Ignorance Is Bliss

Somebody who read my weblog from yesterday sent me an email and all the email said in the subject was "ignorance is bliss" and I have not yet decided how to reply to this so instead of replying directly because maybe the person who sent it is a fake person and you have to be very careful of fake people online pretending to be other people I have decided to write my response here in my weblog and maybe the person will see it.

I must admit I did have to google these words to make sure that I fully understood what they mean and I am of the opinion that ignorance is in fact not bliss at all. I think people say ignorance is bliss because they like to think that yes, in that moment, the less they know about troubling things, the happier they will be, but if you remain ignorant of something you are depriving yourself of being able to do anything to further improve your situation beyond your state of happiness to reach even greater happiness. If bliss is the ultimate state of happiness and if learning something new and expanding your belief bubble can make you happier, then you have not yet attained bliss without first taking those steps.

Or have I got this whole thing wrong?

I do not think that I do.

Oh To Unknow

Today in our lunch and learn I told the others everything I had heard yesterday and I congratulated everyone on a good spy mission accomplished. They said that they also noticed Barry later yesterday afternoon just casually strolling by the coop and every time he did the chickens would come out and cluck for him and it made him seem to walk a little taller and puff his chest out a little bit and Carmel even said it looked like he had brushed his orange tabby fur a little differently to make himself look better for the chickens.

Out of everything we talked about the thing we talked about the most was how the chickens just wanted to stop knowing the things that they knew so that they could feel better.

I do not understand this desire and I do not think I have the ability to unknow something and I will give you a for instance. For instance, when I first learned that I shared a name with my evil twin I could have easily pretended that he didn't exist and that I did not know or I could even have used a different name for my weblog and my twitter and my emails because who are we kidding there are so many fake names being used on the computer what harm would one more do?

But no, I decided with a little help from learning more about new things that I wanted to keep my name and change it for the good and do good things with it and live a life of heroic virtue and I tell you somewhere along this journey of mine I really think that I am starting to be a changed bird and it is all for the better. And not because I chose to unknow something and find other information that I liked better even if it was not accurate but because I learned more new things to help me build a context around the other things I knew.

Billions and billions of chickens are slaughtered each year and I do not understand why unknowing that fact would ever change anything?

I Know But I Do Not Understand

Today's spy mission was a good success I think because I was able to hear most of what Barry and the chickens were talking about even though I did not understand why they were saying what they were saying.

Barry was talking to them about how good the farm used to be in the old days, before any animals knew how many of them the humans ate. He asked them if they remembered ever feeling scared or anxious before and they said yes they remembered that.

He asked them what had changed between the old feeling and the new feeling and they said that now they knew a bad thing they did not before.

He then asked them who told them about the bad thing and they all said Goebbels and I was quite surprised to hear my own name, let me tell you, coming out of the mouths of 16 chickens at the same time.

Barry was quiet after that and the chickens were quiet and then he asked if the chickens would like to go back to feeling less anxious and less afraid and they all said yes and he asked them what would need to happen to make them feel that way and they said they wanted to stop knowing the things that they knew.

I looked over at my shack and Jasmine and Petunia and Carmel were doing a very convincing job talking to me but not really talking to me and the coop was quiet again.

I did not want to risk being found out as the spy I was being and so I then chose to leave having heard enough for the time being and I went back behind the barn and then Carmel saw me and the Farmyard Four all decided to end their conversation too and they left my shack.

The chickens were still in their coop and so I ran so fast back to my shack and then turned around inside and walked out of it just as the chickens were all leaving.

This time though Barry did not even sneak out afterwards. He walked proudly out after the last chicken had left the coop and he looked over at me and I think he might have sneered at me but then again his face always kind of looks that way.

These are all interesting developments and I will share them all tomorrow with the Farmyard Four at our lunch and learn which will be back at our usual meeting spot because we will not be spies two days in a row.

