Living in the Kootenays is synonyms with Vegetarianism, even if most of us are not of that persuasion. Although I have gone without meat for periods of time, I still enjoy eating the stuff.
When I lived up north, in the Quesnel area, I tried abstaining for a few months. Then winter came and I found that I just could not get warm until I started eating flesh again. There’s nothing like animal fat and protein to stimulate the bodies capacity to produce heat.
During that time I developed a theory about meat. I believe there is a knowing, on the level of our collective consciousness, that second hand protein is of very little use to the human body. By this I mean the meat of meat eaters. Humans eat very little meat from predatory animals. Although I have heard, from people who have attended “Wild Life Dinners”, that cougar is very fine eating, I doubt it is very nutritious. I do not know of any culture that dines on a regular diet of carnivore meat.
I believe this is because a million years of trial and error in meat consuming has taught us the pointlessness of consuming second hand protein.
Some vegetarians argue that it is barbaric to consume the flesh of animals because they are sentient beings. It is paramount to cannibalism. I will be happy to report, on such occasions, that plants scream, too, when ripped from the ground. This is a proven fact. In the book “The Secret Life Of Plants”, experiments on a variety of plants showed, not only did plants experience trauma when exposed to various forms of abuse, but they had reactions which were concluded to be similar to emotion.
This presents a dilemma for those who think destroying the life of another being for any reason is wrong. I have heard many
Buddhist adepts will avoid even stepping on ants or other crawly things to avoid the bad karma of killing another being (but they will get a novice to kill things for them).
Some say it is all right to eat plants because they are a lower life form than our animal brothers. What I would like to know is - who is deciding on what level a life form is and by what criteria do they establish this arbitrary pecking order? Who do they think they are to be able to make such assumptions in the first place? Who assigned them the position of God in such matters?
I can only draw from the evidence presented (and from my own personal experiences) that all living things are sentient beings. It is widely accepted that all living creatures survive by consuming other life forms. There is no mystery there. So why all the fuss?
As was seen in the movie (and read in the book) Lord of the Flies, the human animal digresses to its lowest common denominator when it is stripped of any form of civilized restraints. If our social and political institutions should suddenly collapse, the Human race would digress to a form of savagery we can only imagine was prevalent among our ancestors, the Neanderthal Man. ( I do not know enough about those people to say for sure if they were as barbaric or cannibalistic as some stories and movies have portrayed them to be).
I do, however, believe, that given the worst case scenario of global economic and political collapse, we would revert to our basest behaviour. That includes cannibalism, infanticide, rape, pillage and plunder.
Knowing that on a collective conscience level we would avoid consuming second hand protein unless absolutely necessary, I think it is safe to say that, assuming a global collapse does occur, the vegetarians among us would be the first to be eaten. (I have also heard the argument that it may be the overweight who would be consumed first because they could not outrun their pursuers but I prefer to save them until winter when we need the warmth of that fat.)
When I was in my early thirties, I was a self righteous purist. When working for the Department of Holidays (Highways) in Quesnel I would loudly proclaim my disgust at the other employees habit of consuming vast quantities of junk food. One day, one of those employees became tired of my self righteous attitude and made a very poignant remark. He said “You and your kind are a dying breed. Do you see this Mac burger I am eating? This burger is full of chemicals that are helping me to create new forms of disease that you purists will have no defenses for. We junk food junkies are going to wipe you out with these new diseases!”
Four years later we started to hear about AIDS. Two years after that my brother’s doctor told him “MacDonald’s (the icon of junk food) causes AIDS because the chemicals in it are breaking down our immune systems.” Well, blow me away, if that co-worker wasn’t a profit after all! (By the way, I now consume some junk food just to be on the safe side.)
Here in lies the point of this preamble. Fanaticism doesn’t pay! Neither does self righteousness. An open mind will serve us much better than a closed one. Putting oneself into a category, like vegetarian, Buddhist, Christian, NDP, What-ever, is to separate oneself from the rest of life with some imaginary line of exclusivity. Life is an abundant smorgasbord of thoughts, ideas, concepts and other stuff. That is what makes it all interesting (or frightening, depending on how much we isolate ourselves).
