vegetarianism

We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory-disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.

When we lift our forks, we hang our hats somewhere. We set ourselves in one relationship or another to farmed animals, farm-workers, national economies, and global markets. Not making a decision--eating 'like everyone else'--is to make the easiest decision, a decision that is increasingly problematic.

It may be considered folly by common opinion but this refusal to destroy life unnecessarily, this reverence for it, must become a deeply implanted part of his ethical standard.

A simple trick from the backyard astronomer: if you are having trouble seeing something, look slightly away from it. The most light-sensitive parts of our eyes (those we need to see dim objects) are on the edges of the region we normally use for focusing. Eating animals has an invisible quality. Thinking about dogs, and their relationship to the animals we eat, is one way of looking askance and making something invisible visible.

The persistence of the story of animal consent into the contemporary era tells of a human appreciation of the stakes, and a desire to do the right thing.

The choice-obsessed modern West is probably more accommodating to individuals who choose to eat differently than any other culture has ever been, but ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore - ____ easy; I__l eat anything_ - can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society. Food choices are determined by many factors, but reason (even consciousness) is not generally high on the list.

Before child labor laws, there were businesses that treated their ten-year-old employees well. society didn__ ban child labor because it__ impossible to imagine children working in a good environment, but because when you give that much power to businesses over powerless individuals, it__ corrupting. When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it__ corrupting.

We think of dogs as being more like people than pigs; but pigs are highly intelligent animals and if we kept pigs as pets and reared dogs for food, we would probably reverse our order of preference. Are we turning persons into bacon?

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them.

Despite the fact that an Indonesian island chicken has probably had a much more natural life than one raised on a battery farm in England, people who wouldn't think twice about buying something oven-ready become much more upset about a chicken that they've been on a boat with, so there is probably buried in the Western psyche a deep taboo about eating anything you've been introduced to socially.

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

Jīvaka, I say that there are three instances in which meat should not be eaten: when it is seen, heard, or suspected [that the living being has been slaughtered for oneself]. I say that meat should not be eaten in these three instances. I say that there are three instances in which meat may be eaten: when it is not seen, not heard, and not suspected [that the living being has been slaughtered for oneself]. I say that meat may be eaten in these three instances.

Being vegetarian here also means that we do not consume dairy and egg products, because they are products of the meat industry. If we stop consuming, they will stop producing. Only collective awakening can create enough determination for action.

One time I took my knife and sliced off the end of a hog__ nose, just like a piece of salami. The hog went crazy for a few seconds. Then it sat there looking kind of stupid. So I took a handful of salt and rubbed it on the wound. Now that hog really went nuts. It was my way of taking out frustration. Another time, there was a live hog in the pit. It hadn__ done anything wrong, wasn__ even running around. It was just alive. I took a three-foot chunk of pipe and I literally beat that hog to death. It was like I started hitting the hog and I couldn__ stop. And when I finally did stop, I__ expended all this energy and frustration, and I__ thinking what in God__ sweet name did I do.

Living beings wide and far are creatively enticed into the idea of living only on the substance of leafy greenery by alluring allegations that seem to make apparent sense. Some want to avoid the dying aspect of life and prolong the bodily functions of their organs within their potential corpses over time and reduce the waste products given off by our walking structures to lessen worldly contamination. Others want to avoid consuming Earth__ usual containing features from being overly exhumed, or because we have never not lovingly smothered Earth__ natural oxygen sucking creatures, and so we do not consume the things that are taking nutrients from us so that we can preserve them instead, because we find it morally dissatisfying.

Possessing strength and stillness is a sign of balance: power and serenity combined in one moment. It__ challenging enough to hold either one, let alone both, in perfect equipoise, but that is the goal if we want to be balanced.