And here is the important part.
The beginning of compassion is to recognise the 'universal self' in all living things.
But not to assign a heirachy? To remove any absolute scale? You would have to become someone who renounces action. It is a complex argument but there is a difference between someone who renounces action and someone who strives for discipline in action.
You seem to agree that there are two types of evil when societies are concerned, so the man of discipline in action is necessary. In such a case we must have a scale to judge things on, and we must separate humans from animals as clearly as we can in each time.
Right, thank you for that.
IMO, this can cause some serious cognitive dissonance for those deciding to eat those things that were killed for them (even if the identity assumed is merely "generic predicted consumer".)
Of course, there are cases such as tibet, where it's so hard to grow anything of nutritional value that you would be doing more harm to yourself that this may less apply.
Right, I think for reducing the complexity of a hypothetical situation can/does allow for more absolute statements to be made.. and IMO is necessary when the topic is something narrow and focused (like "Shaolin Vegetarianism").
But obviously as you've indicated, there are hierarchies, both imposed by our minds and naturally occurring.. where universal "moral" and "ethical" truths don't quite stand up.
Now this is where I tend to 'remove an absolute scale' as you put it. Teaching people a set universal absolute scale vs. teaching someone critical thinking they can apply to any situation (although the two may not be entirely mutually exclusive).
"They found that 36 percent of the calories produced are used for animal feed. Of those, 12 percent wend their way to the human diet as meat and animal products. Another 4 percent of human-edible calories are used to produce biofuels.
Growing all those crops for direct human consumption instead increases available food calories by up to 70 percent, Cassidy and colleagues report in the Aug. 1 issue of Environmental Research Letters. "
They interestingly enough leave out the relatively-more-ethical option of local-farming..
...
On a seperate note - and an open question to everyone except bawang..
If you go to a local farmer in many places(as is the case in Chinese food markets "ShiChang"), they offer to kill the animal of your choice in exchange for your cash. .. that is, you tell them which live duck, chicken, etc you want and after you give them the cash, they chop off the head right there.
For anyone mentioning loose-threads-of-causality in the purchasing chain.... does this give you different conditions enough to admit you are at least an indirect cause?
http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/13/46...-we-can-fix-it
Decent article.
Nice article - although I don't know that it was hunting itself that allowed population expansion as much as conquering and enslaving other populations' labor and food resources.
-------------------
right from one of the reseaches in meat-in-vitro research in Alberta:
Re-Thinking Meat: Isha Datar at TEDxToronto
Basically she ' loves the environment, and realized how unsustainable our current societal meat eating trends are'....
but she loves the taste of animal so much that she decided researching in-vitro meat was the solution
I think for people that choose to eat meat (for those that get the decision), its a valuable experience to enter into the food chain yourself by hunting, killing and eating an animal. After you've done that, if you decide to continue eating flesh, at least then you are not quite so removed from the cycle of life.
For whoso comes amongst many shall one day find that no one man is by so far the mightiest of all.
Gene Ching
Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
Author of Shaolin Trips
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The Link-Fu is strong with this one.
For whoso comes amongst many shall one day find that no one man is by so far the mightiest of all.
Here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_NdpP0dxBU
That should fix yer green imp envy blues
rett syndrome's acting up again
sucking laowai farts out of the dengfeng bubble