User:RTG/Philosophy of Veganism

A booklet came with Mobys album Play in which he discussed life and philosophy. It said of his veganism:- "Oftentimes wen I meet someone they ask me why I'm a vegan (a vegan is someone who neither eats, wears, or uses animal products). Before I list the reasons why I've chosen to be a vegan let me say that I don't judge people who eat meat. People make different choices for different reasons, and it is not my place to judge the choices that other people make. Just being alive is inevitably going to cause suffering. But anyway, here's why I am a vegan. 1) I love animals, and believe that a vegan diet causes less suffering than a diet centered around animal products. 2) Animals are sentient creatures with their own wills, and it seems wrong to force our will on to another creature ust because we're able to. 3) A great deal of medical evidence points to the fact that a diet centered around animal products is terrible for you. Animal product based diets have been repeatedly proven to cause and exacerbate cancer, heart disease, obesity, impotence, diabetes etc. 4) A vegan diet is materially more efficient than an animal product based diet. By that I mean that you can feed a lot more people with grain directly than by feeding that grain to a cow and then killing the cow. In a world where people are starving it seems criminal to fatten up cows with grain that could be keeping people alive. 5) The raising of farm animals is environmentally disasterous. All of the waste from animal farming gets washed into our water supply, poisoning our drinking water and fouling our lakes, streams, and oceans. 6) Vegan food is nice to look at. Compare a plate with grains and fruits and vegetables to a plate with pigs' intestines, chicken legs, and chopped up cows' muscles. So that's pretty much why I'm a vegan. If for some reason you ever decide to become a vegetarian or a vegan, please do so carefully. MMost of our conventional diets are so meat and animal product based that when we give up meat we don't know what to replace it with. Although a vegetarian or vegan diet is a million times healthier than a carnivorous diet, making the transition away from eating animals needs to be done wisely. Most health food stores and bookstores have good books that can help you to make the transition from an animal product based diet to a vegetarian or vegan diet."

Prophet Mohammed - "A good deed done to an animal is as meritorious as a good deed done to a human being, while an act of cruelty done to an animal is as bad as an act of cruelty done to a human being."

Imam Al-Hafiz Basheer Ahmad Masri - "Any interference with the body of a live animal which causes pain or disfigurement is contrary to Islamic principles."

Surangama Sutra - "If we eat the flesh of living creatures, we are destroying the seeds of compassion."

The Dalai Lama - "There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality."

Mohandas Gandhi - "Spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants."

St. John Chrysostom - "We, the christian leaders, practice abstinence from the flesh of animals. The unnatural eating of flesh is polluting."

God - "thou shalt not kill."

Leonardo Da Vinci - "I have since an early age given up the eating of meat."

Abdul-Baha - "Educate the childeren in such a way that they become exceedingly kind and merciful to the animals."

Hosea (Bible) - "He that kils an ox is as if he killed a man."

Cardinal John H. Newman - "Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God."

Albert Einstein - "It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind."

Buddha - "Meat eating in any form, in any manner, and in any place is unconditionally and once and for all prohibited. I have not permitted meat eating to anyone."

It's 2019. "Farming Continues to Have Highest Rate of Fatal Injury of All". If these figures reported the state of the restaurant industry or the transport industry, there would be shock to be had. These reveals the nature of our perception toward the farming industry, we continue to see it as dirty and worthless, and that breeds dirty and worthless people because while most people just want to be respected and successful, a large percentage are only getting up out of bed to say, "I'll fill the nearest niche the world has created. I'll be... dirty and worthless then." At the back of that attitude is an honourable selflessness, but we do not honour and protect that selflessness by improving it. We blind our vision to it. There are more farm animals than humans in your country, but you do not see them. They are not laughing cows. They are ingredients at the jello factory. It is the dirty and worthless who are laughing because they've got to to live with themselves and the worse is, we are laughing with them and at them without recognising them.

The lion, whatever you may have seen and heard, is one of the farthest from a noble beast that can be found. They are not lord of any jungle (the tiger is that), and they do not live only on the plains in Africa. The lion lives everywhere it can survive. The ones who do live on the plains are scavengers and murderers of hyenas (60% of all hyenas die to lions who do not eat them, but if you watch Youtube you are more likely to see a lion get cornered by hyenas because we have a lie to honour). The male lion takes its pride by killing the former lion. It kills the head of the pride then it eats all of the children. When that is done it waits for young challengers and kills them for the rest of its life. It does not hunt. The females hunt. One of their main targets on the plains are young antelopes. Sometimes, when a female lion corners a baby antelope and nobody else can see them, it will lick the antelope and instead of eating it, will run away with it. They both slowly starve when this happens. If a male should find them, of course, it will eat the baby, but it seems to show, if a lioness would do something different... just for a change...

The lion is not even the king of the plains. The giraffe is the king of the plains, but it seems like that story is never told.

The human is the only ape which believes it prefers meat when given a natural choice. However, chimpanzees will often hunt and eat other small mammals. As chimps share more DNA with us than other apes, this is taken to prove a tendency to hunt. In fact, the chimpanzee will hunt and eat anything unfamiliar which encroaches its territory, bush babies, monkeys, termites, and even other chimps. When the territory of two separate groups of chimpanzees begins to overlap, such that they often hear each other or catch glimpses of each other, they become as an ant colony. There is no nice way to say it. The stronger hunts the weak and pulls them to pieces and sucks out the juice.

