Ridding The World Of Violence

Article #5: Ridding the World Of Violence by Arthur Andrews

“And at the root of it all…”

Almost at the beginning of it all is the violence we do to ourselves, not the violence others do to us or that we do to other humans or other animals.

If we could manage a microscopic existence, and join our own cells at their levels, and see their fears, their panic, the alarms they set off and the defense systems they throw up, the strategies they formulate, the communications, the cooperation and support they muster for each other and for the total good in the face of what we impose on them as we indulge ourselves; if we could be locked arm-in-arm with all our stomach cell brethren as gross amounts of gross food gets piled in upon us, forcing us out and out as we strive desperately to hold on to each other just to keep from bursting; if we could be part of those scenes at that level, we might feel and behave differently, because these are violent acts we commit upon our physical selves. What is required of our bodies in the face of a coffee or alcoholic dousing should be as embarrassing to us as it must be frightening to our nervous systems and befuddling to our
other parts of the body. Really, think about it and recognize that we make our internal and external bodies into garbage bins and cesspools! How violent!

The very first form of violence, however, that no one ever considers (and it is the start of it all), is the violence we do to the food we eat before we take it into our bodies.

We obtain quite live foods containing life force waiting for the opportunity to fulfill their intended purpose and thereby be rewarded by being incorporated into, becoming part of, our higher form of life. But before they ever get that opportunity to gain their own evolution, we kill them, we cook them to death. The things we do to our foods would be considered the crudest of tortures were we to do them to things that could cry out, and especially so, were we to do them to humans. Few things are so violent as cooking is to live foods. And with very few exceptions, it is so unnecessary. What a price we pay for it!

That violence which we perpetuate upon our foods as we kill them goes into the food and then into our bodies where the violence is, in turn, heaped upon our cells, tissues, organs and systems. Then as it builds and compounds, growing all the while, it becomes incorporated into our beings. And in time, as we interact with other humans in the same state, we release the violence within us on each other … from irritations, to anger, to hostility.

If violence is to be dealt with meaningfully and with finality, it must be dealt with at its beginning.