Conscious and Conscientious Commitment to News

Posted on October 4, 2010 by zoeweil

My friend Gregg Krech, who is the director of the ToDo Institute, told me recently that he and his wife had decided to take a short vacation from the news. When this “vacation” was over, they decided to approach the news in a different way. From now on, he said, they would listen selectively and conscientiously and make a commitment to act upon any disturbing news they heard. They had missed the news about the floods in Pakistan during their news hiatus, and when they returned to selective listening and learned about the floods they immediately made an effort to help people in Pakistan.

I thought this approach to the news was marvelous, but in my work at the Institute for Humane Education, I don’t feel like I can personally take any sort of hiatus from the news, much as I sometimes I long to. The endless and relentless exposure to catastrophes, problems, challenges, atrocities, etc., is dizzying and sometimes numbing. There is no way do to enough and more often than not, outside of educating, I end up doing little.

But most people do not need to listen to the news all the time in order to do their work and be a good citizen, and in fact, they might be a better, more helpful and engaged citizen if they listened less often and responded with more engagement when they did.

If you find that you are becoming numb to the bad news that bombards you, perhaps you should try Gregg’s experiment. Maybe it’s time to pause and replenish and then come to the news with attention, compassion, wisdom, courage, and commitment. Try it for a week. See what happens. Can you maintain a commitment to do something to make a difference each time you do expose yourself to the news. Are you a better citizen this way? I welcome your thoughts and responses.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind

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Jon Stewart’s Humorous Expose of Black and White, Myopic and Self-Serving Thinking

Posted on March 8, 2010 by zoeweil

I’m a big fan of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and recently I watched an episode in which Jon discusses the February snowstorms that hit the Mid-Atlantic states and what these storms mean for global warming concerns. You can see the clip here.

What does it mean when comedy becomes a primary source of reason? Please pass this along.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm

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The Hazards of Meat-Eating Hit the Mainstream Media

Posted on November 9, 2009 by zoeweil

I’ve been vegan for twenty years. As I learned about the plight of animals in modern agriculture from Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, John Robbins’ Diet for a New America and numerous undercover films that showed the conditions under which the great majority of animals are raised for food, I knew I didn’t want to participate in causing unnecessary suffering and death to sentient beings. What I learned from books and films was confirmed by my own experiences when I brought high school students to see factory farms for themselves; what we saw solidified my commitment to a plant-based diet. I know that there are farmers who raise animals more humanely, and slaughterhouses that kill animals less brutally and cruelly, but since I don’t need to eat animals — and thereby cause their deaths — I choose not to. And because the system is what it is, in dairy production — even at the most humane farms — calves are still removed from their mothers at birth so the milk meant for the calf can be collected for people; the male offspring are killed because they’re of no use to the dairy industry; and, the dairy cows are eventually slaughtered when they’re no longer producing much milk. And even the most humane egg farms cull (meaning kill) their unproductive older hens and purchase their chicks from hatcheries that destroy the males, who are of no use to the egg industry.

But there are other reasons I was happy to have chosen a vegan diet. I learned about the health hazards of the typical American diet and the ways in which animal-based diets contribute to heart disease, many forms of cancer, strokes, diabetes, kidney disease, and other illnesses. My own health improved when I became vegan.

I also learned about the environmental problems associated with animal agriculture, from global warming to deforestation to water waste to soil erosion to pollution. Then in 2006, the U.N. issued a report citing beef production as contributing more to global warming than transportation. This stunning finding was barely mentioned in the news. So, although I had learned about all these issues from many books, articles, films and research, rarely did I read about the problems associated with meat-eating and animal agriculture in the mainstream media.

Until now.

Quite suddenly, there are numerous articles, TV news reports and interviews, and op-ed essays about the problems associated with meat-eating and the benefits of vegetarianism, and no longer are these coming only from alternative media. They are coming from CNN, The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Times (UK) and more. Here are just a few from the past few weeks:

Take a look and let these articles be food for thought as you consider the diet that does the most good and the least harm for yourself, other people, animals and the environment.

Bon Appetit,

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind

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Filed under: animal protection, food and diet, MOGO (Most Good), news media | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Outrunning Wildebeest?

Posted on November 4, 2009 by zoeweil

A recent New York Times article, “The Human Body is Built for Distance,” (which follows several recent deaths of marathoners), has this to say about running:

“Most mammals can sprint faster than humans — having four legs gives them the advantage. But when it comes to long distances, humans can outrun almost any animal. Because we cool by sweating rather than panting, we can stay cool at speeds and distances that would overheat other animals. On a hot day, the two scientists wrote, a human could even outrun a horse in a 26.2-mile marathon.

