Vegetarian Era
A Revealing Tale: The Meatrix |
By Brother-initiate Alistair Dark, Brisbane Centre, Australia
(Originally in English)
In our everyday life, we are often not aware of issues that occur without news coverage or public involvement. We therefore are unable to solve the problems that we don't know exist. But this situation is improving, thanks to the initiative and intelligence of saintly beings blossoming all over our world.
“Welcome to the Meatrix, the lie we tell ourselves about where our food comes from,” says Moopheous, a cow in a black suit and dark glasses, to Leo, a pig with his nose in the trough. Anyone who's seen 1997s biggest movie hit, “The Matrix,” will spot the parody immediately. The feature film describes a future in which humans live their entire lives plugged into an artificial world, the 'Matrix'. To them it seems real, but outside the Matrix they are actually being used as batteries for intelligent but soulless 'machines.' Similarly, the Meatrix is an artificial reality, based on the belief that the animals we rely on for sustenance live pleasant lives, grazing at leisure in the sunshine.
The Meatrix, a short animated film by freerangegraphics.com, is a fine example of a few 'small' souls taking initiative in promoting awareness about issues beneath the surface of what we generally know. A vegetarian friend emailed me the link in 2004, and it was then that I was first made aware of how widespread factory farming is and why we should be concerned about it.
The impact that The Meatrix has had since it started circulating in 2002 has been fantastic. It has even won a number of Internet awards such as the Webby, Interactive and EMA awards among many others. There is also now a sequel which deals specifically with factory dairy farming. Whereas the third movie in the hit Matrix feature film series was called The Matrix: Revolutions, the sequel to The Meatrix is called The Meatrix II: Revolting.
Presented in the easily digestible form of an entertaining Flash animation (a type of cartoon for the Internet), The Meatrix makes its points clearly and quickly. The last of these is that consumers have the real power - something we should all remember. One brother recently made me aware that our spending choices are as powerful as votes.
The one very unfortunate aspect of The Meatrix is that it does not actually promote vegetarianism. At the end of the film is a web page endorsing family farms that sell meat and eggs. So, although The Meatrix encourages one to look beneath the surface of everyday practices that may affect many people’s lives, it does not expose the real truth, namely that the killing of animals is completely unacceptable, not just the way killing is done for factory farming. I hope that when our world becomes more elevated to a higher level where love and compassion is the global consciousness, all cruel treatment to animals and killing will disappear.
To watch the films, please head along to
http://www.themeatrix.com and http://www.themeatrix2.com.
