In the year 2001, 6-10 million healthy farm animals were killed in the United Kingdom in a strategy to eliminate an out-of-control epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease (details).
Whole flocks of sheep (including newly-born lambs), whole herds of cattle (including calves a few days old) and pigs, pet and zoological cloven-hoofed animals including rare breeds and American Bison. Pleas to use strategic vaccination as an alternative to culling thousands of farms of healthy animals were ignored by a farming and government leaders who were focussed on "recovering export sales".
For what is man without the beasts?
"If all the beasts were gone - man would die from a great loneliness of spirit"
"For whatever happens to the beasts soon happens to man"
(Antibiotic resistance - BSE - E.coli 0157 - Salmonella - Bird Flu)
These simple words of wisdom have been attributed to a native American nation that knew the importance of living in harmony with nature. Native Americans knew that the alternative to an ecology-based, balanced lifestyle was starvation, sickness or death.
The "All things are connected" principle is also embodied in Sir Isaac Newton's Laws of Dynamics, and is a key part of modern physics and astrophysics. Biologist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake and other researchers have amassed evidence for a universal energy field which support apparently paranormal communication phenomena such as dogs who can sense when their owners are coming home and people who sense when they are being stared at (see sixth sense research).
Beautiful Scenic Movie of the Speech: "The Wisdom of Chief Seattle"...
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"All things are connected" is fundamental to the "Law of Karma" - that all actions have consequences. According to this karmic principle, unskilful actions, e.g. those based on fear or greed, have undesirable consequences while skilful actions e.g. those based on joy, love, respect or wisdom, have desirable consequences.
Have the scientific and technological advances of the twentieth century left us arrogantly believing that we are above the laws of nature?
As the FMD slaughter of animals went on, some farmers killed themselves - the disturbing tip of an iceberg of emotional stress tearing through a nation. The human sickness and death that this brutal orgy of animal killing precipitated or exacerbated is incalculable. Some people were traumatised just by watching events on TV. For farming people, locked into isolation on restricted farms in endemic areas, waiting for that awful moment when people from the Ministry of Agriculture might arrive with bad news, the strain on their health, welfare and financial security was often far worse.
Half of the people in this world does not have enough to eat, yet in the U.K. we expended billions of pounds of taxpayers hard-earned money on the burning and burial of hundreds of thousands of tons of uninfected meat. What kind of "Connectedness" is this?
The wisdom quoted above is attributed to a speech in 1854 by the great Native American Chief Seattle, Patriarch of the Duwamish and Suquamish Indians, when responding to a U.S. government offer to buy a large tract of Native American land. The historical accuracy of this speech has been questioned. It was probably a later dramatisation by an experienced writer who was versed in Native American culture. The dramatised speech it is offered here for its poetic beauty, spiritual aspiration and ecological inspirational value...
How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land?
This idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of water, how can you buy them?
Every part of the earth is sacred to my people - We are part of the earth and the earth is part of us.
So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us. The air is precious to the Red Man, for all things share the same breath.
I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo we kill only to stay alive*For what is man without the beasts?
If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit.For whatever happens to the beast, soon happens to man...
All things are connected!
You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of their grandfathers.
This we know: the earth does not belong to man - man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected - like the blood which unites one family.
One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover - We all share the same Creator!
(* rapid restoration of the meat export trade was a major motive for the mass cull referred to above)
Sheep grazing in the Devon countryide before the foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2001
A Prayer for the Animals
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