tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804054451517691779.post3809345620243106715..comments2023-10-16T11:11:47.277-04:00Comments on PROVOKED: Observing Oblivion in the Real WorldBea Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981537551810309024noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804054451517691779.post-90281289055702110482014-11-13T21:59:00.233-05:002014-11-13T21:59:00.233-05:00Welcome back, Bea! Wonderful post and observations...Welcome back, Bea! Wonderful post and observations. Hope your sabbatical was sustaining and healing (even with your side trip into un/reality), and I'm glad for you that some of the knots got untangled. :)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804054451517691779.post-66590474805856167012014-11-11T12:46:45.973-05:002014-11-11T12:46:45.973-05:00I completely understand. I had a breakdown from ac...I completely understand. I had a breakdown from activist overload a few years ago myself. It's so hard to see all of these horrible things happening and watch everyone just stand idly by. I did the same thing - took a break from it all. Now I'm just trying to navigate the best way forward for both the animals and myself. I'm trying to strike a balance in my activism that helps the animals, but isn't toxic to me. I hope that you can find your balance as well. Your blog is one of the first I started following when I first went vegetarian. It helped me make the transition and I continue to appreciate your passion for the cause.Powered By Producehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01587332630438728805noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804054451517691779.post-72140470740443292722014-10-20T10:13:27.503-04:002014-10-20T10:13:27.503-04:00Hi Emy - Yes you're right, you'd can't...Hi Emy - Yes you're right, you'd can't unknow something... No blue pill or memory zapper. It's quite the challenge to find a place to "escape" to. The reasons to be vegan are all in the head and heart. And I sure don't want to vacate those spaces any time soon! <br /><br />Thanks for your thoughts and peace on your journey as well.Bea Elliotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13981537551810309024noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804054451517691779.post-4363398712789066352014-10-20T10:02:45.947-04:002014-10-20T10:02:45.947-04:00Thank you David! It is inside-out/upside-down isn&...Thank you David! It is inside-out/upside-down isn't it? Knowing there are others also negotiating their way 'round this backward non-thinking world is helpful. So the gratitude of support is absolutely mutual! <3Bea Elliotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13981537551810309024noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804054451517691779.post-76569290751107508592014-10-18T00:12:48.680-04:002014-10-18T00:12:48.680-04:00Bea,
I also feel this connection that I cannot be...Bea,<br /><br />I also feel this connection that I cannot bear the suffering or killing of any innocent animals. It's with me almost every day.Mariahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08064368615178870750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804054451517691779.post-13003276261468435122014-10-11T05:42:08.814-04:002014-10-11T05:42:08.814-04:00Thank you for eloquently articulating these many i...Thank you for eloquently articulating these many issues. <br /><br />Time out is important but, as you suggest, we then get exposed to the very things that made us become activists in the first place. <br />Once aware always aware.<br /><br />Best wishes,<br />Emy, Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04921575054218233196noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804054451517691779.post-42126520680638939362014-10-09T10:54:30.428-04:002014-10-09T10:54:30.428-04:00So true, Bea. I feel like a stranger walking aroun...So true, Bea. I feel like a stranger walking around in a strange land. It's bloggers like you and VE that give me hope when despair is nipping at my heels. Thank you so much! <3David Ashtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18339979176989832285noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804054451517691779.post-22392864765280906162014-10-07T09:54:52.638-04:002014-10-07T09:54:52.638-04:00Hello VE! Yes! The obliviators! They do manage in ...Hello VE! Yes! The obliviators! They do manage in their dissonance to take many more casualties than just the nonhuman victims... They really do make the world a tough place to function in. What goes unsaid and unseen weighs heavily on those of us who know. And to witness the perpetrators blissfully continuing the harm is like rubbing salt in the wound. What a crazy set up... To advocate for kindness and be punished/ridiculed/ostracized for it instead. Even an attempt at lip-biting becomes a masochistic agreement with the obliviators. <br /><br />Some reach an ideal by way of a struggle to a mountain top. For me it was a fall into the pits of "reality". It was one last-look at what will never be again. But it never really was what I thought it was to begin with. I'm done grieving over losing something that never existed in the first place.<br /><br />Thanks for offering a hand up and out of that dark space. But you've always been there with more healing in the virtual world than any fake "comforts" in the "RW". And I missed you too. <3 Bea Elliotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13981537551810309024noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6804054451517691779.post-80809624716733117802014-10-04T07:43:24.819-04:002014-10-04T07:43:24.819-04:00Ah Bea you articulate beautifully a perspective we...Ah Bea you articulate beautifully a perspective we share on this species (at least the version of us that are "Americuns"). The fog of obliviousness or as you so precisely write the: "privilege of pretense we are all born into. It's where silence is an armor and blindness a gift." <br /><br />That acerbic and (to me at least) way under-appreciated observer of us named Gore Vidal once named this country "The United States of Amnesia". While he focused on our political and historical obliterating...it doesn't stop there. We float in a fog of our own creating and like small human children...we close our eyes, plug up our ears and go "la la la, I'm not going to see you or listen to you" regarding our fellow Earthlings and then...we gift ourselves with false innocence and virtue. And...when someone as rude as you says look at what you're doing...we treat you as if you're mean and cruel for telling us what's happening. As for the horrors we perpetrate...ah well...that just has to be. Ignore them and do not...ever...have the bad taste to say something about them.<br /><br />If you do speak out...well...you're just an extremist...you're weird...there's something wrong with you. Shut up and stay deaf, blind and most of all dumb (in both meanings of the word).<br /><br />Someone once observed that Americans are uncomfortable about lying to others...our strength is in our seriously skilled ability to lie to ourselves. And woe be unto you if you break the spell. We'll stick you in the whack job category and justify our ignoring of you. I think that's why the youngsters are the ones most often willing to listen...they aren't real practiced at self deception yet. They can still hear and see...sometimes.<br /><br />Nope, you have to keep on speaking out for our relatives because if you wait on the great awakening...all you're going to hear or see or smell is a snore (and maybe a somnolent fart), not a shout of regret or tears of sympathy.<br /><br />When human slavery was part of our horrid fake innocence...the victims were all around us and were much more difficult to ignore...they even spoke our language. Yet we still had to kill hundreds of thousands of ourselves to at least pay lip service to equality.<br /><br />But the furred, finned, skinned and feathered victims...ah...we can hide them mostly....and they don't look like us and they smell bad and they aren't so rude as to be quite as hard to make disappear. Except for the baddies like you...and me (and many others) who try to speak for them and against their misery and massacring.<br /><br />I sometimes think it is our job to feel some of the misery and sick regret and pain that the obliviators hide from themselves...we're their proxy and we have to struggle to find ways to convince them to re-own that knowledge and the feelings that belong to that knowledge of their atrocities toward the other children of mother Earth. And they resist this...with their blindness and their stupor...and that resistance is heartsick making. <br /><br />However, "lip biting and still smiling" is too costly. And...I missed you. :-)veganelderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05188156008589356984noreply@blogger.com