The documentary “Cowspiracy” outlines a clear, albeit frightening, picture of the effects the animal agriculture industry is having on environmental degradation.

Fear can at times be a very effective persuasive method, but fear is also subjective as is each persons response, which is why a yogic, mindful analysis of the proposed dilemma would serve us well if we desire to alter our behavior in a way that makes a meaningful change in the environmental trends presented.

While this documentary made clear what it was advocating for, or in this case against, what was more implicit was what they are really talking about when promoting a vegan lifestyle is ethics.

After all, the director likely didn't want to outright openly castigate the people he was trying to swoon to fulfill his vision of a more perfect union or global community by announcing the immorality of those viewing the film who live differently than him.

I did, however, find the scene of a duck having its head lopped off by someone raising them in his backyard for food, followed by the narration “if I can't do it I don't want someone else doing it for me,” to be an effective way to get the audience to think about their diet.

All in all, I thought the film did a very good job of making both an emotional and philosophical appeal to not support animal agriculture with different data points. I think it missed the mark laying out the entire landscape, or at least glossed over a few breadcrumbs that could have helped the audience delve deeper on their own, which I think even the director would agree is a more holistic resolution to problems of sustainability, given his push for ethical involvement at the individual level with our diets.

“It's better for their fund raising and better for their profile to create a victim and perpetrator sort of plot line,” Demosthenes Maratos said describing the tendency for environmental organizations to obfuscate their responsibility to protect the environment by providing people with fodder to pacify them by exerting whatever resources they have available to them on an issue that is mostly irrelevant.

“It's like when we talk about the fact when we have a dysfunctional family, and the father's an alcoholic,” Dr. Will Tuttle, Environmental and Ethics Author, said with respect to these organizations shirking their responsibilities. “That's the one thing that no one talks about. Everybody goes around that, and yet it's the one thing that is causing devastation in the relationships in the family, because no one wants to talk about it.”

While I find the notion of a vast conspiracy comprised of people looking to make a profit off of destroying the planet to be an interesting plot line for the next James Bond flick, I just think it seemed a bit lacking in authenticity or context, rather.

It seemed a bit reminiscent of when children throw a tantrum acting like it was the end of the world because not everyone is caring about the issue, or aspect of an issue, they want them to most care about; particularly the scene of him stuck in a revolving door! In this regard I think the movie was a good demonstration of how we can be most effective with persuasive arguments and also how we can miss the forest for the trees.

That being said, I do believe that the issues presented are very pressing and worthy of being brought into public awareness, but I believe that his interactions are a case study of the importance of tact when it comes to tackling such behemoth problems that require a significant shift at a fundamental level, as I believe cooperation and giving all of the facets a fair shake is essential for not repeating mistakes of the past environmental disasters. This, of course, can be at times a challenge when conflicts of personality and agenda arise.

In this written reflection of the Cowspiracy documentary what I hope to do is pull apart some of the very abstract words and concepts presented and reveal some useful information, either intended or not, that might help shed light on how we can solve problems of sustainability such as the one presented by animal agriculture.

So, I'll start with the most glaring obstacle.

Some people might not be the least bit concerned about the shared environment and the poisoning of an ecosystem, adrift in a sea of separation. They might also see themselves as helpless and subject to the whims of whichever socio-economic forces at work. Others might just have failed to inform themselves of the interconnected reality that would prevent someone from littering for example; that or they didn't have the opportunity. If they did they would treat their environment the way they would want to be treated.

Some people may have in some way felt alienated by the world. Others may view the dumbing down and poisoning of the general population that results from malnutrition and a depleted environment preferable to a general population that is out of their control and exercising their rights as sovereign individuals to think for themselves and choose a healthy lifestyle.

So we see that the subjectivity of human motivation is something that should be considered in the analysis of the problem and solution proposed by Cowspiracy.

Carl Jung wrote in his book “The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga” that “if you succeed in remembering yourself, if you succeed in making a difference between yourself and that outburst of passion, then you discover the self; you begin to individuate.”

Through my own experience in the “Yoga World” the outbursts of passion have abounded, and while I was at times able to acknowledge the various swellings of emotions and sensations and the reasons and machinations behind them; while I was at times able to acknowledge their connection to the impermanent sense of self integral to the being by which I am literally embodied, it didn't change the fact that, at times, even after further investigation, those outbursts of passion still seemed right and as real and necessary as the flesh around my bones.

It still seems right. Mankind is as much a part of nature as all of the rivers, oceans, mountains, deserts, forests, and stars and are thus also due the same reverence. It's hard to fault a tree for making oxygen, the stars for shining at night, the sky always being blue or a river running in one direction.

I think it would be foolish to presume that our current state of affairs is “unnatural” per-se. I think it would be more appropriate to cast it as a phase; an impermanent state in a continuous flow through which all matter moves.

With this perspective I believe our roles as stewards and custodians, as witnesses of our world, run less risk of being dominated and squandered by willful ignorance and obsessive attachment, and can best come into being as guides mediating the space between rather than the scourge of creation attempting to upend the flow of the universe.

Raised Catholic, I was always taught under the auspices of “two wrongs don't make a right” and an “eye for an eye will make the whole world blind,” yet sitting idly by when something seemed deeply wrong always would eat away at my soul; whether it was failing to investigate why I was feeling that way and drowning my intuitive awareness in booze, burying the butterflies in my stomach with food, or distracting myself from the “evil at hand” with things to occupy my mind, because so often confronting the evil at hand seemed more daunting than dealing with some possible, projected evil down the road.

Still, I will utilize my experience as a Catholic to help shed light on these matters of ethics.

The Yoga practice has taught me that the various sensations that are given prominence in different postures don't need to be treated as restrictions or as something to be avoided. They can serve as vehicles for deeper exploration that aide in allowing for a more profound expression of a pose through the process of seeking ease in uncomfortable positions, calming the mind to allow for clarity and appreciation of the present and what it has to offer, and finding contentment with the chaotic potential of an unknown future and the advent of unfamiliar territory.

Through Yoga we enter a dynamic state of observation and experimentation in both the body and mind. Practicing listening in conversation and not just talking, having the courage and strength to be vigilant observers and rectify the integrity of a posture or state of mind when we sense we may be falling out of alignment or forcing things out of habit are invaluable skills that can serve us well when fostering stability and growth in just about any discipline.

By cultivating awareness of the body and mind; by exercising the various channels of awareness that, for whichever reason, don't get the necessary attention to function optimally, we can more readily muster the appropriate tension and attention; the appropriate relaxation and release needed at the appropriate points and times to bring the body back to balance without overshooting the mark and falling out on the other side.

Take for example the position known as “one legged figure four,” where the outside ankle of one foot rests just above the knee on the thigh of the bent, squatting standing leg and the knee of the balanced leg is hovering off to the side. In this position one might need to root down with the heel of the standing foot, the lower spine, and the outside of the sideways bent knee and ankle if one finds the energy creeping too far up and forward in the body, so much such that one loses the other benefits of the pose by coming out of the bend in the knee and the hip stretch in the standing leg.

In contrast, within the context of the same pose, one might need to bring more of an energetic lift through the top of the head in opposition to the rooting down so as to counteract the energy drawing back and thus out of the bend in the standing knee as you try not to fall backwards, while maintaining the integrity of the frontal hip opening and sensation and stretch in the outer hip.

When stretching the ham strings one may need to spend more time focusing on releasing tension, lengthening, and breathing into the hamstrings on one leg than on the other given the tightness on the other leg. Conversely, with the leg that more easily comes into a split, one might need to focus on strengthening by energetically pulling the legs towards each other in the split and from there energetically lifting prana, or life force energy, up through the spine and out the top of the head or through the throat and the pointer fingers bound in the Kali Mudra – the hand position of having the fingers interwoven with the pointer fingers pressing together extending upward.

Summoning the resolve and energy needed to set alight a torch and venture forth into the unexplored chasms of the body and mind is no easy task. Establishing a sound drishti, or gazing point, and a strong foothold at a familiar outpost that we can come back to periodically as needed to maintain and for resupply, helps us to progress with confidence so that when we trip, we stumble, and we have available to us a platform on which to land and more easily get back on the horse and try again without necessarily needing to face all of the travails we faced initially getting into that posture; the body and mind, still carrying that heat and the various energetic nodes still close to the surface of our awareness, are still available to us when we enter back into the flow and float further down stream.

We have available to us a support that can spare us that fall from grace that was built by a practice of grace and patience that has allowed for our practice to grow sustainably.

The Yogic analysis as both participant and observer offers us a unique experience and boundless resources for application whilst navigating life and avoiding its perilous pitfalls, snake oil salesmen, and predators, especially as we set out to act rightly in such a complex world. By setting out to do so we become keenly aware of our own capacity for, and susceptibility to, malevolence and are more likely to recognize it when we come to it face to face and can then choose to avoid offering fruit from a poison tree.

The intelligence that assuming the role of observer provides humbles us and provides us with fertile ground for introspection that can reveal hidden truths; taking stock of where we are as participants on the mat allows for absorbing the enriching benefits available to our practice in the present moment.

Coaxing the mind into a state that can allow for this kind of experience is challenging when we are attached to some contrived, idyllic vision of where we think we ought to be, or some experience or state previously enjoyed that consequently keeps us constricted and our opportunities to receive less abundant.

“Pranayama” breathing techniques are often incorporated in different postures to help aide in focusing and calming the mind and other systems throughout the body. The breath can then be used direct energy and attention to certain areas to help cut away the overgrown, dominant sensations that are reflections of what has directed us on our journey thus far. To borrow a phrase for a more eloquent summary, by assuming the role of observer we are offered the choice “To be or not to be.”

Tackling the task of ethically going about resolving issues of animal agriculture can at first glance seem very easy. Western science and medicine has conditioned us to verify a hypothesis through controlled experimentation and then observe and conclude. If the experiment is repeatable then we can have some confidence in the conclusions.

If the motivation is to make more efficient use of land to increase productivity whereby there is an increase in supply for people to consume, by golly, the facts are irrefutable. Clearly the industrial scale of animal agriculture has not been the most efficient use of the land while also having negative consequences for the quality of the food production and also for the environment. Solution: eat vegetables.

However, very rarely do experiments truly replicate real world conditions because the real world is not some scientists test lab and its inhabitants play test dummies. Sure we can make assumptions about scale, but if there is anything that modern physics has taught us it's that relativity is very much a thing and the rules established for model may not hold true when things are to scale.

Also, efficient in what sense or according to what or whose context, and does it make sense to be efficient in that way if we consider also the efficiency of other systems?

Is efficiency how much we can consume? Traditionally, humans have evolved to eat to provide their bodies with the nutrients and sustenance needed to maintain their physical form. I suppose how we determine efficiency is really a question of meaning.

'St. Paul the Hermit Fed by the Raven', after Il Guercino

We could sit back and ponder the meaning of life our entire lives all the while subject to the whims of someone else's meaning, at least for them at that time. That meaning may have become meaningless, or at least to that person or people who first devised it, and yet the progressions that evolved from that assumption still operate; there are still people who maintain that infrastructure because they are operating under the same faculties, there are those who are still subjects to its influence.

The Human element is as real as Carbon and Oxygen. Each body has its own unique history. Not only that, if we truly want to solve the environmental degradation it's best to incorporate a strategic approach as opposed to just considering the most immediate, tactical resolution to the issues presented.

While the tactical approach may be a very practical, viable treatment for an ailment, we have also seen in western medicine that treating the symptoms can become a game of “whack a mole,” where treating one symptom leads to needing to treat another if the symptoms are the sole or primary consideration.

I am a firm believer that motivation can be a crucial, if not the most crucial, element in the equation of any endeavor. Motivation is the start, but it is also the goal. The motive drives the action, and the action is the interesting bit that the cameras capture for the audience. Coming back to the motive can animate the action, help keep us aligned, and can help prevent the means from becoming the end.

Besides, ask any good detective what the key is to piecing together a mystery and they will tell you that you need to formulate a motive. It can get a bit murky, however, because what makes each person tick can vary and any profiler knows that some of the most abhorrent behavior can be viewed as perfectly reasonable given the right context.

In other words, if we have a hypothesis about what could be causing a certain problem we can save ourselves a lot of trouble by remembering that the importance of any experimentation, the motive, is not proving a hypothesis but concluding sound observations that may or may not be applicable to the problem you set out to understand and resolve. Maybe the observations have nothing to do with the problem you set out to resolve, but that doesn't make the observations any less valuable because who knows where those observations might lead or what experiment they prompt next?

As it says in the Baghvad Gita, one of the central texts to the yoga tradition, “You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself—without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For yoga is perfect evenness of mind.”

Clearly we have observed that eating habits supplying the demand for animal agriculture have created a problem of sustainability, provided that other variables remain constant or increase. But, as demonstrated in the context of yoga, habits aren't always something that are beneficial and if we are going to earnestly set out to resolve the problems posed by animal agriculture ethically we should set out to do so with a pure heart.

So then, in keeping with the Yogic analogy, while attempting to rectify the apparent conflicts of the present nature of human civilization with that of the nature of the environment it inhabits, it may behoove us to orient a plan of action that is ethical, mindful, and considerate of all of factors and interests.

Considering the central philosophical tenets outlined in the “Yamas and the Niyamas,” or the “dos and don'ts” of the yogic tradition seems like a good place to start as we try to incorporate an ethical approach to solve environmental degradation outlined in Cowspiracy.

The Five Yamas are the measures we should consider involving our interactions with other people and the world at large and they are as follows: Ahimsa (non-harming or non-violence), Satya (truthfulness), Asteya (non-stealing), Brahmacharya (non-excess), Aparigraha (non-possessiveness or non-greed).

The Five Niyamas are the observances we practice in our inner world and they are as follows: Saucha (cleanliness or purity), Santosha (contement), Tapas (fire of transformation or discipline), Svadhyaya (study of the self and of sacred texts), Isvara Pranidhana (Surrender to a higher being, or the contemplation of a higher power).

These, to an extent, represent a religion and a code of conduct. Whether or not they were divinely inspired atop a mountain or written down by a guy sitting in a cave in his pajamas trying to control people oand save himself from is own lonely despair, people who haven't fully realized these tenets; who haven't had that divine inspiration; who haven't done the work and, yet, are adhering to them, are doing so for the sake of keeping up with the Joneses, so to speak. Their adherence represents a sort of faith in those who came before, a belief that the way things have been getting on is right.

According to Merriam-Webster “Religious” is defined as “1: relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity, 2: of, relating to, or devoted to religious beliefs or observances, 3: scrupulously and conscientiously faithful.”

