Wayne as always you inspire me with your tenacity and dedication to the cause of animal rights. And those thumbnails dude, they continue to crack me up. You're a star.
Thank you, as always, Wayne for your insightful and compassionate posts and actions in this world that desperately needs compassionate action as well as faith.
Great post Wayne. Having been in Utah for the trial and visiting Circle Four Farms I can attest to the power of your faith and closing argument. I was already back home on the last day of total, sick in bed with covid, but when I heard your closing my spirit exhaled. I knew you had touched the jury, the cherry on top of a compelling week long trial in which they witnessed the collusion and corruption of their own state's legal system and animal ag. I wept with joy and shouted with excitementfrom my bed where I was watching the decision on my laptop. You have inspired me so many times Wayne. My activism is much smaller, but it's given my life purpose again. As a hybrid "Christian " spiritualist/Panentheist" a profound validation of my new path occurred in church. It was the Spirit whispering an affirmation into my ear ... the path was made clear - i was no longer wandering in the wilderness. Thank you for helping to lead me home, Wayne, to my true heart and purpose.
Thank you for the support Sarah! The funny thing is that I really didn't think we had pulled it off in Utah. Just goes to show how even a little faith can take you a long way!
so much of humans' attachment to the whole cycle of livestocking is a wretched tangle of duty to parents, grandparents, HUMAN ancestors, false ideas about nutrition, and nightmarish enforced alienation from living things --- when you are free of all that, it shows. possibly it becomes charismatic --- graceful, as in early Christian thinking. this is surely one factor that isn't wholly calculable on the trial floor. "charisma" in fact has had a long journey close together with "faith" in human life . . .
Thanks Wayne. I don't quite ID as Judeo-Christian but the Garden of Eden and Isaiah's end-time vision of Lion laying with Lamb have been motivational. It may just be beautiful poetry, but poets may be the Secret Legislators, who knows? That's my faith, that the liturgy of faith shall be actualized, that the Gospel is indeed Good *News*.
I tried this New Year to articulate a crazy dream, with vegan elements. It's called Seven Christian Fantasies.
Paul Barthel is a business owner, founder of the 501 (c)(3) Animal Humane Advocacy, and published author who writes about the fair and ethical treatment of animals.
Barthel has recently finished his latest novel, “Greatest Canines” set for a 2025 release.
Thank you Wayne. -- I have had to figure out the term FAITH in my time. I was brought up in a household that would be called faithless by many onlookers. Only around the time of leaving that home did I begin to learn of the real historical and prehistorical ancientness and tenacity of traditions like Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity. I became fascinated by their vocabularies and their partial views. For a long time, I believed that religions were a manifestation of earth's ever-changing pluralistic planetosphere and biosphere --- I still believe that; but the factors of local, on-the-ground personal experience and communication were missing from the picture I saw presented by Major Faiths. They seemed to substitute programmatic cosmologies for personal realities as a kind of anaesthetic, a blurring/obscuring negation of minute personality. Now I understand the delicate role played by experience and expression in the realm of geological time. Humans have complex, social, language based faiths. Faith means something like seeing a pathway ahead. But every living thing has faith, and transmits and expresses it in every moment of life. Mushrooms, just for example, collaborate with the expressions of faith that plants make. This faith is planted, returned to the earth when a living thing dies. With every breath and every glance, and every death, faith in one side of reality is exchanged for faith of some other kind, across some distance. This biosphere of exchanges is every living thing's greatest ally. Without distance, others would not be others. Thank you for gaining the skills and the knowhow and putting in the effort to clarify our relationship with the others you are rescuing. This was a great New Year's message.
"They seemed to substitute programmatic cosmologies for personal realities as a kind of anaesthetic, a blurring/obscuring negation of minute personality."
This is a fascinating point and one worth pondering more deeply.
In Buddhism, faith means trust in the Dharma to be true—in other words, trust in the truth. The truth is that the only meaning of human life is compassion. There is no other meaning. This is the truth whether one is Buddhist or whatever.
I write this because for so many, “faith” is a loaded term, old-fashioned and fundamentalist. But as you pointed out, faith in the truth is absolutely necessary for animal rights activism.
Thanks for what felt like deeply personal reflections.
FROM 2010: In a recent World Day of Peace message, Pope Benedict XVI warned against any notions that equate human beings with other living things in the name of a “supposedly egalitarian vision.” He said such notions “open the way to a new pantheism tinged with neo-paganism, which would see the source of man’s salvation in nature alone, understood in purely naturalistic terms.” The pope explained in the message that while many experience tranquility and peace when coming into contact with nature, a correct relationship between man and the environment should not lead to “absolutizing nature” or “considering it more important than the human person.” Link: The Vatican criticizes ‘Avatar’ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/.../vatican-criticizes.../
How would you respond to this theological "warning" in relation to faith separate from belief?
