Sure, but is it a life worth living?..
I have been known to explain that I don’t use smilies (emoticons, emoji, or whatever the kids are calling them today) because it promotes patriarchal attitudes and are one step removed from catcalling.
I have several absurdly liberal friends on Facebook
Bravo.
Hey, everyone! He’s OK with killing mosquitoes. Mosquito steaks for everybody!
would I be wise to keep Poe’s Law in mind here?
Yes. But it may probably take some time getting used to. In my case, honestly, the urge to eat non-veg initially was minimal to none, once I left it. Now, from a long long time, the urge is zero obviously.
North-Indian veg. cuisine is very tasty, fulfilling and nutritious. Half the population here is vegetarian and most of the non-vegetarians are occasional non-vegetarians.
And tasty is subjective. Your tasty is not someone else’s tasty. I’ve heard many a person say they don’t like Indian food.
Right, tasty is subjective. It is also true that sometimes taste may take a little time to develop. Also, restaurant food is likely too oily or too spicy to be eaten on regular basis. Home cooked food should be much better.
India is 1/6th of humanity and if you take south Asia (similar cuisine in neighbouring countries as well), that is nearly 25% of humanity. So as a foreigner too, one should have trust in such large group - that the food will have proper variety, taste and nutrition.
But of course, some people may still don’t like Indian food. Every person is unique.
I would prefer to live a long life rather than one shortened by some other creature preying upon me. But if I am going to be killed by another life form, being killed in order to be eaten seems far less intrusive and more reasonable, somehow, than being killed out of malice or cruel sport or, worst yet, casually for no particular reason at all. I don’t wince at the notion that my kitty cat* has just brought down another squirrel or bird, or wish for a world without carnivores. I don’t feel particularly ashamed or wicked for eating pork and chicken and fish and beef and whatnot, or at least not at the base level of “it’s immoral to kill animals to eat them”.
When I encounter a bulky muscular person who seems a bit towards the bovine end of the intelligence scale, I do occasionally find myself musing “could be used for food”. Why don’t I eat other people as a food source? Is it because they’re intelligent, and lack of such intelligence is what makes it OK to eat cows and chickens and whatnot? Or is it because I look upon them and identify with them, “one of us”, to a degree that I don’t with cows and sheep and whatnot? Surely it’s not merely because the law prohibiting me from doing so keeps my predatory inclinations in check?! And not merely because FoodMart doesn’t have neatly wrapped half pound packages of 90% lean ground person on display in the butcher section, on sale for $7.99/pound this week?
Why don’t I occasionally contemplate eating my kitty cat*? I’ve contemplated doing some pretty awful things to her when she’s incurred my wrath. When she peed on my wool sweater I threatened to drown her in the bathtub and skin her and make a catfur sweater, but kittyparts tacos wasn’t ever on the even-theoretical agenda. Hmm… the PUPPY* on the other hand… yeah, after seeing The War of the Roses there were many invitations issued to come sit in my Le Creuset pot if she didn’t stop barking, etc…
Maybe it’s just that some animals register on my list of culinary possibilities and others don’t. There may be something atavistic that makes the propspect of preying upon other critters closely biologically kin to me unappealing —I think I’m more likely to get dangerous buggies in my system. But that doesn’t explain the cat thing. I can’t claim nearby bio kinship with the felines as much as I do admire them and sometimes wear their monicker as nickname. Ok then, maybe I’m somewhat hardwired to see certain forms as appetizing. That could be. It’s not all cultural indoctrination: canines are potential food items as are equines, despite the fact that neither are marketed to us as potential dinner. Meanwhile, on my own I don’t think I ever would have examined crawfish or scallops and thought to myself “hmm, I could broil that, I bet it would be tasty”.
Meh… I don’t really know. Overall I think your appeal to my better nature is off course. You’d get a more sympathetic consideration if you spoke of the captive lives of farm animals and their limited range of motion and crowded conditions and stuff like that. That brings on far more of a wince from me than telling me I should not slaughter them in order to eat them.
If you want to discuss this further, we should meet at a restaurant (nice vegan place, Indian or Ethiopian are my favorite vegan cuisines, none of that macrobiotic tasteless grass-clippings stuff please but something vegan prepared to be eaten by people who like food). Discuss life and rights and the reasonable bounds of behavior of creatures to each other and the place of humans amidst the backdrop of the rest of the lifeworld and interspecies relationship politics and all that. I cook some of that myself and would invite you to my table but after this conversation I would respect and understand a bit of cautious reluctance on your part. Especially if you you have well-developed musculature and aren’t old and stringy yet.
- I have neither kitty nor puppy in my life at the moment, although at various times in my life I did. No, their demise had nothing to do with my predatory habits.
This where I make the distinction too – pain may be felt and reacted to as a basic survival instinct in all kinds of creatures. But suffering requires an awareness that things were good and now they’re bad and you wish it weren’t that way and its not fair, and, and… a higher level of thinking that most humans have.
Edit: oh crap, I misread “that” as “than.” Lemme try again.
This is a legitimate point, if you can show that suffering really requires that sort of thinking. By that reasoning, a child raised in a negligent orphanage (such as the horrific Chinese orphanage one of my ex-students was reared in from infancy, where he never left his crib until he was two, suffered brain damage from his treatment, etc.) isn’t suffering. Is that your understanding of suffering?
Agreed. Valid point.
Although it still does not make me comfortable giving pain to animals. Human infants don’t have adults’ like awareness and probably can be compared to animals (experience pain but do not have developed awareness).
Edit: I see that above post by Left Hand of Dorkness has already made the same point.
But I live in North America where there is a wide variety of foods available to me. What’s more, my cultural upbringing does not prohibit or discourage me from eating meat, thus has no influence on my dietary practices.
If I had to characterize my diet, I would say it closely resembles a Mediterranean style diet. By choice; Because I enjoy that the most. What’s more, as a fairly fit and health conscious individual, I know what works for me and what doesn’t. So while I’ve no doubt I could survive on an exclusively veg diet, I would not thrive on it, nor would I enjoy food (& life) in all its variety.
Neither does mine. The voice has to come from within if it has to come. I know I am not going to convert anyone by having this thread.
Understood.
Topics like this interest me.
It’s one thing to hear someone say that they simply feel more healthy on a veg or vegan diet. Can’t really argue with that sort of conviction. I’d never force anyone to eat something they don’t like/want. Especially if I know they used to eat one way and then consciously chose to eat another way because they simply feel better doing so.
What I have trouble assimilating is the philosophy that, in a nutshell, says “meat is murder”. Yes. Yes it is. Something alive has to die in order that I live. Like it or not, humans are predators. We’re at the top of the food chain under most controlled circumstances. We survived because of evolution and our predatory instincts. It’s a luxury that many of us (but not all of us) can choose not to eat meat and not have that be threat to our survival. We ought not lose sight of that when taking the moral high ground.
you are talking from one perspective: the food chain perspective. But the same God/nature/evolution gave humans compassion too.
Compassion and survival (from starvation) have been at odds more often than not through human history.
More like compassion vs. habits in today’s world.
I am more inclined to change my dietary “habits” on the recommendation of my doctor vs. say a PETA activist/supporter.
Question: Are you saying that your dietary practice is entirely based on compassion and not on your great fortune to be born in today’s world?
- Note: I’m not accusing you of being a PETA activist/supporter.
**Note: I realize you’re not expecting to change hearts and minds in this thread.
Doctors should not have issues with people turning vegetarians.
I think we have the knowledge we are looking for. Now should let the inner voice (whatever it may be) guide us.:)Happy that we could have the discussion cordially.