Though, I suppose that there is a kind of knowing in faith and belief, kind of like a message that can be conveyed without verbal or written articulation, but that doesn't discount those submitting to perceived power out of blind obedience as many do, and have, with respect to authoritarian religions and government institutions.

Giving full consideration to habits as well as psychological and sociological circumstances that have factored into the present problem, in addition to any other relevant factors in play here, seems to be the most honest way to set out resolving the issue. What better way to do that than to bring into the mindful analysis the perspective of religion, the ultimate purveyor of morals and dogma.

As I seemingly tangent off topic here, it is this exact appearance that I intend to use highlight how interconnected things are when we discuss “sustainability,” which is where I think the documentary fell short; and that's the thing. It is meant to be a short hour and a half documentary for people to digest and get the wheels turning in one sitting.

All in all, I thought it very fruitful, concise, well thought out, and captivating. Without further adieu, allow me to extrapolate some of the ideas presented with my own commentary about a subject I am very passionate about.

When I was young I always was amazed how various institutions established for the public welfare can institute some of the most radical, draconian policies, whether it be how they treat women or even those who don't follow their particular “faith;” I was fascinated by the way people will bend over backwards to pervert meaning to suit their own agenda, both consciously for the sake of some grand future plan and unconsciously for the sake of consistency with past patterned thoughts and habits.

Knowing this tendency, one might begin to question the efficacy of using a text that outlines the spiritual struggle, the philosophical and intellectual challenges each person faces throughout their life in the context of a man's struggle to gather the resolve to engage his family, friends, and countrymen in battle as exemplified by the Bhagavad Gita. The risk of having your central religious text used as a means to justify people killing each other runs pretty high, yet that battle for what you believe is right, that battle against the influence of your family, friends, and countrymen is exactly what is required.

But, again, history has proven, however, that people who want to do something will bend over backwards justify their actions and I suppose any good story has something for everyone. Some people just like the fight.

I remember as a child thinking that “the Sermon on the Mount” was some of the most radical teachings, and while it made a lot of sense in many ways, in others it made no sense.

For example, in the book of Matthew, chapter 5 it reads:

In the book of Matthew, chapter 6 it reads:

“Forgive those that trespassed against us?” “Be perfect?” “Right. No wonder one of the largest criticisms of Christians is that they are a bunch a hypocrites. Perfection is obviously something as illusive as the Golden Snitch in a Quidditch match. Why do they call me a sinner if they forgive me? This was clearly an instruction on how to be a slave,” I remember thinking. It was clearly an instruction on how to destroy yourself. “Love your enemies.”

This is clearly not how one would traditionally “honor their mother and father,” the people who clothed and fed the child growing up, and imparted as much of their own wisdom so as to improve their own survival. In fact, how long does one expect to survive if they hate also even their own life?

Honoring someone would mean doing what they want, right? Would honoring them mean repeating their own mistakes and carrying on their own idiosyncrasies that, at present, serve no vital function?

“This teaching is designed to tear at the very fabric of the family on which the 'pillars of civilization' stand and clearly meant to soften them up for invasion!” If people try to make friends of their enemies and enemies of their neighbors then the organizational principles of warring nations goes by the wayside. I'm sure that there were those with ambitions of conquest into Europe who saw this kind of teaching as a something that would do just that.

I am also certain that there were Romans who, when they heard about a man creating a possible uprising in their Mediterranean province, thought a man critical of the High Priests, their masking of greed and selfishness behind holiness and ritual, and creating some division by asserting his Kingship would be worth the trouble and useful to help keep at bay any future incursions on their eastern front from a people united in their opposition to Roman occupation while also helping maintain arrangements already in place with the reigning monarchy.

Immaculate Conception

In hindsight, we can see clearly that no one really does have the right to the fruits of the work but rather just the work itself; the sword we've wielded on which we ultimately rest.

But it is no wonder Christians were persecuted by the Jews and Romans.

No wonder.

“No wonder” may also literally be the reason because if the nature of the “civilization” at the time was allegiance to dynasties and fearful submission to tyrannical power, then the lack of wonder and the pervading ignorance of the people may indeed have been one of the main contributions to the animus that governed the lives of people in those days.

Certainly there had to have been social forces that were feeding into the development of the society back then, the most glaring of which would seem to be warfare: the otherness that emerges when conflicting groups converge, the competition for control over resources, which, as far as states are concerned given the present monetary systems in place, include and depend on people.

So what factors influence the “human resource,” or human behavior? What factors coalesce individuals into conflicting groups? Apart from the primal needs for sustenance, shelter, and generally prolonging ones life, our thoughts seem to be a central factor to shaping the motive for much of our behavior and our thoughts logically seem to emanate from the knowledge and understanding we have digested.

Our thoughts react with the body-mind spectrum and the various systems it encompasses.

These questions are particularly relevant as we entertain questions of sustainability and the problems that arise as the environment is depleted and as we attempt to resolve such problems, because certainly sustainability is an umbrella term that extends far beyond animal agriculture in today's lexicon; which is a perfect representation of humanity's restless endeavor to wrestle control over the uncontrollable.

In the context of the founding of America, as enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, it was the treatment of the colonists by the British that spurred their split and the emergence of conflicting groups.

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation,” the Declaration starts. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

We can see that as if by the nature of polarity, by virtue of how we treat others; by virtue of assuming an identity, to a degree, we consent to a kind of automated government that dictates certain behaviors and thought patterns that effect how we react to the world and how the world reacts to us. This was in no way different than when the Declaration of Independence was signed and the wheels for the American Revolutionary War were set into motion.

The nature of industry and nations are often subject to the whims of forces like competition and demand which imply group separation. As we attempt to try to get a handle on the issue of sustainability presented by Cowspiracy, I think it would be useful to take a closer look at how groups behave given that cooperation seems to be the most essential ingredient for a recipe that doesn't spell disaster.

Identities are like clubs in a way, clubs that are alluring because they offer certain perceived benefits to its members by virtue of their decision to come together under the banner of a shared community and the dues each person pays to ensure that the commonly valued benefits offered by the group are still available.

Because of their shared values, the group naturally occurs so long as it still maintains its usefulness and what the group has to offer is still valued.

At a very basic level this is what was offered by tribal and feudal societies, where the tribe and the castle offered a degree of security from roaming wild predators and marauding raiders, though each person was obligated to abide by the directives of the chief or lord. Without the appearance of marauding raiders, the walls of the city begin to lose their value.

In some cases, kind of like the mafia, the group does you a favor but you are in its debt and, before you know it, it slowly starts to dominate your existence and how you respond to certain stimuli as you become more dependent. Also, like the Mafia, in these cases the benefit or protection offered to you by the group is from a threat or problem the group created itself.

But, like the brain's way of classifying information, the very nature of our identity, is multifaceted, interconnected, and layered within, and without, the sovereign individual.

It's reasonable to presume that the emergence of groups are natural and good to the extent that they serve the individual member without taxing, and possibly even adding to the benefit of, the greater group that it inhabits.

Without a consistent influx of new members, any group will inevitably perish with its existing members or with a change in interest or value of its members, or because the benefits initially offered are no longer being sustained.

Still, if you go far enough with the progression of groups, the pressing question becomes, “can you ever really add to or take anything from something that is everything?” How, in the Universe, can their be another universe? If there is a parallel universe, wouldn't the parallel universes still be one universe?

If, in the grand scheme of things, everything is already accomplished, the battle already won, there's no need to worry about whether you did everything you could; no need for the drama; no need to hustle about trying to secure a future that is already guaranteed and you are good to go, until; until something 'out of place' emerges and upsets the orderly, routine, sense that characterized the world you inhabited; until a doubt creeps in with a tickle and begins to linger tearing apart everything you thought you knew; until curiosity gets the best of the cat and then the cat needs to find some information to bring itself back.

Biologically we have proven with DNA that we are indeed individuals, yet we constantly try to classify things, associations into groups for the sake of ease and expedition of cognitive function. As a consequence, the emergent social structure reinforces the integrity of groups by projecting expectations or norms.

In Saudi Arabia, where you can have your hand cut off for stealing, you are going to think long and hard about how hungry you are before you send your monkey in to steal a loaf of bread from a market. In Afghanistan, if a man says that his wife was adulterous, the woman can be stoned to death by the community. These kinds of consequences and displays are on average sure to reinforce a wife's subservience to her husband.

Similarly, the convergent, singular truth that all philosophical and religious traditions seem to get at is broken down into different languages and symbols as a consequence of the expression of the individual psyche seeking validation; seeking security in an identity that is more closely beneficial to their most immediate needs and offers a bastion from being overwhelmed and completely consumed by broader, more pervading groups that wouldn't necessarily offer the same security and support.

Another example is how different cultures' respective deities that are representations of metaphysical concepts often manifest in the form of humanoid figures most closely resembling those within the society they were devised, because so often people have trouble assimilating new information and conceptual schemas that they can't make a connection to at a basic level; that they don't see in relation to their self.

Similarly, those who have suffered some kind of trauma at the hands of a certain individual or identity or group, are thus less likely to be able to engage with the concepts represented and thoughts explored by that particular embodiment and will seek answers elsewhere, never minding the fact that the others suffer from the same “guilt by associations.” They consequently run the risk of milling around a turn table of disillusionment.

The nuclear family plays a pivotal role in raising a child. Delegating some robotic bureaucracy to the rearing of children will never be able to replicate the intimacy that is so crucial for their development.

With this in mind, it seems natural to assume that the proximity of peoples often serves as an organizational principle for groupings of people beyond geography, but also by virtue of availability with respect to things like availability of information and resources that fulfill needs, which influence shared values.

One of the most basic needs is the need for love and intimacy and it can certainly be hard to fulfill this need worlds apart. People who live in close proximity are thus more likely to be compatible cohabitants, given the conditions that would allot for the development of shared interests and experiences and the inclination of the psyche to seek confirmation and ease in the familiar.

Technology, like proximity, can bring people together. Advancement in communications have made it possible to speak to a digital image of another person half way around the world on a small screen in real time; someone looking to verify information that their government is telling them to justify some defensive offensive just needs to hop on the internet and compare things first hand without relying on the media and then has the ability to deescalate tensions.

However, proximity and technology bringing people together isn't always the case. So often people further isolate themselves from others, from challenges to their habits and understanding, from engaging with the outside world. Whether it's because they are so preoccupied with their filled up schedules; reading lists, to do lists, that when they are moving about the grocery store or standing in line, they haven't the opportunity to glance up from their list and take their mind off of what they are going to do next to talk to someone or take the opportunity to just be in relationship and notice something that would have otherwise gone unnoticed: opportunities that they would otherwise never have known to exist.

They haven't created the space to allow for their mind, their experience to communicate its own story rather than the one being told on their Snapchat application or Facebook wall. Technology can start to be invasive.

To a degree, boundaries to our perception are necessary for us to be able to maintain a degree of functionality because how could one ever hope to operate if they were focusing on the cellular respiration of each of the billions of cells throughout their body? Does it make sense to drag everyone at the checkout through the trenches of the war between you and your in-laws, when everyone else is already engaged in combat on multiple fronts? How much opportunity for growth is afforded by exchanging brief commentaries and pleasantries anyways?

Well, I suppose more opportunity than if you hadn't and while maybe you couldn't bare your soul to someone at the grocery store, nobody is going to bare your sole for you.

It can be challenging at times to really iron things out and follow a train of thought for more than a few moments before reverting back to some more pressing thought and then remembering to get back on the train at a later time, but who knows? Maybe shooting the proverbial shit with the barber will help light a fire in those engines.

It seems that the relationship our conscious mind, our perception has with our bodies is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to consciousness and that relationship can serve as a technology in its own right. That relationship can serve as a mirror that can offer us insight into the complex operations of things such as political movements, violent revolutions, the earth's ecosystems, the movements of the stars and heavenly bodies, and even the relationship with one's spouse! Whew! That's good news!

All throughout the body are various nodes of communication where different parts of the body communicate automatically; automated responses to a dynamic environment of different stimuli operating without our intervening directly with our conscious minds.

When you move your hand to go pick up a glass of water there is a number of different functions being executed by the body in terms of spatial relations with your hand eye coordination as well as the haptic feedback you receive from your hand grasping the glass: sensing the weight and the minimum amount of strength necessary for the glass not to slip through your hands.

The muscles and bones of your arm all move in concert when given the impetus provided by your conscious mind, reciting a symphony you've conducted and practiced since before you can remember so that when it's showtime, all you have to do is wave your arms around holding a stick in the air to help guide the musicians to express their gravitas as they follow along the charted course for the flow of music on their sheets.

With practice, these functions are more or less grouped together for a more seamless cooperation.

RON DICIANNI – THE RESURRECTION MURAL

A virus is a parasite that causes disease by inserting itself into the cellular schema of a host where it is able to replicate its own code and thus manipulate the communication chain between the cells in such a way that induces an atypical response that usually results in cellular deterioration of the host, as it is a foreign entity not meant to cohabit the same body given its code causes the deterioration of the body.

“Viruses teeter on the boundaries of what is considered life,” according to a Live Science article titled 'What are Viruses?' by Aparna Vidyasagar. “On one hand, they contain the key elements that make up all living organisms: the nucleic acids, DNA or RNA (any given virus can only have one or the other). On the other hand, viruses lack the capacity to independently read and act upon the information contained within these nucleic acids.”

In other words, a virus can't replicate and form a group on its own, it can only pervert that which has already been created; that which is already endowed with independent, read-write capability and from there is able to manipulate the communication among the group to proliferate its own agenda.

There is no better example of why it is important to regularly exercise and explore your the various systems that comprise your body to help ensure a degree of autonomy is maintained so that habits don't get manipulated by malign influence.

In fact, many studies have been done on the effects of meditation and fasting on the body in terms of resetting the immune system among other positive benefits. In theory, they each provide a break in the continuous, habitual operations to allow for a period of assessment, coordination and realignment.

This is extremely difficult to do as society has conditioned us to be creatures of habit for the purposes of homogeneity and institutional cohesion.

You can't teach a class if you don't know exactly when to show up for the class and you can't think at class if your starving and all you can think about is your aching tummy. This is why we have units of time, eating patterns, watches, and the Conductor of a train is concerned about getting everyone on and off the train at each stop in a consistent period at various points throughout the day so that a schedule can be established from which others can organize and plan.

It then stands to reason that there are times when it is necessary for the individual to attend to the garden, till the soil and the like, and there are times when we should let the garden grow and do it's own thing so that we can tend to our own garden. The trouble is determining an indication of when to focus on each of these.