There will always be rearguard defenders of outdated beliefs. I think the key thing for us is to interpret these traditions to the best of our ability, pursuant to our ethical beliefs.
One doesn't have to believe in complete anti-speciesism to believe that committing violent acts against sentient beings is wrong. Perhaps we can find common ground there, even if complete equality is not something this Pope (though not future Popes) can agree to.
Even human Superiorism can be pro-animal welfare, to a point practically indistinguishable from trans-species Egalitarianism. For example, one might think that humans, having a unique moral sense, have a unique obligation to be good to other sentients. One might think we're morally superior so we ought to be altruistic and self-sacrificing wrt animals. Probably ahimsic Buddhism & Jainism & Hinduism *are* Superiorist, professing that humans are uniquely positioned to attain Enlightenment/Moksha - we're higher than other animals in spiritual evolution. Animal Welfare is big big church, truly non-partisan, is my point. Even the superiorists can get on board.
Egalitarianism may ultimately be a very crude political Ethic, a strange sibling of Superiorism. "I'll treat you right. . . .if you're EQUAL to me. Are you EQUAL to me? No? Aw, too bad then."
Humans think they are "superior" to animals because humans "know" right from wrong. But animals are superior to humans because humans almost always choose to do wrong frequently and regularly--backed by legal support and economics and politics.
Members of the only extant species--Homo presumptuous--distinguished by a highly developed narcissism, the capacity to routine institutionalized cruelty, and the ability to communicate endless self-justification by means of organized religion and to record prejudices as if they were fact within a variety of speciesist, racist, sexist, and otherwise oppressive systems.
But humans also wrote "Animal Liberation", and free sparrows caught in traps. And pray for the well-being of all sentients. And, like you, hate cruelty. I agree we act like demons too, and our demonism seems to be winning in the world, and destroying it.
Wayne, thank you for this piece—I'm always left feeling both moved and inspired. I'm looking forward to more of your regular writing on Substack.
Thank you! I hope to write more regularly. And please do continue to comment. It's greatly appreciated and gives the writing much more meaning.
Faith is very different than religion
This is a very fair point.
Wayne as always you inspire me with your tenacity and dedication to the cause of animal rights. And those thumbnails dude, they continue to crack me up. You're a star.
haha, gotta have the thumbnails!
Thank you, as always, Wayne for your insightful and compassionate posts and actions in this world that desperately needs compassionate action as well as faith.
Thank you for the support!
Great post Wayne. Having been in Utah for the trial and visiting Circle Four Farms I can attest to the power of your faith and closing argument. I was already back home on the last day of total, sick in bed with covid, but when I heard your closing my spirit exhaled. I knew you had touched the jury, the cherry on top of a compelling week long trial in which they witnessed the collusion and corruption of their own state's legal system and animal ag. I wept with joy and shouted with excitementfrom my bed where I was watching the decision on my laptop. You have inspired me so many times Wayne. My activism is much smaller, but it's given my life purpose again. As a hybrid "Christian " spiritualist/Panentheist" a profound validation of my new path occurred in church. It was the Spirit whispering an affirmation into my ear ... the path was made clear - i was no longer wandering in the wilderness. Thank you for helping to lead me home, Wayne, to my true heart and purpose.
Last day of *trial* not total.
Thank you for the support Sarah! The funny thing is that I really didn't think we had pulled it off in Utah. Just goes to show how even a little faith can take you a long way!
so much of humans' attachment to the whole cycle of livestocking is a wretched tangle of duty to parents, grandparents, HUMAN ancestors, false ideas about nutrition, and nightmarish enforced alienation from living things --- when you are free of all that, it shows. possibly it becomes charismatic --- graceful, as in early Christian thinking. this is surely one factor that isn't wholly calculable on the trial floor. "charisma" in fact has had a long journey close together with "faith" in human life . . .
Thanks Wayne. I don't quite ID as Judeo-Christian but the Garden of Eden and Isaiah's end-time vision of Lion laying with Lamb have been motivational. It may just be beautiful poetry, but poets may be the Secret Legislators, who knows? That's my faith, that the liturgy of faith shall be actualized, that the Gospel is indeed Good *News*.
I tried this New Year to articulate a crazy dream, with vegan elements. It's called Seven Christian Fantasies.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1LrxKswa49/
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing, Paul!
Great article Wayne.
Paul Barthel is a business owner, founder of the 501 (c)(3) Animal Humane Advocacy, and published author who writes about the fair and ethical treatment of animals.
Barthel has recently finished his latest novel, “Greatest Canines” set for a 2025 release.
Thank you Paul!
