While many face the season of “peace on earth” aghast at recent global events, it’s hard not to wonder why we humans still can’t manage to connect the dots when it comes to the violence on the world stage, and the violence we ourselves participate in, even as we bow our heads in prayer while preparing to dine on the remains of those slaughtered for our celebrations.   

Before his death in 490 BCE, it was Pythagoras, one of the most famous of the ancient Greek philosophers, who said, “As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.” Over 2,000 years later, the great Leo Tolstoy reiterated: “As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.”    

There will be no peace until we practice peace collectively, starting with recognizing the incommensurable oppression of the innocent victims of our appetites. Billions of sentient individuals live like machines on a production line until death is delivered on the killing floor.    

Handing off the dirty work to those with fewer options, human consumers pray for peace while we pay for the imprisonment and captivity of the beings whose bodies generate the products we feed on. These innocent and vulnerable souls are deprived of their rights and dignity, so those with power over them can engage in habits that are not only unnecessary but deleterious in a myriad of ways. The individuality and innate worth of each are ignored not only by those who benefit financially but also by those who buy what their bodies produce, from meat to milk and eggs.   

And somehow, peace still eludes us.    

As Will Tuttle explains in his groundbreaking book, The World Peace Diet:    

Our inherited meal traditions require a mentality of violence and denial that silently radiates into every aspect of our private and public lives, permeating our institutions and generating the crises, dilemmas, inequities, and suffering that we seek in vain to understand and effectively address. A new way of eating no longer based in privilege, commodification and exploitation is not only possible but essential and inevitable. Our innate intelligence demands it.   

We owe the animals our most profound apologies. Defenseless and unable to retaliate, they have suffered immense agonies under our domination that most of us have never witnessed or acknowledged. Now, knowing better, we can act better, and by acting better, we can live better and give the animals, our children, and ourselves a true reason for hope and celebration.