You can't really determine an indication without instilling a pattern that will eventually get you into trouble down the line if you allow that pattern to dictate how you should behave. It seems more appropriate that going by one's feeling is the best way to go about making the distinction.

What's that you ask? “Feelings? Ha. Most people are about as in touch with their feelings as they are with the stars in heaven. Feelings are about as subjective as the day is long. Surely there must be a more iron clad rule we could formulate that offers some tangible guidance!”

Well, to you I say what is the primary of the function of a garden if not to be enjoyed by its occupants?

If the garden is there for the benefit of the individual, it seems that the needs of the individual should be prioritized over those of the garden. I suppose the question would become, if we were tending to the needs of the individual, to what extent would the needs of the garden be taken care of in kind? What causes a person to neglect their environment; to neglect their own needs?

We see here that complex organizational structures often emerge and evolve from very basic understandings, motivations, and actions and if we want to protect ourselves from situations that arise when those structures are shaken, it's apparent that considering the architectural design of the structure is imperative.

But groups often offer benefits by virtue of their exclusion. After all, if, after going a few days without breast feeding, you caught sight of your mother offering her milk to a snake like hose you might not feel as intrinsically appreciative had you had the direct association of “face, heart, warmth, breast, nipple, milk.”

We see, then, that there is a variety of reasons that stratification of peoples occurs and groups emerge and they aren't necessarily bad.

Applying the second law of thermodynamics and assuming we occupy an isolated system, one could easily convince their self of the sin of producing offspring and the inherit conflicts that nepotism and the competition over finite resources breeds, that is if one even desires a state of peace and harmony.

There is certainly a plethora of evidence to suggest that the human psyche prefers the chaos of conflict to the order of peace, which can be seen as representation of our own growth and the process of integrating new information, seeking reconciliation in areas of conflict, and the minds inclination to derive meaning or information so as to more fully integrate ourselves with the environment and the universe.

The failure of this process has manifested a number of ways that usually go along the lines of murdering one's brother for his inheritance or stealing another man's wife for your fiftieth.

It stands to reason that the people who fail to integrate don't do so because they lack the necessary motivation; distracted by their own ruse of nihilistic apathy and selfishness or they are lulled into complacency offered by the comfort of the familiar; blind to the changing world that is leaving the conditions for that comfort with which they've associated behind, an association that people will fight tooth and nail to maintain.

In a word, ignorance: the capacity to ignore the most pressing.

I can think of no greater story that exemplifies this “tooth and nail” social program or construct than that of the love of Christ: a man who was tortured and crucified for daring to speak against the influence of popular opinion and the mob for their perversions of the wisdom passed on by his ancestors concerning the mysteries of God and life by a few looking to control others for their own vein glory, self aggrandizement, and group rather than empower others for the Glory of God; healing what he saw literally eating away at the flesh of his people: the temple of their worship; willingly handing himself over to suffering as part of his struggle in opposition to all of the biological and social programming that was telling him otherwise for the sake of the unknowable that he knew was right and True; for the sake of those that all of that programming was telling him he should be cursing, as exemplified by the passage “Forgive them father for they know not what they do.”

One might even begin to despise the “love” that seemingly allows and encourages these behaviors of conflict as an affront to the joy and bliss that peace and communion with the divine brings.

To this degree, one might offer their child as a sacrifice, allowing their child to be torn apart by the savagery of a people hell bent on consuming each other rather than reinforce the cannibalistic behavior one has associated with showing preference to their child.

It can be pretty disheartening to believe that the birth of each child, brought into the world with the narcissism-breeding coddling necessary for their development, represents another bucket dumped into the tidal wave of ignorance hurling towards civilization; even more troubling to believe that those who are ignorant tend to breed more ignorance with both their actions and how they raise their children.

Following this thought you might find yourself saying to yourself, “Arrogant twerps that just show up and expect the world because of their charismatic giggles and incessant screeching; just flop on the floor, make a mess of things, and disturb the orderly space you created.”

Having lived through your own challenges in life with the few life vests that were thrown to you along the way amidst a torrent of anchors, it can be daunting to see each soul born into the world and wonder just how, if they desire not to drown and sink into the abyss in this exponentially increasingly complex world, they will surmount their own incredible mountain of obstacles: tending the garden with the mounting socio-economic forces pulling them away from this responsibility; layers of their self that must be burned away to birth a new incarnation if civilization is to have a chance; if civilization is something that is at all valued.

What does it say for social stability and quality of life and education when you organize a society around Democratic government and incentivize the weaponization of mass population shifts?

For example, framing reproduction in the context of competing groups and parties so as to fulfill superfluous desire, ambitions of conquest, and futile, egotistical endeavors that only serve to distract us from our own illusion of control, rather than the context of fulfillment in communion, reunion, and marriage with the divine; with nature; with our own nature.

It's strange that, as plenty of the mysteries of respective regions' religions indicate, you tell someone they have everything, that they are complete being, that “the kingdom of heaven is within you” and they will still run about, caught up in the show and worrying about where the next hammer is going to drop or the next morsel can be found.

But it's never as simple has just telling someone to just go; just have a metamorphosis. There needs to be significant work done; significant energy expended; focus and care given, because if there isn't, if while sitting in the dark you try to force a square block through a circle hole then you will find yourself stuck and frustrated.

Try telling someone who has been tortured, starved, and deprived of the slightest modicum of reprieve from the arousal of the most basic instincts to let go of any aspirations of trying to secure a future where that experience doesn't have to be relived, not to enjoy the blessing of your child's smiling face and the comfort of a lover's embrace.

Try telling someone who has relived the Holocaust over and over in their head; whose family is still destitute and persecuted following various “Revolutions” not to go to great lengths to ensure that kind of horror that befell their ancestors doesn't get repeated; not to go to great lengths to wrestle control from even the slightest potential of such a threat. Try telling a person suffering after watching their families and communities targeted and picked apart by a vicious bureaucracy attacking every natural and good organizational institution “vengeance is mine, saith the Lord” without incurring a kind of wrath.

Try telling someone who just watched a young girl beaten and burned alive by an angry mob; watched a starving mob rip a live animal apart for meat; try telling someone who just had the lives of their families threatened; who was threatened to have their property confiscated, and their homes torn apart not to want to try and avoid those conditions.

Try telling them some mental magic about the nature of reality, the illusion of control, and how “everything perishes so just breathe through the discomfort;” to just “let it be” and “let go” without being whopped over the head and dismissed as a cult leader at best or worse for pacifying people that have no reason to be passive; for not only not warning them of peril, but acting in concert to disarm them to the encroaching danger.

It's easy as someone who has had reprieve from fear or hunger and the opportunity to contemplate things; easy for someone who has lived a full life, who has a nice comfy escape to fall back on, whose conscience is clear regarding the safety of their family and loved ones, to sit back and lecture a young father trying to provide for their family in a ruthless environment that they don't also inhabit and isn't a part of their environment about ethical conduct.

I suppose at a certain point it becomes almost easy to overlook the existential nature of attachment and thus the suffering of loss; easy to overlook the necessity of attachment for inhabiting our bodies and gaining experience; experiencing things like love; for maintaining a functional psyche and thus interaction with the world.

The question is to what extent have humans conditioned “the world” and created this ruthless environment by cultivating ferocious beasts and with the machinations of war? To what extent have we created these conditions by encouraging excess and abuse and delaying confrontation, and thus reconciliation, with the issues at hand? Clearly there is something to be said about human motivation and resulting social order, and certainly Cowspiracy has proven that human behavior can have drastic effects on our world.

It can be tempting to obfuscate any responsibility to cultivate an environment more conducive for assimilating into the broader diaspora by assuming a position of non-attachment and thus not engaging with the insanity that seems to rule the earth and then get sucked into the rat race, and yet it would appear that it is non-attachment that is necessary for that process of assimilation: the ability to detach from things you previously thought, maybe correctly, were necessary but are now no longer needed and are actually holding you back; the ability to detach from non-attachment.

Is it possible to be both attached and unattached? Is it possible to express an authentic musical masterpiece without paying attention and care to the sound? Conversely, is it an authentic musical expression if you are expressing the music on conditions of how it is perceived?

Should I allow the ruthless environment to dictate my own behavior and how far can I go with my attempts to maintain my perception of control before I become tyrannical and my own actions create exactly what I was trying to avoid; before each act, each stick I throw on the dam in the flowing river to protect my house from flood, creates a build up of pressure down river waiting to be unleashed when even the smallest piece falters or irregular weather patterns dump exceptional amounts of water into the river, overwhelming anything considered for the dam to be able to withstand during design?

What is the greater threat? The threat of flood from a rising river or the sudden release of a reservoir?

The regulation of the natural flow of the river allows for irrigation; for crops to be grown that support a population that can more substantially muster an army for defense from an invading army by allowing for a blacksmith to focus on forging weapons and armor; allows for architects to develop suitable defenses: moats and draw bridges and the like.

To what extent do the walls of the city become not only a constraint but a threat? To what extent do they delay confrontation and inhibit mediation with, and dismantling of, the enemy amassing beyond the gates in such a way that doesn't exacerbate the underlying problems for temporary alleviation of discomfort? To what extent does the preoccupation with the walls to protect from that which is without detract from flushing out threats fostering decay from within?

It can be hard to be sure that your calculation of the integrity of the materials in an engineering project without a stress test. Should we make attempts to control the weather with weather modification techniques; and by doing so do we create problems that are even more complex? Is it necessarily the external environment that needs to be manipulated or is it more practical to take stock of the internal world: other factors in play projecting the problems that we are faced with internally onto the screen of the external world we experience?

This internal approach to the problem of sustainability of animal agriculture is the solution Cowspiracy emphasized at the individual level with diet, approaching the animal agriculture industry itself as not necessarily the problem but rather a symptom.

If you can make a convincing argument that spurs yourself to change your lifestyle, you can persuade others to make that change as well and ultimately remove the demand that fuels that toxic behavior, groups, or industries.

The impact of a change in lifestyle of the individual can have a resounding effect as it is magnified by others who may or may not have previously shared the sentiment, but upon hearing and seeing the waves created from the slightest shift below the surface offered by that argument and example, are now more present, aware, undeterred by the prospective struggle, and spurred on to play their role.

It's also worth noting that this internal, individual approach offers us other solutions upon deeper analysis and not just more clever ways to reorganize and conceal the underlying problem or problems facilitating these kinds of dilemmas, which in turn make it all the more difficult to get a handle on down the road: clever masks that could possibly even set into motion an even worse disaster from an even more precarious, unstable position.

For example, the lack of compassion, communication, and understanding that creates the conditions where an Army is needed to defend against invaders. Solutions at the individual level minimize the risk of alienation that comes when a group targets another group, weakening the cooperation needed to avoid similar problems of a different nature in the future.

What is an Army defending? The property? The people? Values? What resources are needed to maintain an Army and how does the Army go about collecting those resources? What are the consequences of this process on the life of the people of the nation they protect?

How do invaders become invaders? Is it because of a rage conditioned by a climate of hate? Is it because of a strain on resources and lack of knowledge, cooperation, and innovation prevents them from organizing a system which creates the resources needed to meet the demand, preventing them from seeking escape from their prison into foreign lands? Are their demands reasonable necessities or insatiable desires? Are they driven out by their own rulers who, seeking to maintain their own power and control over their population, either purposefully or inadvertently create the conditions that drive their populations to become a force for invasion?

If the would be invaders were able to innovate, given the requisite knowledge and understanding, how much relief would it supply? Would it be enough to allow them to get to the crux of the underlying issues so they wouldn't soon find themselves in the same predicament or would it be just a cane that enables them to continue to prop up their wayward ways and lavish lifestyles?

The clever masks are technologies, like those previously discussed. Those who are ill equipped to wield them will quickly find that it is they who are being wielded by the technology.

The nature of technology, which has evolved through various progressions of civilization, is such that it is built and developed upon other systems in place that, like muscle memory, operate without our awareness and then therefore can get neglected without periodic upkeep. Technological fruits such as computers and automobiles, produced by a conglomeration of various giant corporations, can be seen as the result of a web of interdependent businesses, systems, and technological advancements which themselves are each comprised and dependent on their own supply of labor and resources.

When you design your entire society around things like computers you had better be certain of the reliability of the supply of those resources providing you with that infrastructure otherwise it could lead to disaster. In the event of an emergency such as a pandemic, ports and factories can be closed and the abounding lynch pins of the house of cards come front and center.

In other words, when there is an emergent threat to the vital systems of your most basic identity, such as your physical survival, instincts kick in and the interdependence that once acted as an agent of cooperation turns into a powder keg for war and a game of leverage; people start hoarding essentials like toilet paper and going bananas over bananas at the super market. The resulting death battle can have a snowball effect that can unleash previously unimagined havoc, misery and suffering as a result.

This could be when a group threatens to overwhelm and destroy another group and it's associates that have no way of disassociating from the group given that the group was threatened on the premise of an innate characteristics such as skin color. It could also be when a group or its peripheral supporting groups are systematically targeted to the degree that they are no longer able to offer the benefits that were initially offered and the members have no other way of securing those needs.

An example of this targeting would be that if someone had a prejudice against white people and they wished to do them harm they wouldn't necessarily come out and say how white people are inherently terrible because, on face value, that wouldn't be effective in causing them harm, it would only serve to expose their own prejudice.

They might instead gain entry into institutions around which white people typically congregate, communicate, organize and receive education and introduce rhetoric that would disrupt the institution and encourage behavior that would compromise the integrity of the attendants, their communication and their behavior, as well as the institution and thus the ability for white people to congregate, network, meet a suitor, and start a family, all of which would have prolonged the offensive white characteristic as it is passed on through the generations.

Instead these kinds of measures relegate them to a “shelter in place” kind of lifestyle that renders them sitting ducks waiting to be basted. These measures could include targeting business, trade, currency, and banking that they use as a mode for commerce.

Religious institutions aren't off the table of course, although the anarchic nature of Christianity has proven to be a testament to its resilience over the years, which has played out as interesting dynamic throughout history with the more pervasive, centralized Catholic Church. Christianity has historically proliferated through Europe so there is a strong association of Christianity with white people, and thus reason to target one if the other is offensive.

For better or for worse the evolution of Christianity has never lacked intrigue. Many tend to think that the Protestant reformation, in combination with the printing press, was pivotal to bringing Christianity to the masses given that prior to their advent, Bibles were hand written, and Mass was conducted, in Latin. The average person was then able to verify doctrines espoused by Priests first hand in a language they understood and, as a consequence, were able shirk some of the repression that was foisted on them by the Catholic Church.