I Spy With My Little Eye

Hello all you beautiful people! First of all I am happy because the white chord is back and so I will be able to use my cellphone again tomorrow and second of all I am excited and scared and nervous all at the same time because Carmel and Petunia and I have put together a plan to spy on Barry and find out what he is saying to the chickens and we will be doing that tomorrow instead of our lunch and learn.

First of all, Carmel will go and find Jasmine and say very loudly that we are going to meet near my shack today for our regular lunch and learn and then when Petunia and Carmel and Jasmine come to my shack they will talk into the doorway of it as if I am there but this is the best part you see because I will already have been a sneaky turkey and I will have snuck out of my shack and will be hiding back and behind the barn.

To the casual observer, like Barry, who goes to the chicken coop every time we have our own meeting of the Farmyard Four, it will look like I am in my shack, but I will be secretly sneaking up behind the coop close enough to hopefully hear what he is saying inside of it.

This is a genius plan and I cannot wait to know just what is going on with those chickens.

Sneaker

I told Petunia about Barry sneaking out of the chicken coop at the end of yesterday's chicken meeting of the minds and that seemed to surprise her a little bit but she told me that maybe it makes sense because she heard that the chickens were indeed anxious and that Barry was actually being a calm and comforting voice to them in their time of need.

He was with them today again but only for an hour or so and then they were back out and being as noisy and normal as ever.

I wish I knew what he was saying to them.

I also wish the man and the woman would bring the white cord back because I miss my cellphone and it has been dead for a few days now.

The Coop

So today something very interesting happened and I will tell you that I did not see or hear a single chicken all day long until I walked past the chicken coop and looked in and indeed they were all in there together but I could hardly hear them and they did not come out into the farmyard until it was almost time for their dinner.

I kept an eye on their coop through a little hole that is in the wall of my shack and it points directly at the coop and after they all left to go and have their dinner I saw Barry sneaking out of it too and he looked around but I do not think he saw me because he could not see my eye through that little hole I do not think.

There were a lot of rumors going around on the farmyard about what the chickens were up to and Petunia has sort of decided she would like to be the main newspig around the farm so she took it upon herself to take all of the rumors and sort them out and then she went around and told animals what the most credible and likely reasons for their all day meeting were and no it did not have anything to do with the chickens plotting to take over the farm or sacrificing one chicken to their little chicken God or holding a wedding ceremony which were three very popular rumors.

I will tell her about Barry tomorrow to see if it fits into her idea of the chickens just taking a break from people because they are a little community who might be a little anxious because of how many chickens I told everyone get eaten every year.

Why Are You A Vegetarian?

From everything I have been learning on google it seems to me that becoming a vegetarian is more healthy for a human than not being a vegetarian as this seems to be the main reason why people become them.

If I were to say to you, hey, you, that thing you are doing right now is not as good for you as this other thing, why would you keep doing that thing?

"Because it feels good," maybe you will say and I think you will be referring to how it feels to you physically but not necessarily feeling good to you emotionally because that is also a huge part in the conversation we are looking to have.

I have made a few friends on twitter now who are vegetarians and I hope I can learn a bit more from them about the choices they have made. I think this is what I will call a main pillar of our information campaign both on the farm and out in the bigger outside world.

Searching For Allies

Today at our lunch and learn the Farmyard Four met and we talked more about humans who are vegetarians and they have asked me a few questions that I am researching tonight and I will ask people on twitter tomorrow as well.

They mostly want to know why people are vegetarians. I have told them that people who eat meat are eating more meat than ever so Carmel in particular was very curious about the people who are choosing to do the opposite.

As animals sometimes it is our instinct to follow the herd and do what the other animals who are like us are doing and I think we are finding the idea of vegetarians very interesting as having human allies in our messages to the rest of the farmyard might do a lot to ease the minds of some of the louder animals, like the chickens, who are starting to talk very openly about their dislike of the humans who eat them and I see Barry all the time over in the coop now and whispering in their little ears and I wonder what he is up to.

It is also interesting to me because I know from my cat friends on twitter that cats eat chickens and I wonder what the chickens would think if they knew that about Barry?

