The vegetarianism conflict and my 'religion'

i've been hearing from some people about the fact that i'm very much a pacifist and animal lover, yet i advocate eating meat, and i myself eat meat. i love animals, i hate the mistreatment of animals, and i can't bear to hurt them, but yet i still do say that eating meat is nutritious, and i don't want to stop.

i admire gandhi and his rules of pacifism. and one thing he required was a vegetarian diet. but i disagree - or at least, i'm not sure.

this is still an unreconciled conflict.

there are things that happen to you when you experience killing an animal. it traumatizes you. you feel like you're killing part of yourself. you feel like it's you who's being killed. and then, perhaps it becomes easier to kill something else. perhaps you become more callous towards human beings as well. perhaps, once you've killed an animal, you no longer mind causing pain and suffering to live animals - they're only objects, and they're going to die anyway.

since i've been in the position of a helpless animal, as someone who can't fight against the psychotronic attacks, i do understand how it feels to be the victim of somebody who's physically or technologically stronger than I am.

i've only killed insects, and i've seen the death of small animals and family pets. i've seen the bodies of both of my grandfathers after they died, but i was not near them at the moment when they died. my family 'put to sleep' one of our dogs when i was a teenager.

the empathy of killing or hurting something is strongest when the animal is very similar to you.

there is some literal truth to the experience of trauma while killing an animal. i read about the detailed process of how to slaughter a pig. they mentioned that when you do it, you experience an unpleasant adrenaline rush, a rush of fear or panic, the fight-or-flight feeling, and that this is something you have to get used to. i suspect that this adrenaline rush doesn't come from inside you. i believe that the adrenaline is released by the animal, and that it either vaporizes into the air, or it penetrates your skin through touch.

i have experienced getting an adrenaline rush of panic when i was close to somebody who was getting emergency medical treatment because his blood sugar was dangerously low. when his sugar was low, it caused his body to start panicking. the feeling of panic wasn't my own. i sometimes recognize it when feelings and sensations aren't coming from inside me. this would also explain 'mob mentality.' when a large group of people are together, and somebody feels an adrenaline rush, anger, excitement, or whatever, the emotion spreads to other people through the air. they inhale the hormones emitted by other people, and respond as though they were their own.

studies have already verified the observation that females start menstruating all at the same time, when they're together in a group, because they emit volatile hormones that are inhaled by the other females. or pheromones, i forget which. those volatile hormones affect all the women. i've observed this really happening. at my workplace, all the women get our periods at the same time. we all joke about it. it's happened at almost every place i've worked. this happened back when i lived in a college dorm too.

so i suspect that when you slaughter an animal, the animal's feelings are probably transferred to you in a similar way. you may experience the trauma directly because the pain, fear, and bodily damage create hormones that affect you as though the feeling were your own.

this is usually a good thing because it helps people to have empathy with other people and animals. when one person or animal feels pain or fear, other people do too, but in a more vague, dim, indirect way.

but i do believe that eating meat is nutritionally beneficial to people. i don't advocate a vegetarian diet. i've been against vegetarian diets ever since i began studying nutrition. there are too many 'unnatural' things you have to do to compensate for the loss of nutrients that would have been provided by the meat. and soy is not the miracle food it's advertised to be. soy is not an appropriate replacement for meat! you can't just eat a bunch of soy and hope for the best. and in a primitive group of people who have few resources, we won't be able to make a bunch of artificial vitamin pills ourselves.

philosophically you have to ask, where do you draw the line? i am a heterotrophic organism. i must eat organic chemicals produced by other living things. i have to at least eat plants. when a plant gets injured, it responds by trying to heal the injury and regrow some part of itself. don't the plants suffer and feel pain somehow too? i don't understand how they feel, but that doesn't mean they don't feel. they're still an organism trying to survive. so if you refuse to kill anything at all, your only choice is to allow yourself to starve to death.

in wondering about this before, i learned about the practice of eating insects. this is acceptable to me, and i definitely will include it in the list of acceptable foods in the community/religion that i imagine. but i don't know how nutritious it is if insects are your ONLY form of meat. i don't know how well it supports pregnancy and infant development. also the insects must be fed a clean and nutritious diet. i don't like some of the feeding methods described for edible insects - they seem to be lacking variety. natural, wild insects could eat dangerous, poisonous, or contaminated foods, so i understand the reasons for culturing them and feeding them yourself. but the diets they described were very narrow and limited in their nutrient content.