You can see a degree of validity to the concerns the Catholic Church had, however, as many of the Christian Churches today have drifted far from traditional teachings as a result of the Catholic churches release over the stranglehold over matters of Christianity.

Those that would want to harm white people might gain control of media outlets that serve as a way to introduce thoughts and thought patterns that are a detriment to the well being of the viewer, reader, or listener by appealing to social queues using the power of suggestion to indicate the detrimental behavior is actually positive by associating it with a positive consequence like attracting an attractive suitor or gaining wealth and happiness.

They might normalize detrimental behavior with 'idols' – role models that look like those whom they are targeting – who are, by certain measures, apparently successful and then encouraging them to engage in reprehensible behavior in their private life. This encourages those who idolize them to follow suit.

This systematic targeting of a group might also be self imposed.

If you've invested all of your eggs in one group basket, let's say, and in the process you've alienated yourself from other support networks that you took for granted, because to do so would have compromised the benefits you would have received from the more exclusive group from which you presently benefit, if the group you invested so heavily in turns out to fail and be corrupted you can find yourself in a much more difficult position.

If you have invested so broadly that your investments in various groups are negligible those investments don't bring in any significant return given that the contribution is negligible to the group and often the return in any given group rises exponentially with the level of commitment. Consequently, a degree of isolation arises as your loyalties are less reliable.

These kinds of methods could be applied across the spectrum, and they have been all throughout history by various groups positioning for dominance and you can see how tempting it is to get drawn into the mud and play into these dirty games.

We've seen these kinds of tactics employed and scenarios play out in the political arena in the form of identity politics, organized boycotts of businesses and institutions, and even sabotage. If the political climate is any indication of the effects of these kinds tactics, clearly they create a threatening atmosphere that further divides people, which is exactly what is desired by those whose endeavor to conquer.

Unless you have trained and prepared for these kinds of scenarios then any agency you previously enjoyed goes right out the window and all it takes is someone to start promoting rhetoric that agitates these discrepancies between groups with the slightest threat or suggestion of victimization.

You don't know how much toilet paper you need to have on hand until pandemic hits and all of a sudden the manufacturers producing the toilet paper in another country can no longer meet the demand for you country as well as theirs, and thus they revert to prioritizing their supply for their own people.

You can see how when people are deprived of their most basic needs they then have the greater potential to behave in such a way that is reminiscent of a swarm of locusts, devouring everything in its path. Yet, the same can be said when excess and vices such as greed, avarice, gluttony, and envy go unchecked and a person is challenged by boundaries to his life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Any parent or child knows that telling someone not to do something or challenging their ability more often than not spurs them to do that very thing you discouraged or thought couldn't be done.

So then, after observing similar behavior develop from different conditions of abundance and destitution, we can conclude that the cause isn't so much associated with the environmental conditions as it is with a scarcity of internal resources to regulate the fire needed to bake the bread that sustains the mind, body and soul as it navigates through a perilous realm that threatens to drag it off course at every turn.

This precipice on which we must reside is evident in the rest of nature from which we have evolved and on which our survival depends: the plain of our existence resting at where heaven meets the earth, where the rivers and seas meet the shore. The extremes have never much cared for sustaining our particular organism in the barren desert, at the mountain top or in the depths of the sea.

It's funny how senses like our taste are enjoyed most when they have been restrained or after there has been a withdrawal. It's also interesting how a withdrawal of one sense can heighten the sensation and awareness of other senses. It's also evident that when these practices of attempting to maintain a balance aren't observed they can wreak havoc on our bodies.

Those who, while eating, don't take care to pay attention and appreciation to the tastes, smells, and textures of foods and the preparation of their ingredients often cook or consume foods with a lot of spices or foods with a more rich savory flavor, and find themselves dependent on these ingredients to enjoy their food; overlooking the qualities of the individual ingredients as more of filler for the prominent flavors that are on the surface. This is one reason why people who consume alcohol like red wine find that they enjoy their beverage most with savory foods like steak or french fries, as the two feed into each other.

As precedence is not given to the qualities of the individual ingredients, it's easy for the value of the individual ingredients and the nutrients they provide to be neglected. The irony is that it is the body's need for nutrients, vitamins and minerals that signal to the brain “hunger.”

Before long they find themselves needing to eat more, and more frequently, to be stimulated and have that satisfied sensation. Those who eat a lot tend to be the most hungry, as their stomach is conditioned to be in a state that is stretched and they have conditioned themselves to associate that discomforting sensation of the stomach shrinking with hunger. Without enduring the discomfort for the time needed to allow for the stomach to return to its normal size. the discomfort is only relieved by filling it once more with food.

If, after enduring the discomfort of the stomach shrinking back to normal size, when they next eat they don't actively try to reduce the amount of food they eat by resisting eating to that threshold of feeling stuffed or their taste receptors losing their sense, their stomach will readily expand to meet the previously established threshold for feeling full and the cycle of suffering will continue and eventually even snowball into having more dire effects.

Apart from diseases like diabetes and diseases of the heart, the effects of a nutrient deficient diet has negative effects on cognitive function, auto-immune disease and others of this kind.

Also, it is the restraint, the emptiness that allows for the body to focus on other processes that aid in its function beyond digestion of food, many of which processes are associated with detoxifying and cleansing vital organs in addition to resetting other systems throughout the body, allowing it to heal.

In summary of that rather long, verbose analogy to illustrate the irony of those who are hungry and the importance of restraint and self discipline: “a person who is constantly speaking has less time to listen.” I guess we are all just suckers for a little irony.

The problem is, you can't really know whether or not you don't want to traverse the mountain until you have seen the peak and find yourself at the precipice of falling into heaven or climbing back down, realizing “that was a lot of energy expended for the sake of a nice view and an impressive fireside tale;” realizing you missed the comforts of home and the warmth of your loved ones.

Maybe this is what is meant by those seemingly self deprecating passages referenced earlier: offering your adversary that takes your coat, your cloak also; Walk with him twain for that extra mile because it is his understanding, and sovereign exercise thereof, that is essential for a type of system or social order that doesn't breed corruption, misery, and suffering to be able flourish: from a balanced, common ground.

Challenging yourself in this way is the only way for the adversary to learn; it's the only way for you to grow. How else could you be sure of your own convictions?

If your goal isn't just to be right, in the sense of public opinion, but in fact to be true; to assimilate your being with the cosmos for a more harmonious peaceful experience, how else could you accomplish this than without convictions and with conversation?

If the goal is not to wipe out an entire economy and destroy communities so that an authoritative iron fist can swoop in unchallenged, it's important to take into consideration the people who depend on these industries for survival and the factors that will threaten their survival in the absence them. It's important to consider alternatives to have available to fill the vacuum created because, as has been established previously, the threat to a people's fundamental security can unleash all kinds of havoc.

What does it say to a population that, at the urging of the sustainability of the planet, has effectively leveled off their emissions, consumption, and population growth – all factors used in the calculations of those promoting “sustainable development” – that they must now take in immigrants who not only pose a threat to the security of their own culture and loved ones, but also statistically have proven to have higher birth rates. To top it off this is done for the stated purpose of sustaining the growth, consumption and production of the very industries that are facilitating the sustainability crisis that these regions face.

These kinds of mixed messages and “do as I say and not as I do” type scenarios provide fertile ground for which to sew the seeds of distrust, separateness, and conflict. If there are any imbalances, real or imagined, then they are sure to throw things off kilter and maybe even exacerbate the issue you initially set out to resolve, if the primary concern was ever the planet and not some psychopathic to burn the planet and be the one holding the keys as it burns.

It is pretty tempting to feel empowered and be deceived by delusions of grandeur when we step back and appreciate the works of our hands: the imagination, the will, the resources, the energy you summoned from the ether to manifest the work on which you gaze; tempting to possess; tempting to make the world in the image you envision; tempting to ignore an inconvenient truth and feel the victim of circumstance; tempting to wield deceit and actively promote ignorance as a means to achieving a goal rather than seeking truth, recognizing a need, and approaching the challenge to meet that need with a multifaceted perspective: two different sides of the same coin seeking the best resolution for securing the needs not being met.

Framing reproduction in terms of a “reproduction war” seems reminiscent of the not too distant medieval past when unstable populations in various regions were unleashed on neighboring countries for conquest rather than attempt to shift what might have led to those conditions.

Arms races: the result of vying for security. Technological advancement: the product of an arms race; the product of meeting the need of a demand. Is it a demand or command? Need or desire?

If your desire is a safe space, what is safety? Not to be tortured? Not to have your feelings hurt or your perspective challenged? Not to die?

Nuclear power plants are a technological advancement that now supply much of the world with electricity and heat but at the same time both the nuclear waste and the nuclear bomb are a byproduct that threaten not just the human race with extinction but entire ecosystems. By dropping the bomb to stop the killing, we've turned the world into a giant microwave oven: slowly baking us from the inside out and revealing behavior just as abhorrent, if not more, than that displayed in combat.

What is more barbaric: promoting infanticide as reproductive health or slaughtering each other in combat when a burgeoning population decides they are going to go far and wide to ensure that they carry on carrying on, and bring their problems to your door?

Historically men would go off to fight the battles that need be fought so that women could stay home, rear children, and carry on the civilization by replenishing the population after suffering losses in battle. Which do you prefer: the ignorance of widows, orphans, and the impoverished growing up without a father to provide for those needs or that of abundance, decadence, and excess that results from the triumphant return home from battle with the spoils of war, which include those who survived forever changed by their harrowing experience. Which do you prefer: the ignorance of an authoritarian system bound by censorship and endless rules or that of the unruly mob riled by the slightest cry of “witch,” stomping out any dissenting opinions?

Maybe the risk of ignorance of a child growing up without a father is better than growing up with a father who would instill his own ignorance into his children to carry on the same behavior. Maybe the mob rule is preferable to the dogmatic, rule with an iron fist Orwellian father of the ruling party constructing a society that leaves no room for the individual experience.

Helping others to avoid famine and risk you and yours starving as well seems more reasonable than avoiding famine for some with the certainty of bringing famine on others. At least with one there is a glimmer of hope; where peoples suffering could be limited.

Technically we could end it all; we could do away with the human population and there would be no more having to worry about calculations such as these. However, that doesn't seem very ethical. These kinds of draconian approaches always seem more like cutting off the nose to spite the face, and time and time again these desperate acts to assert control and avoid suffering only seem to exacerbate the problems and suffering, and make both ourselves and our environment that much more unstable.

How does sterilizing or killing off a bunch of people who won't do the work of self study and discipline – sparing yourself from having to do your own work of self study, discipline, and suffering needed to allow for alternatives to emerge – for the stated purpose of combating ignorance and preventing suffering, stack up in the “do as I say, not as I do” test?

What degree of responsibility do you have for yourself and others? If unstable populations and a strain on environmental resources are your concern, isn't it more effective to come out and say that and encourage cooperation rather than to surreptitiously seek impose your will; isn't it more important to instill the sense of community and empathy needed to get people to understand and alleviate your concerns and change your understanding rather than risk incurring blowback from a strong, antagonistic act that rouses people's suspicions and defenses, and instills exactly the kind of behavior that leads to the problems you were hoping to avoid.

Do western countries, being the first countries to industrialize and after suffering through cataclysmic wars that killed hundreds of millions of people, have the right to dictate to other countries who haven't industrialized not to do so? Conversely, because other countries do something, are we obliged to act in kind?

As the world becomes smaller and smaller and it becomes apparent that developments on the other side of the planet can effect the climate we enjoy, it seems that we should be encouraging cooperation.

Something as simple as oil based plastic has allowed for the distribution and mass production of processed food to meet the demands of burgeoning populations in different parts of the world, yet that very food has sapped the life out of people who consume it twofold: through toxic preservatives and contamination of the materials as well as by poisoning the ecosystems inhabited by those who consume those products because they haven't the requisite 'infrastructure' in place to dispose of the waste.

What life are we sustaining with technological developments the likes of these, which seem only to build prisons for our bodies and minds they were meant to free; if they only serve to make us more sick, dependent, better servants to the will of another that may not have our best interest at heart?

Is it wrong then to have attempted to preserve human decency by ending an armed conflict? Was it that we neglected our collective responsibilities as co-creators of our world to allow ourselves to fall right back into the same patterns that led to the problem?

Look at us now. In Japan people sleep in pods when they aren't at their jobs. When they are on the way between the two they are shuffled into a packed train; so packed that they need to hire an official train stuffer to stand at the door to pack people in so the doors can close.

In San Francisco the housing crisis and wealth disparity is so extreme that the people needed to ensure that the city still functions can't afford a place to live and for affordable housing they are building subterranean pod complexes for them to sleep in.

Maybe it wasn't necessarily wrong to have developed the technology in the past. Maybe it needed to happen then but is no longer needed now. I certainly wouldn't wish the responsibility of weighing the potential loss of life – the value of different lives and their individual potential – on anyone. There are however instances where there is no third option for avoiding loss of life and you are certain that whatever action you do or do not take will incur a loss.

The fact is, instances like this happened. Is the bigger mistake looking back at the past in anger or resentment? Doesn't it instead make more sense to embrace the dawn of a new day to make a better world rather than restore the past?

As the first passage in the yoga Sutras of Patanjali reminds us, “atha yoga anushasanam,” which means “now is the time for yoga.” Now is the time to yoke; to be present; to be in relationship with ourselves and the world. There wasn't some missed opportunity in the past, or some distant opportunity in the future to practice.

Look at the US now with the post-modern society that is not only still operating largely on the combustion engine, largely oil based gasoline when alternatives have been available for decades. Clearly there is no reason that people should have a nuclear reactor in their station wagon, but there are certainly viable alternatives available. Why the delay?

There will always be arguments for National Security that will be cited as an excuse for delay, however real or far-fetched.

One such example would be “that we needed a certain supply for the economy” and so and so forth. There are also other glaring obstacles, such as having to overcome the lobbying efforts of a firmly established industry that has been entrenched in the Washington DC power structure for a very long time.

When businesses and investors see a market they would be able to tap they are all over it, and it's as plain as day that there is a need and demand for other alternatives, so why not? Is about holding those keys?

There is also something to be said for the human need of touch and to be in nature, there needs to be that exchange of energy for our own health and well being so it doesn't make sense to lock everyone up for the sake of the environment, we are the environment!

The principle of technology is that it is ergonomic, meaning its design is devised with the human being in mind, or as a function and outgrowth of human nature.

There are some horrifying aspects of human behavior, which can explain some horrifying devices that have been produced throughout history, but the extent to which such behavior is natural and not the result of social conditioning is arguable.