Why would evolution favor the distance runner? The prevailing theory is that endurance running allowed primitive humans to incorporate meat into their diet. They may have watched the sky for scavenging birds and then run long distances to reach a fresh kill and steal the meat from whatever animal was there first.

Other research suggests that before the development of slingshots or bows, early hunters engaged in persistence hunting, chasing an animal for hours until it overheated, making it easy to kill at close range. A 2006 report in the journal Current Anthropology documents persistence hunting among modern hunter-gatherers, including the Bushmen in Africa.”

This seems a suspect conclusion to me. I’m neither an anthropologist nor a paleontologist, just someone reading this article quizzically and wondering aloud. My husband and I engaged in a discussion about it, and being the research maven he is, he attempted to find out whether a human could really outrun a horse. It seems that under the right circumstances, and over many years of trying, and with sixty plus people attempting the effort against a single horse who stopped for veterinary breaks, it can very occasionally be done with the human winning by a few minutes. Hmmm…. It’s hard to imagine early humans running miles and miles and miles with spears or some other weapon (since our teeth and fingernails would hardly bring down a big mammal) to feed the tribe. And how would one get the wildebeest back home anyway?

Humans are good long distance runners, but is there really evidence that early humans evolved to be this way in order to bring down much faster and larger animals, and that those of us who could outrun an antelope lived longer and produced more children with those genes? Could it be that we evolved to be distance runners because those that could run long distances could also warn their tribes of coming dangers? Could it be that bipedalism and hairlessness had a side effect of distance running?

Could it be that early humans ate a much more plant-based, easily obtained diet, with insects and small, slow animals to supplement fruits, leaves, nuts and seeds and scavenged the kills of more fearsome predators as we were able, running for any other number of reasons?

Just wondering.

~ Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind

Addendum: Since writing this post I heard an interview with an anthropologist (perhaps the person who’s been relied upon for the article’s expertise), and although I’m still not convinced, I’ll chalk this up to “not believing” until there’s more evidence.


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The Susan Boyle Phenomenon

Posted on April 29, 2009 by zoeweil

I’ve been curious, delighted, and dismayed by the media response to Susan Boyle’s instant notoriety after performing on Britain’s Got Talent. Her performance has generated over 60 million views on YouTube, , and she’s become the new singing sensation. But most of the conversation has been around her appearance. Even Talk of the Nation, a radio show that usually covers meaningful issues, devoted a segment to her looks. Recently, the New York Times had an article analyzing the reasons why her looks are such a topic and assessing stereotypes and human psychology. At least now we’re delving into the phenomenon, rather than taking part in Boyle-bashing based on looks.

My curiosity revolved around the speed at which one woman’s unlikely success became an international phenomenon. As someone who’s trying to gain media attention for efforts in humane education and the MOGO principle, and who has come to realize just how difficult this is, it’s remarkable to watch what can happen when someone becomes a media sensation overnight.

My delight revolved around Susan Boyle’s success based on talent, not on beauty, wealth, youth, or whom she knew.

My dismay revolved around the overwhelming focus on her appearance, including the specificity of the critique. There was an inordinate amount of attention paid to her frizzy, greying hair and bushy eyebrows, which infuriated me. She is being criticized for leaving the hair that grows on her body alone, instead of buying products to change it and removing parts of it to meet conventional standards of beauty. Listening to a debate on the media about what sorts of makeover would be appropriate, I found myself alternately shifting from outrage to wonderment. Is this really what we care about? Is this really the topic of the day? With all the pressing issues of our time, we readily turn our attention to the grotesquely unimportant: Susan Boyle’s physical appearance and what she should do about it.

I keep wondering what we could do to generate this kind of attention for humane education and MOGO living. Every idea that could generate media attention seems ridiculously gimmicky and lacking in integrity. So dear readers of this blog, any suggestions for creating a media phenomenon for MOGO?

~Zoe

Image courtesy of ITV.

Filed under: Cultural Issues, media literacy, MOGO (Most Good), news media, values | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Meat and Global Warming: Mainstream Media Reports the Important News…Eventually

Posted on September 15, 2008 by zoeweil

In last week’s Time Magazine, there’s a great article on the connection between meat consumption and global warming. When articles such as these come out, I’m always so happy that the mainstream press is reporting on such critically important information. I’m grateful that such news –- unpalatable though it may be to many –- is getting the press it so desperately needs.

But then I wonder why it takes so long. When so many people (such as scientists and changemakers) have been working for so many years to reveal important information like that in this story to the public, and when the mainstream media takes such a long time (in this case over a decade) to catch up, I read such articles with a sigh. “Finally,” I think, and get back to work.

We need our mainstream media to report information –- no matter how unwelcome -– when it comes out, not when they think the public is ready to hear it and they won’t get castigated for it. And we must do our part to urge them to do so and acknowledge the importance of these reports.

~ Zoe

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