Goats: Destroyers of environment

[Guest guest]

DGilsen (AT) aol (DOT) com wrote:

 

> [Text 2680072 from COM]

>

> Goats are good for wool also if you get the angolias, they produce

> copious amounts of milk. and can pull small wagons and will trim your trees,

> they prefer to trim your trees as opposed to eat your grass, and they can

> climb trees great for pruning trees. Are as a group fairly hardy, and goats

> milk cheese is excellent! They can eat almost any thing a cow can also.

 

Anyone who has read Vernon Carter and Tom Dale's classic *Topsoil and

Civilization* will think twice about bringing any goats into their locale.

According to Carter and Dale, goats destroyed a number of civilizations.

Roughly, this is the scenario they offer: A civilization starts with small

farmers owning their own land, evolves into bigger and bigger farms under the

control of fewer and fewer landowners. Hand-in-hand with this is the

introduction of slave/peasant/serf laborers who overfarm the land -- because

it's

not theirs, they have no incentive to take good care of it. By this time, the

fertility of the land is more and more depleted -- it produces very low yields

of

grain. Land owners' solution: bring in the goats! Goats are able to graze

very

poor land and turn it into meat. But, at the same time, as they graze --

unlike

a cow -- they pull up the roots and all of the plant. This results leaves the

soil very vulnerable to erosion. The plants never have a chance to recover and

protect the land. After several hundred years of this treatment, contemporary

people cannot believe that lands like Greece, Rome, Iraq, etc., ever had lush

topsoil which was several inches deep -- because all they can see is the

aftermath rock outcroppings left over after all the erosion which was caused by

the goats.

 

On the other hand, in Vedic culture, as explained by Srila Prabhupada, goats do

have a place, because those who demand meat to eat can sacrifice a goat to

Kali,

thus avoiding the great sin of cow slaughter.

 

 

>

> Dogs, well there is a story of lord Chitana feeding some ones dog with

> his own two hands. So I guess he didn't go to hell for it. I didn't know

> that there was a hell in our beliefs. Is there? I thought we just got put

> back further down the evolutional path for various MIS deeds i.e. come back

> as a rat or earth worm or something.

 

I'm sure someone else will tell you about the fifth Canto of the Bhagavatam --

wherein the greedy capitalists go the the suchimukha hell and are stitched

through with thread, etc. (I can't help but wonder if Srila Vyasadeva, having

described that, could also forsee the Industrial Revolution which began by

pulling women out of their cottages and sending them to work in the thread and

cloth mills.)

 

But, as far as hell goes, I'll never forget one description I heard. In the

early 1980's I convinced John Holt, my Hinduism professor, to take the class to

a

field trip to the Boston temple. The students completely loved the program.

At

the end, there was a question-answer period, and one of the Bowdoin students

asked the devotee giving the lecture -- I think it was Niranjana -- "Do you

people believe in an actual, literal hell?" The devotee replied, "Yes, in fact

we do.... It starts right outside the door."

 

Enough said!!

 

your servant,

 

Hare Krsna dasi

[Guest guest]

>

>

> On the other hand, in Vedic culture, as explained by Srila Prabhupada, goats

do

> have a place, because those who demand meat to eat can sacrifice a goat to

> Kali,

> thus avoiding the great sin of cow slaughter.

 

> I didn't know

> > that there was a hell in our beliefs. Is there?

 

Yes, but you aren't eternally damned if you go there - you eventually work

off

the karma and take higher births.