Meat diets vs. vegetarianism

Only if you believe in the God of the Bible. It seems that you do?

Go back and read reply 66 I made to Stan please.

Go back and read reply 66 I made to Stan please.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Are you saying Stan believes in the God of the Bible? It seems you didn't read his post.

A bizarre lack of joined-up thinking somewhere, that's for sure.

Yes... I'm not sure whether you've yet read Michael Patterson's blog post on "difability" - if not, I think you should as I reckon you'd really appreciate it: A Reflection on a Decade of GBS.


Can you elaborate on this a little, Steve? Am genuinely confused as to what you mean and why you say this.

Thank you for that Laird. I read just a few paragraphs and I already felt that I could totally relate with some of what he wrote. [emoji106]

Sure.
As someone who has a fairly strong belief in a certain non-materialist worldview, I don’t see death as final. If I did, I think I would have difficulty coping with the death of relatives and even dogs! [emoji4] The idea that this is our one chance at life, when we are so stupid as humans, that we could accept the killing of others as easily as most appear to do - would be intolerable. That’s why I would have to shut compassion out to survive a lifetime with my sanity reasonably intact. Does that help?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Laird]

Sure.
As someone who has a fairly strong belief in a certain non-materialist worldview, I don’t see death as final. If I did, I think I would have difficulty coping with the death of relatives and even dogs! [emoji4] The idea that this is our one chance at life, when we are so stupid as humans, that we could accept the killing of others as easily as most appear to do - would be intolerable. That’s why I would have to shut compassion out to survive a lifetime with my sanity reasonably intact. Does that help?

I guess it kind of gives me a sense of where you're coming from, though maybe I don't quite understand. I mean, I think a totally reversed perspective is possible - something like: "If we only have one chance at life, then every small thing that we do, especially for others, is incredibly, incredibly important, and compassion is even more vital, because the person to whom we are showing compassion will not ever again have the chance to enjoy and appreciate life: we are even more obligated to make life as good as possible for as many people - who will get only this one chance at a good life - as possible".

Edit: just for your peace of mind: even though I can at times be incredibly contentious, I'm not trying to start an argument here - just sharing a different possibility.

Edit: just for your peace of mind: even though I can at times be incredibly contentious, I'm not trying to start an argument here - just sharing a different possibility.

Yes you are!


Just checking, do you want the 5 or the 10 minute argument? 

I understand that argument, that we should live our one life to the very fullest possible extent.

One might expect that with my worldview, it would be easy to relax a bit, it’s not that vital, we get another chance, type of thing? I don’t see it that way though, in any case, once you’re here, it’s difficult enough no matter what you might think. I reckon most people are too tired to give The Big Questions much thought. Any short moments of dreaming of them are rudely interrupted by a headbutt in the bollocks by a child!

But I would see the dark side of man as so stupid, bombing others for what? It’s insanity. It’s pure insanity. Money, power, all the things which drive the world as it is would be that much harder to accept. My current worldview makes sense, as well as soothing my delicate composition.

[Laird]

Just checking, do you want the 5 or the 10 minute argument? 

No, listen here, enough of this nonsense. I've already paid. You know precisely how long we are to argue for. Don't you??!!

[Laird]

More seriously, Steve: maybe I added that addendum as much to remind myself - and give myself reason - not to become argumentative where I might otherwise have been a little more reckless!

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Are you saying Stan believes in the God of the Bible? It seems you didn't read his post.

A bizarre lack of joined-up thinking somewhere, that's for sure.

If your going to assume you know or wonder about the mind if God which Stan has done then you have to have some perspective understanding of what God is supposedly thinking. The point I'm making is what the men whom wrote the scriptures that make up the Bible have done since antiquity: postulate what they think God is saying from their perspectives. Stan wonders if God differentiates mammals from plants like Stan does. Evidently God does not except for one thing. He elevates all humans above all other animals and to hold dominion over all the Earth. With all that said I was being a bit cheeky when I first replied to Stan.

With all I've written over the years I'm rightly surprised of the question of if I believe the Bible. What do you think?

If your going to assume you know or wonder about the mind if God which Stan has done then you have to have some perspective understanding of what God is supposedly thinking. The point I'm making is what the men whom wrote the scriptures that make up the Bible have done since antiquity: postulate what they think God is saying from their perspectives. Stan wonders if God differentiates mammals from plants like Stan does. Evidently God does not except for one thing. He elevates all humans above all other animals and to hold dominion over all the Earth. With all that said I was being a bit cheeky when I first replied to Stan.

With all I've written over the years I'm rightly surprised of the question of if I believe the Bible. What do you think?

It’s one thing to do that, but quite another to write those thoughts in a book and expect people to believe what you postulate. (And get very upset if they don’t) 

The God I tend to favour is not the one in the Bible, it’s more the one that I think Einstein favoured.

[Ninshub]

What I find difficult to reconcile is this fact; that for me to live - something must die.

Now whether that something is a plant or a cow is irrelevant. I believe that it’s only our limited minds that see them differently. To me, all life is sacred. Once again, I think a lot depends on ones worldview.

Joseph Campbell talked and wrote a lot about this topic. Mythology, an understanding of life as a sacred play and our role in it, reconciles us to the fact that in its very essence life feeds on life. From the book The Power of Myth:

Now, one of the main problems of mythology is reconciling the mind to this brutal condition of life, which lives by the killing and eating of lives. You don't kid yourself by only eating vegetables either for they, too, are alive. So the essence of life is this eating of itself! Life lives on lives, and the reconciliation of the human mind and sensibilities to that fundamental fact is one of the functions of some of those very brutal rites in which the ritual consists chiefly of killing--in imitation, as it were, of that first, primordial crime [C: in reference to an Indonesian creation story], out of which arose this temporal world in which we all participate. The reconciliation of mind to the conditions of life is fundamental to all creations stories. They're very like each other in this respect...