i have thought that perhaps meat eaters could be required to kill a small animal themselves, and if they were willing to do this, then they would be ethically allowed to eat meat. i don't like the idea that you pay somebody else to kill an animal for you, someplace where you can't see the event occur. if you can't bear to admit that the killing really happens, then it seems unethical to eat meat. if i required this, it would be done in the least traumatic way possible. it would not serve the purpose of just causing people to feel guilt and pain. they would only do whatever they felt comfortable with.

or maybe at the very least, they could observe someone else killing an animal. it's easy to tolerate the idea that somebody i dislike was killing an animal, but what if it was done by somebody who i like and respect? what if it was done by somebody i cared about? i didn't grow up on a farm, but when you do, you see your own parents killing animals.

i just don't know about the ethics of purchasing something that you yourself can't imagine doing, or producing, or watching, or really comprehending in any direct way. if you can't bear to think of it or admit that it's real, then it seems like you shouldn't be buying it and using it. i understand that division and specialization of labor in society makes it so that one person is really good at mathematics, and another person hates math and wants nothing to do with it, and the math-loving people go into certain professions. but the math-hating people don't think that doing math is wrong or evil. they just think that doing math is unpleasant. it's different when the division of labor has some people doing an activity which your religion might define as morally wrong - if you actually thought about it.

it usually seems more tolerable to kill and eat a fish rather than a 'warm, fuzzy' mammal. again, the dissimilarity makes the animal seem less like yourself, less empathic. there are several types of semi-vegetarian diets that actually draw the line to allow fish in the diet.

i have thought that killing animals might be less traumatic if it were done a certain way, according to a particular set of rules or quality requirements, like the kosher rules. there could be some kind of religious rite associated with killing an animal. there could be very strong rules about how the animals would be treated while alive, to prevent their pain and suffering, and specific rules about exactly how the killing would be performed. of course i advocate that the animal must be killed very, very quickly and effectively, so that death occurs instantly.

i've also thought that hunting wild animals, rather than raising them on a farm, seems less bad.

'they' think that i advocate eating meat because i've been doing it all my life and it would be traumatic to admit that i've been doing a horrible thing for years. they think that i'm just rationalizing, so that i won't feel guilty about what i've done.

that argument seems plausible, but also, i really feel convinced by what i've read in my studies of nutrition. i also know from personal observation that i feel healthier and stronger when i have meat in my diet, and i feel sicker and weaker when i eat a vegetarian diet. i also feel much less satisfied by each vegetarian meal, and i feel constantly frustrated and hungry. it feels like i need to eat all the time, and i'm still not getting what i need.

some people describe meat eating as an 'addiction.' i don't describe it that way. humans are animals. many other animals are omnivorous or carnivorous. you can't say they have an 'addiction' to eating meat. a wild tiger or lion isn't 'addicted' to eating meat.

there are some psychological phenomena that i want to avoid. i want to make sure that when people kill animals, they don't become callous and insensitive. i want them to at least acknowledge that the animal's life was real, even if this is done through a religious ritual without much emotional involvement. and i don't want them to transfer the 'able to kill' feeling over to humans.

i have heard that native americans did something like that, a ritualistic acknowledgment of respect paid to the animal killed. but i'm not sure what to believe about the native americans, because many stories about them are myths - for instance, the famous chief seattle speech is a fake.

i want to make sure that animal handlers don't mistreat the animals because they're anticipating that the animal is soon to die anyway. the animals must be comfortable and at ease up until the very last moment of their lives. they must not feel fear. i would prefer that they not even be alerted to the fact that they are about to die, if they are captive animals on a farm. it would be different with hunted animals, because they are probably running away and being chased. there is no way to avoid alerting them to the danger, if they are startled and are trying to run away.

i have seen the type of people who do kill animals. i've heard people talking about slaughtering animals. i felt disgusted by their attitudes and emotions. they really did not understand empathy. the particular person i'm remembering was somebody who said that he got paid to shoot somebody's pigs to slaughter them. he described it as though it was no big deal. also, he wanted to go into the military. his desire to go into the military had exactly the same incomprehension. it never occurred to him for even a second that he could be getting paid to shoot and kill innocent people, people speaking another language that he could not understand, for reasons that were wrong and evil and stupid. this was something that he just could not imagine. the military was just a good job that paid a lot of money, and it was fun and exciting. he didn't mind the idea of going to iraq - he liked it. he just repeated all the government brainwashing that says he's protecting our country from terrorists. i had several conversations with him about this. there was just no way to explain or convince him that he would be paid to kill real human beings whose lives actually mattered, people who had done nothing wrong, innocent civilians just like me and everyone he knew - except they had a slightly different physical appearance, and another language and culture. and the government said it's okay to kill them. and yet, somehow, he wasn't abnormal in his social relationships. he was able to interact with other people, as long as they were white americans.