Thank you Wayne. -- I have had to figure out the term FAITH in my time. I was brought up in a household that would be called faithless by many onlookers. Only around the time of leaving that home did I begin to learn of the real historical and prehistorical ancientness and tenacity of traditions like Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity. I became fascinated by their vocabularies and their partial views. For a long time, I believed that religions were a manifestation of earth's ever-changing pluralistic planetosphere and biosphere --- I still believe that; but the factors of local, on-the-ground personal experience and communication were missing from the picture I saw presented by Major Faiths. They seemed to substitute programmatic cosmologies for personal realities as a kind of anaesthetic, a blurring/obscuring negation of minute personality. Now I understand the delicate role played by experience and expression in the realm of geological time. Humans have complex, social, language based faiths. Faith means something like seeing a pathway ahead. But every living thing has faith, and transmits and expresses it in every moment of life. Mushrooms, just for example, collaborate with the expressions of faith that plants make. This faith is planted, returned to the earth when a living thing dies. With every breath and every glance, and every death, faith in one side of reality is exchanged for faith of some other kind, across some distance. This biosphere of exchanges is every living thing's greatest ally. Without distance, others would not be others. Thank you for gaining the skills and the knowhow and putting in the effort to clarify our relationship with the others you are rescuing. This was a great New Year's message.
"They seemed to substitute programmatic cosmologies for personal realities as a kind of anaesthetic, a blurring/obscuring negation of minute personality."
This is a fascinating point and one worth pondering more deeply.
I’m a Buddhist (teacher) also.
In Buddhism, faith means trust in the Dharma to be true—in other words, trust in the truth. The truth is that the only meaning of human life is compassion. There is no other meaning. This is the truth whether one is Buddhist or whatever.
I write this because for so many, “faith” is a loaded term, old-fashioned and fundamentalist. But as you pointed out, faith in the truth is absolutely necessary for animal rights activism.
Thanks for what felt like deeply personal reflections.
Happy New Year and hopefully 2025 will be better for animals!
FROM 2010: In a recent World Day of Peace message, Pope Benedict XVI warned against any notions that equate human beings with other living things in the name of a “supposedly egalitarian vision.” He said such notions “open the way to a new pantheism tinged with neo-paganism, which would see the source of man’s salvation in nature alone, understood in purely naturalistic terms.” The pope explained in the message that while many experience tranquility and peace when coming into contact with nature, a correct relationship between man and the environment should not lead to “absolutizing nature” or “considering it more important than the human person.” Link: The Vatican criticizes ‘Avatar’ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/.../vatican-criticizes.../
How would you respond to this theological "warning" in relation to faith separate from belief?
There will always be rearguard defenders of outdated beliefs. I think the key thing for us is to interpret these traditions to the best of our ability, pursuant to our ethical beliefs.
One doesn't have to believe in complete anti-speciesism to believe that committing violent acts against sentient beings is wrong. Perhaps we can find common ground there, even if complete equality is not something this Pope (though not future Popes) can agree to.
Even human Superiorism can be pro-animal welfare, to a point practically indistinguishable from trans-species Egalitarianism. For example, one might think that humans, having a unique moral sense, have a unique obligation to be good to other sentients. One might think we're morally superior so we ought to be altruistic and self-sacrificing wrt animals. Probably ahimsic Buddhism & Jainism & Hinduism *are* Superiorist, professing that humans are uniquely positioned to attain Enlightenment/Moksha - we're higher than other animals in spiritual evolution. Animal Welfare is big big church, truly non-partisan, is my point. Even the superiorists can get on board.
Egalitarianism may ultimately be a very crude political Ethic, a strange sibling of Superiorism. "I'll treat you right. . . .if you're EQUAL to me. Are you EQUAL to me? No? Aw, too bad then."
Humans think they are "superior" to animals because humans "know" right from wrong. But animals are superior to humans because humans almost always choose to do wrong frequently and regularly--backed by legal support and economics and politics.
Members of the only extant species--Homo presumptuous--distinguished by a highly developed narcissism, the capacity to routine institutionalized cruelty, and the ability to communicate endless self-justification by means of organized religion and to record prejudices as if they were fact within a variety of speciesist, racist, sexist, and otherwise oppressive systems.
But humans also wrote "Animal Liberation", and free sparrows caught in traps. And pray for the well-being of all sentients. And, like you, hate cruelty. I agree we act like demons too, and our demonism seems to be winning in the world, and destroying it.
Sharing (from Facebook) this article though not about "faith" per se, interesting read, I think:
The Young Person’s Illustrated Guide to American Fascism by Sue Coe and Stephen F. Eisenman
Author Interview
Kim Stallwood (Kim Stallwood’s Substack)
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FCN9XFnck/