guest blog on kindness by ari solomon

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Ari Solomon is a wonderful person and vegan! He's the founder and owner of A Scent of Scandal a great vegan candle company. I'm honored to have him guest blog for The Kind Life!
 
Enjoy his thoughtful piece about kindness:

Our Innate Kindness
By Ari Solomon

When Alicia asked me to blog for The Kind Life I was thrilled because there's been something I've been meaning to explore for some time now and I think this is just the place. It goes something like this:
 
Are human beings innately kind? Is kindness our default or if we don't consciously practice kindness as we would any other skill do we revert back to being some sort of monstrous Conan the Barbarian?
 
I realize that to fully investigate a question like this it would probably take a dissertation versus a blog but there's a specific common human response that gives us strong clues.
 
A few weeks ago I was watching a talk show that shed light on how animal-based foods are produced. But before footage from inside the slaughterhouse was shown the host of the show warned the audience that the images were going to be graphic and upsetting. In fact she cautioned that if viewers had children present it might be best to escort them out of the room. Of course such warnings are not unique to this talk show; you always hear them before footage like this is aired.
 
But this got me thinking. If we're supposed to be eating things like meat dairy and eggs why do we find slaughterhouse footage so disturbing? Certainly no one would ask us to emotionally prepare ourselves before showing a video of people harvesting broccoli or picking apples. If eating animals and their "by-products" is so natural what's with our revulsion to blood and gore?

Here's something else to ponder: About a year ago during a routine trip to the vet's office I was sitting in the waiting room while Animal Planet played on the TV. It was one of the shows documenting big cats in Africa. When a lion hunted and brought down a gazelle I noticed the faces of the other people in the room around me. People were groaning and averting their eyes. One woman actually spoke out loud "Ugh isn't it awful?"
 
Now I'm not an anthropologist but I'd venture to say that these instinctual responses tell us all we need to know about how we should treat animals and consequently what we should be eating. If we can't bear to watch animals being slaughtered or hunted and if we have to lie to our children about where our food comes from perhaps we should meditate on that instead of doing what most people do: numb themselves to the truth.

Sure a butcher might tell you that he/she has no problem slicing and dicing animals and a hunter may wax poetic about the thrill of killing. But I'm pretty certain this is what comes only after some process of desensitization takes place. When you ask kids what they want to do when they grow up very few respond "Kill animals."
 
Harvey Diamond famously said "You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple I'll buy you a new car." Indeed I think that when it comes to animals kindness is undeniably our default.
 
Thank you Ari! What do you all think? Why have so many people decided to numb their innate kindness?