Feel bad about them, don't hurt them

[SusanLR]

@Debrah There have been many posts on how humans are made in this thread.
We fall in the omnivore, not carnivore nor herbivore section.
Think back to early humans. Hunters/Gatherers. Both in other words.
I agree the industry of the way animals are treated for profit is a nasty business.
When it comes to money, people are nasty. What ever the business.
But, the way we have multiplied, as I stated in my original post, I don't know what shape the world
would be in today had we just simply went on hunting wild animals for meat.
Even the most primitive peoples had spears and tools of stone carved for scrapers.
Then the more modern means would have come along and the animals would have been depleted
I fear.
That would have forced fruits and vegetables to live on, but, the animals would have disappeared.
People have always eaten meat and vegetables.

As for the excerpt from the Bible. That is in only one of the world's bibles. There are many
different books per culture. And a topic for a different section.
Although everyone has the right to the belief of choice.

 

[Aspychata]

@Debrah, if humans were strictly herbivores we would have larger and more complicated intestines for the harder to digest cell structures of green plants. Cows and sheep, for example, have far more complex digestive systems than we do, such as the "cud chewing" structure of cows where partially digested plant matter is regurgitated to be chewed more thoroughly in order to be fully digested.

Also, humans seem to have a natural aversion to the taste of chlorophyll bearing plants (green veggies) which indicates that the eating of them came about rather recently for us. We DO seem to be drawn towards fruits, legumes, nuts, and seeds, although with seeds our digestive systems seem to have trouble fully breaking them down.


That's why we have complicated smoothie machines because we needed to break down the vegetable and fruit for our systems. l started my family on green smoothies on mother's day and they opted out. But l noticed a huge difference in myself after a couple weeks, just a complete mood change and speedy fast cognitively. However, l had always fed my family healthly banana smoothies.

@oregano In the past there has been cannibalism but it doesn't mean l am going out to buy books on it! Trying to point out that the past is not always part of the present situtation because as the human race, we are always evolving and our body changes to adopt slowly to this.

Nice post oregano!

 

[sidd851]

I don't think I will be able to eat eggs again. Thank you.




You're not wrong, but I agree only when considering the way animals are treated now.

But I think there are limits to veganism, and that is one we found in children: it is close to impossible to supply the required amount of nutrients to the fast-growing bodies of children [1][2].
I don't eat meat either, but I'm an adult. It's not a diet I would advice to children nor pregnant women.

Still, it seems that we have an over-consumption of meat, which is hard to break from since in many countries it has become part of a culture and lifestyle. In my country people eat a lot of meat (twice as much as in the U.S), and it is hard to find vegetarian or vegan meals when taking part of any reunion or event.

References:
[1] Is vegetarianism healthy for children?
[2] Clinical practice: vegetarian infant and child nutrition.




Maybe. A distinction often made in regards to these arguments is that we humans are not under the same (moral) principles as other animals, because of our privileged place in nature (higher cognition, possibly consciousness) we're under different (moral) duties, one of which may be to preserve other animals life when possible.

Also, whether we should eat or not eat meat is not a moral principle that can be derived from nature (this is, animals eat meat therefore it's good to eat meat), this kind of arguments leads to a fallacy known as appeal to nature.

The singlemost important nutrient in the diet of a child, from birth to 5 to 7 yrs of age is.. ..?
Cholesterol.
Our entire nervous system is made of it.

Give the kids all the meat, dairy, fowl and fish they can handle!
Vegan"ism" is a flawed answer to a flawed problem within a flawed system.

We simply aren't responsible enough to not exhaust resources.
Used to be, we had to move into new hunting grounds periodically.
Now?
No hunting grounds left, because we don't curtail our population.

It is a tangled skein, but to deprive developing children, nutrients that nature custom designed them to have?

 

[sidd851]

that maybe your culture it isn’t !my !culture! I can’t tear flesh from an animal’s body with my teeth,And no my body has reminded me that I should’ve never eaten animal I have unbearable high cholesterol all because I ate animal.

I'm sorry, to hear of your cholesterol problems, @Streetwise , but "high cholesterol" is not caused by eating animal, any more than high blood pressure is caused by eating meat.

The complex interplay, between eating "normal" amounts of meat, and the previously unreachable core of grains, where all the carbs are, said carbs, contribute to the bodies ability to self regulate.
Oddly enough, in this instance, it is plants that cause high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Why Dietary Cholesterol Does Not Matter (For Most People)

Please, do not mistake my comments for rebuke.
We simply can't go about encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides, and no amount of cognition erases nor dismisses aeons of evolution.

 

[sidd851]

"Everyone has the right to live their life how they want."


"Everyone has the right to live their life how they want." - How does this apply to humans and not equally to animals? How are people able to discount the animal's perspective and the animal's rights? This is how ego-centric, human-centric conversations usually go:

"What do you think about the fox-hunting ban?"
"I'm against it."
"Why?"
"Well, it encroaches on people's freedom."
"What about the fox's freedom?"
"Huh?" - an unheard-of concept.

Imagine if this were one racial group talking about another. Totally one-sided.

If you have enough empathy to see things from the animal's perspective, you can never unsee it. Eating them then becomes as unconscionable as cannibalism. This is a view which has expanded beyond human species-specific interests to consider the interests of all species - a more Earth-centric perspective.

This sort of human 'racism' (species-ism) against animals is also likely due to the unexamined human assumption that animals are lesser - an assumption which people don't WANT to examine because it would make them too uncomfortable; they'd have to question themselves and change their ways - if the full implications of what they were doing were admitted to their conscious awareness.

