Back To The Drawing Board
Posted on Jul 17th, 2008
by 
Fearless
Fearless
FOR SEVERAL DAYS, I haven't known what to write about here, but I've just come from an interesting discussion in Second Life about the Ethics of Vegetarianism and it's given me a new focus.
I've always wondered, "What's wrong with me?" This vague feeling of not being 'right' or having some intrinsic 'fault' that I just don't seem to grasp or comprehend, has always been with me. Without getting too 'psychological' about it, it's something I've addressed from time to time, and then when the 'crisis' passes, I pretty much just go back to who I was before anyway.
Discovering Second Life has been a turning point. I realised one day that I was spending far more time and energy creating a beautiful avatar for in there, than I was in focusing on the 'real' me, out here. It was a good realisation to have and it started me on the journey that I'm now taking.
We all go through periods of adjustment / development / advancement and along the way, I think I've evolved to a pretty good person. Still, there are a few improvements which can always be made. And that's what this trip is for me - a new page - more chapters - and another 'fresh start'.
Looking at the issue of what I eat - what I take into my body as nourishment - is something that I've thought about from time to time. I have really bad eating habits - in fact, I'm ashamed of how I nourish my body ( or don't!) It's one of the most basic homages we can give to ourselves, but I just 'make do' and get by. I do it with the clothes I wear as well - thrift shops and what people pass on to me.
You wouldn't think it, but I do ascribe to the "Your body is your temple" sentiment, but I use mine as a rubbish bin! (You can see why I ask myself, "What's wrong with you?")
This is all indicative of attitude that I have - I just take what comes. I don't make any sort of conscious effort to 'create' myself - to adorn myself, to nurture myself. And this is going to change. It is!
I used to be a vegetarian (many years ago) for about seven years and then one day, I just felt like a sausage in bread with onions and tomato sauce and that was the end of my vegetarianism. But I've always felt uneasy with the moral dilemma of eating meat. I've always thought that if you don't have the 'stomach' to kill an animal, then you shouldn't be eating it.
Abdicating our responsibility to kill our food on to someone else, is just weasly, really. But still, I do. Many of us do. How many people do you know who kill their own meat? The discussion was interesting enough that I want to share it with you:
Thomas: Today, I wanted to focus on ethics...which has come up nearly every week anyway. Several weeks ago, when we started this gathering, I gave people an opportunity to say why they had decided to live a vegetarian lifestyle…and it is a lifestyle, not merely a ‘diet’ because it can affect so many choices beyond food and the way that people look at you. Today, I’d like to start delving a bit more deeply into these reasons.
Thomas: Many are driven to vegetarianism for ‘ethical’ reasons. In fact, in western, more industrialized countries, ethics may well be the most popular reason for going vegetarian. Ethics and morality are so synonymous, that one word is used to define the other.
Thomas: A popular phrase in US politics (and likely others) over the last few years is that morality can’t be legislated because we are all raised in different circumstances with varying influences to establish our moral values to which we go on through life further developing or perhaps undoing our morality. Society does try to establish basic moral standards but they certainly don’t cover all circumstances you’ll face in your lifetime.
Thomas: Various ethical reasons have been suggested for choosing vegetarianism. It has been argued, for example, that the production, slaughtering, and consumption of meat or animal products is unethical. Reasons for this include a belief in animal rights, an aversion to inflicting pain or harm on other beings, or a belief that the unnecessary killing of other animals is inherently wrong.
Thomas: One might also argue that although production and consumption of meat may be acceptable, the methods utilized in the commercial industry are unethical. Ethical vegetarianism has become more popular after the spread of factory farming.
I wonder how many people actually see the life and death conditions of the approximately 100 million pigs, 37 million cows which are raised and slaughtered in the US alone every year….or more than 20 million chickens slaughtered every single day and think it is morally, or ethically right.
Grace: I've always thought that if you don't have the 'stomach' to kill an animal yourself ... then you shouldn't eat it. But so many of us are quite prepared to abdicate our responsibility for 'feeding ourselves' and let others do the killing for us. Including me, I might add.
