Perhaps equating the eating (and inhumane treatment) of animals with rape is somewhat extreme, but there is a link, albeit, one that is difficult to perceive.

Most of the repellent behavior in today's society plays out in front of a background of a widespread, unconscious callousness, which has become acceptable in our society.

Many people in the US are unfortunate enough to live in areas where there is almost no access to freshly grown produce and humanely raised animal products. We go to the grocery store and buy things wrapped in plastic, because that's what there is to buy, not necessarily because we want to buy them. But the kind of automatic feeding trough provided by Walmarts and other large chains leads to complete disconnection from the process of how food is grown or produced. We have no way of developing a empathic consciousness of the real pain factory-farmed animals suffer.

In Elium and Elium's book, Raising a Boy, the authors point out that the average American child consumes six-and-a-half hours of media (TV, videos, computer games) every day of the week.

This passive consumption prevents real interaction with other people and ultimately leads to the stunting of children's empathic development. They see so many acts of violence (with no immediate consequences for them) played out in front of their hypnotized eyes, that they cannot develop the capacity to understand that violence in REAL life has consequences, causes pain, suffering, injury, even death.

A mild example found in Elium & Elium's book is the difference in behavior among school children; older teachers recall that when a child fell while playing at school, other children would gather around to see if the child was all right, to offer sympathy and comfort. Now, when one of their fellows falls, no one pays any attention; children are losing (or never developing) their ability to perceive and empathize with the actual pain that others feel. It's not that they don't know the difference between reality and TV or a computer game -- it's that they don't spend enough time actually living in reality, so that they develop ways of interacting with other people, understanding them, nurturing deeper feelings for them, developing a sense that all of us, together, form a society with common interests.

Worse, it has become taboo to even show pain or vulnerability in public and sometimes, for the most unfortunate, even in one's own family: parents raised on TV don't want to permit their children to show pain. They want their kids to be the bullies, not the bullied -- to have the power that comes with aggressive acts of violence, not to be the meek who will be victimized and trampled upon. These parents naively equate violence with ultimate power, and believe that encouraging their children to empathize will weaken their ability to develop aggressive power. They are getting aggressiveness mixed up with assertiveness; hours of passive media consumption robs us all of our ability to be actively assertive. Instead of learning the mature skill of assertiveness, which we learn by interacting with other people in real situations -- we remain trapped in the immature, aggressive, reactionary phase shown on television and played out in computer games.

Even worse, life itself is starting to imitate fantasy; the unreal worlds we mentally inhabit are starting to take control of us, not the other way around: we are so used to watching violence, that actual, outrageous violence against others is becoming a spectator sport (the Richmond rape is an example of this: groups of boys stood around watching a fifteen-year-old girl being gang-raped for TWO HOURS, without doing a damn thing about it, except for filming it on their cell phones and inviting their friends to WATCH).

What is the matter with these children? They do not feel any EMPATHY! Their development has been stunted to the point where they can allow an outrage to occur, and even become passive accessories to a hideous crime, simply because they have been taught to be spectators. Their real life experiences are so limited and their better instincts have been so repressed, that they are confined to a narrow repertoire of reactions (ridicule, irony, mocking, cynicism, and other aggressive, hurtful responses), even when confronted with terrible scenes of horror (witness the enormous rise in popularity of the horror genre in film). Our society inures people to pain, and teaches us to ignore three-quarters of our real selves. We put boxes of socially acceptable emotions in front of our children and tell them that they should not feel anything that is not in the box.

A much milder version of this lack of empathy and the deliberate mutilation of our more humane tendencies is the unconscious consumption of meat. It's just part of the bigger, more callous setting we've created for ourselves. We have simply come to accept that it is all right to harm others, to do violence -- especially from a position of power, as a display of power.

We accept that if you have the power -- a gang, or wealth, or some sort of mental fortress, including a simple lack of consciousness or the internal ability to shut down or ignore one's own sense of empathy -- then it is all right to act on our violent impulses, regardless of the pain it may cause another creature or human being.

I am not a media Luddite, but I reject the notion that unlimited, undiscriminating media consumption cannot harm children -- or adults, for that matter. We are multifaceted creatures, and we need a wide variety of real life experiences in order to fully develop. This cannot be done in isolation, and media consumption encourages isolation, escapism, and unconsciousness. It has become a replacement for actual experience, and we are learning to become inferior in attitude, intelligence, activities, and range and depth of feeling.

if it's the last thread in the fabric. That's going to snap.