Friday, February 5, 2021

Ode to PETA* on Speciesism

by SMSmith


From PETA's speciesism campaign

https://www.peta.org/
PETA, O PETA
What petalism1 you inspire!
Speaking in tongues
Of bow-wow, quack, oink, and me-ow,
Squawk, squeak, twitter, and hiss,
And yet miss
The meaning of metaphoric and
Anthropomorphic ‼

“We're offended,” you say,
At the way selfie-sapiens
Are so casual and careless
With attribute slanging
And haranguing of other
Sweet, sentient species
Who are the equal of humans—
Full equal in all.

OR ... OR,
Could PETA be unwittingly
Seeding the reverse?!

O, dreaded thought!
Could PETA foreshadow the inverse?

Could PETA inadvertently
Be floating the notion
In previewed advance of new statutes
Drafted by ... h-hmm ... who?
Committees of ghosts?!

Like faux-peeps in the WEF?
Or the new WO — World Order?
Or some cabal of worthies
Obsessed and devoted
To converting all people
Into sheep, cattle, or goats, (or so forth)?
Herding 'n fencing,  e-tagging 'n chipping,
Vaxxing 'n masking, gagging, wing-clipping;
Or maybe for harvest or hunting?‼ OR
Entertainment with games‼2

Could cabals be thinking
To strip property rights?
So nothing is owned and everyone free
To rent from BIG CORPS whatever's essential,
With pressured consent to be channeled and managed
By Utopian lords of suspicious descent,
Taylored and taught
In the science and arts
Of efficiency charts?

WHO really knows?
'Cause, as we're repeatedly told
Déjà vu is clearly and merely
Conspiracy theory—
Which CiA swears under oath—
Dismissing the witness of history,
And disclosures of mysteries
By heretics of secret gnosis
Sought for and cherished by NASA and Gnostics,
And a few ayahuastics.

“Oh, no,” PETA cries,
Horrified at such thought.
PETA opposes all categories,
Hierarchies, and stories of wo;
Of lockdowns 'n takedowns,
Shutdowns 'n shakedowns 'n breakdowns;
Of pain, terror, and grief,
Of bullies and bullying
By man or by beast.

Oops! PETA, so sorry to offend
In word beast or in deed,
But IF you contend
“We're not different or superior”
To hyena or lion,
What's to keep us from lyin' in wait
To exploit and consume?

IF “we're not different
In any important way;”
IF “the same laws of nature” apply
Why not be king of the vast, wild savannah
Like lordly lions in stealth demonstrate?
Like WEF and the R-boys contemplate.

So PETA, O PETA
Surely—
Philanthropic as you are—
With so much laudable action and cause
Under your non-leather belt;
Surely you
Would never, ever, ever
Make choice to set-up
As puppet for the powers?
As a voice under script?

So, PETA
Surely you're not [with apologies]
A snake in the grass?
A wolf in sheep's clothing?
An unwitting ass?
Surely, surely not!
PETA, O PETA ‼

So PETA, good PETA
Surely you now see
How the people need help?
We need slogans and banners
Calling-out bullies and bad manners.
We need lawn signs and march signs—
Kids protesting en masse
Against corralling 'n tagging,
Dehorning 'n gagging,
Hula hooping 'n snooping,
Confining 'n fining,
Lying 'n spying,
Snitching 'n dividing,
Isolating, psy-oping—
All that, plus more.

So PETA, please PETA
Channel more passion to the kids
To rescue the people—
To stop the abuse
By funding and launching
PETOP and PETOK,
'Cause people should be as equal
In protection of rights,
“From abuse in any way,”
Just like you advance
On your elegant site.
( https://www.peta.org/ )

So, please, PETA, please
Compare the abuse
And refuse the Old Normal
Camouflaged and confused as the New.

Yes, PETA, O PETA
Help! Help!


--------------------------------/
PS: Yes PETA, for the most part of history, mankind has miserably failed in stewardship of the animal kingdom, thus there is definitely great need for PETA, but at times, you seem to push the boundaries of bullying and extremism. Many animals die of natural or accidental causes and would you deny use of their remains? (Compare voluntary human organ donation.) Ice cream and milk does not need to deny little calves. Cows can contently give milk long after a calf is weaned, if there is someone committed to milking twice a day. Bonding with and carrying for animals is one of the emotional highs of human and animal existence, so how can you judge the enjoyment, satisfaction, or sense of accomplishment an animal might feel in putting in a good day's work? (Compare a human day of aimless waste with a day of satisfying work.) (; Anthropomorphic!;) Yes, these animal creatures are owned by God, not us, but often under the stewardship of humans. And yes, it would be far better to say: This dog (or pig or chicken or cow or horse, or parrot, or gerbil, etc., etc.) is in my stewardship" than to say "I own," Perhaps that is the language we need to be affirming,  just like we need to be affirming that public servants are not public masters. And we need to quit denying the reality of hierarchy. Life and nature is all built on hierarchy.3 We just invert or misinterpret it, like ownership and stewardship, like servant and master. And yes, big agri-business is frequently a great offender as are some others, but extremism is not the answer. Awareness and education is one place to start along with language such as:

----------------------/
*People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
https://www.peta.org/
https://headlines.peta.org/end-speciesism/
All quote marks in the Ode indicate direct quotes from PETA's website.

1. Definitions of petalism
a) an ancient Syracusan method of banishing for five years a citizen suspected of having dangerous influence or ambition [olive leaves were used for ballots]— compare OSTRACISM
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/petalism
b) a modern USA method (A.D. 2021) of banishing forever ancient word usage suspected of having dangerous emotional influence or of triggering: a) animal grief, shaming, pain, or guilt; or b) human disrespect, abusive behavior, or superiority— compare REDACTING, CENSORSHIP, BULLYING.
2. Hunger Games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Games_(film)
3. “A natural hierarchy is simply an order of increasing wholeness, such as: particles to atoms to cells to organisms, or letters to words to sentences to paragraphs. The whole of one level becomes a part of the whole of the next. ... Virtually all growth processes, from matter to life to mind occur via natural holarchies, or [nested] orders of increasing holism or wholeness—wholes that become parts of new wholes—and that’s natural hierarchy or holarchy.”
From A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber, © 1996, Shambhala, p. 28. See also: “Reality is composed of holons”—a holon being “an entity that is itself a whole and simultaneously a part of some other whole” (p. 20). “In other words, normal hierarchies are composed of holons” .... “When a holon in a natural hierarchy usurps its position and attempts to dominate the whole then you get a pathological or dominator hierarchy—a cancerous cell dominates the body, or a fascist dictator dominates the social system or a repressive ego dominates the organism, and so on, / But the cure for these pathological holarchies is not getting rid of holarchy, per se—which isn’t possible anyway—but rather in arresting the arrogant holon and integrating it back into the natural holarchy, or putting it in its rightful place, so to speak” (p. 28, bold emphasis added). [But] people confuse dominator hierarchies with natural hierarchies” (p. 28). “[T]he point is not to get rid of hierarchies or holarchies altogether—that’s impossible. Trying to get rid of ranking is itself a ranking. Denying hierarchy is itself a hierarchy. ... you can’t escape nested orders” (p. 29).
Also see: https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-hijacking-of-hierarchy.html

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Déjà Vu ~ Times blog by SMSmith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.