You Have Been Had!

The biggest con of all time

By Eric G. Weiner

The sad bit is you were conned by the people you loved and trusted most in your life… your parents. Mind you, they were just unwittingly passing the con along as it had been passed along to them. The entire con has been going on for at least a million years. And it is a con without conscious connivers.

How is this possible?

It is evolution at work. The process of “natural selection” works just as well within a culture as it does in nature. Once a particular cultural direction is taken, it must overcome what hinders it, and latch onto what supports it, or else like any doomed species, it dies off. Think of the development of the automobile once the idea of driving vs. riding horses caught on.

From a rickety, slow, wind-up novelty, it quickly evolved to become a self contained magic machine — faster than any land creature on earth, able to travel such speeds all day long, containing previously inconceivable pieces of fantasy like headlights, radio, remote garage door openers, cd players, GPS guidance systems, video, computers, and recently, self-parking, and even self- driving capabilities.

Contrary factors needed to be overcome. These machines were smelly and noisy and fabulously expensive. As symbols of the very rich, they were resented by the poorer classes, and hated by rural dwellers because it scared their animals and messed up their roads. Then Henry Ford and his assembly line made the price accessible so it was less resented by the poor who could now aspire to ownership, and rural folk realized it was now cheaper than owning horses in the long run and could be used to transfer produce to town more quickly and economically. The negative stories, about the possible ill effects on the lungs of children, and society in general, largely vanished as everybody began to climb aboard the excitement of this new thing that now existed on the planet, growling to change the world.

Entire industries co-evolved around the automobile. An entire infrastructure of assembly line factories, steel mills, parts manufacturers, highway and bridge construction companies, rubber plantations and tire manufacturers, and of course the oil industry — extraction, refining, distribution etc. Then there arose the supportive industries of service and filling stations, washing, repairing, road maintenance, painting, selling, advertising, inspecting, licensing, policing, and, of course, insuring. Each piece enabled, further refined, and eased the continuance and advance of this cultural direction.

Faster cars demanded better tires. Better tires demanded better roads. Better roads meant better surfaces and better tire materials. Asphalt manufacturers, gravel purveyors, and tire manufacturers grew gigantic.

Exploitation of international resources demanded suppression of resistance. Political lobbying and military personnel and apparatus grew to achieve this. Feedback loops evolved. Oil, steel and automotive companies paid for the politicians who would create policies that aided them, which consequently provided them more money enabling them to control yet more politicians and media channels which in turn further aided the products and reinforced the initial cultural direction.

Along with the physical, were the psychic evolutions. Cars became highly sculpted objects of desire, the romantization of the “of the open road”, James Bond and his supercars, the glorious car chases, the car as masculine accessory; the “muscle car”, the SUV, the pick-up truck, the “sportscar” and of course, also, “the family car”.

Movies, popular songs, TV shows, all sang the praises, the adventure, and the mythology that goes with the automobile experience. It became a central, giant self-perpetuating machine. It requires no mastermind, or single cabal (though there were plenty of mini-cabals); each element feeds and sustains the other. And so it goes. Now cars are our way of life. No one ever talks of eliminating the automobile — making them more ecological yes. Ending them, no.

And so it happened when humans began to kill. Unlike the automobile, this direction has had one million years to refine itself and become a core, basically unexamined part of our lives.

This was not just “part of our nature”, as is commonly supposed, this was a cataclysmic event. It is reflected in the Western bible when Eve (morally flawed woman that she was) supposedly gave a “forbidden fruit” to Adam (poor innocent male). The forbidden “fruit” was not a fruit but a dead being, the original sin was the murder of our fellow creatures, the male hunter was the one passing the sin of his killings onto the woman, and the “Tree of Knowledge” as with the other tell-tale reversals and psychological disguises noted above, was actually the Tree of our subsequent Ignore-ance.

When Jane Goodall first documented chimpanzee predation she noticed a startling discontinuity. Early on in her fieldwork she would throw out a bunch of bananas to attract chimps, inadvertently creating an instant hierarchy in the scramble to get first pick. She later ruefully realized that most natural food sources in the chimpanzee wild are fairly spread out — like berries on a tree — and hence seldom create such an unnatural convergence on a single food source with the intense resultant hierarchy. However in the stressful, compressed circumstances caused by a single bunch of bananas, the largest, most aggressive apes dominated the food grab.

However when Goodall later observed predation by a non-dominant chimpanzee, everything was startlingly different. Even the most senior, dominant, aggressive apes, respectfully kept their distance and submissively awaited the killer’s permission before daring to come forward for a taste.

This primal fear and respect is learned anew by every would-be gang leader and ruthless politician. If you are willing to kill, and can show your ability to do so, you jump to the top of the pack. You have displayed a ruthlessness not often shared; but immediately feared. You have proven yourself to be lethal danger and not to be crossed.

Humans, who must remain protective of their helpless young far longer than most species, have enormous empathic gifts to overcome to become successful killers. Once the predatory turn was taken, many powerful supporting features had to come into play to keep this cultural ball rolling. Hence the great, long, and extremely powerful con that has led to us marching enraptured and blind down our murderous path.