I can't find the part of which episode in the Power of Myth where this quote comes from, if it comes from the TV series itself, but he talks about this to some degree in this episode of the Power of Myth, in terms of hunters killing animals (start at around 11:30 minutes).


The hunter recognizes the animal as an equal, a Thou, instead of an It.


In another episode, there's a really interesting (to me) part about how life in essence is cruel and whether it's wise or spiritually more advanced to adopt a negative or affirmative stance to it. Some religions have developed a sorrowful attitude towards it (e.g. Christianity), Campbell thinks other mythologies are spiritually superior going the other way.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: (...) But I think it’s a really childish attitude, to say “no” to life with all its pain, you know, to say this is something that should not have been.

Schopenhauer, in one of his marvelous chapters, I think it’s in The World as Will and Idea, says: “Life is something that should not have been. It is in its very essence and character, a terrible thing to consider, this business of living by killing and eating.” I mean, it’s in sin in terms of all ethical judgments all the time.
BILL MOYERS: As Zorba says, you know, “Trouble? Life is trouble. Only death is no trouble.”
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That’s it. And when people say to me, you know, do you have optimism about the world, you know, how terrible it is, I said, yes, just say, “It’s great!” Just the way it is.
BILL MOYERS: But doesn’t that lead to a rather passive attitude in the face of evil, in the face of wrong?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: You participate in it. Whatever you do is evil for somebody.
BILL MOYERS: But explain that for the audience.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, when I was in India, there was a man whose name was Sri Krishnamenon and his mystical name was Atmananda and he was in Trivandrum, and I went to Trivandrum, and I had the wonderful privilege of sitting face to face with him as I’m sitting here with you. And the first question, first thing he said to me is, “Do you have a question?” Because the teacher there always answers questions, he doesn’t tell you what anything, he answers. And I said, “Yes, I have a question.” I said, “Since in Hindu thinking all the universe is divine, is a manifestation of divinity itself, how can we say ‘no’ to anything in the world, how can we say ‘no’ to brutality, to stupidity, to vulgarity, to thoughtlessness?” And he said, “For you and me, we must say yes.”
Well, I had learned from my friends who were students of his, that that happened to have been the first question he asked his guru, and we had a wonderful talk for about an hour there on this theme, of the affirmation of the world. And it confirmed me in a feeling that I have had, that who are we to judge? And it seems to me that this is one of the great teachings of Jesus.
BILL MOYERS: Well, I see now what you mean in one respect; in some classic Christian doctrine the world is to be despised, life is to be redeemed in the hereafter, it is heaven where our rewards come, and if you affirm that which you deplore, as you say, you’re affirming the world, which is our eternity of the moment.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That’s what I would say. Eternity isn’t some later time; eternity isn’t a long time; eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking in time cuts out.
BILL MOYERS: This is it.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: This is it.
BILL MOYERS: This is my …
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: If you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere, and the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.
There’s a wonderful formula that the Buddhists have for the Boddhisattva. The Bodhisattva, the one whose being, satra, is illumination, bodhi, who realizes his identity with eternity, and at the same time his participation in time. And the attitude is not to withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but to realize that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder, and come back and participate in it. “All life is sorrowful,” is the first Buddhist saying, and it is. It wouldn’t be life if there were not temporality involved, which is sorrow, loss, loss, loss.
BILL MOYERS: That’s a pessimistic note.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, I mean, you got to say yes to it and say it’s great this way. I mean, this is the way God intended it.
BILL MOYERS: You don’t really believe that?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, this is the way it is, and I don’t believe anybody intended it, but this is the way it is. And Joyce’s wonderful line, you know, “History is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awake.” And the way to awake from it is not to be afraid and to recognize, as I did in my conversation with that Hindu guru or teacher that I told you of, that all of this as it is, is as it has to be, and it is a manifestation of the eternal presence in the world. The end of things always is painful; pain is part of there being a world at all.
BILL MOYERS: But if one accepted that isn’t the ultimate conclusion, to say, well, ‘I won’t try to reform any laws or fight any battles.’
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I didn’t say that.
BILL MOYERS: Isn’t that the logical conclusion one could draw, though, the philosophy of nihilism?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, that’s not the necessary thing to draw. You could say I will participate in this row, and I will join the army, and I will go to war.
BILL MOYERS: I’ll do the best I can on earth.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I will participate in the game. It’s a wonderful, wonderful opera, except that it hurts. And that wonderful Irish saying, you know, “Is this a private fight, or can anybody get into it?” This is the way life is, and the hero is the one who can participate in it decently, in the way of nature, not in the way of personal rancor, revenge or anything of the kind.

Taken from here:
https://billmoyers.com/content/ep-2-jose...-the-myth/

And the relevant episode is here (start at 23 minutes):



Personally, I feel I'm in alignment with Campbell here, but it doesn't mean I don't struggle with these things either. I try to reduce my meat consumption to a very minimum, especially the way animals are killed today and our removal from the act of the killing, and our not having to rely on meat consumption to survive. I think plants  have a consciousness, as did Campbell, but I have less or no qualms about eating beings with less sentience (I recognize it's an assumption on my part), due to the fact that we are incarnated beings who live in this nature of life-feeding-on-life.

In another, larger way, I don't entirely get why people who believe in a spirit world (most people on this forum) are so upset about killing though - whether it's people getting murdered, babies getting aborted, beings getting eaten -, since this is obviously a shadow play for something greater that goes on and on. But I recognize that in my human animal incarnation I feel attachment and sympathy and empathy and can feel suffering at loss or other people losing loved ones. But on the other hand a part of me knowing that this is a creation of Mind and nothing really dies.