The Ethics of Eating

Venus fly trap doesn't care about your feels.

There's a quote from someone - I don't feel like looking up to be precise because my laptop is slow as balls - that goes something like, "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine." In other words, it's stranger than whatever our imagination is capable of conceiving. The reason for that, I believe, is that the universe is infinite, and holographic - meaning all parts contain the whole. The conceptual mind cannot grasp what is infinite, because the conceptual mind is finite. This is the whole point of meditation. I've gone off topic.

The evidence is mounting that plants, which we've long thought to have no nervous system - the nervous system being the conduit for conscious expression - are conscious. I happen to believe that not only is the entire universe conscious, but that it is an emanation of consciousness itself. If that seems preposterous keep in mind that, again, the conceptual mind is incapable of describing the infinite, and consciousness is, after all, a concept. Suffice to say, nearly everything we are capable of observing, from electrons in a plasma field to planets to superclusters of galaxies, exhibits what could be called consciousness and intelligence in some form.

For this reason I have to laugh at militant vegans who compare me to a Nazi because I eat meat. The more evidence that mounts suggesting plants are conscious, that plants know they are being eaten and do not like it (isn't that another way of saying "feels pain"?), the more it is apparent that, according to their "logic", the only ethical way of consuming food is to not consume food at all.

Unfortunately there is often little distinction made between the horrors of the industrially raised meat most people consume and pastured, organic meats. Every health and ethical and environmental objection raised about meat flagrantly ignores this distinction. Wherever and whenever I can - and unfortunately there is a limited market for this in my current location - I purchase pasture-raised meats. I have my own free range chickens for eggs. Any argument that there is no "humane" way to kill an animal for food is ignorant of the viciousness of wild nature. Though shortened by slaughter, the life lived by pasture raised livestock is superior to life in the wild. These animals have an abundance of food and fresh water, and protection from predators. If we could ask these animals their preference - to live under constant threat of starvation, especially during the cold winter, being eaten alive by a predator, having only a slight chance of living to old age, or living comfortably and safely for a shorter while to provide sustenance for a much more gentle and benevolent predator, which would they choose?

We can't ask them that question. And yet we must eat. And, as it turns out, plants don't like being eaten any more than animals do. So, we are left with a choice: starve to death or nourish our bodies the way nature intended, applying our intelligence and a sense of empathy to the process, so that we find an acceptable medium between the need to properly nourish the masses of humanity and providing a better life for animals (and plants) that will become our food.