El Dr. Will Tuttle ha recibido la Condecoración del Valor de la Conciencia y el Premio de las Jaulas Vacías. Doctorado en Filosofía por la Universidad de California, Berkeley, es el creador de varios programas de formación en bienestar y activismo. Fue monje zen y ha creado ocho édificantes álbumes de música de piano original. Cofundador de Circle of Compassion, es un frecuente escritor y presentador de radio, televisión y medios digitales. Junto a su esposa Madeleine, una artista suiza visionaria, presenta conferencias, talleres y conciertos en todo el mundo.
Food is our most intimate and telling connection both with the
living natural order and with our living cultural heritage. By
eating the plants and animals of our earth, we literally
incorporate them. It is also through this act of eating that we
partake of our culture's values and paradigms at the most primal
levels. It is becoming increasingly obvious, however, that the
choices we make about our food are leading to environmental
degradation, enormous human health problems, and unimaginable
cruelty toward our fellow creatures.I've spent the last 30 years
exploring the fascinating connections and cause-effect
relationships between our individual and cultural practice of using
animals for food and the stress and difficulties we create for each
other and ourselves. I've discovered that the violence we instigate
for our plates boomerangs in remarkable ways.Incorporating systems
theory, teachings from mythology and religions, and the human
sciences, The World Peace Diet presents the outlines of a more
empowering understanding of our world, based on a comprehension of
the far-reaching cultural and spiritual implications of our food
choices and the worldview those choices reflect and mandate. The
author offers a set of universal principles for all people of
conscience, from any religious tradition, that they can follow to
reconnect with what we are eating, what was required to get it on
our plate, and what happens after it leaves our plates.The song of
the new mythos that yearns to be born through us requires our
spirits to be loving and alive enough to hear and recognize the
pain we are causing through our obsolete food orientation. We are
called to allow our innate mercy and kindness to shine forth and to
confront the indoctrinated assumptions that promote cruelty."Will
Tuttle brings a priceless perspective--not only to the planetary
crisis confronting us all, but also to powerful ways we each can
affect it. This book is radiant with his learning and his
compassion."--Joanna Macy, author, Coming Back to Life--
(12/12/2005)
The World Peace Diet: Eating For Spiritual Health And Social
Harmony is a profound call for veganism in today's modern world.
Author Will Tuttle, who has received a Ph.D. in the philosophy of
education from the University of California, Berkeley, examines the
deleterious medical, hormonal, environmental, and societal effects
of consuming meat or other animal products such as milk or eggs.
Forcefully recommending a change toward the higher consciousness
and compassion for animals and humans alike that is veganism, The
World Peace Diet is passionate in its denouncement of myths
perpetuated by the meat, milk and egg industry and its endorsement
of the health and spiritual benefits that encompass making a change
toward a cruelty-free diet.-- (02/13/2006)
Reviewed by Charles Patterson The World Peace Diet is a unique
contribution to understanding the direct relationship between the
food we eat and the vast range of the world's problems--hunger,
poverty, disease, war, terrorism, genocide, environmental
degradation, and, of course, the exploitation and slaughter of
billions of defenseless animals, which all too many people do not
consider a problem at all. To explain how the ugly reality of the
abuse and killing of animals became the centerpiece of our
so-called civilization, Dr. Will Tuttle examines the emergence of
our herding culture that began roughly 10,000 years ago in the Near
East with the enslavement (euphemistically called "domestication")
of sheep and goats, and later cattle, camels, horses, and other
animals for food, clothing, transport and labor. This herding
culture introduced a higher level of domination and coercion into
human history and eventually led to oppressive hierarchical
societies and large-scale warfare never seen before. The
enslavement of animals and the intensive animal agriculture that
resulted from it injected large doses of ruthlessness, detachment,
and socially accepted cruelty into the fabric of our civilization.
It also produced assorted ideologies of human supremacy and
speciesist attitudes that today define our relationship to animals.
Tuttle examines in detail the horrors of modern industrialized
animal agriculture--factory farms, slaughterhouses, hunting and
herding sea life, the devastating effects on human health and the
environment, and the corporate meat-medical complex behind it all.