‘Til next time - If life makes you want to wet your pants sometimes, just remember, you are not alone!
When I lived up north, in the Quesnel area, I tried abstaining for a few months. Then winter came and I found that I just could not get warm until I started eating flesh again. There’s nothing like animal fat and protein to stimulate the bodies capacity to produce heat.
During that time I developed a theory about meat. I believe there is a knowing, on the level of our collective consciousness, that second hand protein is of very little use to the human body. By this I mean the meat of meat eaters. Humans eat very little meat from predatory animals. Although I have heard, from people who have attended “Wild Life Dinners”, that cougar is very fine eating, I doubt it is very nutritious. I do not know of any culture that dines on a regular diet of carnivore meat.
I believe this is because a million years of trial and error in meat consuming has taught us the pointlessness of consuming second hand protein.
Some vegetarians argue that it is barbaric to consume the flesh of animals because they are sentient beings. It is paramount to cannibalism. I will be happy to report, on such occasions, that plants scream, too, when ripped from the ground. This is a proven fact. In the book “The Secret Life Of Plants”, experiments on a variety of plants showed, not only did plants experience trauma when exposed to various forms of abuse, but they had reactions which were concluded to be similar to emotion.
This presents a dilemma for those who think destroying the life of another being for any reason is wrong. I have heard many
Buddhist adepts will avoid even stepping on ants or other crawly things to avoid the bad karma of killing another being (but they will get a novice to kill things for them).
Some say it is all right to eat plants because they are a lower life form than our animal brothers. What I would like to know is - who is deciding on what level a life form is and by what criteria do they establish this arbitrary pecking order? Who do they think they are to be able to make such assumptions in the first place? Who assigned them the position of God in such matters?
I can only draw from the evidence presented (and from my own personal experiences) that all living things are sentient beings. It is widely accepted that all living creatures survive by consuming other life forms. There is no mystery there. So why all the fuss?
As was seen in the movie (and read in the book) Lord of the Flies, the human animal digresses to its lowest common denominator when it is stripped of any form of civilized restraints. If our social and political institutions should suddenly collapse, the Human race would digress to a form of savagery we can only imagine was prevalent among our ancestors, the Neanderthal Man. ( I do not know enough about those people to say for sure if they were as barbaric or cannibalistic as some stories and movies have portrayed them to be).
I do, however, believe, that given the worst case scenario of global economic and political collapse, we would revert to our basest behaviour. That includes cannibalism, infanticide, rape, pillage and plunder.
Knowing that on a collective conscience level we would avoid consuming second hand protein unless absolutely necessary, I think it is safe to say that, assuming a global collapse does occur, the vegetarians among us would be the first to be eaten. (I have also heard the argument that it may be the overweight who would be consumed first because they could not outrun their pursuers but I prefer to save them until winter when we need the warmth of that fat.)
When I was in my early thirties, I was a self righteous purist. When working for the Department of Holidays (Highways) in Quesnel I would loudly proclaim my disgust at the other employees habit of consuming vast quantities of junk food. One day, one of those employees became tired of my self righteous attitude and made a very poignant remark. He said “You and your kind are a dying breed. Do you see this Mac burger I am eating? This burger is full of chemicals that are helping me to create new forms of disease that you purists will have no defenses for. We junk food junkies are going to wipe you out with these new diseases!”
Four years later we started to hear about AIDS. Two years after that my brother’s doctor told him “MacDonald’s (the icon of junk food) causes AIDS because the chemicals in it are breaking down our immune systems.” Well, blow me away, if that co-worker wasn’t a profit after all! (By the way, I now consume some junk food just to be on the safe side.)
Here in lies the point of this preamble. Fanaticism doesn’t pay! Neither does self righteousness. An open mind will serve us much better than a closed one. Putting oneself into a category, like vegetarian, Buddhist, Christian, NDP, What-ever, is to separate oneself from the rest of life with some imaginary line of exclusivity. Life is an abundant smorgasbord of thoughts, ideas, concepts and other stuff. That is what makes it all interesting (or frightening, depending on how much we isolate ourselves).
‘Til next time - If life makes you want to wet your pants sometimes, just remember, you are not alone!
