My take on this sort of veers off in two different directions.
The first deals with survival. My drive to survive is stronger than that for my feelings about eating plants. I also know that if I was stranded on a desert island with no food or water I would ultimately eat whatever I had to in order to live. This would include, for example, my dog. That is instinct. However, in our society we don’t live in an intinct driven environment so we can be a little more choosy about what we consume. (and remember, choosy Moms choose Jif!)
The second deals with the emotive and sentient level of plants versus animals. I know from experience that animals are aware and intelligent. I do not know this when it comes to plants. I’m not saying they aren’t the most intelligent forms of life on the planet, only that I don’t have tohe empirical evidence to support it.
There are numerous groups who take this very far, including those who commit suicide due to the damage they do to micro-organisms via breathing, walking, or digesting. Whatever.
The bottom line is survival. As long as I can do that I guess (from a genetic standpoint, anyway) I’m happy.
I was a generic vegetarian for about 6 months. Just naturally found I wasn’t eating much meat, and the health/environmental reasons really made a lot of sense to me. Became completely lacto-oval for about 6 months and stopped that because I ended up obsessed with what I was eating. I’m exaggerating, but it’s quite difficult to be really hardcore about it unless you stick with eating rice, tofu and fresh veggies.
I started travelling in China and certainly some of the food was cooked in pork fat. But otherwise did not eat animal products. Strangely enough, some of the buddhist monks and nuns ran excellent vegetarian restaurants, and they wouldn’t eat garlic or onions. Anyhoo, about 5 years total where it was meat free and at times with eggs and/or ice cream.
Eventually, moved to Japan, and that’s when I reintroduced fish into my diet. It is difficult, perhaps not impossible, but certainly really difficult eating out in Tokyo to get a balanced diet if one does not at least eat seafood.
So, 5 years pretty hardcore vegetarian, and another 5 or so years with seafood. Then, my carnivorous wife and I had some serious marital difficulties. My being a vegetarian was a stressor in our marriage. She did not demand that I start eating meat or anything like that. I made the decision to remove a stressor that when combined with all the other stessors could have ended in divorce. At the end of the day, my vegetarianism took a back seat to my marriage.
For anyone really curious about veganism, I would suggest goggling “Jain.” The Jains of India are extremely hardcore about not directly or indirectly taking animal or insect life. Quite interesting.
Ha! I’ll tell you all what politeness demands I don’t tell my meat-eating friends.
[RANT]
I don’t eat meat because EATING MEAT IS EVIL and don’t give me any of your but it’s NATURAL bullshit because it ain’t we have transcended our base animal instincts or at least those of us with an ounce of morality have when a lion eats an antellope THAT isn’t evil that’s natural when you choose to fill your already fat carcass with the cadavers of animals slaughtered merely for your indulgence THAT is EVIL I know it and YOU know it yet you hide behind this sick “democratic” wholesale denial and look at me like I’M THE WEIRD ONE if I was charitable I’d say the only reason you won’t accept what is BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS is because you feel yourself incapable of dealing with the GUILT that you would inevitably feel for the pain and the suffering and the needless destruction that you have already caused in your wasted and wasting life so far on this planet well GET OVER IT and STOP EATING MEAT oh and don’t get me wrong if you and I are ever on a desert island KILL me the moment you set foot on it if you want to survive my first barbeque.
[/RANT]
As a kid, I was a real picky eater. My family served lots of good working class food- meatloaf, pork chops, fish sticks- and I wouldn’t eat any of it. Drove my mom nuts. Then one day, I realized that the reason that I didn’t like any of this stuff was because I just didn’t like meat. The texture (especially fat and gristle) creeps me out and the taste is too heavy and makes me feel sick. Additionally, the thought of muching through veins, and eatng flesh that was so recently moving and vital and alive, weirded me out if I thought too much about it.
I stopped eating red meat, and subsisted entirely on chicken (seafood was never really a part of my life). Then one day I realized that eating chicken was pointless because I didn’t like it and didn’t need to eat it, and I became vegetarian.
I don’t miss meat at all. I am a lot healthier now that I am vegetarian. When I ate meat, my diet was really limited because I couldn’t get out of the mindset that meat had to be the centerpiece of a meal. I picked at my food and saw little variety. When I became veg, I suddenly started loving and caring about what i ate. I learned to enjoy and cook a variety of foods, and became a full on foody. My diet improved a hundred fold as I began to center them around hearty grains and fresh vegetables as opposed to a sad chicken breast night after night. I gained weight. I went from being a 100lb girl with pale skin, ribs sticking out, and constantly sick to a sturdy girl with hips and breasts and a hearty, healthy body.
