Eating Animals Comes With Strings Attached

Dr. David Suzuki says that we are made of air with a little bit of thickening. Our flesh is mostly carbon (C), hydrogen (H), oxygen (O) and nitrogen (N), gases that constitute the main components of carbohydrates and proteins. The 'thickening' is composed of minerals, the main constituents of the bones. Minerals come to us in our food, in significant proportion from eating animals and animal products. Clearly then, for many, the main support structure and stability of our bodies is provided by animals.

The world is made up of systems, each one in turn composed of other systems, arranged in a hierarchical fashion. Individuals make a community; a collection of communities makes a nation; nations may come together into a federation. Each individual contributes to some degree within the community’s operation.

Similarly, animals (including humans) are composed of systems, organs, cells and organelles in hierarchical array where each individual component, at its level of association, contributes to the function of the whole. This pattern continues at the molecular level. Each molecule is a complex system of atoms of various kinds, lending their properties to create a structure capable of new functions, which would not be possible for the individual elements alone. C, H, O, N and the various minerals are composed of subatomic particles: electrons, protons, and neutrons.

Quantum physicists say that those subatomic particles are in turn composed of strings. Consequently, we can imagine that animals (including humans) are complex orchestras made of zillions of strings, where individual strings form groups. These groups organize themselves into larger, more complex groups and so on, from the subatomic to the macro level.

Subatomic strings are like the strings of a musical instrument: they vibrate and can be tuned. Subatomic strings retain information resulting from interactions with other elements, where they attune to others and resonate with similar vibratory patterns. The subatomic string carries its tuning on to other associations.

If, in experimental situations, strings are tuned by their interactions, it is conceivable that the experiences an animal has are carried not only in the nervous system but also in every string that is part of its body. This would create a subtle tuning and resonance to particular stimuli. When we eat parts or products from an animal, we acquire those tuned strings, and many of them become part of our support structure (skeleton). Thus, the animal’s tuning is transferred to us.

Most animals that we eat, or whose products we consume, live and die in fear. They are raised on factory farms with hundreds of others, often in crowded conditions. They are often herded by the threat of electrical shocks or other harm. Their offspring are taken away from them at birth. Their social interactions, if allowed to exist, are suddenly broken by force when herd mates are removed. They are often trucked long distances through unfamiliar territory, on little food or water. In hot, noisy slaughterhouses, they are pushed through chutes and narrow passageways, to a point where they see the animal in front of them being killed.

Those who grew up in countries with social unrest know exactly how that feels: it is terrifying. Chickens are housed inside metal cages inside closed barns without seeing the light of day, laying eggs that roll down a chute before the animal realizes what happened. Pigs do not fare better.

I contend that eating animal products obtained under such conditions tunes our bodies to resonate with messages of fear, and to respond with fear. Messages of fear resonate with the majority of the population. Fear of death drives the war on terror (terrorists want to destroy our way of life); fear of poverty stops us from acting on environmental issues (it will hurt the economy and lower our standard of living); fear of strangers drives immigration policies (they will not adapt to our way of life). Fear is a natural instinct and will always be a part of our behaviour. However, if we can treat our animals in such a way that they do not suffer excess fear, fear will become less dominant in our day-to-day actions.

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