respect for life, or.. is a pickle conscious?
It's been a couple of years since I last did this, so I thought I'd do it again. Over January, I'm abstaining from caffeine & alcohol (& movies, but that's another story). I'll see how I feel at the end of it, and if I like it, I may well continue with either or both. I'm not particularly fanatical about this sort of thing (why get healthy by living better only to lose it all by stressing out over lapses?), I just like to experiment & see if it improves my life.
I was reading a book today, and it talked a little about stages in spiritual growth, and that one of those stages was "respect for life" (their words). I started to wonder, given that I believe all people are equal, if we take it a bit further, are all beings?
Equality is a funny thing - for example, while we have functioning forebrains and free will, I wouldn't say a mosquito does - although to be fair, it might be tricky to verify the "free will" part.
How about "equally deserving of life"? This is hardly a new concept, most religions hold human life sacred. Many take it further (eg Hinduism with cows, or Buddhism to all animals).
I thus started to realise that vegetarianism probably wasn't a bad idea. Respect for all life seems a reasonable reason for becoming a vegetarian. The known problems with digesting dairy products reason enough to take it further, to veganism, but that's really a separate conversation.
Ok, so I want to (without being insane about it, I have enough trouble eating regularly as it is) respect life.
But which life?
Why should animals be protected, and not plants?
I realise that some people have a "nothing with a central nervous system" or "nothing which can run away from me" rule - which, while perfectly fine for them (la la, freewill, etc etc) seems a little arbitrary to me.
Are plants any less "living" than animals?
They feel pain, you can communicate with them, etc etc.. so where's the line? Is it consciousness? Plants have a lower level of consciousness than animals, therefore it's ok to kill them? But by the same argument, animals have a lower level of consciousness than us, so it should be ok to kill them too.. so that doesn't work.
Ok, how about "only organisms that don't have to die in order to feed me"?
So dairy, egg, fallen fruit etc are ok, but not cabbages, potatoes and other root vegetables?
Of course, most plants have seeds, so even though one cabbage has been uprooted (& killed), the seeds grow on.... but then, that's the same as saying it's ok to kill a cow since its calf has survived.
Is a cabbage any less alive than I am? Just because we (humans) can't necessarily or easily assess its consciousness, does this mean it doesn't have one?
If shamans, medicine men & tribal elders can talk to rivers & mountains, surely things we can more easily see growing MUST have some form of consciousness also, in which case, should it die so I can live?
This is, of course, a fairly abstract discussion.
So, winding it right back into the practical: Even at the moment, I typically eat only meat once or twice a month. I do eat quite a bit of chicken though, and a little fish.
The extreme possibility, that of eating only things that drop (or don't require death to provide) I suspect will drive me nothing short of crazy. I don't cook, although I've tried many times to learn, ahhh, yeah, I don't see that happening in a hurry. I just get BORED standing in a kitchen, chopping things, burning things, or whatever it is that people do in those places. The likelihood of me being able to put together a healthy, edible diet is, hmm, "rather low" *cough*.
Thus, I'm left in somewhat of a pickle (Ooh! pickles! Oh, hang on? Do they have consciousness?). If I'm going to expand "life" to include non-humans, then stopping at animals is entirely arbitrary and thus hardly justifiable.
I believe in respecting life & I'd like to reflect that in my dietary habits, but I'm unsure how to resolve this without being totally arbitrary in which lines are drawn in the sand, or starving myself in the process.
I'd like to try this, at least for January, but what is a sane, reasonable & consistent solution?
[a little later. ok, this helps a bit. In essence it says "respect nature, not specifically individual life forms". Which I guess means "Respect Life" (capital L), rather than "Respect life" (small l). This is much more reasonable, although I'm still left wondering a little about a good place to draw a line and start (not) eating.]
I was reading a book today, and it talked a little about stages in spiritual growth, and that one of those stages was "respect for life" (their words). I started to wonder, given that I believe all people are equal, if we take it a bit further, are all beings?
Equality is a funny thing - for example, while we have functioning forebrains and free will, I wouldn't say a mosquito does - although to be fair, it might be tricky to verify the "free will" part.
How about "equally deserving of life"? This is hardly a new concept, most religions hold human life sacred. Many take it further (eg Hinduism with cows, or Buddhism to all animals).
I thus started to realise that vegetarianism probably wasn't a bad idea. Respect for all life seems a reasonable reason for becoming a vegetarian. The known problems with digesting dairy products reason enough to take it further, to veganism, but that's really a separate conversation.
Ok, so I want to (without being insane about it, I have enough trouble eating regularly as it is) respect life.
But which life?
Why should animals be protected, and not plants?
I realise that some people have a "nothing with a central nervous system" or "nothing which can run away from me" rule - which, while perfectly fine for them (la la, freewill, etc etc) seems a little arbitrary to me.
Are plants any less "living" than animals?
They feel pain, you can communicate with them, etc etc.. so where's the line? Is it consciousness? Plants have a lower level of consciousness than animals, therefore it's ok to kill them? But by the same argument, animals have a lower level of consciousness than us, so it should be ok to kill them too.. so that doesn't work.
Ok, how about "only organisms that don't have to die in order to feed me"?
So dairy, egg, fallen fruit etc are ok, but not cabbages, potatoes and other root vegetables?
Of course, most plants have seeds, so even though one cabbage has been uprooted (& killed), the seeds grow on.... but then, that's the same as saying it's ok to kill a cow since its calf has survived.
Is a cabbage any less alive than I am? Just because we (humans) can't necessarily or easily assess its consciousness, does this mean it doesn't have one?
If shamans, medicine men & tribal elders can talk to rivers & mountains, surely things we can more easily see growing MUST have some form of consciousness also, in which case, should it die so I can live?
This is, of course, a fairly abstract discussion.
So, winding it right back into the practical: Even at the moment, I typically eat only meat once or twice a month. I do eat quite a bit of chicken though, and a little fish.
The extreme possibility, that of eating only things that drop (or don't require death to provide) I suspect will drive me nothing short of crazy. I don't cook, although I've tried many times to learn, ahhh, yeah, I don't see that happening in a hurry. I just get BORED standing in a kitchen, chopping things, burning things, or whatever it is that people do in those places. The likelihood of me being able to put together a healthy, edible diet is, hmm, "rather low" *cough*.
Thus, I'm left in somewhat of a pickle (Ooh! pickles! Oh, hang on? Do they have consciousness?). If I'm going to expand "life" to include non-humans, then stopping at animals is entirely arbitrary and thus hardly justifiable.
I believe in respecting life & I'd like to reflect that in my dietary habits, but I'm unsure how to resolve this without being totally arbitrary in which lines are drawn in the sand, or starving myself in the process.
I'd like to try this, at least for January, but what is a sane, reasonable & consistent solution?
[a little later. ok, this helps a bit. In essence it says "respect nature, not specifically individual life forms". Which I guess means "Respect Life" (capital L), rather than "Respect life" (small l). This is much more reasonable, although I'm still left wondering a little about a good place to draw a line and start (not) eating.]