The real travesty is your punctuation, but we’ll save that for another thread.
Oh we have, have we? I guess you don’t have sex either? I mean come on, why would anyone want to engage in that rutting behavior when the world is already overpopulated? If you must have a child you can have it in a test tube, no need to give in to your base animal instincts. We all know you have transcended them. No masturbating either you little hypocrite.
and you choose to fill your already fat carcass with the cadavers of plants slaughtered merely for your indulgence. In fact you don’t even wait for them to completely die. You shove them in a refrigerator to keep a little life left in them so that you can munch on them while they are still struggling for sunlight, air, and water. You beast.
I can assure you that not one ounce of guilt is consumed with my food. I eat plants and animals with the same level of respect that they deserve. You on the other hand seem to have some issues.
No, but now I’m not sure if you’re just joking about the whole thing.
I sometimes think hypothetical situations like this can be really valuable. I suspect that I would react in the same way that you would. However, I think we would both put off eating our dog until it we were absolutely at death’s door. We would try to eat all manner of other things before consuming something that we had raised for the purpose of love and companionship. Why would we give in at the last moment? I think it is because we instictively and egotistically believe that our purpose on the planet is greater than that of the dog’s purpose. When rescued from the island we can raise two more dogs and bring lots more love and companionship into the world. I know that we wouldn’t explicitly rationalize eating our dog that way, we would simply react in desperation to our pained stomach, but I think the ego is the motivation behind our ability to carry out the act.
This is even more interesting to me than the hypothetical situation. Consider the sentient level of cows versus corn. I grew up in the Dairy State and I can assure you that describing cows as sentient and emotive and intelligent is being extremely generous. What do cows do all day? They slurp up water, they munch nutrients from a trough, and they pass gas. They occasionally procreate (at least cows and bulls do). What do stalks of corn do? They slurp up water, they extract nutrients from the soil, and they pass gas. They procreate when they can.
There is lots of empirical evidence that plants sense many things. They react to sunlight, sound, handling…they wither and die away without water or nutrients. While their sensory mechanisms are certainly different from animals, they are clearly sentient. It seems to me that the decision that plants are more acceptable food than animals based on the sensory criteria is much more about us than it is about them. It is egotistical as well. It seems evil to eat animals because their sensory systems are closer to OURS! Cow’s eyes are remarkably similar to human’s eyes, so they must be “more sentient” and a “higher” form of life. Because their process of bearing young is similar to ours, we put them above life forms who reproduce in different ways, like plants. But this is all about us, not about them.
Think of this hypothetical. Occasionally, babies are born with no brain. I can’t remember the name of the condition, and it is thankfully rare, but it does happen. Without a brain these babies have no sensory mechanism whatsoever. Do this make them acceptable as food? Of course not! Why? Because these babies were not brought into the world with the purpose of serving as food. They were brought into the world to provide love and companionship and serve as outlets for our own love and caring. Their lives were tragically cut short before they could fully serve their purpose.
I hope I am not misunderstood, I certainly don’t want to try to convince anyone to not be a vegetarian. I really just would like to understand the motivations. If the motivation is simply that it makes you feel bad to consume animals who have traits that are similar to humans than I can understand that. But no one seems to just come out and say it.
Other people on this thread have stated that they simply don’t like the taste or the smell of meat, so they don’t eat it. That sure makes sense. I don’t like the taste of carrots and won’t go near them. Squash, too. But that doesn’t make it evil for people who do like the taste and smell of meat, to eat it. It doesn’t make us disrespectful of life.
I don’t agree with any of your rant for the following reasons:
#1. Your grammer made it almost impossible to read.
#2. No one is EVIL for consuming meat. That is ridicolous. Are toddlers evil? I’m sure you have friends and relatives that eat meat. Are they evil? A diet is a CHOICE. There is no right or wrong involved. Do you consume dairy? I’m curious, because I think that’s as gross as eating meat. So if my views were as extremist as yours, I could say YOU were EVIL.
#3. Attacking people for their choice to consume meat is just as bad as attacking someone for their choice NOT to eat meat. It goes both ways. If you don’t have respect FOR meat eaters than you can’t expect to get respect FROM them.