By definition, the degree that the technology serves humanity than it still retains it's value. The technological organization may find itself useful for some and not for others, but does “use” equate “service?” Do we have the right to dictate to others what is useful for them and does their desire to use a tool trump the needs that wouldn't be met met as a result of its use?

There are plenty of those who “use” drugs recreationally, and it only serves to poison their mind, body, and spirit. There are, of course, those who need a dose medicinally to get through a surgery or the like, or maybe they use a drug to have a spiritual experience or to help cope with some other condition.

When you start to apply blanket rules you always wind up in trouble. What could have been useful at the start of the twentieth century isn't necessarily useful today. Whale oil became obsolete with the advent of crude oil. The horse and buggy people used to commute was replaced with with the automobile which spurred the rise of commercial metropolises and farming, the development of suburbs, and the reorganization of the traditional town and thus lifestyle of the average person.

Technological advancements, combined with the consolidation of wealth and influence that they channeled and the influence of the state, slowly made it more difficult for the average person to maintain any degree of sovereignty over their lives with regard to subsistence living and self reliance, which serves to act as a check on imbalances of power and a corrective force to any abusive relationship.

For a while these innovations looked promising, but now we see the demands of both industry and the populations they supply tearing at the quality of life that the very same innovations were meant to help us enjoy. During our campaign to conquer the wilderness, the wilderness crept in to our home and slowly started cracking the foundations on which the community we created was built.

Freedom of movement may have long been essential for people to be able to get around to their various jobs and visit Grandma, but the advent of the internet as well as other technologies such as hemp plastics has made it so that there are many industries that could easily conduct most of their business in such a way that would translate to a reduction of o-zone depletion from carbon emissions and pollution from plastic waste from petroleum byproducts, yet we are way behind the curve of where we could be for making this technology cost effective for everyone and thus available and implemented across a much broader range. The technological learning curve should also be considered in addition to the willingness, impetus, and ability to learn as well.

These transitions take time, and rightly so, however that shouldn't distract us from what Immanuel Kant, the Enlightenment Era German Philosopher, would say is “categorically imperative:” that one should “act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”

Well, it's hard to think of anything more imperative and daunting than to act with the universe hanging in the balance, and it seems also very easy to dissuade oneself of this imperative when one knowingly acts against their better judgment and the universe doesn't collapse back into the void of nothingness.

It's also been established that in a world of continuous flow, establishing a Universal Law seems a bit risky. Maybe we should dub it a “rule of thumb?”

How does one help people who will only help themselves when it is to the next helping of biscuits and gravy at the all you can eat buffet? Yet helping others help themselves seems the only way that their problems can be resolved without incurring any blowback that comes with forceful intervention.

What is more cost effective? To allow for a business which fails to adapt to changes in markets and conditions to fail or subsidize its own short comings at a cost to taxpayers footing the bill, and with this kind of safety net what kind of impetus, if any, is provided for people to make the right, tough decisions; to help people realize how absolutely necessary it is that they act in accordance to the “force” of the universe when the more direct consequences of their misdeeds are hidden from the and laden on those who have been working at great cost?

Again, ensuring that those basic needs are met is something that can at least afford the opportunity for those decisions to be made by freeing up the resources to engage in that kind of development.

Without a doubt the majority of the people who inhabit this planet want to get through this experience of life happily, and with minimal pain and suffering. The trick is that there are complex systems at work that can mesmerize us into a trance and allow us to fall into cycles that propagate the illusion: the next dollar to chase, the next threat to your security, the next problem to avoid, the next Bank's financial solvency that is necessary as a matter of National Security.

Institutions don't suffer, people do; individuals. Why is it that we allow zombies groups to turn us into zombies, devouring ourselves? How is it that we will go to such great lengths to maintain the status quo; to cling to groups that offer nothing more than a group for the group, individual people be damned?

What I mean is that there is a lot of tricks the mind plays on us.

For example, people seeking to avoid suffering often find themselves suffering their entire lives; withdrawn, living in a state of constant, abject fear: fear of attachment, fear of making mistakes, fear of causing any suffering.

Other times people will go to great lengths to ensure that they suffer: frequently subjecting themselves to pain to condition themselves not to feel or numbing themselves with drugs to avoid confrontation with pain. As we've seen with people who get hooked on opioids after being prescribed them for pain following some trauma, the pain comes back stronger and then feeds into the addiction.

The irony is without sensation you can't be alive. Without a healthy fear of death you can't appreciate your life. Without pain you can't heal.

The suffering seems not only unavoidable but necessary. It must be true what they say, misery loves company, and it must be because misery is lonely. Why then is it that, with so many of us on this rock floating through nothingness, there is so much misery?

Why are we so desperate to avoid being alone and also all one? Why is it that in our quest for fulfillment and completion that we isolate ourselves from involvement with others; that we wall our inner self off from the rest of being that carries on without? Why is it that we seek another for being complete; to provide what we lack; to answer questions we struggle with?

What's behind this motivation to be validated and by virtue of this process do we cease being, and thus being valid? How can we be if our being is not valid and is our quest to be validated just a part of our being?

Why in our desperation to avoid suffering and pain, to avoid exposing our own deceit, do we create these complex illusions that cause just that for ourselves and others? Why do we allow ourselves to be packed into pods?

It takes religious like discipline of non-religiousness to be able to stay on the straight and narrow path; to stay present; it takes commitment to virtues like those outlined by the Buddhist discipline known as the brahmavih?r?s, also known as the sublime attitudes or 'abodes of brahma,' which outline a practice of prayer, reflection, mindfulness, contentment, gratitude, equanimity, selflessness, compassion to, not only find the resolve to desire to bring people out of suffering, but also stability necessary not to get sucked in, or add to, the tumult of a suffering world while extending your helping hand into the whirlwind to help bring people out.

What is most evident is that it takes courage.

It begs the question, does one stop technological advancement for the sake of some calculation that factored variables from a bygone era that could, both then and now, be irrelevant or, by virtue of their involvement, act as a self fulfilling prophecy: skewing the data in a way that confirms a hypothesis? If technology, like the King to his vassals, exists in dependency and as a function of those it was designed to serve, it behooves us to be sure that the technology isn't suicidal.

How is one to recognize at which point a group becomes a hindrance rather than a foothold? If people aren't given the opportunity to evolve, will they behave in a way the indicates no hope of change? Will they be evolving if they are having decisions made for them and the lifestyle isn't something that is felt through every fiber of their being? Will it only be when there is nothing left to give, nothing left to take that we can start to see things come full circle and the transience of this existence brings to clarity that which is most important?

Technological advancement could possibly resolve present complications if we come with fresh eyes to a problem; but do we come with fresh eyes and forego the considerations of the past? Can you have fresh eyes without foregoing the past?

What does it say when the most wealthy nation on earth, that has brought a level of convenience never before seen with industrial and technological advancement, has at the same time created a situation where IQ and education levels have simultaneously worsened with obesity and other illness?

While breaking the home and the bonds of the family with the financial demands of artificial constraints created by institutions set up for the public welfare that force the average household to be supported by two working parents, the forces of ignorance have been loosed upon the very same public, and on many over seas orphans and widows wading in the wreckage, for the alleged purpose of nation building, which has proven failed as in Iraq and Afghanistan. This while the nation builder can't even build its own nation, as infrastructure crumbles and a people are divided.

I think most single parents can attest to the difficulties of trying to educate and raise your children to be moral inquisitors of society while at the same time providing for them because to do that requires that you also have time do that for yourself. Also, the statistics are in: children of single mothers are more likely to be convicted of crime, join a gang.

Clearly there is a crisis of character, a crisis of stewardship, a crisis for the civilization we've been conditioned to value. Maybe it's just a crisis of being.

Yet another obstacle: defining what is “civilized.” Tailgating for a weekend funneling beers in the parking lot and slamming chili dogs? Draping women in Ghost costumes so as not to offend another's delicate sensibilities? Forcing everyone to toe the line under a Jackbooted Despot? Tea and crumpets?

The term clearly refers to a society which is civil. In other words, a people ruled by courtesy and politeness. Clearly what is courteous or polite can be twisted to varying degrees depending on the values and norms established by the society, but at a fundamental level most value the basic essentials and these values and customs typically evolve from human nature.

Someone could even go so far as to use this norm to the detriment of others by signaling the queue that would trigger the normally virtuous response by posing as a victim and tugging on their heart strings so as to puppeteer some selfish fantasy.

To this end it would be important to consider the wisdom of the Golden rule that is “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise,” and the implication that it is Golden only under the assumption that you would like to take care of yourself, that you know how to take care of yourself, that you aren't some kind of sadomasochist, and that that your basic needs like food, shelter, security, and love are all being met while extending whichever virtue has been signaled.

The important thing to note is that the term “Civil” refers to a kind of self governance via consideration of others. It's then reasonable to assume that conflicts in any relationship that go ignored for lack of consideration and communication will ultimately fester and boil, and start to eat away at the relative peace the parties involved had previously enjoyed while occupying their shared environment when the pressing matters were being addressed, or when they were being ignored.

Sacred Heart

In other words, it's important to be mindful and considerate because, even if you ignore things, in this interconnected world you can be certain that you are being considered, whether you are aware of it or not.

Yoga has been known to heal people by cultivating space in the mind to observe the mind in addition to the body, so as to be able to more acutely analyze and bring awareness to what may be contributing to any sensations or patterns in their experience. So often injuries are the result of neglect.

So then, is meditating under a tree contemplating the action of inaction a way to resolve a conflict?

In a few ways, yes, because when an invading army comes to take your homeland, murder you, slaughter your friends and family, and rape and enslave your women and children there wont be any conflict when they are fully assimilated in slavery and you are dead.

What suffering are you willing to endure?

What potential is more tolerable: that you failed to act in defense of your people – so defined by dictates of social forces and the golden rule – as they were slaughtered because you assumed everyone was on the same “identity wavelength” as you; that for the sake of some utopian dream you were lulled into a state of dormancy, choosing the suffering of fear of wrong action; of being absolutely alone and without anyone to hold, any memory to treasure as a substitute for a coping mechanism and preferable to the suffering of loss, or that your action contributed to furthering the innate divide that breeds the potential for more conflict, the potential divide that – having previously established is a natural function of life – is as certain as waves on the ocean?

If you were about to trample over someone, wouldn't you want that person you were about to trample to speak up and tell you not to tread on you? If you were about to walk right into a sinkhole, wouldn't you hope someone would stop you?

It seems that those with the most immediate shared interests will always find some idol to rally around that is the most accurate representation of their shared identity and can best deliver the goods they need or desire. Factions will always emerge when a fear and scarcity mindset sets in – no matter how abundant the nature of reality is – and people just want to take, take, take. Consequently that mindset projects out into the world and creates the exact conditions it set out to avoid.

No matter what there will always be that lingering doubt that might reveal another perspective for the better or worse, but in this particular scenario it seems to me that the opportunity for resolving conflict with negotiation seems a much better option than the opportunity to resolve a conflict with the suffering and erasure of your loved ones.

As the great ape beats his chest with thunder and the roaring lion reveals his fangs, the fold that was once scattered grazing from the bounty offered by their peaceful domain will tremble with fear at the sound of battle and call to arms that rings out, herding the once sprawling identity chain to the most fundamental and prominent of these.

It can be tempting, as we enter into the monuments of the past that are our bodies in search of hidden treasure and clues that can reveal hidden pathways that lead to opportunities of enrichment, to fall for the first shiny object that presents itself and become fixated on the objective and miss out on the mission. Booby traps lay in wait ready to turn back those who haven't adequately prepared themselves for the trial and who haven't come equipped to navigate the dark corridors.

As we've seen, it's not that groups are necessarily bad or good. They are a tool; a technology; a pattern, which can be used for good or evil.

The nurturing mother showing preference to the baby she lugged around and labored for as opposed to the neighbor's is just, and it is the most effective check on abuse from the breast milk gluttons looking to siphon off the “breast milk pool.”

Our most basic groups act as the earth on which a ladder can stand to help carry you to places you would otherwise never have been able to reach without.

Throughout history, Jews in Europe have always been criticized by whichever country they wind up for because of their in group preference and the society apart with which they carried themselves. This of course is something that can hardly be helped for many immigrants when, for whatever reason, they move to a new country. There are often the challenges of language barrier in addition to adjusting to the norms and customs of society to which they migrate. There are also barriers that arise from a native population that is suspicious and hostile, weary of foreign invasion. So there is again, the learning curve that can't be helped.

Being an immigrant is also challenging because, for better or worse, in some cases it requires you to sacrifice part of your identity, your lifestyle which had up until the point of being an immigrant, you thought served you well. Sacrificing part of your identity can be a pretty laborious task.

Those of us who have been conditioned to think that one way is right for no other reason other than “that's how it's always been,” “people in positions better suited to make those decisions think it's the way it has to be,” or “God said this is how it has to be in this book” will always find themselves susceptible to misunderstandings of others.

One prime example of this is the guy in a white coat with a piece of paper framed on the wall, which indicates to you that he is a man of knowledge to whom you should defer, prescribing you a pain medication containing fentanyl: a deadly substance that has led to the opioid epidemic that has ravaged much of the western world. Clearly the man in the white coat did this either because that was what he was told to do, because it was what was easiest for him to do, or because he got a nice bonus the more of it he “sold.”

For someone to tell you what's good for you seems a bit strong, given they don't have access to all of the data that you do about yourself. A more amicable approach would be making a suggestion for a stated reason and then allowing further examination of your reason.

There are obvious challenges when these adjustments are forbidden as prescribed by authorities such as sacred texts handed down from on high.

Conflicts are sure to arise when people who, with religious convictions, have interpreted passages such as these to be indications that they should not only obey the voice that are the words in the Bible as they have been interpreted, but also that they are set apart from other peoples with whom they encounter who don't share their identity: who they identify as those who keep the covenant.

What is the difference between an identity and a characteristic; between a quality and a label? Who keeps the covenant? He who carries around the the most appropriately decorated, ornate box?

In Germany, after World War I, Jews had their businesses identified so as to be avoided or even targeted by those who were resentful of the relative success their “group” enjoyed through the economic turmoil in the early twentieth century.

When the Irish fled famine in Ireland for America they were met with hardship due to the broader, new society to which they now belonged.

“In the late nineteenth century, political cartoonist Thomas Nast regularly lambasted Irish Catholic immigrants as drunkards and barbarians unfit for citizenship; signs that read, 'No Irish Need Apply,' lined shop windows in Boston and New York and dotted the classified pages in many of the country’s leading papers; statesmen warned about the dangers of admitting Catholics from Southern and Eastern Europe onto American shores, for fear that they were something less than civilized (and less than white),” As Josh Zeitz writes for Politico. “It wasn’t unusual for respectable politicians to wonder aloud whether Catholics could be loyal to their adoptive country and to the Pope.”

