In regards to eating meat

[Steppingfeet]

Hi Monica,

Firstly, thank you for tactfully exploring this highly charged issue so close to your heart with grace and respect for all. While in many ways I do not see eye to eye with you on this particular issue, I feel that you have honored both the spirit and the letter of the first guideline of this forum in exemplary fashion. Thank you for taking us all to task, compelling us to examine some deeply held and perhaps unrecognized beliefs. And thank you to everyone else who has contributed mightily to this issue!

Monica wrote:
Why is killing raping a child perverted and sadistic, but contributing to the torture and killing of an animal NOT perverted and sadistic? Why is it a given that they are not the same? THAT is my point! I would like to explore why they are different.

It seems that much of your perspective is predicated on your emotional conviction in the equivalency of murder/rape/torture and animal slaughter. I understand the deep compassion and empathy wherefrom this arises – and do not fault you for it – but, after considering whether I should adopt a similar emotional perspective, I find that I cannot.

Before I dive into the reasons for not agreeing, I must begin by differentiating between humane slaughter on one hand and unnecessarily brutal, sadistic, and barbarous slaughter on the other. I make no case or apology for inhumane slaughter. I attempt only to contrast humane slaughter (which I believe both possible and feasible) against the crimes you list above.

The difference as I see it follows thusly:

• (1) It is necessary to eat food. You naturally would contend that it is not “necessary” to eat meat, but I’m sure we would both agree on the larger point that it is a necessity of biological life that life feeds off of life. For some strange reason the Logos did not arrange for inert matter, like a rock, to nourish us, or for that matter, neither did it design water to be our sole source of sustenance. We must eat that which was once living (and in the case of yogurt, is still living).
  
  There is nothing, absolutely nothing necessary about raping. There is no biological imperative that demands we rape or torture another for the physical continuation of the individual or the species.
  
  (2)

  Book II, Session #42: RA: …the balanced entity will see in the seeming attack of an other-self the causes of this action which are, in most cases, of a more complex nature than the cause of the attack of the second-density bull as was your example. Thus this balanced entity would be open to many more opportunities for service to a third-density other-self.

  
  The situation of love vs. control between two third-density entities is hopelessly complex, much more so than the situation of the third-density entity in relation to the second-density entity, as with the bull.
  
  I am sure that the animal feels a basic emotional set of responses centered around fear and the animal joy of being itself and fulfilling its purpose. However the animal, I believe, is not going to experience a crisis of self-worth in response to humane slaughter. Is not going to be overcome with shame as might the victim of rape. Is not going to turn the situation into a complex moral dilemma as might the subject of torture. Humane slaughter, I believe it safe to presume, is not going to cause detriment to the conscious identity of the creature.
  
  (3) Fueled by the desire to survive, to serve others the product of the foodstuff, and to express gratitude to the animal for the giving of its life, a human can slaughter humanely without sinister motive. Contrast that to the rapist who cannot have pure intention. While I am sure that rape can be undertaken with more or less compassion for the victim, malevolence must be present in the heart of the perpetrator on some level.
  
  (4) Rape and torture by definition are a violation of free will. I think it impossible to argue that either activity is other than a violation of free will. (If either rape or torture are desired by the receiving party, then it becomes something other than rape and torture.)
  
  One creature eating an other, be it plant or animal matter, is not so clearly a “violation” of the plant or animal’s free will. On the contrary, as I mentioned above, to eat once living material is a biological necessity of life. If this act of life eating life (with an eye towards the sacred transaction taking place) is a “violation” of the life being eaten, then it seems this physical experience was designed to violate.

I believe that it becomes closer to the depraved act of rape and torture when the animal is treated inhumanely – when it is deprived of being its most chicken or cow or pig-self – through means such as force feeding the animal unnatural food, loading it up with antibiotics, cramming it into severely overcrowded shetlers with other animals, depriving it of the environment it desires, beating the animal, treating the creature as a commodity with no care for its suffering, and inflicting unnecessary pain in the act of slaughter.

