Tonight I watched as two cats mercilessly taunted and battered a huge mouse that was in the house. At first I was stoked, I mean more excited than I was for the first football game of the year, but as the torture continued I began to feel remorse for the poor little mouse that was pretty much done for. If it was a quick and easy kill I could chalk it up to nature, but the cats just kept toying with the animal and I began to question their instincts.
This leads to the questioning of my own instincts and also those of others. Having grown up on a self sustaining beef farm, I learned at an early age the utilitarian benefits of animals. Our pets (the cows) were kept to provide my family with nourishment. Honestly, we named our cows after family members and friends whose birthdays landed closest to birth of our baby cows. That didn't deter us from butchering them when the time was right, and keeping them in the freezer until they were needed. That doesn't mean we didn't care for and about our animals. It makes the relationship sound even weirder, but we would play with the cows. When they were young they would snort and charge at us, but we learned how to grab them and spin them to the ground, where they would get up, snort stomp and charge again. It is a lot like the relationship between my brother and I.
I bring this up because these animals were treated very well and given the best of accommodations. We truly loved our animals, yet when the time came we killed them and put them in the freezer in order to provide sustenance to our family. To a lot of people this outrageous and cruel, but I know that these animals are treated better, and therefore have a better quality mean than most any farm in the country.
So that brings me to my next point.
What is life, and at what point is it ok to extinguish? A lot of vegetarians and even a few vegans I know hate mosquitoes. They slap the shit out of a bug that is biting them without a second thought. I don't mean to say that I don't do the same thing, in fact if I knew of a nest of baby biting bugs I would kill them faster than you can say st... I would napalm that colony like a politician in the 70's.
It takes me back to the simpler more barbaric times of my youth when it was perfectly acceptable to burn ants with a magnifying glass. If fact, it was called science. In my learned adulthood I question such practices. Although I am still a carnivore, I have reduced my carne intake significantly due to spices, and recipes that have fooled me into thinking I am satisfied. A good trick for meat-consumers to be satisfied by a vegetarian dish, is to make it just a little more spicy than the consumer is used too. Then put dill pickles on the top to even it out. It will be hard for the meat eater to finish because of the spice, but because there is no meat in it they will want to finish it in order to complain that they are still hungry, or will not finish it because of some other excuse, like gas.
So with that in mind I still wonder what is more in-humane? Is it worse to eat baby cows, (veal) or baby carrots (baby carrots)? Is the taking of a plant life less inhumane that the taking of an animal life? Why? They both have cells that grow, they both reproduce and neither one of them speak English. This is just the beginning. What about baby bok Choy? And other produce with baby in the name. Why do their lives get to be shortened due to deliciousness, as opposed to organisms that make noise and have motor skills?
The crazy thing is after I began to read Buddhist texts and to buy into the idea that all life is sacred, I began to realize that it doesn't mention plant life as being sacred. Apparently mobility determines validity. We all know that when you uproot a chloroplast producing, square celled organism it loses its ability to spawn and create more offspring. Even though it can't protest to its demise, does that mean it doesn't deserve to live? I wish I had more answers than questions, but considering I'm not running for office, I don't think I need to have answers. Especially since no one is paying me to have them. If the vegetable lobbyist want to pay me in order that this blog doesn't get out then I'll take it. I've got six other blogs that I hope will yield me lawsuits soon anyway.
