While watching my friend's 2 1/2 year old son, Jude, I made an observation that was both startling and completely obvious. We were playing dinosaurs and the thought occurred, "Did the dinosaurs teach us all we really need to know about peace?"
As most little boys like to do, we were reading about dinosaurs and talking about their life on earth millions of years ago. Whenever we would come across a page in a book of a dinosaur who ate eggs or other dinosaurs, Jude would say they were "scary". These carnivorous dinosaurs have always been depicted as the villains in popular TV shows, movies, and books. We all know that you have to watch your back for T-Rex and that though the Brontosaurus was huge, you could make a friend out of one and probably even slide down its back for fun. Yes, the gentle giants, or herbivores, were always depicted as the "good guys".
How can we not see the parallel here with modern man and his diet? Why don't we see eating meat as "scary"? (Well we can probably answer that first and foremost as most people who eat meat have absolutely nothing to do with the hunting/killing of said beast. They pick up the flesh at the market, colored pink and wrapped in plastic. It's incredibly far-removed from the days of T-Rex ripping the flesh off of his neighbor. But I digress...) If being a meat-eater makes one aggressive and if being an herbivore denotes characteristics such as calm and peaceful-wouldn't we all want to be herbivores? (And now I go to answer my own question...well that is only if a person actually wants a peaceful world, which I question with the behaviors we see globally). But I know I DO!!!
Recalling a workshop I had attending about 6 months ago with Gabriel Cousens MD, he referred to those who eat other animals as living in the "culture of death" and calls vegetarianism (and for him a mostly vegan/raw diet), the "culture of life". These descriptions never became so vivid as when I place the image of a T-Rex and Brontosaurus beside them.
One might argue to me, (I can hear it now and I know exactly who would say it, and you know them too), that this is simply nature and it's just how things are on this planet. But I will argue right back that mankind is DIFFERENT than NATURE in that we do not operate purely out of a place of instinct. No, we have the gifts of intuition and intellect to guide us to our greatest form of existence. It is our innate responsibility to utilize these gifts, these human differentiators, to make wise decisions for all living things.
The question I leave you with is this: Do you want the "scary" aggression of the T-Rex or the gentle strength of the Brontosaurus? (And if you have ANY trouble to answer that just go watch The Land Before Time).
Om tat sat.
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