The Dilemma of the Omnivore

I am not a meat eater, a vegetarian, or a vegan. I am an omnivore able to consider the positive and negative results and effects of this. I am a living entity interdependent on all other living entities feeding and being fed upon. An ecosystem exists within my gut. However, only we can choce to be intentional cruel or intetionally compassion. We can'tt stop pain and death,. but we can try to either improve or worsen things. Only humans can be humane or inhumane.

The main problem here is that we have lost all respect for our food, both animal and vegetable, as well all life forms in general, including the human animal. Earlier cultures respected the loss of the life in order to sustain another. The animals and plants were worshipped as life givers. They weren’t treated with intentional or casual cruelty.  Of course hierarchies developed, forcing all other life to a level below us and raising a few humans above all others.  Everything below the few at the top became dehumanized, raw material for the good of the few.  Industrialization, like the car industry, requires increasing demand to keep up with overproduction. Then planned obsolescence is built in, animals and plants are mutated through selective breeding and genetics to be the right colour and have no positive health value. 

Predators usually minimize the chance of prey killing them by going for the sick, the weak, and the elderly, those most unlikely to improve the health of the prey species. They leave the strongest and healthiest and fastest out of respect for their ability to end the predator’s life, even by accident. This is good for both species. We have flipped this. We eat the healthiest and throw away the ones we should be eating. Sometimes we just kill the best for their horns and antlers, or a good time. We could be the most humane predators on the planet instead of the least. We could eat a small number of animals who live in the best manner possible until their painless end becomes humane and beneficial.

We should kill and consume as little of everything as possible. Nature a has given us the choice, the advantage of being able to combine nutrient streams or switch back and forth as needed. Producing millions of fast-food hamburgers a day isn’t needed. Consumption is the food chain, but we have vast, wasteful, intentional over-consumption.

This debate has likely gone on since the first anthropoid chewed on the first bit of meat. It disgusted some and enticed others while others were ambivalent.  It goes back before us for sure. Chimpanzees hunt and eat monkeys. Venus flytraps eat flies.

Death is part of life, each driving the other. Cruelty isn’t a necessary part of it. The Biblical directive is sometimes interpreted as dominion, but can also be stewardship. Stewardship normally has the intent of nurturing and improving, not dehumanizing cruel exploitation.  We could make sure every life, every death, every sacrifice is appreciated and as painless as possible instead of maximizing the cruelty and destroying even the nutrients inherent in plants. 

We need to be integral with nature, not at war with it. In Tolkien terms, we need to be Elves not Orcs they were twisted into by dominating greed. This isn't tree-hugging but applying compassion to the lessons found in nature. Working with it and using the results of its uncountable experiments instead of assuming superiority of value and expertise. We need to humanize, not anthropomorphize, everything. Nothing and no one is expendable. It is all essentially integrated.

Dehumanization breeds dehumanization as each seeks to stand higher in the pile until it all collapses.

Only compassion defeats dehumanization.

Thursday April 13, 2017

The Matter of Meat: A history of pros and cons

Listen to Full Episode 54:00

Eating meat: some say we've evolved to do it. It's in our DNA. It's how we got our big brains. Yet others, as far back as Pythagoras, have argued that eating meat is bad for our bodies, cruel to animals, and toxic to the planet.  Now -- perhaps more than ever -- when it comes to the matter of meat, clear-cut answers can be hard to come by. Kevin Ball serves up the arguments.  **This episode originally aired November 23, 2016.

Ideas

Meat: we may have evolved to eat it, but arguments that it’s bad for our bodies, cruel to animals, and harmful to the planet go back thousands of years