As I scrolled across Facebook this morning, I came across a video my sister had shared about bullfighting. The video detailed all of the measures taken to prepare the bull for its performance: ripping the calf away from its herd and malnourishing it, repeated stabbing with knives and spears, letting the bull bleed out, wounded, all while totally conscious. It was shocking to see and difficult to digest: my jaw dropped, and my stomach started knotting up. This absolute cruelty is done for the purpose of bull runs and bull fights: an ancient practice that is upheld in modern tourism in some countries, like Spain, France, and Mexico, among others.
The result of deeply intentional violence is the “wild bull” stereotype we are all familiar with: a crazed beast that must be slain by the valiant human conqueror. But what living creature, when tormented and tortured so evilly, wouldn’t become out of its mind and violent right back, doing anything to protect itself from more of the same injuries?
I can’t help but wonder when humans first began the practice of dehumanization. To be able to look at one of your own kind, and hunt and slay them, a la The Most Dangerous Game, is not natural. How do we, who have the ability to birth and care for a tiny baby, also hold the same capacity to look our own kind in the eye and desire their death, or worse, their suffering?
But as I think about it deeper, I’m not sure we can label the treatment of bulls as dehumanization; after all, a bull is not a human to begin with. It is something deeper. It is devitalization. We have allowed ourselves to entertain and execute the act of devitalization, ignoring and suppressing the vitality in living beings. Devitalization is what allows us to prepare bulls for fights, but it also allows us to hunt animals to the point of extinction; to exhaust our soil and cut down trees until the ground is barren. Devitalization is what makes it okay for us to eat a steak and not have to consider the cramped and sad farming of the cattle who gave their meat, which certainly is not full of vitality to begin with. Devitalization is what makes us desire to put chemicals and lab-grown products into our bodies and call it food, as if a box of crackers is the same nourishment as root vegetables grown in our backyards. Devitalization is the removal of depth from our way of living, and it is unsurprisingly what has made us a society of unvital people.
What is vitality? Merriam-Webster says it is “lively and animated character….the peculiarity distinguishing the living from the nonliving.” In our devitalized world, we no longer have the ability to make this distinguishment. Nearly everything seems to be lacking vitality, that quality of alive-ness. In her book about vibrations, Lalah Delia discusses the science of vitality and how cells vibrate at certain rates and frequencies. She discusses how Dr. Valerie Hunt, a professor of physiology at UCLA, did studies about energy fields and found that “a person eating junk food radiated a ‘dull and small’ energy because the foods being eaten were ‘lifeless,’ ‘inert,’ and ‘dead’ in vibration;” the cells in food products vibrate at a low frequency and are therefore lacking in vitality. But since we are comfortable with devitalization, we don’t notice or care that these foods are feeding into our own devitalization. Meanwhile, Dr. Hunt found that a person “eating whole foods such as fruits, vegetables, grains, and seeds” actually “radiated an ‘enlivened’ vibration because of the higher electromagnetic energies received from the food.” Not surprisingly, food whose cells vibrate at a higher frequency cause our own cells to vibrate at that higher frequency when we eat it.
The earth is vital, full of life. The plants that grow from the earth contain that vitality, and the animals and humans that eat vital plants participate in the food chain of vitality. But if plants are grown in depleted soil, if animals are born and raised and slaughtered in filth and suffering, when we eat these foods we are eating food void of vitality; we are participating in a food chain whose cells lose vibrational frequency with each step. And then we go on living in devitalized lifestyles that allow us to hurt each other. We participate willingly in causing suffering, projecting our own suffering onto the plants, humans, and animals we encounter.
I don’t believe someone who understood vitality could possibly participate in the cruel practice of preparing a bull for fighting. But I also don’t believe someone who understands vitality can participate in a devitalized food system. When you understand the boxed microwaveable macaroni and cheese has such little life in it, you can’t possibly continue to put that mac and cheese in your body and not be aware of your own lacking vitality. Who would do this to themselves? Well of course I can come up with a few scenarios, but if a person has the ability to choose vital food from a vital system or devitalized food from a devitalized system, it’s only a matter of time before vitality becomes priority.
I’m not saying all problems would be solved if we chose to exit the devitalized system; however, I do believe deeply that confronting our acceptance of devitalization will inevitably lead to a more vital world, a society made up of people more aware of their own vitality and living from that higher vibrational frequency. And I think that would certainly solve at least a few needless problems we’ve brought upon ourselves.
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