Thomas: I know that some of my friends or co-workers will tell me that they were raised on a farm and that I have no idea of what is going on, yet they were raised on a family farm...saw a calf born and raised it themself...and have no idea of what the conditions are at factory farms.
Chee: I'm wondering if vegetarians would eat meat if they killed the animals in a more ethical way?
Grace: If you had to kill the animal yourself Chee, I think you would think differently.
Thomas: I would not now, Chee.
Sara: well, i wouldn't, but can't speak for anyone else
DeSantis: chee, i hunted and i did kill
Chee: yes but that is because we are so far from nature at these times
Thomas: I think that the first time I saw my father kill a deer is when I began losing my taste for meat.
Grace: Maybe the answer is to get back to a more natural way ... if each of us were responsible for actually getting our own food (from nature) rather than the supermarket.
Thomas: The US Department of Agriculture estimates that 10 billion animals are killed annually for human consumption in the US alone. That doesn’t even consider the number of aquatic animal killed for human consumption but estimates are in the range of 17 billion in the US without consideration of incidental by-catch – marine or bird life that gets caught up in the process but never makes it to the dinner table.
DeSantis: Grace - we all live in trees?
Grace: No ... but we are so remote from the natural world now. We're so dis-connected.
Sara: i would happily live in a tree....
DeSantis: she's right
Chee: yes that's what i mean Grace, i don't think it's right to say i'd probably think differently if i had to kill it myself.. i don't need it to survive
Grace: I think we are at a crossroads ... we can either go the way of letting multi nationals feed us or we can be responsible for our own food production.
Thomas agrees with Grace.
Grace: My partner is aiming for a vegan diet .... but I don't see anything wrong with getting milk from a cow or honey from a bee.
Thomas: I guess that comes back to how dairy cows are treated. Some are treated horribly to increase their production of milk.
DeSantis: milk from a cow i will argue; honey - well that's still under debate
Grace: I'm thinking along more personal lines ... small production ... family / community
DeSantis: no problem - i kept chickens and killed them and dressed them
Thomas: yes, I think there is room for smaller operations like that ... where the cows may well live a better life than they might in the wild. But they are near defensless and were never intended to exist in the number they do in captivity.
Thomas: There is such waste in food production. For example, Shrimp fisheries are the worst with 80 – 90% of the marine life (in weight) being drug from the ocean bottom considered by-catch and waste.
Grace: I don't know whether it's possible to put the genie back into the bottle ... for us to turn our backs on large scale farming/fishing production methods.
Sara: it's probably difficult with the large population of humans
Thomas: Others are less deadly but there really isn't enough fish to keep feeding an increasing human population either.
DeSantis: how much of the world will you accept starving? Until this year i grew 35% of our food
Grace: We are working harder/faster/longer to pay for a lifestyle that's not beneficial to us. What happened to us being self-sufficient? Growing our own food?
DeSantis: we lost
Thomas: yes, we got caught up in 'improving' our lives and lost track of the basics, I think.
DeSantis: i have a freezer full - and if the power goes?
Grace: We've now become dependent upon a lifestyle that isn't sustainable. We can't look after ourselves any more. Or at least, it's far more difficult to. People use up all their time working for someone else to get enough money to buy food (from someone else)
DeSantis: that's not quite true. Define lifestyle.
Chee: well we're on our way to become useless i think.. all machines
Grace: The way we live our lives.
Grace: I don't know that many people are really living the lives they WANT to live. They are leading the lives they HAVE to.
Thomas: Sometimes Chee, I think we are less feeling..less empathetic with what is happening around us and how we treat others...but then you look back in history and we've always been violent, as a race.
DeSantis: there are people in the Sudan getting by. And that's a shit hole.
Thomas: true.... but I think most of us would not be happy with that lifestyle ... but then, we have excess on the other end of the scale.
Grace: Yes, but is 'getting by' the kind of life they want to lead? And how are they 'getting by'? How much support are they getting from others?
