> Brian:
>
> First of all, I don't think I ever said I have never killed anything before. I
> have, I didn't like it, but that was a personal ethical decision, not one I
> feel I have the right to impose upon all of humanity. If a person chooses to
> hunt to feed him/herself, and truly understands the food web and how we fit
> into it, and it not merely killing for pleasure - how can *I* not be respectful
> of that? (notice the emphasis - I - if you don't want to respect them, fine by
> me)
>
This is not about me imposing my views on others. James Serpell
shows in _In the Company of Animals_ that in all cultures that
exploit animals (hunting or domesticating) there exist mechanisms for
relieving the accompanying sense of guilt and responsibility. This
means that all of us, not just me, are uncomfortable harming animals.
So why don't we recognize this and act on it, rather than deceive
ourselves into thinking (very superficially) that it's okay, when our
guts and psyches know it isn't? I can give examples, either from our
own culture or cross-culturally, of these self-deceiving guilt
assuagers. The biblical myth that god gave us permission to dominate
animals and eat flesh is a good place to start in this culture.
The suggestion that activist vegetarians are imposing on humanity is
a complete reversal of reality (a typical tactic of patriarchy, as
Mary Daly points out in _Gyn/Ecology_). Right now the meat-based
diet in the US is imposed on the population, through massive federal
subsidies, deceitful propaganda about the nutritional importance of
animal products, withholding of relevant information from the public
(e.g., what's done to the animals to turn them into meat), etc., etc.
Then when vegetarians challenge this imposed violent "food" system,
we're accused of trying to impose our "personal" ethic on others, of
being disrespectful of others "choices."
> And, while I have adopted a vegetarian lifestyle for personal ethical, moral,
> health, environmental, and spiritual reasons,
To what extent do you think that the feelings behind your vegetarian
lifestyle are special to you, NOT felt by others such as men or
people in other cultures?
I believe that it is not
> unnatural for humans to eat meat occassionally. Our teeth are constructed so
> that it is possible for us to eat meat, our digestive systems are set up so
> that we can digest meat, we need many of the nutrients that meat provides us
> with (granted, I know that it is possible and even easy to find these nutrients
> elsewhere), and as participants in the life cycle, we shouldn't feel guilty
> about participating in a *natural* way. I just don't think that factory
> farming and raising animals in an inhumane way solely for the purpose of
> slaughtering them is natural.
>
Agreed. We are physiologically equipped to digest minute
amounts of flesh without major damage to our health. We evolved as
gatherers and scavengers, who might have eaten some insects or small
animals once in a while, or, in dire straits, scavenged some flesh
from an already dead animal. But this says nothing about how
PSYCHOLOGICALLY equipped we are to kill large mammals. As I said
before, we're not cats. Cats feel no compunction about their
killing, we do. Recognizing this is not imposing on others but
respecting human nature.
> So to kill like a cat, with the grace of a cat - even as humans is
> not necessarily wrong.
I would prefer to decide what to do based on OUR nature, not another
species' nature. But if for some reason we must insist on deriving
our ethics by looking at other animals, why focus on the 20% of
animal species who are predators, rather than the 80% who are
vegetarians? Instead of insisting on the human right to "kill with
the grace of a cat," why not celebrate our capacity to enact veganism
with the peace and dignity of a mountain gorilla--at least then we'd
be copying a fellow primate!
Brian Luke
