Hello again Dermot >Keith Addison wrote: > > >Hi Andres. Dermot > > > >>Hi Dermot, > >> > >>On Thursday, September 29, 2005, at 05:56 PM, dermot wrote: > >> > >>><snip> > >>> > >>>It may be the case that some people cannot tolerate a vegetarian diet. > >>>I > >>>don't know. My point is that IF we can tolerate this diet that we > >>>should > >>>because it is unethical to kill sentient creatures for no good reason. > >>>ANIMALS HAVE RIGHTS. Just because they are dumb doesn't mean we can > >>>deprive them of a happy existance because they happen to taste nice. > >>> > >>> > >>I have trouble with this whole ethics thing. The Buddha said > >>(paraphrasing here) that all creatures love life, all creatures fear > >>death, knowing this, how can you cause harm. The trouble is, i think > >>that plants are sentient creatures as well. They are on a different > >>time-scale, mode, or wavelength if you will, but they definitely feel. > >> > >> > > > >I think so too. Plants do some downright weird things, you can > >explain it all away easily enough perhaps, but you're missing > >something if you do. > > > >I don't have any problems with people being vegetarians or whatever > >they want to be, but in my view what you call the "holier than thou" > >attitude that sometimes goes with it is baseless. The trouble is when > >people do it for their own emotional reasons, which is fair enough, > >but they try to pretend it's for logical reasons, and get very > >annoyed when the logic doesn't hold up. > > >People shouldn't make important decisions based on emotions, I agree.
But that's not what I said, I said it's fair enough, it's their prerogative, just don't pretend it's anything else. If you say you don't like eating meat, or if you don't agree with killing animals so you don't eat meat, that's fine with me. But if you start promoting something or insisting that others follow your way then you should have a solid case for it, not just an emotional one. >The funny thing is when I make the case for vegetarianism based on logic >with my meat eating friends they accuse me of being relentlessly logical >when they begin to lose the argument. You just can't win. :-) Then they are not very educated about their meat-eating and your vegetarianism. The only real basis of the discussion is from the point of view of what's called the "soil community", an ecological unit, and in these terms vegetarianism is not sustainable. It has to accord with a sustainable food-production system, and it doesn't. So what are you basing it on? You are promoting it and you should have a solid case to present, but I fail to see it. I don't see much logic. Ethics? What are your ethics based on? Ethical realities are seldom in conflict with nature's ways. Neither need be as clear as daylight though, it's all too easy to get them both wrong, it takes work. That aside, I recommend you have a considerable browse round Sally Fallon's website, if you haven't done so already: http://www.westonaprice.org/ Best wishes Keith > >My previous partner Christine Thery (who did many of the > >illustrations at the JtF website) once got us into a furious row with > >a couple of veggies, just as the logic was failing, by saying: "In > >other words you eat vegetables because they don't scream and try to > >run away when you kill them." LOL! She had a point. > > > >>I think most gardeners have gotten a glimpse of that, perhaps when > >>uprooting a carrot, chopping down a tree that shades your tomatoes, or > >>clipping baby greens. > >> > >>Once you realized this, would you stop eating vegetables? > >> > >>So where do you draw the line? Do you kill roaches? Rats? Ants? > >>Spiders? What about poisonous ones? How can one say a rat (definitely > >>sentient and lots smarter than most farm animals) has less of a right > >>to live than, say, a rabbit or a chicken? > >> > >>How about a 15 year old cherry tree? Or a 50 year old Douglas Fir? > >> > >>All creatures eat other creatures, in one way or another. > >>Think of the countless billions teeming in your compost pile. What > >>about their rights? > >> > >> > > > >Inside a compost pile seems to me like a reasonable sort of place to > >end up when it's your turn to get eaten. You'll become billions of > >creatures, eventually just merging into the spirit of the local soil > >community. > > > > > > > >>You are now able to choose to be a vegetarian. What > >>would you do if you were hungry, or your children were, and all you > >>could find to eat was an animal? Is hunger what you would consider a > >>good reason? Or would you let your kids starve because animals have > >>rights? Or if not, why do your kids have more rights than a bull calf? > >> > >>Not trying to be a PITA, it's just that the issue is far more complex > >>than what you present. > >> > >> > > > >I very much agree. (As I may have said...) > > > >My friend Prema is a Tibetan nun, based at Daramsala in India with > >the Dalai Lama. I've quoted her before here: "It's not often a person > >gets the chance to live a human life, it's quite rare, one shouldn't > >waste such an opportunity." Quite! > > > >She told me the Northern Buddhists are vegetarians but they don't > >make rigid rules about it. They try to live without killing other > >creatures, though they know it's impossible. She was very interested > >to hear that plants eat other creatures, they send out root hairs > >that capture and devour soil micro-organisms, even nematodes > >sometimes. Plants eat meat. > > > >It's possible (quite easy!) to live in a relationship of positive > >symbiosis with the rest of the creatures you're sharing your slice of > >the biosphere with, in full respect for the rights of everything else > >that's alive, while doing your share of necessary killing too. You > >can always be adding more than you're substracting. > > > >Best wishes > > > >Keith > > > > > > > > > >>andres (who, having been vegetarian, has also felt holier than thou) > >> _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