In a chapter called "The Domination of the Feminine" he describes
the "dairy nightmare" and the "four pathways to hell" for calves
born to dairy cows. He also writes about the egg industry as
another manifestation of our patriarchal herding culture's
domination of the feminine. Failure to see, confront, and take
responsibility for the vast hidden suffering that our food choices
require shrivels us up as human beings emotionally, intellectually,
and spiritually and keeps our society in a perpetual state of
denial and hypocrisy. Keeping ourselves oblivious to what we're
doing when we purchase, prepare, and consume meat, eggs, and dairy
products truncates our capacity to think, feel, and care for
others. According to Tuttle, the desensitizing of millions of
children and adults to the daily torture of animals plants in them
the seeds of violence, poverty, war, genocide, and despair. The
cycles of violence that have terrorized and continue to terrorize
people are rooted in our meals. Eating animals forces us to act
like predators, and we then proceed to see and define ourselves as
such. The cruelty we are forced to participate in as children turns
us into lifetime perpetrators of cruelty. How can we be peaceful
and compassionate people while eating the flesh of abused animals?
Growing up, none of us freely chose to eat animals. Our family and
culture imposed it on us. Well-meaning parents, grandparents, and
others force us to eat the flesh and secretions of animals long
before we have any choice in the matter. By the time we find out
that the meat on our plate is the flesh of a murdered animal, it
all seems natural and normal. By then our daily meals are already
rituals of denial and repressed guilt that dull our innate
compassion and our propensity for justice. The conspiracy of
silence about the truth of our meals is so pervasive that there is
a strong societal taboo against knowing where our food comes from.
Exploiting and killing animals is such an accepted part of our way
of life that it is unmentionable in public and is virtually ignored
in discussions and debates about social problems and public policy.
It never seems to occur to those our society considers its leaders
that the best way to curb violence is to get people to stop eating
violence. Late in the book the author tells the story of his own
journey to veganism. While living in Concord, Massachusetts, for
the first 22 years of his life, Tuttle, like most Americans, ate
large quantities of animal flesh, eggs, and dairy products.
However, during that time he also encountered seeds of inspiration
that sprouted later: the literary revolution of the 1840s and '50s,
based in Concord, that sprang from the lives and writings of
American transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David
Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott. Tuttle points
out that they were the first major American thinkers to question
the meaning of food and establish a philosophical foundation for a
more compassionate attitude toward animals. Thoreau thought the
destiny of the human race should be "to leave off eating animals as
surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other," and
Louisa May Alcott wrote, "Vegetable diet and sweet repose. Animal
food and nightmare... Without flesh diet there could be no
blood-shedding war." Tuttle's commitment and dedication to his
vegan, nonviolent worldview suffuses every page of this profoundly
insightful and important book. The World Peace Diet is sure to be a
catalyst and powerful tool in the evolution of human consciousness,
from our present herder mindset--based on might-makes-right and the
exploitation of others--to a more humane attitude toward the earth
and all its inhabitants.-- (05/02/2006)
Reviewed by Eve Spencer Apart from the author's master's degree in
humanities and PhD in the philosophy of education, he is also a
professional pianist who trained in Korea as a Zen Buddhist monk,
worked in tai chi, yoga, meditation, intuition development and
spiritual healing, and lives a vegan lifestyle. The World Peace
Diet is not a diet in the sense of a fad diet to lose weight, but
the author illustrates clearly how the social, psychological and
spiritual consequences of our meals "ripple through all aspects of
our lives." The book is systematically developed to reveal the
connection between what we daily put on our plates, and peace in
the world and in our lives. Some of the chapters covered include
the power of food, the herding culture, the nature of intelligence,
domination of the feminine, the metaphysics of food, science and
religion, profiting from destruction, the journey of
transformation, and in the final chapter--living the revolution--is
"the last days of eating animal." Many people we talk with about
food insist that we all make individual choices about the foods we
eat, resisting being told that we are indoctrinated. But as Tuttle
points out, we never chose an omnivorous diet; we were fed this way
by our herding culture. We were told by our parents, doctors,
church leaders, teachers, as well as by government, advertising and
the media, the meat, dairy and egg businesses, and big pharma, as
well as most nutritionists, that nonhuman animals are there for us
to eat and make us strong. Those forces continue to manipulate
consumers who still believe they are making free choices, while the
terror and suffering of other animals remain hidden from view. If
we could only look with enlightened eyes at the meat on our plates,
and see beyond the appearance, we would surely shrink, horrified.