i'm not really sure about this, but, in my experience, people who hunt wild roaming animals don't seem quite as unempathic as people who slaughter captive animals in a group. they seem to have a SLIGHTLY better acceptance of non-white, non-americans as being human. they seem to have more respect for the animals that they chase and kill - although, again, some of them speak disrespectfully of the animals as objects. and some of them are prejudiced against non-white non-americans. i actually don't know, now that i think about it. i haven't known very many hunters or people who get paid to slaughter animals. it actually seems like both groups of people tend to be the types who define all other human races and cultures as 'not like myself, therefore killable.'

in the community i imagine, i would like to deliberately adopt multiracial children and deliberately invite immigrants. the community members would find it more difficult to look at nonwhite races and call them killable. they'd be too familiar.

the worst people seem to be the ones who don't mind killing a large group of animals who are physically trapped and cannot escape, animals who have been fed and nurtured for months or years. i know that farmers who raise animals might send them away someplace else to be slaughtered, so that they don't have to do this themselves. i know farmers do sometimes speak about the emotional pain of killing animals that they nurtured. but some people really do seem to be without any feeling or understanding of it at all.

i don't necessarily want hunters or farmers to suffer every single time they kill an animal. but i want them to somehow acknowledge or respect the animal in some way, even if it is merely a ritual and even if they don't sincerely 'feel' the meaning of the ritual. it is almost an act of politeness. like saying 'please' and 'thank you.' even if they don't really feel it or understand it, it is a minimal way of acknowledging the animal's dignity and value.

if i decide that i'm not comfortable with the killing of 'large, warm, fuzzy' animals, i still will advocate eating insects, and probably fish, and possibly some other kind of small animal.

right now i am still paying other people to kill large animals for me.

this is all about designing an intentional community with a particular culture, a particular religion. i'm an atheist, and i would like to see community support for atheists. community support for christians already exists, although i would sympathize if christians said that even they felt the need to see an intentional community built for themselves. it's true that mainstream christianity isn't really doing this either.

NOBODY is allowed to build the particular kind of intentional community i'm thinking of, because all intentional communities challenge or violate zoning laws. even the amish community frequently gets into conflicts with the government over zoning laws. anytime your community needs to do something small and local, on its own, there will be a law saying they can't. you're not allowed to build houses right around manufacturing sites, for instance - the land must be categorized as 'residential' if they would allow houses there. what if you had a small factory and you wanted to allow the workers to sleep right nearby on-site? and wouldn't it be nice if there were informal outdoor markets right on the street, and you could just walk out of your house and go to the market?

(i have seen one example of zones that made sense to me. it was a geological map that described the different types of rock and soil over a whole area. the areas were divided into zones because certain kinds of land were physically unsuitable for certain kinds of buildings. the soil might not be solid or stable enough for a very large building, and that kind of thing. but not all zoning laws have practical reasons like that. i've read that the amish get into conflicts because they build small additions on their houses to allow their parents and grandparents to continue living there with the family. those add-ons built on the house get them in trouble with local laws. but the 'english,' as they call us, usually don't live in the same houses with our parents and grandparents after we grow up. we usually move away, sometimes very far away.)

this overlaps with topics i'd like to write about separately because they're too long - questions about what IS a 'community,' why communities are what they are today, why people lack a sense of community, what needs they meet, how the government has made it difficult to form communities, etc. i will have to write another blog about this.

so anyway, my 'intentional community' concept involves asking questions about what kind of culture i would like to create, and that includes ethical-religious questions like whether we eat meat. since i picture the community producing at least some of its own food, then we would need to decide right away about whether to kill animals and how to do it. and since i picture it as a more pacifist, nonviolent community, i don't want to do things that encourage people to view other living creatures, including humans, as killable objects. it's important to avoid doing things that teach people that it's okay to turn off your empathy and hurt people. personally, i think i will allow meat eating, but i want to consider how it affects people psychologically whenever they kill animals.

so, i haven't reconciled the vegetarianism conflict yet, but i do take it seriously.