Vegetarians

Hello all you beautiful people and I know I call you that all the time but tonight I am really feeling it because I have asked the people of twitter and I did not have even one person tell me that they ate a turkey on the weekend for Easter. Now, I have read the statistics on google and I know how many turkeys get eaten during Easter as a whole but I am encouraged that I know of a number of you who did not.

Maybe the ones who did were afraid to tell a turkey that they did? I would understand that emotion because if I were to start eating humans I may not go around making a big show of it to other humans so I get that.

Still, it is is encouraging and I will be telling the Farmyard Four about this because we still have to follow up the stump speech with some more messaging around the farmyard and I think that messaging should be that there are people who do not eat animals.

I am learning about something called a vegetarian and I think I would like to know more vegetarians. If you are a vegetarian, please do let me know.

Good Friday

I am learning how to ask questions on twitter to get the best response as I have that very important question to ask everyone tomorrow and I am just popping on here onto my weblog to say that the word good in Good Friday actually means "holy" and it is good because the man named Jesus (and boy is there a lot on google about him) could not have been resurrected had he not died first.

I do not want to go down the Jesus rabbit hole tonight but I am making a note here to learn more about him because if he can come back from the dead maybe there is hope for us animals who are doomed to be eaten.

The Bigger Outside World

Carmel, Petunia, Jasmine and I met today for our Farmyard Four lunch and learn and Barry walked past us and did not try to join because I think he can tell he is not wanted here with us, not just yet, and anyway he has been spending more and more time with the chickens.

We decided that our next step following the stump speech was to try and connect the bigger outside world with the farmyard so that the animals can know they are not alone.

This weekend is Easter and in fact today is Good Friday although why it is good I do not know so I will need to look that up tonight on google and I know that many people will be eating turkey this weekend on Easter and so I am going to ask my twitter friends whether or not they eat Turkey on this day and to comment on their thoughts as to why they eat turkey and we will take the outcomes of those questions and see how we can talk to the animals here about it all.

I am hoping that there will be some twitter friends who are sympathetic because I am hearing grumblings on the farmyard from some of the animals towards the man and the woman and there are feelings starting to happen that I did not intend, feelings of anger that could really start to ruin things around here.

I Do Not Like Confrontation

So I am learning that of the many things I like in this world like my friends on twitter and jokes and pictures instead of writing 🦃💓🥰 there are also a number of things I do not like and I know that I must rise above these things if I am trying to live my best life but it is oh so very hard and one of the things I do not like at all is confrontation.

"What was that all about?" I said to Barry when I finally saw him today, licking himself up on the fencepost as if nothing had happened and he said to me "What was what all about?" and oh the nerve of him I thought.

I told him that I was speaking about his intro to me and how he suggested that I was trying to be a leader of the farmyard and that he would be a better leader and that what he did was undermine what we were trying to accomplish.

He went like this to me: pffffff.

He was a very dismissive cat and I did not know what to say so I calmed myself down (which I am very proud of) and I thought that I should maybe seek to understand instead of just assuming so instead I asked him a question.

"Why did you say what you said about leading the farm?"

And he stopped licking himself and he looked at me and, with very cold words, he said, "Because I want to be the one to lead it."

And my friends I do not care about leading this farmyard and all I care about is trying to get the animals to care about their own futures and their own fates and to understand that the humans eat the majority of us and they do not eat cats so how is Barry even the right animal to speak on that topic and I wanted to get into all of this with him but instead I knew I would not be able to keep my cool and so I just walked away.

I think it was the smartest move I could have done before I said something I was really going to regret. I need to think of my next words to Barry very carefully or this whole thing could get very much out of control.

We The Farmyard

The last couple of days as I have been walking this way and that way the animals have been saying to me these three words: "we the farmyard". They are leaving out the word "are" from my speech but I think it is implied from their tones.

They nod to me in silence letting me know they are with me. Everyone except the chickens.

Barry is still nowhere to be found.