Are we not aware of the interdependence of consciousness, energy
and matter? Pythagoras taught, many years ago, that eating animal
foods has negative effects on our consciousness. The toxins such as
trans fats, pathogens, pesticides, and drug and hormone residues
that are present in animal foods, besides injuring the animals,
also injure our bodies, and can also disturb us emotionally. When
humans eat the flesh of beings who have endured fear, terror and
agony, their sufferings are literally ingested into our bodies. How
then can we live with inner peace? As the author points out,
calves, steers, lambs, chickens and even dairy cows, who would
easily live 20 to 30 years in the wild, are all pushed to grow
abnormally quickly, then slaughtered as infants and children.
Similarly in the various wars around the globe, children suffer and
die the most. The eggs, bacon and cheese that we eat are living
vibratory embodiments of cruelty, violence, enslavement, terror and
despair--the tormented consciousness of the animals. Dr Tuttle
reminds us that we talk about stopping the cycle of violence;
children who are violated and abused will often, when they become
adults, tend to perpetuate the cycle of violence through the
generations. We can see this; yet fail to see the deeper dynamic.
We will always be violent towards each other as long as we are
violent towards other animals--how can it be otherwise? The World
Peace Diet portrays how a vegan life offers compassion for all
beings, including for ourselves and for the planet. The author
reveals how such a revolution of heart, mind and body can enable us
to transform our world to one of peace, harmony, loving kindness,
respect and reverence for the interconnectedness and sacredness of
all life. For anyone wanting to grow spiritually, who wants to wake
up and live a compassionate life, and contribute to world peace,
this book will help. How rare to come across a book that clearly
depicts the problems arising from a meat-based diet entirely cut
off from the spiritual aspects of our lives. I cannot do justice to
this wonderful book--you have to read every page for yourself, and
I thoroughly recommend that you do.-- (05/02/2006)
Reviewed by Joseph Connelly, March/ April 2006 [excerpted]
Tuttle's scholarship calls for a new revolution to counter what he
sees as our culture's last true upheaval, the commodification of
animals, which "completely redefined human relations with animals,
nature, the divine, and each other." Tuttle doesn't hold back: To
meditate for world peace, to pray for a better world, and to work
for social justice and environmental protection while continuing to
purchase the flesh, milk, and eggs of horribly abused animals
exposes a disconnect that is so fundamental that it renders our
efforts absurd, hypocritical, and doomed to a certain
failure.Tuttle lifts the discussion of veganism to a higher level.
He argues cogently for a spiritual component, one where the
consequence of using and consuming animals, so ubiquitous in human
society, affects us not only in ways that can be measured
physically, but physically aas well. He convincingly shows how
science and patriarchical religions, so often at odds in Western
Society, are both cut from the same cloth--one that reinforces the
domination of women, animals and nature in order to further the
interests of the ruling elite. Yet for all of the complexities of
how we ended up where we are, Tuttle's remedy of spiritual veganism
is offered as the cure for what ails us.When we cultivate ... the
consequences of our food choices and conscientiously adopt a
plant-based way of eating, refusing to participate in the
domination of animals and the dulling of the awareness this
requires, we make a profound statement... We become a force of
sensitivity, healing, and compassion. We become a revolution of
one. The revolution starts now.-- (03/24/2006)
Reviewed by Susan B. Hagloch Not a diet book in the usual sense of
the term, this is "an exploration intothe profound cultural and
spiritual ramifications of our food choices."Tuttle, who trained
with a Zen Buddhist monk and speaks widely on spiritualhealing,
posits that our ancient herding cultures and the resultantinclusion
of animals and animal products into our modern diets
havedesensitized us to the suffering of our fellow creatures; this,
in turn, allows us to accept violence against other humans. At his
most logical, Tuttle backs up his claims with examples of
mainstream spiritual traditionsand philosophers' arguments. He is
less persuasive when he descends intohorrific sensationalism-less
talk of the rape of cows via artificialinsemination and more
illustrations of how soy products can be substitutedinto our daily
menus would have made this a better book. While not
alwayslevelheaded, this book is certainly thought-provoking. Given
the increasingpopularity of vegetarianism and veganism, this is
recommended for mostcollections.-- (05/02/2006)
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