Being vegetarian or vegan can go much, much deeper than just some random choice whether to eat just plants (with or without diary animal produce),
plants and animals or just animals.
It's kind of about what this place, this universe or planet is and seems to mean.
I think many children may have been very startled and disgusted in their very early years when they were learning what it is that people eat for
sustenance.
"We have to eat other beings? Gerry the Goat and Charlie the Cow? You mean kill them, end their lives, and put their bodies in our
mouths, taste them, chew them and swallow them and ingest them?". These kind of thoughts can be horrible to many babies.
As a vegetarian, I'm certainly not against other people or animals eating meat. (I see humans as animal, nothing but. I see humans essentially as
indistinguishable from other animals, whether or not we can or like to type on electronic keyboards to lighted screens which pass our thoughts to
other animals around the world through wildly complex network structures).
I see that bears in the wild, for example, are not going to be able to survive on berries alone, and it seems that they are going to need to kill
fish, birds, mammals, whatever they need if they have an impulse to stay alive. I don't know, but seems the animal spirit, including humans, may have
that built into them whether they like it or not. Not even clearly in the logical impulse for staying alive, but much more subtly, it comes as hunger
that seems to need to be satisfied and can be overwhelming, beyond choice or thought, especially if starved. As I said, humans are only a kind of
animal.
So, when I say that vegetarianism can be a deep, deep element of life and identity, I'm not meaning it prescriptively, for everyone. If you choose to
- eat meat.
The point is that, today, in much of the world (but by no means all, or maybe even most of the world), we now have a choice of whether to eat meat or
not. There is
no compulsion whatsoever to eat meat. We can stay alive and healthy without eating dead animal, without killing animal people and
having Wendy the Chicken for dinner (today - Philomena would be for tommorrow, Jezebel for Wednesday, Emily for Thursday and then we'd be on to Samuel
the cow on Friday and he'd do all weekend, bless him. If there's one thing about killing the cow you've fed in the back yard and brought up and loved
all your life, it's that you know he'll last all weekend for the family, much of next week with still some of Sammy for the cold store for leaner
times. After that, well, while I love how Francis the pigeon rests on my windowsill most mornings, and we do have good kind of chats, it's true that
he can't live forever and exactly when and how he dies can be up to me.)
So, obviously, you can do that if you want to - if you choose (while many people avoid or have not been able to think much about doing this, deeply).
However, we don't have to do it. Unlike many beasts of the wild, many human animals - actually most in the world (while maybe not in most places in
the world)
don't have to at all.
However, we still have hunger, have to eat to stay alive, and perhaps we think, since we find ourselves here on earth we are here for a reason. So
that means, we live on plants.
We don't know for sure, we don't know much about the meaning of this place if there is any, but it seems that the fruits of plants might just exist
for the very reason of eating them. It can be a little bizarre that potatoes are so nutritious, tomatoes the way the are and green beans so wholesome,
if they were not to be harvested.
So, these being enough to eat, there's no need to kill and imbibe Geoffrey the Goat (etc. etc. week after week).
When you examine what eating meat really is in the nature of a place, this universe - we can see that all one is doing is making sure one stays alive,
but in order to do this, every time, one is ending another being's life, who, it seems also wants to / is struggling to stay alive and be and grow.
At the end of the day, if you examine this closely, you will see that not only does it make no sense,
it seems wildly to be against sense. It
is a proposterous cycle of meaninglessness, suffering, torture (not only to the animal which receives the death, but perhaps more to the
sensibilities, conscious or subconscious of the animal which is continuing to dominate and slaughter and eat other struggling animals).
Why do we do it when we don't have to? There is no reason. Cows don't have to, and now many humans in today's world don't have to. There were
vegetarian societies many centuries ago, but before the modern age in the developed world, except in particular places people couldn't be sure if they
could always be vegetarian.
But, since you asked - why plants if they are living beings also - the most basic reason it seems is because we do have to eat something. After that
you can argue about that - for example, eating fruits of plants doesn't kill the plant - and there are other good arguments, but essentially the plant
part is - because you have to or else you die. I don't even think most of us can go with a choice to starve to death, we're not able.
edit on 3-2-2015 by bw1000 because: (no reason given)