History has proven that far too often groups can take on that zombie existence and begin to operate to the detriment of everyone it comes into contact with, and even the individual for whom they were originally created, when the social contract and cohesion necessary for the groups proper function is violated.

For example, social welfare programs were established for the stated purpose to act as a safety net for those who, for whatever reason, fell through the cracks of society. The person who, while having the ability to provide for himself grifts and dips into the pot unnecessarily or not for lack ability or alternative means, does so because the social contract has been violated.

Either they don't share an identity with the group or they associate the group with a feeling of being slighted and thus justify their selfish act. Regardless, the violation of the social contract is symbolic of alienation.

If the law is only designed to serve a select few; if the law is selectively enforced; if the law targets people for reasons other than being lawbreakers; if the law targets those lawbreakers that only break the law because of it unjustly is designed to keep them from that to which they are essentially entitled, then the law is lawlessness and ceases to serve its function, so agreed by those who gave the law power with their consent, and we see then that it's only natural to “assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”

In other words, if there is no respect for your own sovereignty by any individual or government, by virtue of your equal station not being given consideration, you are released of any obligation to any bonds or political bands previously shared and assume your independence.

If you are being poisoned, if you are systematically being disarmed or deprived of your right to defend your life, to speak your mind, to control who consumes your wife's breast milk you, then the law is martial.

This kind of behavior; these kinds of violations of the social contract obviously pose a problem for those who have sacrificed their lives to build and sustain such programs for their own use, for their children's use, and for the use of meeting needs of those whom the programs were intended.

This kind of behavior poses a problem for those who sacrificed their lives to build and sustain a country where self evident truths about the equality of men with respect to their fundamental, inalienable rights that were endowed by their Creator are not sidelined by the excesses of state or private enterprise.

It can be gut-wrenching to come face to face with the prospect that everything you worked for your entire life was plundered for gratuitous use.

What's more is that the violation poses a problem for the person who, by committing the act to either violate the law or institute and enforce an unjust law, reinforces their own alienation and prolongs their ignorance: what could only have led to the selfish act in the first place.

By providing another ball to chase, they distract themselves and delay their confrontation with reality and the assessment needed to arrive at the realization of the futility of investment in the material things that are perishing; of attempting to control the uncontrollable. They give up on that pursuit of happiness to which they are entitled by their mere existence.

Just as a band may come together for a tour, they ultimately will disband and the music they played will never be heard again, at least not as it was; each iteration is a unique expression. Sure there may be a recording, but it will only ever be an echo, and the person listening to it will only ever be a shadow of their former self who had listened to it before.

What's apparent is that the only thing that is unsustainable is the form to which we attach, and so we see that by virtue of clinging to things such as these, we are limited; by holding on to a way of life out of fear of death, the unknown, or what is beyond our control, we perish.

The steady march of time and the advancement of the pieces on the chessboard will inevitably bring scenarios such as conflicting groups and those of sustainability to the forefront. There is a weird contradiction that the term itself seems to highlight, “What is unsustainable in a world as boundless as the one we inhabit? Why is it we squander and surrender our limitless nature for the passing glance of an artificial construct?”

The saving grace of the individual amid all the drama of the life and death of groups and identity is that the individual is not necessarily bound by identity. For example, what may interest the person as a child may differ than their interests as an adult. Our body is the medium with which we experience and express the inner and outer world and the shape and experience within and without will also change. While the medium or mode of being we inhabit may vary in acuity and appearance across time, there remains a degree of base consistency.

While we may not choose our family and our hereditary genes, we ultimately have available to us the opportunity to change our name or, with enough attention and energy, recognize our learned behaviors, which may have led to the manifestation of certain physical characteristics or life circumstances, and alter them.

It's possible that a pensive, judgmental mind might manifest a protruding jaw or a furrowed brow or a stonemason might develop burly, calloused hands and arms; that a puppet lying to himself may grow a big nose. Respectively, the judgmental one might have difficulty carrying on relationships while the mason might develop back problems; the lying puppets big nose might create a living hell for him knocking everything over, and the obfuscation of his responsibility and quest for fun only fan the flames.

The various identities we embody, or don't embody, factor into our self-unfoldment. Friend, classmate, son, daughter, brother, sister, hockey player, our decisions to observe, participate, or follow along; to act rather than react are what makes us who we are.

An important question to now ask would be 'what things are barring us from the knowledge, or inhibiting us from the wisdom and understanding that would allow us to be in state of homeostasis as opposed to facing down the seemingly ever looming threat of sustainability?'

Notions of justice? The longing for some previously enjoyed state of being? The desire to feel safe or posses something?

So, when attempting to resolve issues of sustainability, I think it would be useful to ask “is the goal to destroy animal agriculture, to maintain quality of life, to maintain population growth and offer a sustainable solution to the rising demand for food?”

What groups are associated with said agriculture industry that might be adversely effected by its destruction? Is their job security or their unwillingness to adapt worth the destruction of ecosystems? If somebody is demanding food is it needed?

Often times I appreciate my self imposed austerity and the greater appreciation it helps foster for the things that I have and the space it allows for me to develop the understanding needed to be content without needing to fulfill some superfluous whim.

If certain segments of the population are practicing demographic warfare as a means to gain leverage to impose their will and in the process are creating starving, uneducated, warring populations, should others engage in the same kind of behavior? Should those who established a Republican form of government so as to maintain a more just system to mitigate the negative effects of tyrannical government, do away with that very system when it is challenged by tyrannical abuses? Is it not more important to assert their independence and preserve Republican government for those who are still operating with that common bond?

Should those presiding over said populations in positions of influence and promoting such behavior, leveraging ignorance as their own means to exert influence, have their bad practices continually rewarded after already having had countless extensions of good will and relief offered to them to help give them the opportunity to change. Should they once more be allowed obfuscate the regret they would normally experience after observing the consequences of promoting such behavior? Does it make any sense to extend this relief to people who “despitefully use you” without a second thought?

What size army would the places not experiencing those problems like to be invaded by when those ignorant populations have nothing left in their own land to ravage and turn their sites on the them?

Certainly the Pavlovian response is something that has been tried and true and rewarding this kind of behavior would be inviting untold suffering.

But on the other hand, maybe your own destruction is warranted: the destruction of that thick security blanket of abundance that has left your appreciation for all that made it possible for you to enjoy that warmth, absent; that sold you the belief that if you just bought the newest fuel efficient car you're absolved of any further responsibility.

Maybe the security blanket that has rendered your experience of life utterly useless to everyone else deserves to be destroyed, as you are relegated to ineffectual dead stone with the promise of entry into an illusive, shining city that no one can find or prove exists, dead stone that isn't only useless but burdensome to your countrymen who have to not only combat your 'positive vibes' that are endangering them, but also carry you away from the coming flood when reality sets in and you are left suffering; because you wouldn't act beyond just faithfully wishing people well and absolving yourself of any further responsibility to engage.

Maybe that security blanket that has left you helpless to the human potential for malevolence deserves to be destroyed with the Savior identity and the naivety that thought it possible that the next act of good will and charity that you extend, and the alleviation of distress it might provide, might be paid forward rather than used to reconstitute the same hapless behavior that created the distressing conditions in the first place, as each act of mercy in the past had so been used.

Maybe your belief that your well wishes from the land of plenty bares any weight in the decisions of someone who occupies a world ignorant of the blessings of your full heart doesn't belong in this world and truly does deserve entry into that illusive, shining city.

All it takes is for the parties involved in a conflict to present a limited, dismal enough outlook or an appealing enough prospect that would result from joining or failing to join a side in the engagement, then they have have successfully instilled a motive.

There exist various forces that can shape a persons motivation, each with varying degrees of involvement. This is exactly why the populations of different regions come into conflict in war: because the variations of the structures governing the group also leads to variations in what is valued and there is a struggle to retain those values, or even just the group and the benefits offered by the group that are valued.

For example, someone who doesn't speak English might not value the English literature that has passed on wisdom that has benefited the people who spoke it through the years.

Even I, being an English speaker, have questioned the value of lessons of works such as the Bible, one of the most influential pieces of literature on western culture.

“But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Give me a break! Grab that hand that smites you and bring the body attached to that hand to heel with divine fury and justice!

Clearly the Bible is a compilation of various stories that serve as instructions, given literally in story but also figuratively and in metaphor, so as to more easily illustrate greater concepts, yet many passages are portrayed by many in their selected context as Gospel.

Yet another thing that bothered me about my Catholic religion growing up: How can any one institution claim monopoly of media between that which is divine, eternal, infinite and right with that which is temporal, fallen, and separate. By definition, wouldn't that responsibility rest with the individual and not disparate groups lording over segments of the population?

I suppose it's only natural for this kind of institution to crop up with some of the language that is in the Bible. What kind of character dares to argue something like “no one comes to the father but through me” and also mention that “the kingdom of heaven is within you.”

It's possible that “turning the other cheek” was a commentary on the virtue, or lack thereof, of blind allegiance. In this case, blind allegiance referring to the emotion or pain and subsequent behavior or demons such sensations are expected to produce. The instability of relationships and institutions with such foundations, which aren't predicated on eternal principles or universal applications as much as they are seeking revenge.

Jesus was raised in the Jewish faith and had earned the right to comment on and discuss scripture, yet his readings were deemed heretical and he was ultimately crucified by the Romans at the behest of the Jewish High Council for his commitment to them.

Would it be possible to honor your parents and the degree of selflessness they had that brought you into the world while at the same time despising the hegemonic role said relationships have in your psychological and professional development?

Jesus himself intervened on behalf of a prostitute being stoned to death by drawing a line in the sand. That alone doesn't seem to imply that we should be docile while being bludgeoned to death or that our lusts should be entertained. Without the mindfulness required to notice the leaps in logic and false associations we can lend ourselves to, it can be easy to assume the understanding and operation of that which is made most readily available to us.

Much of Jesus' teaching was a criticism of the teachings by the Pharisees, who had manipulated the teachings of the Torah to suit their own agenda, inserting themselves between the acolyte and that which was divine, upending thousands of years of a living tradition and turning a practice into a religion.

For example, interpreting the commandment not to “commit adultery” and “covet thy neighbors wife” to mean that if she is an unmarried prostitute then it's fair game.

What if you are married? Can't you commit adultery?

What is adultery if not a violation of the sacred bond shared between a man and a woman who devote their entire being to the other and, by so doing, become one?

Does one devote their entire being to a woman he has casual sex with? What effect does that behavior have on the relationship each has with their internal world? Does it make them further unavailable from developing a relationship with their significant other, materialized or not, and does that release of obligation to be communion?

If one does not honor their own body, treating it as an object for gratuitous indulgence rather than something sacrosanct; rather than the house of something sacred, how does that translate into how they treat others?

The online Etymology Dictionary describes adultery as the following:

Seattle

How naked can you be whilst not devoting your entire being to your significant other? How naked can you be without commitment, without trust? How can we ever be redeem that lost trust?

If anything, the violation is a sign of neglect and also represents significant additional work that needs to be accomplished to repair that relationship.

The Yoga tradition breaks down the layers of each person's being into “koshas:” five interrelated layers of the self working in tandem to manifest our experience. These layers, in no particular orientation, are the physical body, the energetic body, the mental body, the wisdom body, and the bliss body.

A broken heart that results from a breach in trust and a feeling of abandonment can shake the foundations of our connection with the eternal. Thoughts of betrayal, regrets, start to come to front and center if we aren't wise enough to recognize our own betrayal of those aspects of our self that are eternal.

Without coming clean, without coming back to the truth, our bodies' energetic blockage can start to manifest physical illness and tension which can start to spiral out of control as the physical pain starts to evoke negative thoughts that detract from the bliss available to us when we come back to our bountiful nature; when we embrace the hardships and, with work, give forgiveness for the sake of giving.

“28But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. 29And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. 30And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” - Matthew 5, King James Version

It's reasonable to conclude that taking things at face value is never a good practice.

I personally value my right eye. It affords me the depth perception I need to not knock stuff over as much, but I can see how if all it does is serve to get me into trouble with my wife; with the flesh of my flesh; with the key to a bountiful life, free of suffering in solitude, I should take as much care to operate as mindfully and attentive as a surgeon removing a cancerous tumor in the brain to ensure that I reconcile myself to her.

The reluctance to exert the effort to fix an eye that wanders and is captivated by the slightest glimpse of any low hanging fruit is surely not worth the exponentially worse trouble that unfolds from not doing the work to be more intimate in your marriage, with the flesh of your flesh, to be one.

The very nature of institutions and communities lends themselves to the corruptions that plague the individuals of which they are comprised, so then it seems incumbent on those who would like to preserve or foster a community to which to belong, to master those very corruptions to which they are susceptible.

As Richard. R Beeman details in his article about “Perspectives on the Constitution,” in his final speech before the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin remarked about the impossibility of producing a perfect government.

"…When you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views," Franklin said while also making sure to note that though there are those that are preferable.

I think there is no better summary of the responsibility we all have to ourselves and others as being the best form of government than the remark he is said to have given exiting the assembly after having been asked by a group of citizens what kind of government the delegates had established: “A Republic if you can keep it:” meaning the responsibility to be present, engaged, considerate, and in communion with the eternal aspects that can help to keep us on course and avoid becoming divested.

Maybe the “turning the other cheek” passage means that, although we may have been hurt in the past or had our trust violated, we should still allow ourselves to be vulnerable so that we can live in relationship with others and not be ruled by the associations of our past, because what freedom is there in that? What opportunity is there to grow without that capacity to be open?

After having been labeled or treated as “the other” by a certain group of people or another individual, having felt slighted do I feed into those distinctions? Was my 'otherness' my own doing? Do I bear any responsibility for creating the distance? Was it my own quest for conformity as opposed to reconciliation? If not, what factors could be influencing their behavior?

After all, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” I think any honest person can claim to have maliciously or negligently hurt someone at one point or another, and if we can at least concede that there is a reality that exists beyond what we perceive, then we can certainly presume that one would like to devise a way so as to most effectively live in symbiosis with said reality. Certainly none of us would have made it thus far if we hadn't made this concession at some level.

I tend to think that if we are ever going to get a grip on dilemmas such as the one articulated by the Cowspiracy documentary then we are going to have to communicate effectively so that we can learn from – and are able to be in relationship with – one another, our environment, and also with our self, because we really do create the world we inhabit.