A gorilla in captivity is one of the most dangerous animals on the planet. In the wild, as long as you don't frighten the gorillas in the way a mouse might frighten an elephant, their group will either ignore you, or treat you like a friend of the family. A silverback will launch into a big cat and take fatal injuries to kill it, knowing well what the cat is. The gorilla has huge teeth to help it with such a fight, but they are not the teeth of a predator. The only thing a gorilla tends to eat in the wild is leaves.

Chimps do not have a choice what they are.

Humans do not eat flesh. We eat burgers and steaks and chops and all sorts of appetising words. However, just as we are not equipped for eating grass, the human is not equipped to eat meat. We aren't even equipped to break a large animals skin with our teeth. Most evolution is a response to the need to survive or the need to thrive. Humans engineer their meat. It is conceivable, easy to argue, that humans observed predators, long after we were able to kill a more dangerous animal, and wished to emulate them, or steal the secret of their strength and power. And just continued to learn and do what we see, as most animals do. Also, it is easier to travel through unfamiliar territory in the wild if you eat animals because not knowing which plants and fruits are safe will mean illness or death. Reasons like these are all defunct in todays world. There is no good reason to continue eating animals, or to continue using them for material as synthetics and plants have long ago surpassed the value animal derived products.

Sometimes when I yawn, you yawn too. As an animal, we may have overpowering control of our bodies and actions, but what we control is mostly an organic machine.

In this modern world we are not expected to be overtly gentle, but we are expected to uphold a certain level of accepted behaviour. We should not abuse each other or other animals. We should not kill, for instance. But to have animal products, kill and abuse we must. So we simply hide these events from sight.

If your job involves killing or otherwise harvesting animal products, your job may involve many distasteful elements, but that does not mean you are no longer human. You continue to be human, while the distasteful elements of your job continue to be distasteful. So you are required to "cope". You've got to laugh, you know? Yes that's right. Laugh and the world laughs with you. At various points you share your coping mechanisms, particularly through humour.

Sometimes when I yawn, you yawn too. Sometimes when I laugh, you are compelled to laugh with me. It's not perfect. You can't be perfect. But as a part of nature you have goals. You can't be perfect, or even truly know what perfect is. It is even possibly wrong to try to be perfect, but it is even more wrong not to try and be a little better than what has come before. We have a future to fulfil and that means change. Change into the unknown means failure. But it also means success. Becoming vegan in our ways is important for humans, while remaining dependant on animals is a tradition.

We kill them, tear them into a thousand pieces, lick up the parts one way or another... Some time later, vegetarians or not, we argue if the animal felt too much for us to forgive each other. A farmed animal lives in a bare cage of one form or another. If it does not behave as is wished of it, it feels pain.

Once it nears the end of puberty, it dies.

Even if it feels nothing, the death and dismemberment is a horror story. This means horror story actors, in the real world where we tell ourselves, such situations are naturally prevented.

Those who produce such food for us, sadly, are always rejected as the lowest form of behaved human, especially by those who consume the produce. Veganism is one step toward changing that situation. How lowly can you be if you brave a bit of mud which is used to change humanity from a hidden horror story, to a brave new world.

Yes brave. You know that much is true. Ahahahaha, right? Ahahahaha...

Veganism changes human lives without necessarily changing their purpose (farming, for instance, does not stop being required when diets change). There is no real need to pretend there is no violence or struggle in the world when we change our choice of diet and materials, and we may be foolish or wrong when we believe that way, but there is a particular kind of adventure which cannot be experienced any other way.

You will see and hear many things in this world. Studies show, vegans tend to consume multiple times the amount of protein as vegetarians and other meat eaters do, particularly the meat eaters. Eat your colours. Eat your leaves and fruits. Protein is on the side if you want to stay healthy. In your heart you know, these super rich protein foods, we have come to see as regular, are a bit synthetic. As a vegan, you are particularly susceptible to that. Get off the sucrose completely. Get cheap organics, passatas, whole plain soya, eat baby vegetables such as potatoes and carrots. They grow better for harvesting when small and are more nutritious. You do not need to drink 2 litres of water each day. You need to consume 2 litres of liquids. Drinking some water at various times helps your system to clean and lubricate. It makes no sense to flush your system every day if you are otherwise getting sufficient fluid. But get sufficient fluid one way or the other. If you are going to sweat and exercise the 2 litres out of you every day, well then drink it. Your heart beats all the time even if you do not feel it, but if you can make yourself feel it every day just through a minimum of exercise, you turn the engine over.

Even if you are not an ape, your body is. Have your feet left the ground today? Have your hands lifted your own bodyweight today? Have your feet tried to be hands today? Have you turned upside down today? Have you touched your shoulderblades today? Have your buttocks touched the ground today? Have your hands played with your ankles today? Have you held your breath today? Have you closed your eyes and lifted your arms, while you remember what flying is, even if you cannot do it, today? Have you made a rhythm, today? Have you played with your tongue today? Have you learned how to make a list of apelike activities you can perform humanly, in this lifetime? It's the only one you've got. It's the only thing you are. It's the only thing you can be, no matter how special of a one you are, that is the one you are. Be the one. Not the only one, but one all the same... ook ook.

"I am only one, But still I am one. I cannot do everything, But still I can do something; And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do." ~ Edward Everett Hale, quote popular among vegans at one time or another.