All around me there are many spiritual people telling me the world is going to become vegetarian for one reason or another. Maybe all the animals in the farms will become diseased, so we'll stop eating them. Maybe all the fish in the sea will die, so we'll stop eating them.
Either way, it seems only a matter of time before the world becomes vegetarian. Great news for vegetarians. Bad news for me, since I don't understand the very basic vegetarian belief. That it is a non-violent diet.
When I was six or seven, my dad took me to the forest and we picked some wild flowers. We brought the flowers home, and put them in a vase. What happened next forever changed my perspective of the plant world and our relationship with them. The flowers died. They died slowly within days while the rest of the wild flowers outside thrived. And I didn't understand why the flowers died since we had put them a big vase of water, and plenty of sunshine.
Well around the same time at school we were learning a bit about the natural world, the life cycle of butterflies. And even the life cycle of plants. And this was when I learned that the basic plant needs roots. No roots. Plants can't drink water and die.
Then a revelation hit me. All adults must know this. And they don't care. Adults know they are condemning flowers to death when they pick them. And they don't care.
I realized there's no point in making an argument. People don't care if they kill flowers. But at the age of seven I made a personal vow, which I have kept. I will never pick flowers.
Then comes christmas time! Who doesn't love the fresh scent of a christmas tree? I loved the christmas tree so much, I even wrote little story about it. I was drawing the tree in the pot, when another realization hit my childish brain. This pot is far too small for tree roots! This tree is just another giant picked flower and without roots its going to die!
And this hurt me more than mere flowers, because of all the plant life - the tree is just wow. I've always felt they had souls. And were killing them for a holiday decoration!
Now, I know that trees are being killed for lots of other extensionally meaningless things, like toothpicks. But its way too complicated for me to begin to say when it is okay to kill a tree, and when it isn't okay to kill a tree. The only thing that made sense to me, as it made sense to me at the age of seven..............was how tragic it was to rip a tree from its roots. And make a mockery of it as it struggles to drink water.
Then comes middle school, when I first really encounter vegetarians. And our first meeting was not a happy one. I ask the vegetarians, why they do not eat meat? They're answer was simple - because animals are living things. So I ask them, but aren't plants living things? And the usual response was. "Yeah but..they're not really living" "They're not conscious" or "They don't feel pain"
All three of these answers stroke a bone so deep with me, so much to the point, I never wanted to be associated with vegetarians. Vegetarians are the reason why I dislike vegetarianism.
The argument that plants were not conscious was something I couldn't grasp my mind around. How can anything be living, without awareness? It seemed evident to me as early as middle school that what separates life from non-life, is self awareness. It would make no sense why a plant would bother to breathe, if they didn't care to be alive. The idea that life just lives because its programmed to live, seemed illogical to me.
My teachers argued against me. Explaining that something needs a nervous system to be conscious. So then I asked myself, a catholic at the time........Does the soul need a nervous system to be conscious?
Do aliens need nervous system to be conscious? Couldn't there be other systems of consciousness, besides a nervous system, which is very specific to the animal kingdom on earth?
How can plants even interact with their environment in the way that they do, without some sort of system?
Well, I'm happy I kept to my hunches. As it turns out, we know now that the most basic life forms, single-celled life forms - are self aware. That by communicating with each other, the most basic life forms distinguish self from non-self!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVfmUfr8VPA
And if we realize that self-awareness is a basic function of basic life forms......why wouldn't self awareness be the norm for all life forms?
Now...there are very good and valid arguments against many farms and slaughter houses. But that's not where I want to bring this argument. I'm putting this here because there is another argument for vegetarianism. And there are two main spiritual arguments for vegetarianism, both I have 'beef' with.
One. God designed for us to eat vegetables. Not animals. And two. The nonviolent argument. Any consumption of an animal is violent, but consuming a salad is nonviolent.
So I've tried to dig deeper at the argument that God wants us to be vegetarian. Well the first thing I find is genesis. Where God commands us to eat the fruit of trees. Now fruit is very special, it is the ONLY living thing on this planet that WANTS to be eaten. The trees WANT you to eat their fruit. And certainly, the fruitarian argument, that is the diet of eden, the diet God intended for us....MAKES SENSE!!
It does make moral sense.
Why would God want you to eat the carrot, anymore than God wants you to eat a chicken? When the bible seems to make it clear, God loves all his creations. The fruit becomes the only thing you can consume...............without actually harming a living thingl!
The God-Vegetarian argument takes many twists and turns. Some saying, oh, its okay to eat plants because they have no soul. Oh its okay to eat plants because, their consciousness is sleeping, so they don't know you're eating them. Oh its okay to eat a plant, because the human soul can't reincarnate as a plant.
But none of these God arguments really get to the moral heart of the matter. Why God would want us to eat any living thing to begin with???
The nonviolence argument becomes just as puzzling for me. I was reading up on the nonviolence practice, and I found something very - strange. They refrained from harming plants.........in the invent it would harm bugs and microscopic life??????
So the microscopic organisms that could be harmed should we pull a plant from its roots, have more value, than the plant itself? Or am I misunderstanding some of these arguments?
Its just so frustrating that a vegetarian places more value on microscopic life, than a plant, thousands of years more advanced and complex than any micro organism. Is it because we can clearly see microscopic life moving around in a petri dish, to let you know its alive? Well then..just fast forward plants...They are always moving!
Do you understand my dilemma in a world saying vegetarian is the spiritual diet?
In my perspective, I can't fathom it being wrong to eat a living thing - because im no magical air breathing yogi. I can't get away from eating a living thing. And I don't want to be hypocritical and just pretend vegetables aren't living.
I can't sit here and pretend vegetarianism is a nonviolent diet, when biology shows us how plants employ various self-defense techniques. Why do they self defend themselves, if not for the fear of death?
I can't sit here and pretend that vegetarianism is a spiritual diet, when spiritually speaking, why does God want us to eat any living thing? In the garden of eden it was fruit....very different from a living vegetable.
And of course there are so many ills and wrongs happening in the food market today. But in my perspective, it's not that it is morally wrong to eat meat. So much as it is how we have gone about it, and the over consumption of meat. Likewise, it's not just our animal farms that are completely unnatural, but so are our monoculture plant farms. There is nothing in nature that resembles it!!
Really, if you demand that my diet is spiritually moral...I would have to live off fruit!! Or worse......air. Until then, I will just try to eat healthy. And healthy meat as it turns out, doesn't come from abused animals.
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