{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

pain blurts out the truth
like a blind monkey with severe tooth decay
pirate sword gripped like a baseball bat
swinging wildly in panic-stricken, pain-laden
horror

Certainly this is not a smooth running system nature has on her hands.  There's bound to be rejects and downright deserters.

(Lifted from a reply I posted in the thread, Born to Fear: Interviews with Thomas Ligotti)

The following quotes were collected in  the Vegetarianism and Antivivisection section of Monsalvat: the Parsifal home page (these four happen to be from that most radical and defiant of all troublemakers) :


Thus, because Christian morality leaves animals out of account ..., they are at once outlawed in philosophical morals; they are mere "things", mere means to any ends whatsoever. They can therefore be used for vivisection, hunting, coursing, bullfights and horse racing, and can be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy carts of stone. Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, chandalas and mlecchas, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!

~ Arthur Schopenhauer


Since compassion for animals is so intimately associated with goodness of character, it may be confidently asserted that whoever is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
 
~ Arthur Schopenhauer


The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer


Just as the dark [skin] colour is natural to man, so too is the vegetable diet; but only in a tropical climate does he remain true to the latter as to the former. When he spread to the more frigid zones, he had to counteract the unnatural climate by an equally unnatural diet. Right in the north one cannot exist at all without animal food.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

    One must begin by drawing people's attention to animals and reminding them of the Brahman's great saying, Tat twam asi (That art thou), - even though it will be difficult to make it acceptable to the modern world of Old Testament Judaization. However, a start must be made here, — since the commandment to love thy neighbour is becoming more and more questionable and difficult to observe — particularly in the face of our vivisectionist friends...

~ Richard Wagner

Here Wagner is alluding to Schopenhauer's teaching that the best aspects of Christianity were those which it shared with Buddhism and Hinduism, whereas the worst aspects of Christianity were those which it had inherited from Judaism. These latter included the Judaeo-Christian attitude to animals, which in the Old Testament (Genesis 9 v2) had been given by Yahweh into the stewardship of Noah and his descendants. For Schopenhauer and therefore also for his disciple Wagner, the idea that men could deal with other animals (including birds and fishes) as they liked, as if animals were things rather than conscious beings, was abhorrent.


 The world is not a piece of machinery and animals are not articles manufactured for our use. Such views should be left to synagogues and philosophical lecture-rooms, which in essence are not so very different.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

I'm looking to get shot in the head for speaking my mind, lynched by an angry mob, or at least beat to a pulp by ignorant knuckle-dragging ruffians, left to die in a ditch.   ~ Gorticide

I am trying to renew some enthusiasm for ideas in the midst of being paralyzed by emotions I find psychologically painful to process.

If you don't mind me asking, what did they mean by "modern age"?

Take care.

I know what women are like.They regard marriage solely as an institution to provide for them.-Schopenhauer(Written by him in his last years.)