I spoke with Carmel today because now that we have their attention we need to follow it up with something but we never planned anything past what is now being called the stump speech so we have some planning to do ahead of us and I will talk to Petunia and Jasmine tomorrow and see if they are okay with being the Farmyard Four and proceeding with next steps without Barry because I think they are as unimpressed with him as I am.

I will keep you all posted.

To leave things on a brighter note than I have been writing lately, I just used google to search out rainbows because I think they are very pretty and did you know that you can touch someone else's rainbow but not your own? I think I like that idea very much because it means that you cannot mess up your own vision of perfection no matter how hard you try. Only someone else can do that for you and you should choose who you let be around your rainbows very carefully.

Barry

Before he introduced me in my speech, Barry got up on the stump and he stood up on his two hind legs and got everyone's attention and my first thoughts were "Good job Barry" because all of the animals grew quiet and let me tell you that was the last time that day that I thought that.

"You are here today to hear our esteemed friend Goebbels the Turkey speak to you all about the state of our beloved farmyard and the animals within it," he said. "Goebbels thinks he is a very smart bird and wants you all to listen to him."

There was something in the tone of his purr that I did not like when he said that last part.

"I want you to all remember, especially you chickens, who helped get you here today though," he said. "Who flipped the latches and opened the gates, who let you know the coast is clear?"

"Chickens, let me hear you," he said. "Who did those things?"

"You did!" all the chickens echoed.

"That's right," he said, "and I think that it is worth remembering in the coming days and weeks that if the farmyard is going to have a leader that it is worth remembering who did deeds and who only said words and that is all I have to say about that."

I was steaming. I had no idea he was going to say something like that.

"Anyway, here he is, here's Goebbels," and he left the stump and I was shocked and I took to the stump and I looked at Carmel in the front row and she gave me the sweetest smile and I saw Jasmine standing at the back and Jasmine nodded her head up and down in encouragement and I forgot all about Barry's introduction and I gave my speech."

Barry has been in hiding ever since and I cannot wait to confront him.

Whirling

Oh my goodness my head is still whirling from the events of the day and everything went according to plan but then some things didn't and I am just so mad at Barry the Barn Cat now and I have done everything I can to control my temper all day and not blow up at him in front of everyone.

I have to be calm.

I have to remember that even though Barry did what he did today that overall everything went very well.

The cows were perfect and they kept the man and the woman busy for a long time. The stump looked very very nice and there was room for everyone to crowd around and there was much tittering and chirping and talking and the chickens were running underfoot this way and that and everywhere you looked you saw the chickens.

Herman, the old Boar, he's the oldest animal on the farm, sat at the back and said very little but I could see him nodding at some of the things I was saying when I was giving my speech and he has not come to talk to me since but I think I should go and see him as I am curious about what his thoughts are about Barry and his antics.

Barry introduced me and then he did, the thing that he did which I will tell you about soon, and then I was in shock at what he had said but I overcame my shock and I hopped up on the stump and to my surprise the animals of the farmyard were stomping and cheering for me and I think I heard a boo and it sounded like a chicken but overall they were happy to see me and I started to speak.

I started to tell them that I have a connection to the outside world and I did not go into details because the next thing you know they will all be lining up to try and use the computer at night or they will steal my cellphone and so I just said that I have a connection and I have learned some things that affect so many of us.

US.

That's right, I said US and I said more words to that effect and I said that to many of the humans we are not separated like we think of ourselves on the farm. Here, to each other, we say the sheep are over there and the cows are over there and the turkey is there, but to many humans we are not sheep and cows and turkey we are one thing and that one thing is food.

I shared with them the statistics and I think it was lost because, for example, there are sixteen chickens on the farm and that is the most out of any animal and so the animals have a concept of how many sixteen is but when I start using words like "billion" it sounds like a made up number but because I know so many words and I have been practicing my communication skills so much I think they believed me when I said it was more than any number we can count to.

I also said that humans are good and that I have met many of them from the outside world and if they want to eat us that is one thing but I do not want to fight them because, first of all, I think we would lose, but second of all violence never solves anything and if we want to see any change we need to find a way to communicate with them better.

WE.