There are many components to this con. Imagine yourself in a room with a murderer. Would you be inclined to argue with, let alone criticize this person? Rarity of critique is built into the system. Second, in order to insure that our young would still be cared for sufficiently, a certain section of society had to be raised with different sensibilities. Women became the nurturers, the child “carers” while men were raised to be hard and insensitive — able to do the “hard work of manhood” — hunting and fighting. This division of sexual labour and psychology helped keep the con going. Not surprisingly this new “killer sex” used its propensity for violence and blunted sensitivity to intimidate and dominate women, children, animals, and… basically… anything in its path. This included domination of other humans, the historical mindset, nature itself, and all political and social agendas.

Denigration of the victim was another great tool which developed at this time, and has been used many times in many ways ever since. The division of “us” vs. “them”, “the Human vs the “Animal”. This word “Animal” is quite the piece of magic. One of incredible power. In one breathtaking word/concept, Over 9 million species were thrust into a single decrepit container and instantly rendered disposable.

“In the beginning was the word”. Religions arose to certify our difference and sanctify our “Dominion” over these “others”. Unlike “animals”, apparently we alone had “divine souls”. Our near divinity was granted by God himself who made us in his own image and therefore looks just like us — (if you are an aged, white male). This God initially demands we kill animals as sacrifice. Later he relents but lets us know that by saving all the animals from the flood (which he created) we are now entitled to kill them whenever we like.

Each religion created its own schema that allows killing other species to be conscience-free. The Native American beseeches the “Buffalo Spirit” who then grants permission to kill individual buffalos. The Inuit chews up snow and spits it into the mouth of the seal he just killed because “the seal allowed itself to be caught in order to get a drink of fresh water.” The Old Testament declares that “The life of the animal is in the blood of the animal” so the Jew and the Muslim drains the blood of the animal and therefore cannot not really be accused of “taking a life”.

The con goes on and on. As science grows ascendant over religion it provides new rationales. Descartes reassured us that the screams and cries of animals mid-vivisection were just the “clockwork creaking of machinery” because lacking our “supreme reason” they cannot possibly feel like we do. Those who felt otherwise were ridiculed as “womanly”, “childish” or “oversensitive”. Behavioural psychologists later reassured us that what we witness in animals is just reflex, or mere “stimulus/response”. Until very recently science declared that even studying things like “feelings”, “pain” and “emotions” were off limits. The crime of “Anthropomorphism” became the scourge of young scientists who might dare attribute “human” characteristics such as pain, terror, etc. to the non-human — as if humans were the sole possessors of these feelings.

In modern times we evolved ways to move our mass imprisonment and murder of other beings far from view. In fact laws have been passed making it illegal to photograph or video inside these “Agri-businesses”. When we finally meet the “products” of these industries, we do not see dead, innocent, beaten and tortured individuals — but “steaks”, “burgers”, “chops”, and “roasts”.

Language evolved to become a major enabler — cows became “live-stock” and “heads of beef”, pigs became “pork”, chicken became “poultry”, and all become unobjectionable “protein meals”, “animal harvests”, or “essential sources of high-grade protein”. And so the con goes on and on.

Charlie the Tuna can’t wait till we capture him, so we can appreciate how fine he tastes. Cows love to give us their milk rather than to their own young who are purposefully raised with anaemic diets and confined in tiny pens for life to produce the white flesh we prize as “veal”.

We continue the con by raising our children to love and identify with animals while feeding them their dead bodies. This enormous cognitive dissonance forces them even further from confronting a horrifying reality that was never confronted by their own parents, or their parents before them. Hence the con goes on in silence; it is unspoken, unspeakable, and all the more effective because of it. It is in the silent air we breathe, we take it for granted and it invisibly rules us.

We are given all kinds of world views to support our murderous ways. “It is nature’s way”, “All life consists in killing and consuming other life” and many other familiar bromides that soothe our feelings and are not factually true.

We live a life surrounded by our phenomenal murder yet remain wonderfully oblivious to it. This astounding blindness was built up in countless increments till we arrive at today.

We now kill over 200 million of our fellow beings every day yet never see it. That is the equivalent of slaughtering the entire population of Russia and Great Britain combined, each and every day! And that is only land creatures. Add fish and we get 3 billion slaughtered daily. 72 billion land animals are murdered per year and over a trillion living beings of the sea. Yet most of us never hear, see or smell it. We hear no evil, see no evil, smell no evil. We clothe our bodies and feet in their dead skin and fur as no creature has ever before us and consider it normal. The very glues we use to keep our objects together are often composed of the tendons of the creatures we have torn apart. We create myths about the need for dairy and animal protein for our health in the face of their major role in heart disease and cancer.

We imagine we are the most important thing in creation — in fact all of creation was supposedly made expressly for us to enjoy.

Yet if even the beings we hold in lowest regard — insects — were to suddenly die off, all planetary life would cease within 50 years. On the other hand, if humans disappeared overnight the entire planet would flourish.

Killing and “meat” eating is currently our human norm. The vegetarian, and the vegan, are the eccentrics, the weirdos. “They” have to justify what they are doing, not we. We are the greatest murderers in the history of the world yet most of us know almost nothing about what we are really doing. This is not an accident.

We have been conned, we continue to be conned. We need not feel guilty about our ignorance. It is the greatest, longest, and most successful con of all time. We have been living inside a horrific falsehood, a dream that has been created for us, and by us, via a process as old as life itself. This million year old cultural direction has been an excruciating nightmare for the rest of the living, sensitive world. It is time to leave this dreamworld. It is time to open our eyes and finally wake up.