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Re: The Ethics of Vegetarianism
In article <3g9aq4$6rm@ucunix.san.uc.edu>,
Mohan Draksharam <esccm@columbine.egr.uh.edu> wrote:
|> the following article is going to a few (minority) individuals. this is
|> my first posting and i hope you objectively evaluate my post.
Agreed.
|> does this imply that plants don't feel? then how come sunflower blossoms
|> only in sunlight??
On the contrary, scientists have shown experiments suggesting in many
ways that plants do feel. They are definitely living entities.
Your point is quite valid. I will pick it up below.
|> : Many people would no doubt take up vegetarianism if they visited a
|> : slaughterhouse, or if they themselves had to kill the animals they ate.
|> Such
|> : visits should be compulsory for all meat eater..
|> :
|> what would `many' classify as? is it an absolute number like say 20 or a
|> relative number like 20 out of 1000? i can assure you that this relation
|> is what you mean by `many'. now, that many doesn't seem like many, does
|> it? all the people who visit a slaughterhouse a don't convert never
|> report it and you never will be able to show that in you stats!
Undoubtedly many people wouldn't convert, but certainly many would.
One of the problems with meat in America is that meat is almost made
to seem like a vegetable. Nobody relates the dead carcass with the
animal that it came from, since meat is so nicely packaged & attractive.
If everyone had to personally kill their animals, undoubtedly many would
become vegetarians.
|> : bloodshed or slaughter, only beasts satisfy their hunger with flesh, and
|> : not even all of those, because horses, cattle, and sheep live on grass."
|> :
|> aren't we also beasts 'cuz we also belong to the animal kingdom?
We should properly belong to the category of the "not even all of those" that
Pythagoras was referring to. We may be related to the animals, but we are
also humans, and we have choices. A tiger will never come and eat in your
wheat-field, it can only eat other animals. A horse will never terrorize your
cattle, it can only eat grass. Only we have the brains to choose. (I would
have said that only we have the brains & body to choose, but technically our
body can't choose either, since it's been shown that this digestive tract
is much more related to the herbivores than to the carnivores).
|> : cried, moved and lived... It is certainly not lions or wolves that we
|> eat out
|> : of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter
|> we hunt harmless creatures for exactly what they are, `harmless'. i would
|> be stupid if choose to hunt a lion rather than a deer. i'll be putting
|> myself in danger of being attacked. it is classic economics-costs vs.
|> benefits, the cost of killing a lion to the benefit of eating its meat is
|> worse than it is for a deer. as a human being i tend to maximize the
|> cost/benefit ratio. then there is the darwinian arguement of survival. i
|> hunt the deer for the exact reason a lion hunts a deer rather than another
|> lion for food, my survival is not jeopardized.
There is _even less_ harm in eating vegetables, since your survival will
definitely not be jeopardized by them (in contrast, a deer can kick you to
death, and a bull can gore you with his horns). So, from a classical economic
view, you are better off "hunting" carrots. You will also get a much better
return on your caloric output (you have to put a certain amount of calories,
fuel, etc. into hunting animals, but you get less calories back from their
flesh; in contrast, harvesting plants is cheap and easy and you get more
food calories back from them). It's basic nutrition at its best. This topic
should be discussed on sci.med.nutrition, not here.
|> : Plutarch then delivered this challenge to flesh-eaters: "If you declare
|> that
|> : you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself
|> what
|> : you want to eat. Do it, however only through your own resources, unaided
|> : by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of ax."
This is the ultimate test of the claim, "It's natural to eat meat."
|> : The poet Shelly was a commited vegetarian. In his essay A Vindication of
|> : Natural Diet, he wrote, "Let the advocate of animal food force himself
|> to a
|> : decisive experiment on its fitness, and as Plutarch recommends, tear a
|> : living lamb with his teeth and plunging his head into its vitals, slake
|> his
|> : thirst with the steaming blood...then, and then only, would he be
|> : consistent."
|> :
|> through the use of the greatest tool ever created or will ever be, the
|> BRAIN, the humankind has strived to make the hassle of living easier and
|> the creation of tools to kill, cut, cook...compensate the loss of
Then use your brain and your library and verify my above arguments
about caloric return and the classical economics requirement of
vegetarianism. It is not unsurprising that the greatest classical
economist, Adam Smith, said
"It may indeed be doubted whether butchers' meat is anywhere a necessity
of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and
butter, or oil, where butter is not to be had, afford the most plentiful, the
most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet.