Grace: I have this idealistic notion of wondering what would happen if ALL of society's wealth was evenly divided between the world's adults ...
Thomas: There are also non-animal rights arguments to promote vegetarianism. Global warming is one key issue for environmental vegetarians. According to a study done by the University of ... switching from a meat-eating diet to vegetarianism reduces one carbon footprint by 1.4 times the amount of switching from a Toyota Camry to a Hybrid car.
Grace: This is a relatively new phenomenon (I think) ... this consideration of what impact our actions have on the planet.
Thomas: I think it is gaining more of a foothold.
Grace: In the past, farmers, industrialists etc., just did what they wanted to do and expected Planet Earth to suck it up.
Thomas: I remember an environmental class 15 years ago in which we discussed the affects of animals on the climate.
Bonn: thomas, sorry, I am not a global warming advocate
Grace: But shouldn't we all tread more gently on the earth anyway Bonn, regardless of whether you think global warming is a legitimate issue or not?
Thomas: ..but it is something that many are becoming so much more aware of. This is because of the vast amount of methane that is put into the air from overbreeding for consumption, methane being a 32% more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Shipment of the grain and the cattle itself also plays a part in this issue, being that it takes 8 pounds of grain to get 1 pound of meat.
DeSantis: ok, so how many should we cull?
Thomas: That is always something that stuck with me...that cattle need up to 10 lbs of grain to produce 1lb of meat. People could be eating the grains instead of feeding cows to kill them.
Bonn: I agree 100% - except for the clean kills I have witnessed
Thomas: and all of that is assuming, in my mind Bonn, that killing anything for our own pleasure or comfort is right. I don't accept that..clean or not.
Bonn: The fish - caught in front of me and instanly killed
Thomas: and that would make my mother feel better to know I was instantly killed in front of her..rather than tortured.
Grace: I just have to keep reminding myself that another sentient being's life is being taken just so I can eat.
Grace: Bonn, have you ever killed anything yourself?
Bonnie: The problem is OUR socieity - it horribly hurting the cows
Grace: Our society is you and me Bonnie.
Treading softly on the earth - being mindful of how our actions impact on others. Which is probably the 'modern' way of saying, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you ... only do it first."
Being Graceful and Serene
Access: Public
food sustainability
September 2008 
I am very glad that you wrote about this issue. I have been a vegetarian for 4 years now. I still live at home and I am the only person in my immediate family who doesn't eat meat. I made the decision to stop eating meat for moral reasons; I didn't want to kill other living creatures to feed me and I didn't want to eat things that once moved and thought for themselves. Sometimes my dad and sister will ask me why I have trouble eating meat, but why I still eat plants which were once alive as well. This question is very good because it does put some things into perspective. How are plants so different from animals? Both things grow and need some sort of energy to live off of, just like humans. So how is it different and good for me to be a vegetarian when I am still taking the life of innocent plants? I have thought about this question a lot and I have remained a vegetarian because of health reasons as well as moral reasons. Thank you for your article and for letting me comment! -Sophie
Dear Sophie,
What is left for you to eat if you don't use the plants for nourishment? Personally, I believe that plants and animals (and us) were all created/developed as a complex system of hierarchy - sharks eat humans; humans hunt sharks; lions eat deer; deer eat grass; dogs kill cats; cats kill birds; birds eat worms - it's all just part of nature's way.
It basically comes down to what you're comfortable with. People with a sensitive disposition are less likely to eat another living creature, but don't have any qualms about eating a carrot (which was also once living and would doubtless just rot in the ground if we didn't pull it up to eat). Likewise, every living creature will die one day, if it isn't eaten or killed by a car on the road for example). We all die - even rocks wear away eventually.
It's all just part of the relentless way of life.
Morally though, I feel purer for not eating animals, even though sometimes I might still yearn for that 'texture' of meat (which would appeal to me whether it was an animal or a vegetable).
We can all just do our best and do what we think is right.
It's a pleasure to hear from you - always such a thrill to have someone respond to a posting.
All the best,
Grace