I used WE and US a lot and at the end of my speech, with Barry moving around in the corner of my eye, I said the words just like I had been practicing them all week.

I said:

"We are the farmyard. We are all different. We eat different foods and we speak different languages but together we make up this farmyard. This farmyard is what is in trouble, it's not just you, and you and you..." and I nodded my head in the direction of each person each time I said the word "you".

"You are you, but you are also a part of US, and we have a duty to help each other and to dictate our own fate."

"We are the farmyard," I repeated, and then I learned a trick from google and I did that trick and I said "Repeat after me... We are the farmyard." and they repeated and I said it again and they repeated and I said it a third time and they repeated and then they said it a fourth time without me and I cannot tell you that it was the happiest I have ever been in my life.

Petunia came around the corner just then and gave us the sign to get back to our places as the milking machine cleanup was all done and the man and the woman were coming back soon and everyone scurried this way and that but I could hear them all saying "we" "we" "we" and I think if I was to judge the success of my speech it is that fact right there that makes me think it was successful.

But Barry... there is still the fact of Barry that I have to deal with.

I will tell you more tomorrow. It is late and today has been a big day.

Good news before bad always and the good news is that my speech today was, dare I say it, pretty darn great.

The Big Day Is Fast Approaching

Everything is coming together for Friday. Jasmine has been moving some of the bigger and heavier things out of the way so that we have room for all of the animals near the tree stump and it is looking good over there and Petunia has crafted a very very smart distraction for the man and the woman and she has enlisted the help of the cows to do so.

The cows want to come to the speech very badly but Petunia has convinced them that we will talk with them separately later and I do not know exactly what they will be able to do but I know it has something to do with the milking machines and where the cows live is all the way on the other side of the farm, away from the main barn and where the tree stump is so I hope they are able to help.

Carmel has spoken with every animal she can and I love her and everyone loves her and when she asks nicely the animals are usually willing to say yes and she is just such a lovely little lamb.

Barry has made himself the CAT IN CHARGE and yes I am using capital letters because that is how he sounds when he speaks to us and he will be introducing me for my speech and will also be in charge of opening the latches of some of the other animals who may be locked up at that time so that they can attend and he will be in charge of opening the chicken coop as well and I know that conventional wisdom may not allow for a cat to enter a chicken coop but I have told the chickens they can trust Barry and I think they heard what I said but, as usual, they spent a lot of the time I was talking to them talking amongst themselves.

It is all coming together. Now if you'll excuse me I am going to call it an early night and go and get some rest because I have a big day of speech preparations to take care of tomorrow.

Wish me luck all you beautiful people.

NoThanksgiving

Thanksgiving.

My dear beautiful people do you know what this holiday is?

I have just learned about it today when I was looking at how many turkeys get eaten in a year and did you know that in the country I am in called the United States Of America there are 46 million turkeys that get eaten just on this Thanksgiving day alone???

First of all, I am calling this day NoThanksgiving because, no thank you sir, I do not like this day one bit, but another 22 million turkeys get eaten at Christmas and 19 million turkeys get eaten later this very month at a time called Easter which I had to double check the spelling when I typed it out because at first I thought it said Eatsher and it was referring to only girl turkeys.

I am not good at math but the number of turkeys that humans eat is a number that is just simply too many.

And now get your eyeglasses out because I am going to change one little letter and it will be when I speak about how many pigs and sheep humans eat every year.

Sheep it is half a billion and pigs it is 1.5 billion. Yes you read that right!

The chickens - I feel the worst for the chickens - 50 billion chickens every year get eaten and yes I know I have complained about them and let me tell you on an interpersonal level they are the absolute worst but that doesn't mean that they should all get eaten. What kind of saint could I ever hope to be if I felt like that I ask you?

So this is the website that I found from google and I have learned how to make a link to it here.

The most interesting sentence on this whole page is this:

"In the last 50 years the number of people on the planet has doubled. But the amount of meat we eat has tripled."

Yes there are more people on the planet but they are also eating more meat per person than they have ever eaten and there are so many more of us animals than them.