Effective communication requires vulnerability; it requires owning our own responsibility, and obstacles to vulnerability and responsibility usually arise from getting caught up in branding: the various identities, and personas we have developed as a means to making our way through the world. Humans have evolved as tribal creatures, their teamwork enabling them to overcome some of the fiercest of predators.

Both ethics and religion endeavor to articulate to the individual how he or she may best be reconciled with the divine or exist symbiotically with the community and environment, which is why I think they are so pertinent when considering the problems presented by this documentary.

One of the great traditions of the West is to harp on religion, given that religious institutions were often the influence behind creating these boundaries between and within ourselves.

It's possible that these boundaries were established out of fear: as a means to help us to avoid our own suffering, to spare us from calamity that befalls us as we progress along our experience; out of fear of unleashing horrible potential of mankind; out of fear of losing control, of allowing the flame within our hearts to be extinguished.

Stories like those of the Bible also have managed to enumerate various lessons and wisdom that can be applied by the individual as they navigate their way through life based historical analysis.

Whatever the purpose, and however Religion has manifested throughout history, one thing we can say for sure is that in the context of Western nations founded with Protestant roots and being the traditional punching bag, we've seen a kind of role reversal where being “educated” – gaining knowledge and earning a certificate of that knowledge from a reputable, well funded, established institution – has become the new form of dogma to which we defer, when in fact the only thing the certificate really proves is the extent to which the graduate was able retain a certain amount of knowledge that was fed to them from lofty board rooms, who craft a curriculum based on the needs and funds of market forces.

Few collegiate institutions and degrees allow for anything beyond nominal development of the faculties needed for people to behave in an autonomous fashion that best regulates a healthy society. If there is anything Cowspiracy has proven it is that market forces aren't necessarily the best indicator for right action.

In this day and age, religion has only served as a scapegoat for people to believe that they themselves are not ignorant, when psychologically, and in this particular scenario logically, we've proven that the brain is just as susceptible, if not more to the trappings of dogma and we have since created an angry, bitter, and depressed society that is suffering in the despair of meaninglessness.

This is why I believe the crisis presented by this documentary is owed the same healthy level of skepticism as any other ethical consideration of conduct.

Maybe the radical nature of the teachings that I thought made no sense appeared that way because they were misinterpreted? Growing up I was always critical of poetry for ambiguity in meaning. I suppose that was why I struggled for much of my early life, as life seemed wrought with ambiguity and contradictions. In fact, contradictions seemed a requisite for existence.

Looking back, in my own despair of trying to make sense of a world I saw clearly going off the rails, it was just the process of seeking meaning that that was my saving grace through it all.

Yin Yang

So, in keeping with mindful yogic analysis of the proposed solution to the problem presented by the documentary, it seems be appropriate to delve deep into the layers of our self that help us to be so befuddled rather than just blame it on any one institution.

The development of the human psyche needs a certain degree of structure as it branches out and attempts to successfully live in relationship to the world. Knowledge itself, knowledge of self, is in large part passed on by teachers, either in the form of a record – such as authors of books – or as living beings acting as instructors.

In a way knowledge and information is immortal, never lost just forgotten waiting to be rediscovered but I do believe that religions, or any other institution with a form of dogma, offer that foothold from which development can occur: a basic outline of robust, complex concepts about nature and structure of reality, and guidance on how one should go about conducting themselves as they navigate the the maze of life.

I think looking at “veganism” in the context of religion is important because for some it might be just that, it may be a lifestyle they adopted because it “felt right,” and for others it may be a lifestyle choice influenced by what information they have so far assimilated into their conscious awareness, and the same goes for those operating the farms and consuming the product.

One scene of the movie I thought was most striking was when the film showed the kids of the family operating a sustainable farm interacting with the animals so intuitively and symbiotically. I also was struck by their genuine remarks.

“Some people think that pigs are dirty and gross, but I really like them,” their daughter said telling about her life on the farm with the livestock. “They know people, and they'll be friends. They're nice. And they can be like your best friend or be like a sister. See, they know you when you get to know them. I mean we shouldn't be bonding, but I Have to have nice pigs!”

“Why shouldn't you bond with them?,” the Director asked.

“Because they're going to turn into bacon.”

Then the movie cut to their parents talking about the animals.

“I love animals. That's why I'm in the meat business. It's what more of society needs to see, is that that packaged piece of meat is a living animal. Living and breathing creature, that uh, yeah its hard. Its hard. But what Donneget said earlier, we do it because we love them.”

Now you might be thinking to yourself, “raising these animals in a cage just to be slaughtered is a funny way of expressing your love” or “I wonder what those ignorant pigs would say if they knew that these people feeding them, giving them shelter, touching them with kindness as they would members of their own family were just keeping them fenced in to be slaughtered on the appointed day for their own food and their own survival.”

The pigs catching wind of the plot might then be a bit put off by the ethics of these people and might then do all they can to escape the clutches of their benevolent benefactors.

For these people, operating the farm was a way of life. It's how they survived. Many cultures from all over the world have for thousands of years always had that healthy respect for nature and the food that the hunt would provide for them to live, which is why I think its interesting to take a look at exactly how we best address the problems of agriculture and the stress it puts on the environment.

Conservationists who specialize in wildlife management teach today that the removal of the wolf population in Yellowstone from hunting by man, removed a predator from the food chain and ecosystem that kept other populations in line to prevent things such as overgrazing. Were those hunters unethical? Who decides which species survives and which will perish? Who are we to claim ownership over the balance of the various systems that comprise the planet and the universe to which it belongs; systems seen and unseen? I have a hard enough time balancing my budget!

Yet decisions of conduct such as the ones we make about our diet are the decisions that fundamentally have an effect on our environment, and as beings with a developed prefrontal cortex that empowers us with a certain degree of self awareness, we have also available to us the decision whether or not to accept the responsibility that comes with the expansive consciousness or not.

The question thus becomes, “is our quest for mastery of our world the manifestation of our refusal to accept the most preordinate truth about our nature; is that same quest as much a part of the nature we seek to master?” If it wasn't than the most ethical solution would be the erasure of the human race from the face of the planet.

The wolves threatened the lives and livelihood of those early pioneers, maybe by attacking their family directly or maybe by attacking their only horse that they depended upon for bringing the food to the market that they would sell and provide them with the finances they needed to prevent the government from taking the land on which they built their home; maybe the wolves were attacking their only ox that they used to plow the fields.

Is the only ethic “he who can most effectively subvert those on whom their way of life depends” or “the survival of the group with the most fit shared identity?” Is it truly their life that is dependent on this way they have chosen? Is it right to presume that I, having assimilated more knowledge and capabilities with regard to ability manipulate that which I can perceive, am thereby justified in caging pigs to be raised for slaughter? Do I identify with the sensations that arise from my foot or the emotions that arise from the thoughts emanating from my cortex? Clearly wherever I most strongly identify will take precedent! Or is there another way?

It seems to me that if I was attempting to formulate an ethic by which to more fully be in symbiosis with the cosmos I would make sure that ethic was founded upon something more solid then whichever identity I might be more strongly associated with at a given time and that if I was sincere in my efforts my allegiance would be to the wisdom and understanding that transcends those limitations.

I think a closer analysis is worth delving into because we might find that the “Cowspiracy” might go far deeper than just the demands of industry and consumer, and the problem, reaction, and solution that was presented in the film.

An analysis of the psyche of the individual that is in large part responsible for directing the functions and actions of said body, and the interplay of that individual with the group and how the group behaves, seems to be at the forefront of issues of “sustainability.”

A good question to ask ourselves before jumping to the most immediately available solution; before falling into the expected behavior after being bludgeoned over the head with the frightening ecological reality, would be “what conditions of the past led us to arrive at the dilemma now posed by 'Cowspiracy;' what conditions have conspired to bring us face to face with this crisis?”

I'm quite certain that when in his 1798 “Essay on the Principle of Population” Thomas Malthus was fantasizing about the inevitable suffering and premature death of the human race from overpopulation he wasn't taking into consideration the various technological and social advancements that would have prevented such a cataclysm.

“The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race,” Malthus wrote. “The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction; and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.”

I find Malthus' summation of the various dilemmas posed by the nature of human existence on earth to be poignant and concise. I also thought his predilection of disastrous depopulation events with “the vices of mankind” to be particularly relevant in the analysis of veganism – and the problems posed by animal agriculture – with the lens of religion or, for the sake of logic, ethics and reason.

When I took a philosophy course in College we discussed various systems of “Ethics.” Obviously ethics can be very difficult to reason, even for people privileged enough to have achieved a level of education that allowed them to attend college and study something that isn't all too practical in the business world; still so even for paid professional thinkers, and in a world where survival means making sure you find a job that pays enough to provide housing, sustenance for you and your family, and taxes it becomes all the more complicated.

Toss in various social obligations to the Community as well as the fact that the very nature of existence and reality seems to lend itself to Democratic Republic governance, being a citizen comes incumbent with the responsibility to be informed, and in the midst of the era of Fake News and the challenges to having a firm ethical foundation seem to be ever expanding.

You have to wade through the sea of propaganda from various interests pushing their own agenda and then do your best to make decisions about who would most closely represent you when drafting and voting on legislation or making decisions of foreign policy; making sure that these representative would do so with your thoughtful, considerate, well reasoned ethic, that you have had the time to so carefully integrate to your own life as well as the greater world at large.

Sarcasm aside, clearly there are significant obstacles to be overcome while mindfully formulating your own proper ethic, and without proper motivation how does one formulate a 'proper ethic?'

Maybe the average person defers to some person of influence, someone they trust; someone they view as more experienced in the world who has taken the time to make careful considerations on various issues of morality and current events for guidance, such as some religious figurehead, only to find that they're porking their acolytes or spending their stuffed coffers on a cocaine binder off of strippers' boobies.

After all, the stated purpose of a Republic is to delegate certain responsibilities to others so that some of the resources for those being represented in the Democracy are freed up and able to be devoted to where each individual deems they'd like to devote those resources.

Traditionally, these same principles of “specialization” have also been applied to the religious, theological, and ethical functions of the state. Following the aforementioned logic, the efficiency and harmony of the community is dependent on each individual independently being able to make proper, ethical decisions about where their resources would best serve their locale, which, depending on the person, might only extend as far as their own refrigerator.

How does one instill a sense of “responsibility to the community? How does one deduce how to best conduct themselves?

What obstacles do we face while attempting to ingratiate and instill a sense of urgency and an understanding of how vital these challenges of perception are so that we don't propagate the same issues or furlough our responsibility for corrective action.

While ethics and philosophy may not be all that practical for getting into the business world, “coincidentally,” when considering documentaries such as “Cowspiracy,” it seems that business is where it is needed most.

It then stands to reason that the ethical instruction of the individual is paramount whilst maintaining a “healthy” society and tackling issues facing the shared commons, each individual serving as their own voting block and acting as a check and balance on the excesses or deficiencies of others or the group; each individual serving as a source for inspiration, instruction, and deduction that can implement the most appropriate, immediate action upon observing a need.

I remember, fresh out of college and in a new city and having already had some relative experience in High School and College, I got a job at a restaurant because it afforded me the flexible hours to continue to pursue a career of what I saw was my calling at the time while making a decent wage and enabling me to meet some people with whom I could make friends. Not to mention that, mathematically speaking, I would meet more people and improve the odds that I would maybe meet someone I would fall in love with and get married.

Binding of Isaac

Alas, the marriage thing never really came to fruition and I learned a lesson about how to best achieve a goal; that it isn't so much a matter of numbers and probability so much as it is a matter of will and intention that comes from a place of knowing: knowing yourself, knowing what you want, what you need, what's right for you, what gives your life meaning, what you love.

But that job worked well for a time until the place closed and I got my first job at a Steak House.

I'll never forget during the training the owner finding out I was a vegetarian when he was asking how we liked the food and I replied that I didn't eat meat but I could sell it.

“A vegetarian with no morals, I love it!” he announced.

I was clearly put off by his comment, as I remember it years later. But part of me has always struggled with the moral ambiguities of the “hedonistic calculus” we make as participants in community.

One person may look at Roe v. Wade as the greatest achievement in Women's rights while another may view it as legalized murder, an abomination, and the single largest genocide in modern history, yet still society hurls forward.

This is why I appreciate considerations like those about people eating burgers at McDonald's as a viable decision for their economic reality versus going off and living in the woods and foraging pine cones. Practicality is something that takes time to allow for people to iron out what I did while looking for my soul mate.

What needs are articulated that we must consider when choosing to either compromise or decline an offer of being in community? Is it ethical for me to define how others should structure their hierarchy of needs? Even if I see them suffering; even if, in the future, I foresee that they will suffer more based on how they are leading their lives?

Was I unethical? Am I unethical? Doing what I saw was my calling would not have been possible had it not been for those compromises. Does the vein ambition of a recent college grad take precedent over the obligation to live mindfully and in accordance with the highest possible good they can imagine? Hindsight is twenty twenty as they say.

In the world of mindfulness, deferring responsibility seems an elephantine scapegoat, yet, as we've seen, limits are inherit in our embodied being and thus also our degree of awareness. How then, in our own limited perception, can we dare to enforce a code – or shortcut for reason – on others where the reason may be lacking.

I remember in my sociology course learning how patterned groups of schemas, what the yoga world would refer to as “samskaras,” are a requisite for human survival; for being able to make decisions quickly in fight or flight situations particularly.

For example, while taking a stroll through the city you found yourself in some dark alley and being aggressively approached by a man covering their face with a dark hood while brandishing shiny object.

While it's possible the man might just be trying to keep some heat in on his head and carrying a spoon for the soup he was enthusiastically hoping you might buy for him and his aching belly, you still have to make that decision about whether to stick around and investigate, turn and run, or brandish your trusty sidearm and shoot him dead.

I also remember the reality of the necessity for samskaras being verified while reading Desikichar's “The Heart of Yoga:” that prejudices, patterned thoughts, or a grouping of schemas, while they may be unfair to the individual, they sometimes are necessary when dealing with groups or encountering a decision that must be made otherwise you cannot survive in the world.

In my sociology course I took at school we discussed things like group behavior, and concepts that dealt with the psychology of the individual and the interplay with the group when encountering situations where one must decide how to act. We discussed things like normalcy bias and bystander effect, both of which were predicated on deferring to others about how to act when confronted with unfamiliar, abnormal behavior.

The normalcy bias “causes people to underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster and its possible effects, because people believe that things will always function the way things normally have functioned.“

The Bystander effect posits “that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present; the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that one of them will help.
Several factors contribute to the bystander effect, including ambiguity, group cohesiveness, and diffusion of responsibility that reinforces mutual denial of a situation's severity.”

Another concept I found interesting was “the Overton Window” or the range of socially acceptable behavior by the mainstream population at a given time.

