A friend sent me this article this morning and I found it fascinating. Addicting goats to cigarettes to train them to lead flocks up the ramps to the killing floor. Is the goat betraying its own kind? It has to know that its leading these flocks to slaughter. But since it is not a part of that flock, that disconnection allows for a cognitive bias? Is there tribalism amongst livestock?
Not coincidentally, in my 2 person poetry workshop yesterday, my compatriot was telling me about her father selling drugs to farms. She used to accompany him and get to visit the animals. He hid the death from her. Im certain that having your young daughter with you on sales trips helps your closing rate.
I related to her by sharing that my father worked in a slaughterhouse on the top floor, the killing floor, for most of his life. He carried a ludicrously long, slim folding knife and kept a razor edge on it. In my child mind it was about 9 inches long. Always assumed that he had used that for the job, but I dont know the details.
This sharing of stories was prompted by a poem that she had written relating a teacher with a “free range” classroom to her father and the farms, and eventually, her own children. This brought an idea to mind that I want to explore:
Start here to save time:
What is it about our culture that wants to hide from death? Mexico celebrates the dead. Buddhism and Stoicism teach us to remember our deaths daily. Meanwhile, most people buy sealed caskets in an effort to preserve their body after its lost its animation. How big does your ego have to be to believe that you are separate and above nature? Big enough that you’ve got to grease it to get it out the front door each morning. I believe this to be a result of our narcissistic culture, and our lost rites of passage into adulthood. We need this. A small death to transform our identities. Especially from child to adult.
The dying have to spend their days in hospice or nursing homes or the hospital. Thankfully, a dear friend who passed away this year went home for his last days. The vast majority of meat eaters are completely cut off from the death that contributes to their food. Commerce has hidden all of the death from our lives. Every death is in neat and tidy little sealed packages. The meat we buy, the coffins we’re buried in, body bags. That way we wont be turned off by the blood and shit that comes with death, and run the risk of buying less stuff.
Memento Mori.
How do you say “Buy less shit” in latin?