Meditation and Vegan. Its NOT about the animals. Read first...

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Floatsy

You'd like to use examples of extreme survival, but we weren't talking about this were we?

Er... you were talking about me giving myself up for food = extreme.

In daily life and especially for those of us privileged enough to have nothing better to do that surf on the Internet and live with sufficiency, a protein balanced based diet without meat is possible. Dietary wise it is also more than sufficient.

Of course.

I don't dictate want people should or shouldn't do, but if you have no issues with diet based morality you'd see no issue I presume with someone wanting to consume humans ordinarily.

As consumers have choices I think we should exercise our power in the market place. Corporations are purely profit driven so it stands to say that we also have some responsibilities.

To say that humans need to consume meat is also factually incorrect. Fwiw.

Blessings,
Floatsy

I didn't say 'humans need to consume meat'. I said forcing that moral on humans such as the islanders around New Guinea would cause malnutrition.

There are cultural obastcles as well, for example, Amazon tribes with minimal agriculture that survive largely on hunting and gathering. To impose the moral in the immediate term would see malnutrition and on the longer term require the people to become subsistence farmers. The whole jungle lore and all its knowledge base would be lost.

Even subsistence farming has problems, like when it doesn't rain the variety of food is reduced significantly, and people might go int the jungle to hunt and find grubs and frogs and stuff as well as various edible plants.

Basically, vegan moralism isn't workable, but if you have full access to the market place and a modicum of wealth, then, under those circumstances, ad in my case, large scale animal cruelty (throughout their lives) and environmental destruction are compelling reasons to have a vegan diet.

[Floatsy]

I hear you, Gem, just for me at the personal level, and for many people like you and I who live essentially privileged, non-starvation lives - the more I see and realize, the more I want to adjust my diet and way of life to not cause more harm to other living beings, or environmental degradation, if possible. So even a little less is good in my mind in consumer choices.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Floatsy

I hear you, Gem, just for me at the personal level, and for many people like you and I who live essentially privileged, non-starvation lives - the more I see and realize, the more I want to adjust my diet and way of life to not cause more harm to other living beings, or environmental degradation, if possible. So even a little less is good in my mind in consumer choices.

Well, consumer capitalism is where you 'buy into' ethical choices. The 'clean green do good' is a marketing ploy that plays on human emotion while capitalist-consumer ideology itself is the most destructive force on Earth. In New Guinea there are a lot of people who aren't wholly engaged in capital markets as employees and spenders, but live subsistence lifestyles predicated on the natural environment. Below the surface of our market structures, we also fundamentally are sustained by ecological systems, but being far removed from Earth's ecology we live unsustainable, artificial lives, and see ourselves as privileged. When we see countries like Samoa or Kiribati, or even at home among Aboriginal communities, it's clear that market forces and ideologies, and not personal choices, have disrupted the health and well-being of Indigenous peoples. The new wave of vege-moralism is merely a continuation, an imitation, of dominant cultural values being imposed by privileged social classes who do not even inquire into the cultural practices of other peoples, but stand above them with supposedly superior morals and knowledges, and it really doesn't matter if healthy peoples get sick and die, because we can always pretend it was their own 'lifestyle choices' when we need to wash out hands of it - and because we didn't bother to learn about other peoples' ways of life - we are ignorant enough to do that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRvRm19UKdA

[row37]

Taking the life of a sentient being is very wrong, unless it is a mercy killing in an incurable, painful, end time situation. We should never, ever do that. Some people, even the Dali Lama, state that if the animal is already dead and it wasn't killed specifically for you, then no harm. Bull. We are animals, and all living beings have a right to live, love and die naturally. They feel joy, sadness, grieve over lost loved ones, have their children and take care of them, play, sing, and talk in their manner. They are us.

Think about it.... if no one ate dead animals, there would not be a market for them. By not eating them, you are making the dead animal market smaller (and the more people that do that make it even smaller). This means that less animals suffer. These poor animals live ghastly lives. They are treated as a product, not as a living being. They suffer terribly and live in great fear. They die painfully and needlessly. This is fact, not spiritual stuff. Not eating them DOES make a difference, and urging others to not mistreat them and stop eating their flesh is something that must be done if we can.

There is absolutely no scientific proof that humans need to eat dead animals. None. But there IS scientific proof that it causes cancer, or at least leads to a higher incidence of cancer. Even if it didn't, that isn't the point. I have been on a basically vegan diet (what I call a cruelty free diet) for over a decade. I am active, ride a bike everywhere, work very hard physically, and am in great health (much better health than when I ate a cruel, cancer causing dead animal diet). I am 65 years old and know this is not only the healthiest diet, it is the most sane, compassionate and rational diet.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by row37

Taking the life of a sentient being is very wrong, unless it is a mercy killing in an incurable, painful, end time situation. We should never, ever do that. Some people, even the Dali Lama, state that if the animal is already dead and it wasn't killed specifically for you, then no harm. Bull. We are animals, and all living beings have a right to live, love and die naturally. They feel joy, sadness, grieve over lost loved ones, have their children and take care of them, play, sing, and talk in their manner. They are us.

Think about it.... if no one ate dead animals, there would not be a market for them. By not eating them, you are making the dead animal market smaller (and the more people that do that make it even smaller). This means that less animals suffer. These poor animals live ghastly lives. They are treated as a product, not as a living being. They suffer terribly and live in great fear. They die painfully and needlessly. This is fact, not spiritual stuff. Not eating them DOES make a difference, and urging others to not mistreat them and stop eating their flesh is something that must be done if we can.

There is absolutely no scientific proof that humans need to eat dead animals. None. But there IS scientific proof that it causes cancer, or at least leads to a higher incidence of cancer. Even if it didn't, that isn't the point. I have been on a basically vegan diet (what I call a cruelty free diet) for over a decade. I am active, ride a bike everywhere, work very hard physically, and am in great health (much better health than when I ate a cruel, cancer causing dead animal diet). I am 65 years old and know this is not only the healthiest diet, it is the most sane, compassionate and rational diet.

So the ethic is based on cruelty to animals and health benefits, but there are conditions in which killing is OK. That sounds reasonable. We still have to understand that a veg diet isn't actually 'cruelty free' in that land clearing for farming destroys habitat causing animal deaths, but really, its the overall ecological destruction caused by agriculture that presents the major ethical dilemma, and not the singularly hunted beasts that nourish sustainable societies. Indeed, sustainable social cultures are wiped out in the same way as wildlife is.