, that’s easy to guess. I’ll try to translate their chirrupings into plain speak (and tone down their language)–Please just go away and leave us alone. There’s not a single species on this planet that wouldn’t benefit by the immediate cessation of Homo sapiens, now that distinction is pretty singular!

Now while we don’t exactly advocate immediate extirpation of our species, we do need to get a move on the population reduction whilst there’s still some hope for other species to reclaim their spot on the planet once we step off the mass scale now tipping at 96% us and our domestic beasts (that is just such a sobering fact that renders me speechless, hey, I know what you’re thinking!) Seriously, when I watch wildlife docos and see endless streams of caribou migrating and realise that only represents 250,000 individuals, or an island cheek by jowl crammed with penguins (up to 1.5 million birds) and then think we humans are 8 billion in number, that also does my head in. The only thing to compare to that level of individual organisms (4-8 billion strong) is a super swarm of locusts in biblical plague proportions–’nuff said. Economic collapse needs to and will go hand in hand with population downshift of the top 2 billion consumers, and like it or not, that’s all of us. Maybe a topic for another day (we have started discussion on this previously and come up with more than a modicum of denial there, too) is how we personally take responsibility for enacting population reduction, since that is all we can do. I think I’ve already did my dash in opening up a juicy enough can of worms to go on with for now.

What did Spock always say? Live long and prosper. I think we’ve done that mightily enough. And what did Worf the Klingon always say? Today is a good day to die. Hmmmm.

Go well, everyone.