None of that is necessary, however. Monica, have you heard of an autistic lady named Temple Grandin? I heard her being interviewed on NPR once. You should check her work out: http://www.grandin.com/. Displaying an incredible, near telepathic degree of empathy towards animals, she has long sought to decrease their suffering. Her knowledge of slaughter houses is as intimate, detailed, and comprehensive as one can come by and in her educated, empathic opinion, animals can indeed be slaughtered without pain and without fear of impending death.

Monica wrote:
If this were a human child, or a black slave a century ago, or a Jewish Holocaust victim, would those who are working to free them from the abuse and oppression be told that they are merely having an 'emotional reaction'?

I personally am not diminishing your well informed and well examined point of view to the dust bin of “mere emotional reaction”. Emotions bring their own intelligence, wisdom, and insight to bear upon a situation. I think that in coming to your own conclusion on this matter, you rightfully turn to your emotional intelligence and ask your audience to consider the emotional impact of being party to rape or torture. There is nothing “less than” about that, but when discussing this issue, it is helpful to recognize the influential role of emotion in the equation.

Monica wrote:
The only explanation I can find is that people just don't consider animals to have value as beings. This too I don't understand. Women and minority ethnicities were once considered 'things' instead of beings. How is this any different? How is speciesism any different from racism?

This is at the core of your argument. Do animals have intrinsic value and if so, how should we relate to them? I think that most all on these forums would agree that animals certainly do have value, both as equal representations of the Creator and as their outer forms of cow, turkey, or chicken. But most begin to diverge when it comes to questions of ethical treatment, because once what was formerly insentient property is elevated to a status of sentience and worth, capable of feeling and suffering, it becomes incumbent upon us to make ethical choices regarding right relationship to that creature -- and there's a whole lot of room for disagreement in ethical considerations.

Interestingly, I believe a similar issue created a wedge between the ancient Atlanteans. According to the Cayce readings, the polarities began to develop between STS and STO regarding how the population should relate to creatures they had created which Cayce was calling “automatons”. What precisely that was, I don’t know, but the heart-centered camp wanted to treat these things with compassion and care whereas the self-serving camp decried this as preposterous, seeing these “automatons” as mere property to be used for the benefit of the self without regard for the needs of the automatons.

Monica wrote:
Aside from the Law of One, it isn't difficult to figure out. Here is a clue: I have observed that cows and chickens, and even fish, struggle like hell to get away, whereas a carrot does not, and fruit fall peacefully from the tree. Yeah, I know that tired old argument that the carrot would run away if it could, but I do not believe that - I believe that spirits inhabit the bodies they need in this lifetime, and if a spirit is advanced enough to want to run away from danger, it is NOT going to choose a carrot's body!!!

I would respectfully disagree here. Plants, too, evolve elaborate defense mechanisms to ward off potential predators (is that the right word?) and preserve their life, what they generally cannot do, however, is move.

Everything from second density on up, from the single-celled organism to the human being, does what it can to avoid being extinguished and/or consumed, the flu virus included.

One final note I would like to make. I read an excellent book recently titled “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan. In it, he describes corn’s central role in our food system, and he approaches corn’s success from a very unique (and Law of One-compatible) viewpoint, that is, from corn’s perspective. He writes as if corn had some sort of species-wide intelligence or decision-making capacity. From corn’s point of view, the best thing it could do to secure its own survival and propagation was to make itself appealing to humans. In so doing, it got itself spread literally across the globe. Humans clear fields for it, provide it the nutrients it needs, protect it from insect and disease and competing plants. From an evolutionary standpoint, securing the sponsorship of humans was a fantastic move on corn’s part. (I wish I had the book to quote directly.)

The same can be said of certain animals. In partnership with humans, they are ensured the continuation of their species in exchange for offering their bodies for food. Of course, we systematically abuse this sacred contract through the abject mistreatment of animals, but underneath is the possibility of harmoniously giving and taking from animals in the cycle of life here on planet Earth.

Love/Light,
Gary

PS: Eating the flesh of what was once a mobile, feeling creature is something which, if I ponder too deeply, disturbs me. The entire process of slaughtering and processing and buying and cooking and putting into mouth and chewing and swallowing and digesting and excreting is so damned weird... and is probably especially bizarre to the wanderer who has likely spent millions of years eating non-flesh based energy. But such are the demands of incarnation in the chemical vehicle.