Decency nowhere requires that any man should eat butchers' meat"
That's in _The Wealth of Nations_, the fundamental textbook on classical
economics.
|> : Leo Tolstoy wrote that by killing animals for food, "Man suppresses in
|> : himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity-that of sympathy
|> and
|> : pity toward living creatures like himself-and by violating his own
|> feelings
|> : becomes cruel." He also warned, "While our bodies are the living graves
|> of
|> : murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal conditions on earth?"
|> :
|> : When we lose respect for animal life, we lose respect for human life as
|> : well. Twenty-six hundred years ago, Pythagoras said, "Those that kill
|> : animals to eat their flesh tend to massacre their own." We're fearful of
|> : enemy guns, bombs, and missiles, but can we close our eyes to the pain
|> : and fear we ourselves bring about by slaughtering, for human
|> : consumption, over 1.6 billion domestic mammals and 22.5 billion poultry
|> a
|> : year. The number of fish killed each year is in the trillions. And what
|> ot
|> : speak of the tens of millions of animals killed each year in the
|> : "torture-camps" of medical research laboratories, or slaughtered for
|> their
|> : fur, hide, or skin, or hunted for "sport". Can we deny that this
|> brutality
|> : makes us more brutal too?
|> :
|> i was of the opinion that an intellectual human being was capable of
|> distinguishing between a human being and an animal. when did food
As you above mentioned, we are both members of the animal kingdom.
All of the above mentioned vegetarians are members of the intellectual
community, as were Mahatma Gandhi, Einstein, Ben Franklin, and others.
It is the _less intellectual_ human beings who engage themselves in
triage. To convince yourself of this, ask yourself "What does the
average Texas redneck eat?"
|> bio-chemically interfere with human intellect? the lack of respect is
The axiom you are what you eat indeed proves true. Animals to be
slaughtered are increased in bulk by steroid injections. Traces
of steroids that remain in meat will biochemically react upon your
brain and make you more aggressive and less rational. Meat
is preserved through nitrates and nitrites, which cause cancer.
There are also quantities of urea and other waste products in meat.
|> more due to fauly teaching than anything else.
Agreed.
|> : Leonardo da Vinci wrote, "Truly man is the king of beasts, for his
|> brutality
|> : exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others. We are burial places!"
|> He
|> : added, "The time will come when men will look upon the murder of
|> : animals as they now look upon the murder of men."
|> :
|> : Mahatma Gandhi felt that ethical principles are a stronger support for
|> : lifelong commitment to a vegetarian diet than reasons of health. "I do
|> : feel," he stated, "that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that
|> : we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our
|> : bodily wants." He also said, "The greatness of a nation and its moral
|> : progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
|> :
|> does gandhi suggest starvation 'cuz plants are also creatures and the
|> lowest form of food , the plankton, is a creature too.
Ok, here's where we get to the Veda (you knew it had to come somewhere,
didn't you?). The Vedic injunction is not to kill creatures, period.
The other Vedic principle is that one living entity is life for another
living entity (one jiva eats another). There is karma even in strict
vegetarianism, unless that vegetarianism is dove-tailed with Krishna
consciousness. Krishna instructs us in the Bhagavad Gita that we must
offer him leaves, fruits, flowers, and water (9.26), and that everything
we do should be in sacrifice to him (9.27). Those who eat foods as
part of sacrifice (prasadam) are freed from sinful reaction, but
those who eat other foods are filling themselves with sin (3.13).
The meat-eater, though, gets the worst of it, sinking into one body
of suffering after another [Mahabharata]. Yes, the plants are also
creatures, but it is the way of the material world that we must eat
other creatures; therefore, let us do it in keeping with the Gita.
|> and didn't gandhi
|> say that india was a great nation 'cuz of its heritage, a heritage that
|> has always include a preponderance of meat-eaters?
In the Indian heritage law book known as _Manu-Samhita_, it is
said that meat-eating should be a capital offense, and that all
parties involved with meat-eating must suffer for their actions.
It is only more recently that meat-eating has become dominant.
|> sorry again if i have offended people, i had a valid case too.
|>
|> mohan draksharam
Yours,
Vijay