What? No one’s stated reason is to piss off us meat eaters. Make it impossible for us to cook Thanksgiving or invite you over for a BBQ - or at least give you and excuse to whine when we do?
See, we omnivores think its all about us…us, we tell you…health, religion, ethics, even just plain don’t like meat - we see through them for the flimsy excuses they are!
Oh puhlease – it was a rant, the mark-up clearly said so. It was actually important for the spirit of the rant to say it in one breath. To this end it has all the punctuation that it requires – it starts with a capital and ends with a fullstop, (if there are any missing or superfluous apostrophes, or, misspellings then they are simply typos).
So Torus, your well thought out comments on sex and animal instincts fail to observe our habits for sexual modesty, for the widespread use of contraceptive methods, for the laws that pertain to sexual conduct, etc., etc., etc.
I can only guess that your stance with regards to the innocent slaughter of vegetables is intended to be ironic, actually it is merely noise. FWIW I eat to survive, I just don’t need to eat meat to do so, and neither do you.
Well you go right ahead and be as blinkered and as full of self-denial as you need to be. But when you say that you “eat plants and animals with the same level of respect that they deserve” I’m bothered by the suggestion that plants and animals deserve the same level of respect, is that the “issue” that you see in me? That I differentiate?
Joking? No, but if you’d read my post with a minimum of care you would have seen that I was being intentionally immoderate (though I take back nothing).
See my comments above. Oh, and <smirk>.
No I don’t think that toddlers who eat meat are evil, quite clearly they are subject to the indoctrination of their family and almost certainly unable to make an informed choice. It is interesting that you claim “A diet is a CHOICE. There is no right or wrong involved”, so all vegetarians who make what they believe to be an ethical choice are deluding themselves, nice. You also say you think “consuming dairy is as gross as eating meat”, so you think eating meat is gross? That is rediculous. Are toddlers gross? etc.
Er, not IMO. I would like to see less suffering in the world (and besides eating meat is gross), what could be the motives of someone who attacks another for not eating meat?
**
Er, who says I don’t have respect both for and from meat-eaters? But meat-eaters don’t do very well on giving respect to the lives of the animals they slaughter, perhaps it’s not a mutual thing.
Well, you attacked first. This was meant to be a poll and I asked reasons why, not for someone to go off on people. You want to go off, take it to the BBQ Pit, where you can roast your vegetables.
No one has to say you don’t have respect. It’s clearly shown in your rant.
I read the thread title as “Vegetarian spring roll”. I must be hungry.
BTW, I was veggie for 3 years before moving to the Far East, for moral reasons against factory farming. I’d eat meat if it wasn’t factory farmed, but it was too difficult to find out what was free range and what wasn’t. We’re omnivores, I accept that, but the conditions in factory farms are unforgiveable.
Anyway, since it’s almost impossible to sustain the choice in Japan, China and Hong Kong - in Hong Kong, I even found pork chops on the menu in a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant - so I gave up. Mmmm, meat…
Oh, I almost just want to walk away from this, but I know that too many of you would see that as an admission of some wrong.
“Well (I) attacked first” What’s your point? Do you think I’m having a little whinge because the nasty meat-eaters have attacked me? Well, not at all.
“(You) asked reasons why.” Well, my rant gave you some pretty honest, unvarnished reasons – if you can’t see through the ironically intended intemperance, and insist on throwing out the baby with the bath water, then I do just give in.
“(I) want to go off”. Come on! I didn’t go off! I told you what I think – Eating meat is wrong, most meat-eaters know it and live tacitly (and often openly) in denial about it.
“Take it to the pit”. Really? Tell me, was my “rant” an inappropriate mode of expression for this forum? Did my prologic “I’ll tell you all what politeness demands I don’t tell my meat-eating friends” and the rant indicators not put it in a context that intelligent people should be able to take the intended meaning? (BTW the subtext is that as a v-something, I find that society’s conventions demand that I bite my tongue*, rather than share my REAL, ACTUAL and CONSIDERED distaste for the very dubious, but widely received, practice of killing animals for our own pleasure.)
“(My) disrepect is clearly shown” Puhlease!
I could have sworn I came to this forum for intelligent conversation.
<walking away>
*and as a v-something I find that doubly painful, ho-ho.