I like people. I know there are good humans out there. My brain is all fuzzy fried when I think about all of this because I do not want to go to a war just because there are more of us than them and besides I do not think most animals are on the internet so having what I would call a "mobilization effort" would be very hard and so many of them cannot read either.

But humans can read and I can tell the animals here on the farm what is happening in my speech on Friday and maybe we can come up with some debates and some arguments that will make people start to eat animals less and, well, here is the hardest part of everything...

I think that not only did the man and the woman eat my friend Biggun but when I think of when it happened I think they ate him at Thanksgiving and then it was shortly afterwards that they started to feed me really really well and a lot of food and... my friends... I am worried that the same thing will happen to me this Thanksgiving.

I know that everything I am saying is about so much more than me but at the same time I am thinking a lot about me, too.

We Are The Farm

I have been thinking and thinking and thinking about my speech and here is what I hope to be able to properly communicate on Friday.

I do want to talk to humans about their eating habits and I have an outlet for those thoughts here on my weblog and on twitter and especially about their eating habits where it concerns turkeys and pigs and lambs and, okay, maybe even the chickens too, but before I start giving speeches to humans I need to know that I have the support of the animals around me first and this is what Petunia meant when she said to define "us" first and so that is what this Friday is about. It is the first step.

I do not think the animals on the farm know how many animals humans eat so I want to tell them some facts about that and I will be collecting those facts on google over the coming days.

Carmel asked me a really good question and she asked me "What emotion do you want every animal who hears you speak on Friday feeling when they leave after your speech?" and it made me think of the speech called "I Have A Dream" and I want the animals to leave my speech feeling closer to one another despite the fact that some of them have feathers and some have snouts and some have tails and some do not. I want the animals to feel united and yes of course we love the man and the woman and we do not hate humans but I want them to feel a part of the word "us" whenever I am saying "us" in the future.

So my question to you is how do I do that? How can I create an idea of "us"? And I do not want to bore them too much with all the facts and numbers but they are important too.

I am open to any thoughts and suggestions all you beautiful people might have.

The Stage Is Set!

I think we are officially the Farmyard Five now because Jasmine came to lunch again today and we are starting to put the plans into place for my big speech on Friday.

The area around the stump needs to be cleared and we need to find a distraction for the man and the woman and that is Petunia's area of expertise so she is taking that on and I am planning out what I am going to say and Jasmine offered to be the main animal to take care of setting up the stage which is amazing because she is the biggest and strongest of us all.

Carmel is in charge of marketing and spreading the word for the animals to attend and Barry has asked if he can be the host and if he can introduce me and everyone has their part to play and I looked at Barry when he was talking but he would not meet my eye and he has been avoiding me on the farmyard for days. I need to pin him down but when the lunch and learn was over he was the first one to leave again.

This is going to be a busy week and I still have so many thoughts in my head to organize!

I am going to reach out to everyone I know on twitter and see if they can help me and if you are reading this weblog please let me know if you have any thoughts as we lead up to Friday!

Nobody's Fool

I learned today what a practical joke was and it was not lol because it was played on me but I was a good sport and I did not look too embarrassed but today Barry came to me this morning and told me that our lunch and learn was cancelled because Petunia was not feeling very well and so I did not attend and then later in the afternoon I saw Carmel and she asked me why I did not attend the lunch and I told her that and she said that Barry was a jokester.

I asked them what they talked about and she said that Barry just spoke a little bit about some of the changes he would like to see around the farm and that he thought some of the animals could stand to do a little more work and that they were lazy and that they just sat around all day thinking about the big world and not the little world right in front of their faces and I realized that Barry was talking about me but I do not think Carmel realized it because she was saying all of this to me in a very straightforward way as if she was telling me a story only rooted in facts and not emotions.

I went to the barn and I called up to the loft to Barry but he would not come down, if he was even there, and so I do not have any more answers than this but I need to speak with him and soon because coupled with what Jasmine told me his behaviour is starting to rub me the wrong way.