To quote a fellow vegan: If a powerful alien species came here and said, “We want to eat you guys. We’re more intelligent than you, more powerful, and we have the ability to force you to submit. So we have the right and even the obligation to eat you and experiment on you and hunt you for sport, etc.” Would people say, “Yep, fair enough. They’re smarter. That’s all that matters. It’s their choice to eat us. And they’ve been eating humans on other planets for thousands of years, so it’s definitely okay for that reason alone. Right, which way to the factory farm? I’ll be first in line.”

I don't believe humans are smarter than animals. Animals are the ones who are able to live in harmony with their ecosystems if left to their own devices; it's humans that wreck the ecological balance, endangering the planet, cutting their noses to spite their own faces. We need to be more intelligent about using our so-called intelligence.

That is a powerful statement.
I have no doubt that you consider it unassailable.
Consider.

I eat meat.
I love meat.
Cheese, eggs, milk, fish, fowl, all of it.

I am also buddhist.
I take no life.
I slaughter no animals, nor commission someone to slaughter them for me.

I am, however, an unconventional buddhist.
I have this silly notion, that every, EVERY, life form, has the right to strive against the forces that nature has seen fit to equip them for.

To bunch thousands of them into a corralled area, out of their natural habitat, to feed them chemicals, so that we can more quickly take their children from them, or eat them ourselves, to remove the freedom of life itself..
This is the way we treat our agricultural crops, so nobody will shame me for callousness, regarding animals.


I'm not the partisan.

You're ALL plant-murderers.

(Tag, you're it.)

 

[Aspychata]

@oregano
Nice post!
We have smoothie machines because according to sidd851 l am slaughtering vegetables and fruit to be broken down for digestive consumption.

In the past there was cannibalism but it doesn't mean l am going out to buy books on it. I am trying to point out the past is not always part of the answer to the present situtation because we keep evolving.

@sidd851
Guess that makes you a double murderer because those cows you ate were slaying the grass before it met your tummy.

Still given your argument, l would rather slay the corn then slay lamb, goat, pig, cow. In fact, point me in the direction of the truffles and l will slay with pleasure, merci beacoup.

Is that a new Buddha thing, name calling? You truly lost me, l am going to nurse my wounds and eat a dandelion instead of Buttercup.

 

[sidd851]

@oregano
Nice post!
We have smoothie machines because according to sidd851 l am slaughtering vegetables and fruit to be broken down for digestive consumption.

In the past there was cannibalism but it doesn't mean l am going out to buy books on it. I am trying to point out the past is not always part of the answer to the present situtation because we keep evolving.

@sidd851
Guess that makes you a double murderer because those cows you ate were slaying the grass before it met your tummy.

Still given your argument, l would rather slay the corn then slay lamb, goat, pig, cow. In fact, point me in the direction of the truffles and l will slay with pleasure, merci beacoup.

First- in response to the first.
Yes.
We keep evolving.
But to evolve, even, we are bound by rules.
No organ or organ system springs up from nothing-- everything is built upon the past design. This requires that change take place very slowly.
What do you suppose would happen if we gained 2 feet of height, as we did in the last 3.5 million years, in the space of 2, 3 generations?
Species death.
Mother nor child would survive childbirth.

By the very same token-- that we have grown morals-- possibly our crowning achievement(our adherence to them notwithstanding)-- does not exempt us from the physical, biological needs that DNA codes for, without regard for our feckless desires.
I'm afraid we're stuck eating what we were meant to, for the time being.

Second- The idea of sin being carried by a child for a parent's transgression, original sin, and the laughable idea of a murderer eating a murderer becoming a double-murderer by extrapolation..
I don't know where to begin unpacking that one.

I personally continue to eat meat until I am convinced that the quality of a kind of life, ie consciousness, mobility, makes it inferior or superior.
Trees were here long before us.
They harbor their own wisdom, their own desires.
Do you not consider the vivisection, the removal of the children from the womb of the living parents, by purely mechanical means, as we do with our agricultural crops?

I would bet my life, that in all of earth's history, far more plants' lives have been taken by humans, than animals'.
Think of the baby seeds alone!

And finally, I called no names,
that were not leveled in the opposite partisan way, at least.

I am not arguing any single point, here, except that we are all of us, single points of perspective--
I attempted to give you some of mine, which is that all life is sacred, and how that may resemble, to those unaware, cold, calloused, and uncaring practice.
The opposite is true-- I extend regard to plants, fungi, yeasts and bacteria, all life.

If we are measuring the most compassionate course of action.. the argument falls apart.
Save animal lives to commit wholesale genocide and genetic experimentation on plants?!?

I mention this, only because of the repeated use of "Buttercup", which is obviously a heartstring ploy-- it cannot be taken seriously as argument.

If you can qualify, that animal life is more intrinsically valuable, than that of plant life,
I will gladly listen.

See? There's that.. sticky...

 

[Aspychata]

Even water can take on properties and like water , l am splashing and streaming and fleeing your logic put forth. No name calling, just a tofu plea, a Portobello request of a Buttercup free meal once a week. Don't quite agree but you could always rip out your floors, l hear the trees calling their babies.

 

[sidd851]

Touché, my friend.

But therein lies the rub, for me.
What if ultimately, we're anthropomorphizing the fact that we must kill, one way or another, to survive.

My word, man!
60% of every bowel movement is..
bacterial, fungal, and yeast corpses!

I'm simply not convinced that taking thousands more lives, is the answer to our anthrop..
Our fauna-centricity.

I will continue to be mindful of the number of lives that are ended, ultimately to provide me nutrition.
I can quantify life.
Qualifying it is somewhat.. stickier,
don't you think?

There is the story of a buddhist monk who was laid upon by bandits. Tied up and carried off to get him out of the way.
Thrown in some reeds, the monk(the robbers knew), would not thrash, so as to not damage or kill the reeds.
The monk is overdue, and eventually is found, when the other monks discover the robbers on the road and deduce what must have happened.