Sorry this is so long, I don't even know if I'm posting this in the right place or if anyone will read it, I'd just really like to hear other peoples' ideas and opinions.
So I've been passionate about my veganism for a long time. But I’ve been getting very upset recently and extremely angry, to the point where it’s really affected my whole wellbeing. Feeling like I had to battle everyone around me, even those closest to me, as one of the minority of sane people in an insane world, shouting and screaming against a tide of brainwashed people; waking up every day thinking about all the animals suffering in the world, seeing the injustice everywhere in everyday life. But then after I watched yet another video about veganism, this time a speech, I had some different thoughts of my own.
Ok so. The way I see it is this:
Everything living has to eat something else that is living to survive.
Plants generate themselves by photosynthesis and sunlight but are part of the earth and decay in its soil,
Every human being will eventually be recycled by the planet when they die,
Our bodies are full of tiny cells, bacteria, that eat us,
Animals kill other animals,
And each animal instinctually tries to survive; animals have a brain, a nervous system to feel pain and sentient consciousness (unlike plants).
But they do not have the same level of consciousness as us.
But unlike plants, animals evolved to move around to eat other organisms.
Everything that lives relies on other things that live, because instead of seeing the world as separate,
Humans, plants, animals (basic categories),
I can see the world as though it’s one organism,
Giving birth to itself, dying, decaying and eating itself,
It’s a constant cycle of consumption,
The planet literally eats and consumes itself,
Even on a cellular level,
And everything is connected,
The bio-diversity is rich and amazing and creates one whole self-sustaining eco-system.
It makes sense as humanity evolved to use the flesh, skin and bones of animals to survive and live.
It makes logical progressive sense also that we reached the point of industrialising that cultivation.
But with that came a disconnect from nature and therefore ourselves.
I think now having reached this stage of evolution, in my part of the first-world, eating and consuming animals has become more of an addiction, a habit or convenience, at the detriment of the natural world.
And I think with our elevated consciousness and intelligence comes responsibility.
We can chose.
And there is so much cognitive dissonance that the food people eat or products they consume were once an animal or belonged to an animal.
I personally wouldn’t harm or kill an animal, unless I was put in a survival situation and even then I can only speculate on what I would or wouldn’t do, and I wouldn’t want to pay someone else to torture or kill an animal for me.
I want to live compassionately, I can’t stand of suffering of innocent beings, people or animals, but suffering is fundamentally a natural part of life.
In Buddhism that is the first noble truth.
Nature and animals do not have an ego, but we do, which makes all of this living on the earth together thing tricky…
But the point is, is eating animals really inherently wrong? Is it so wrong to recognise that we are all part of one earth that lives and breaths and endlessly recycles itself? Can you humanely kill an animal if you recognise that it’s life is your own, that we are all connected and all profoundly one, one cosmic energy moving in synergy?
As Alan Watts writes in Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts unknown, page 12:
“[…] under the surface of both sky and water there is the grim business of preying. Men and birds against fish, fish against fish. The tortuous process of life continuing by the painful transformation of one form or body into another. To creatures who do not anticipate and reflect imaginatively on this holocaust of eating and being eaten, this is perhaps not so terrible. But poor man!”
And page 13:
“But man with his astonishing ability to stand aside from himself and think about himself – in short, to comment on life, man has done something which confuses his own existence down to its roots. For the more sensitive he is, the more he finds the very act of living in conflict with his moral conscience. Upon reflection a universe so arranged that there is no way of living except by destroying other lives seems to be a hideous mistake.”
So I've been passionate about my veganism for a long time. But I’ve been getting very upset recently and extremely angry, to the point where it’s really affected my whole wellbeing. Feeling like I had to battle everyone around me, even those closest to me, as one of the minority of sane people in an insane world, shouting and screaming against a tide of brainwashed people; waking up every day thinking about all the animals suffering in the world, seeing the injustice everywhere in everyday life. But then after I watched yet another video about veganism, this time a speech, I had some different thoughts of my own.
Ok so. The way I see it is this:
Everything living has to eat something else that is living to survive.
Plants generate themselves by photosynthesis and sunlight but are part of the earth and decay in its soil,
Every human being will eventually be recycled by the planet when they die,
Our bodies are full of tiny cells, bacteria, that eat us,
Animals kill other animals,
And each animal instinctually tries to survive; animals have a brain, a nervous system to feel pain and sentient consciousness (unlike plants).
But they do not have the same level of consciousness as us.
But unlike plants, animals evolved to move around to eat other organisms.
Everything that lives relies on other things that live, because instead of seeing the world as separate,
Humans, plants, animals (basic categories),
I can see the world as though it’s one organism,
Giving birth to itself, dying, decaying and eating itself,
It’s a constant cycle of consumption,
The planet literally eats and consumes itself,
Even on a cellular level,
And everything is connected,
The bio-diversity is rich and amazing and creates one whole self-sustaining eco-system.
It makes sense as humanity evolved to use the flesh, skin and bones of animals to survive and live.
It makes logical progressive sense also that we reached the point of industrialising that cultivation.
But with that came a disconnect from nature and therefore ourselves.
I think now having reached this stage of evolution, in my part of the first-world, eating and consuming animals has become more of an addiction, a habit or convenience, at the detriment of the natural world.
And I think with our elevated consciousness and intelligence comes responsibility.
We can chose.
And there is so much cognitive dissonance that the food people eat or products they consume were once an animal or belonged to an animal.
I personally wouldn’t harm or kill an animal, unless I was put in a survival situation and even then I can only speculate on what I would or wouldn’t do, and I wouldn’t want to pay someone else to torture or kill an animal for me.
I want to live compassionately, I can’t stand of suffering of innocent beings, people or animals, but suffering is fundamentally a natural part of life.
In Buddhism that is the first noble truth.
Nature and animals do not have an ego, but we do, which makes all of this living on the earth together thing tricky…
But the point is, is eating animals really inherently wrong? Is it so wrong to recognise that we are all part of one earth that lives and breaths and endlessly recycles itself? Can you humanely kill an animal if you recognise that it’s life is your own, that we are all connected and all profoundly one, one cosmic energy moving in synergy?
As Alan Watts writes in Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts unknown, page 12:
“[…] under the surface of both sky and water there is the grim business of preying. Men and birds against fish, fish against fish. The tortuous process of life continuing by the painful transformation of one form or body into another. To creatures who do not anticipate and reflect imaginatively on this holocaust of eating and being eaten, this is perhaps not so terrible. But poor man!”
And page 13:
“But man with his astonishing ability to stand aside from himself and think about himself – in short, to comment on life, man has done something which confuses his own existence down to its roots. For the more sensitive he is, the more he finds the very act of living in conflict with his moral conscience. Upon reflection a universe so arranged that there is no way of living except by destroying other lives seems to be a hideous mistake.”
