I am a vegetarian. I confess the only reason I stopped eating meat was to lose weight, since meat is a very concentrated source of fat. But vanity has nothing to do with my continued commitment to being a vegetarian. Neither do politics or religion. It is a deeply personal choice and sometimes difficult to articulate.
I don't believe I'm on this planet by chance. I didn't create myself. I believe I was created by a force greater than anything I can imagine. I also believe that force created everything and everyone else around me. Including plant and animal life. I'm not so sure that just because we have the know how to oppress and eat animals that we should. I know that sounds a lot like everything we've heard from animal rights groups. But as I said, this is not a political choice for me. I don't do anything just because someone else thinks I should. I always have to process it myself and make my own decisions.
Not eating another living being boils down to compassion. Why would I be so arrogant to think that I have a right to take another living beings life? Even though the meat may be wrapped up in a nice clear plastic package, we cannot absolve ourselves of that animals blood. It is on all of our hands.
Albert Einstein once said: "Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
I was leafing through an issue of Life magazine and came across some pictures of a little boy who fell into a gorilla cage at a zoo. A compassionate female gorilla cradled the little boy and gently carried him to the gate where she knew her captors (the zoo keepers) would enter. I cried when I read that story. Especially since, when the zoo keepers came, they used high pressure water hoses to keep the gorillas away. I wonder what that female gorilla was thinking? I wonder a lot about what animals think of us. What makes us so sure they don't think? Just because we don't want them to? What do you suppose that female gorilla was doing when she carried that little boy to safety?
I realize we don't eat gorillas. (Thank God) But we imprison them without a hearing. And we're systematically destroying their homes without a single thought to their rights. Mark Twain once said: "The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures. The fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."
As a child, I was taken on many an outing to our city's zoo which was quite famous for having a large and varied animal stock. I will never forget my feeling of sadness and guilt as I looked at those joyless, lifeless creatures who deserved so much more than what they were receiving. The animals were well cared for, but what kind of life is it for a wild animal to live in a cage no matter how large it is? And what kind of life is it to be born, bred and slaughtered just because those hamburgers taste so good?
Who knows? Perhaps, if we ground us up and flattened us into burger shapes, we might be just as tasty.
http://worldpeacediet.org/ For more information on vegetarianism and veganism
http://afriendwithwords.com
I don't believe I'm on this planet by chance. I didn't create myself. I believe I was created by a force greater than anything I can imagine. I also believe that force created everything and everyone else around me. Including plant and animal life. I'm not so sure that just because we have the know how to oppress and eat animals that we should. I know that sounds a lot like everything we've heard from animal rights groups. But as I said, this is not a political choice for me. I don't do anything just because someone else thinks I should. I always have to process it myself and make my own decisions.
Not eating another living being boils down to compassion. Why would I be so arrogant to think that I have a right to take another living beings life? Even though the meat may be wrapped up in a nice clear plastic package, we cannot absolve ourselves of that animals blood. It is on all of our hands.
Albert Einstein once said: "Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
I was leafing through an issue of Life magazine and came across some pictures of a little boy who fell into a gorilla cage at a zoo. A compassionate female gorilla cradled the little boy and gently carried him to the gate where she knew her captors (the zoo keepers) would enter. I cried when I read that story. Especially since, when the zoo keepers came, they used high pressure water hoses to keep the gorillas away. I wonder what that female gorilla was thinking? I wonder a lot about what animals think of us. What makes us so sure they don't think? Just because we don't want them to? What do you suppose that female gorilla was doing when she carried that little boy to safety?
I realize we don't eat gorillas. (Thank God) But we imprison them without a hearing. And we're systematically destroying their homes without a single thought to their rights. Mark Twain once said: "The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures. The fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."
As a child, I was taken on many an outing to our city's zoo which was quite famous for having a large and varied animal stock. I will never forget my feeling of sadness and guilt as I looked at those joyless, lifeless creatures who deserved so much more than what they were receiving. The animals were well cared for, but what kind of life is it for a wild animal to live in a cage no matter how large it is? And what kind of life is it to be born, bred and slaughtered just because those hamburgers taste so good?
Who knows? Perhaps, if we ground us up and flattened us into burger shapes, we might be just as tasty.
http://worldpeacediet.org/ For more information on vegetarianism and veganism
http://afriendwithwords.com
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