The social atmosphere is vital for maintaining well being of the individual, for if we weren't learning at least some extent from our social circle then we likely wouldn't have made it through childhood, for example if we weren't taught to look both ways before we crossed the street we might have had to learn that lesson the hard way, if we were lucky enough to survive to learn that lesson.

Looking to others is also vital for maintaining a sort of check and balance on on our own sanity. But, as we've seen while briefly exploring the “Bystander Effect” and “Normalcy Bias,” clearly the group is not the ultimate word on what is “right action.”

In Ancient Rome, the intelligentsia deemed that “blood letting” was a practical solution for healing many ailments, and in the Mayan civilization, the community would perform ritual sacrifice to appease the gods.

Cannibalism is by and large something that would not fit within the Overton Window.

Why? Well there may be some sociological, evolutionary reason concerning the susceptibility of a society that is literally eating itself; there may even be some dramatic health effects that those having lived in a cannibalistic culture witnessed and seen result from such practices and would then would want to pass on that knowledge so as to spare some future amount of suffering of their progeny.

Whatever the reason, there are cultures all over the world that have stigmatized cannibalism. Most animals don't even act as cannibals. Still, there are select cases. Isolate a few variables, set the right conditions, and I think anyone is capable of what would have been to them previously unthinkable.

Whether by ignorance or some perverse ritual designed as a social control by the priest class, the group isn't always the best indicator for right behavior and, as evidenced by the evolution of civilization, the Overton Window can shift; and if it can shift for the better, it can also shift for the worse.

Clearly relying on these patterned thoughts that have, maybe in the past, served us well whilst coping with the various dilemmas we've faced in our past lives; dilemmas such as “meat” or “potatoes” or “have your cake and it eat too,” can have fatal consequences for both those who possess a degree of group cohesiveness, sense of shared community, or are motivated by a desire to fully realize holistic being as well as for those who scoff at the notion of “right conduct” and whose primary motivation is serving their self.

Choices about who we love, thoughts we dwell on, how we interact, what we decide to consume and make a part of our lives -- or even not to -- are no less trivial than the decisions we make about getting in the car of a drunk driver and wearing our seat belt.

If we care about the kind of world we want to live in, these decisions help manifest reality and they especially influence the life we lead.

By cultivating an awareness of the board and the pieces in play, we are better able to understand where it is we are, how we got here, and thus can improve the odds we find our soulmate or that shining city on a hill that we'd like to occupy.

We can get a better handle on acknowledging whichever stimulus and produces a response.

Given that what we've already established about groups and values, in practicing mindfulness and not differing responsibility to others, one calculates right action as a derivative of what they value most, the variances between what different people might consider right action when confronted with the same dilemma seem self evident.

With the various identities or sensations that each person may be wrestling with and experiencing at any given moment, identities and sensations which could just be the result of conflicting signals of various stimuli, trying to achieve whatever goal they might have in mind, incorporating a sense of community in your daily ethical considerations can be quite the herculean task, which is why I also found the origin story of Tirumalai Krishnamacharya to be one of the most fascinating tales.

Here was a man, one of the main progenitors of “Yoga” in the West that was popularized mostly by a following of influential western women seeking spiritual fulfillment; here was a man who is credited with founding a system of teachings that -- mirroring much of what the cutting edge philosophers and psychiatrists of Europe, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, were simultaneously expounding upon due to their own belief of the turmoil “the Death of God” was creating -- breaks down the human psyche and analyzes the concept of identity and how we can “yoke” to be in “union” with the divine, yet his Dharma was motivated by a desire to forge an “Indian Identity” to defend against European, British colonial invasion that he saw the continent succumbing to due to a lack of cultural identity, which he thought evolved from a lack relationship and interest to their Hindu heritage.

And so, India, beset by turmoil and civil unrest created by the advent of foreign invaders, was jarred from its apathetic disposition towards its heritage and ultimately able to repel the occupation by Europeans in large part by Krishnamaricharya fulfilling what he saw was his dharma and contributing to unification under a shared Indian identity, but also by revolutionaries masquerading yogis and holy men to fight off the invaders.

Borrowing yoga poses from the practices of European gymnists, marrying them with his own brand and unique style that he learned in the cave of a mystic as a child, and then teaching at an institution at the Palace of a friendly Maharaja in Mysore, Krishnamaracharya was on his way to successfully fulfilling his ambition of drawing interest in traditional India.

The wheels of fate would turn and shortly thereafter a white, western woman came up and embraced him and -- per the request of the Maharaja who had commissioned Krishnamaracharya to establish his school -- she became his first female student who would end up being largely responsible for bringing his Yoga to the West.

What I found most notable, beyond the irony, was the power of mindfully cutting through the patterns of the mind that can often govern human behavior and by doing so we can open up a whole new world.

Thus we again encounter the problem of self fulfilling prophecies and the like, and other ethical quandaries that arise when the individual encounters the group, or the identity encounters the Self.

How should one react? Should one react? Should one be one? Quick! Answer! Too late. Choice made for you. Now you're One!

And so to come full circle with what I am trying to articulate about ethics of a vegan diet and enforcing a vegan diet or vegan practices on others, it seems a delicate balance of identity to navigate, as what people eat becomes a part of people in more than just the nutrients that ingest. I would say that their most certainly are social forces to consider as well; social forces as well as forces of human nature.

Throw in the fact that there are pesticides in the food you are seeking nourishment from and poisonous toxins in the drugs the doctor prescribes you to get better when your feeling sick, being able to negotiate these complexities becomes all the more difficult when your brain isn't functioning as optimally as one would hope. Should the decisions for my well being be left to those more privileged to consider these factors for me? What if the person making these decisions for me subscribes to the “Survival of the fittest” ethic?

Is it ethical to enforce your own ethics on others on their behalf? How can we be certain of what a pose should look like for someone whose body we aren't in? As a yoga practitioner, one of the concepts I have most come to appreciate is the concept of meeting yourself where you are on the mat, taking your time to work into a posture and not forcing it, as the body can sometimes react violently and cause injury.

Entertaining the prospect of being a yoga teacher has been a very gratifying experience for me as it has offered a new perspective to consider in my yoga practice, another precipice on the mountain to incorporate that comes into view as there is a break in the clouds.

How is it that I can best be a participant in the process of “yoking” for others, as the perspective commands a withdrawal to be in communion with others and their experience; it requires a separation; a space to be created for connection and engagement.

Clearly the absolute nature of the infinite makes so much sense yet we, in our limited capacity, seem foolishly inclined to redeem ourselves with notions of “equality” and “freedom,” which is why a Big Mac at McDonald's may be a good option for someone; someones dog may love being a vegan but their cat might keel over. Does it make sense to tell someone relegated to a life closer to the extremes of the poles not to raise cattle for milk that they can use to make cheese to provide them with nutrition throughout the winter.

In my Philosophy course we discussed “Utilitarianism,” Nicomachean ethics, and others. I remember feeling mostly confused, as I found them mostly hypocritical, which, again, was the only thing that made sense as I remember feeling disillusioned by a world full of hypocrites and contradictions which seems to be part of our own nature and our subconscious speaking to us.

I remember being perturbed by the shifting use of the term Truth to represent something that was entirely relative, such as of the concept of freedom and liberty, something that is so enshrined in American culture but remains mythic and paradoxically dependent upon restrictions and laws.

I saw that clearly there was no such thing as freedom; that everything is dependent on something else; everything material and manifest is in a constant flux and transitioning to the realm of immaterial and unmanifest and the material is merely borrowing from the immaterial to maintain.

Even today I still see people pushing the “follow your bliss” mantra and others, but obviously these things come with inherit conflicts.

What if your bliss is to commit genocide? What if the only thing that brings you happiness is controlling other people and the world, as you struggle with your own helplessness to the machinations of the universe? What if in your “pursuit of happiness” you continue to find with each attainment of whatever state or goal that you thought would make you happy you find that happiness as fleeting and the only contentment you found was buzzing about pursuing such an end and in the process you were making everyone else around you miserable?

I remember also reading "The Tragedy of the Commons" by Garrett Hardin and being intrigued by the dilemma and the factors at play. Clearly the realm of psychology must be considered because even if the population was constant, a shift in demand could just as easily create such a dilemma.

The struggle to define the ideal system of ethics, or even the concept itself, again seems flawed in the sense that it fails to account for the variations of values that permeate the social palate, and yet the nature of our reality compels universal maxims of this kind.

It seems what we must first wrestle with is what is valued across the board. Looking to nature, given our unique situation of the aforementioned prefrontal cortex which seems to only complicate things, we see the tree grows, the sun shines, the wind blows, the night falls, the wolf howls, and the winter is cold. It's not a deduction, it's not this weeks fad, its just what they do.

As noble of a cause attempting to bring order to the inherent chaos may be; chaos that arises between “conflicting 'blisses' or when the only ethical consideration is “do for self; do for shared identity,” all else be damned; “do what thou wilt” without any consideration to the nature of who you are and what you love, who you love, what love is; it can just as easily be done by recognizing that the chaos is just a perception: a representation of what we can't organize and incorporate in our minds.

Not a person on earth can with certainty claim to expound on the processes behind the generation of life beyond that which is described in the Bible in Genesis, yet we operate still in relationship with the flower that springs from nothing with certainty in a very orderly way.

What do we do?

What do we do? We sit around and contemplate the nature of our existence; of consciousness. We get caught up in clever ruses. We smell a beautiful flower. We regenerate the experience of being human in a slightly different way.

I remember playing a video game that was team based when I was younger and I would find myself saying to myself when we lost “if everyone was me we would have won, there would have been no miscommunication, everyone would have been playing together in a hive mind mentality and we would have defeated the opponent.”

What a boring game that would have been though, if everyone was me. What would I have been able to learn? Would I have really won or would my singular mindset, not reacting and birthing spontaneous action, ultimately lead to my downfall as soon as my patterns were exposed?

Without a doubt we get caught up in the social forces of life, but social creatures are consequently subject to such forces. The individual existing in a state of “being” is experiencing this interaction in addition to all of the other senses that come with being human. What we do is just transitioning into another mode of being, another medium of experience, and that is all.

When I saw the name “Cowspiracy” I thought to myself “here we go, with another insanity inducing cult like mindset that is sure to throw me off my rocker.” Ironic coming from someone who has been a vegetarian for over 10 years? I don't think so.

One of the things I found most interesting in my studies were the similarities for the sanskrit terms “Samskara” and “Sanskara.” The first referring to the mind patterns that evolve from our various expressions of being manifesting like pedals of a flower that unfold throughout our life. The second refers to a rite of passage or "putting together, making perfect, getting ready, to prepare", or "a sacred or sanctifying ceremony.”

The flowing nature of “matter” that science has proven lends itself well to what the various religions and philosophers have eluded to and handed down for centuries about the nature of our existence, which to me the most essential ingredient to solving issues that arise from different groups that share an environment, when you need to instill the sense of belonging needed to overcome the tragedies of the commons.

When you start postulating metaphysical reality, the discussion starts to lose its value as some people are disillusioned by the practical benefits the discussion can offer. The reality appears to be, however, that the most practical resource is not that which offers some tangible benefit, but rather the resource that makes the intangible, tangible. What greater resource is there than to have the know-how and wherewithal to be able to make gold?

The point is, in a dark world where everything is perishing does it make sense to prioritize the dollars in your bank account, which could be wiped out with the next financial crisis or squandered by the next spending spree by your daughter on spring break, or rather to invest in something that's luster is never tarnished and carry and protect the flame that sheds light and reveals a way through the darkness; that offers a comforting warmth while in the cold throes of death.

How foolish it seems to invest solely in something guaranteed to meet its demise. If there is one thing that is certain it is that, whether it's a language, a name, or even the tallest mountain, all will eventually be swallowed by the flowing seas of time.

What greater work is there to devote your life to than the maintenance of the only structure that could ever hope to stand the test of time: the connection created by selfless giving? What greater struggle; what other revolution could there possibly be than that of realizing selflessness?

What could be more treasured and worthy of our reverence, nurture, and protection than the tender yet immutable human spirit? How bountiful it is when, shining like the Sun, it shares a wellspring of warmth, love, and kindness through the empty void of nothingness without regard; enough to quench the thirst of the most barren of hearts and temper the most fiery of tongues.

What could possibly command greater respect than the environment; than the house that provides for us reprieve from the cruelest aspects of nature that results from exposure to the elements: the clouds that swoop in to shade us when the Sun starts to burn; the rain that spills out when our food starts to shrivel; the tree that speaks to us of our nature as it softly rustles in the breeze and silver threads of moonlight shimmer through the night.

How foolhardy it is to foist expectation over realization? What more cruel device could there be than to convince someone with plenary powers of their finitude and rob them of the intangible sentiment, the impersonal feeling that is enjoyed by selflessness: a feeling that no drug could ever hope to replicate because the elements involved in the tincture are not something that could ever hope to be given substance as they brought from the furthest reaches of our inner most being.

What kind of world takes shape when the essence of wisdom is consumed and lived through every fiber of our being and the veil of illusion is fully lifted from our eyes and we are no longer players of the game but partakers in the experience of being? What energy is available to us?

What else could ever hope to describe love than heedlessly casting yourself away for the sake of a brighter future; what greater treasure could possibly await? And what could ever be more foolish than to pass up such a reward for the sake of certain doom?

As a child, I remember telling myself that I was allowing myself to be overweight so that if I ever fell in love with someone I could be sure that they loved me for me and not some superficial image. But this test I devised; this condition for my love that I established only ever prevented me from being who I was in the first place and thus no one could ever love me for who I was. I was hiding from myself.

By publishing this work anonymously, attempting to insulate myself from the doubt that lingers that this work was compiled for the benefit of anyone other than myself, do I then free myself from later doubt? Do I free myself from the notion that my attempt to fully realize these divined musings in my own life was done so for the sake of others, out of fear of becoming the hypocrite praying “standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men?” Does publishing it anonymously self handicap myself; does it obfuscate my responsibility to cast off, to withdraw? Do I cut myself off from a whole new world by failing to take that leap?

But isn't the sake of others the entire point? Isn't the selflessness the only thing that ever caries on in this transient world?

“19Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: 20But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: 21For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” - Matthew 6, King James Version

By simply printing this “manifesto” and filing it away for me to reference periodically do I make this work a devotion to myself and a contradiction to the very meaning it served to devise?

How many people can a message possibly reach without a face that carries it? Do I open up others to the same doubt that it was ever about anything other than myself and dissuade others from attempting should I fail?

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, but can I fail when by virtue of casting off I have already secured victory?