|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Well? |
| I agree. It�s pernicious and ought to be discouraged. |
|
10% |
[ 1 ] |
| You make some good points but you�re going too far. |
|
10% |
[ 1 ] |
| This is so whack it�s funny. Bartender, give me some of what he�s having. |
|
40% |
[ 4 ] |
| I completely disagree, and The Bobster deserves incarceration or worse. |
|
40% |
[ 4 ] |
|
| Total Votes : 10 |
|
| Author |
Message |
The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
|
 Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 10:12 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
| Rteacher wrote: |
| Bhakti yoga acknowledges that there is still some karma involved in killing plants. There is no material solution to avoiding sinful karmic reactions. |
I've heard of people who are "fruititarians," though I don't know if it's actually possible to get all the nutrition necessary from nuts and berries. I think honey and dairy products might be allowed under this, because no creature, plant or animal was killed.
| Quote: |
| and if your reason for being a vegetarian (like all of the ones I know personally) is not out of compassion for animals but rather because raising meat consumes far more resources than it provides? |
That's great for another topic and I might look into it and get around to it. Technically, it might fall under compassion, though, just in the sense that it's showing compassion toward the ecosphere as a whole by trying to minimze the impact our species has on it.
I have several more of these topics in mind, but the problem is, aside from this particular afternoon, I've been getting a little strapped for time lately due to some other projects, so I haven't been able to devote as much energy to the discussions as I might like.
I'll keep yours in mind, though.
Bramble
| Quote: |
| Well, good luck getting anyone to discuss anything with you. |
I would thank you for your well wishes, but I don't hink you are sincere. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
|
| Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:49 am Post subject: |
|
|
| The Bobster wrote: |
My wife is thinking about vegetarianism, even though she loves meat as much as I do, maybe more. The topic interests me for this and other reasons, so I've been proposing various topics that relate to it. |
I'm not getting into the rest of the thread, because I usually find your form of discussion on theoretical matters to be a bit bullying.
Anyway, the transition to vegetarianism can be a bit rough on everyone in a family context. My mom thought I was doing it to avoid her cooking. What I'd suggest is trying meatless meals a night or two a week, for a while. Maybe that will be an acceptable compromise for you both. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
SuperFly
Joined: 09 Jul 2003
Location: In the doghouse
|
| Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:00 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Does one lose weight when they become vegetarians? I've never met a grossly overweight vegetarian, but I've heard they exist...is it because of junk food? I can't understand how a person could continue to be 3-400 pounds when all they do is eat veggies. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
laogaiguk
Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Location: somewhere in Korea
|
| Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:05 am Post subject: |
|
|
| SuperFly wrote: |
| Does one lose weight when they become vegetarians? I've never met a grossly overweight vegetarian, but I've heard they exist...is it because of junk food? I can't understand how a person could continue to be 3-400 pounds when all they do is eat veggies. |
The French eat horribly, but at good times and small portions. While what you eat is important, so is when and how much. These are actually the bigger problems back home in North America. Ohhh, and add in being lazy. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
littlelisa
Joined: 12 Jun 2007
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:41 am Post subject: |
|
|
| SuperFly wrote: |
| Does one lose weight when they become vegetarians? I've never met a grossly overweight vegetarian, but I've heard they exist...is it because of junk food? I can't understand how a person could continue to be 3-400 pounds when all they do is eat veggies. |
Personally, I gained a bit, as did a lot of people I know. Not much, just a bit. But I've never met anyone who was vegetarian and grossly overweight. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Underwaterbob
Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Location: In Cognito
|
| Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 3:05 am Post subject: |
|
|
| SuperFly wrote: |
| Does one lose weight when they become vegetarians? I've never met a grossly overweight vegetarian, but I've heard they exist...is it because of junk food? I can't understand how a person could continue to be 3-400 pounds when all they do is eat veggies. |
I've met a fat (not grossly overweight) vegetarian or two. Usually their diet consists of french fries and grilled cheeses.
People who have definitely not made a good choice... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 10:21 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Bramble wrote: |
| Quote: |
| 3. And if we cannot find a method that does not give favoritism to one phylum over another, |
3. It�s unclear what you mean by this�please explain. |
I used the wrong word, and that's why it's unclear. Rather than phylum, I ought to have spoken of "Kingdom," in the manner of taxonomy , where the major divisions between animal life and plant life are described. By the above I was trying to say that favoritism occurs toward animals as opposed to plants. Apologies for the lack of clarity.
| Quote: |
| Quote: |
| 4. how can we really say we are reducing the amount of death and pain, overall � especially considering that many of the animals we spare from our own stomachs will later dine on other animals and plants? (E.g., by refraining to eat a very large fish for dinner and allowing it to live, we are condemning a host of smaller fish to be killed and eaten by it.) |
4. That�s a silly way of framing the issue. You could �reduce the amount of death and pain, overall� by using living human beings as organ donors without their consent, but your actions would still be morally repugnant. I prefer the animal rights argument, as it seems sounder and more logically consistent. |
I may be wrong, but the way I've heard it spoken of by most vegetarians, I think the reduction of death and pain in the world is large part of the argument in favor of vegetarian as an ethical endeavor. That's most vegetarians, not all, but that's the topic of this threead, after all, to examine the notion of compassion as it relates to dietary choices. Some people just think meat is icky. And some people think that animals (all animals) are "closer" to humans than plants.
Plants are also living creatures, though, and their lives are sacrificed to provide life force energy and bilogical material for human beings and other animals. Kill an animal for food, death happens - kill a plant for food, death happens, too. Hard to say the total amount of death that happens is less either way.
I think a lot of what goes on is the perception we have of animals having consciousness, which is something we deduce from seeing them move, appently under their own volition. Since a cow, or a pig, or a prawn has the ability to choose whether to move or whether to stay still, and can choose a direction for movement, we tend to give these creatures a greater sense of empathetic "reality" than we do plants - after, plants only respond to very basic, immediate stimuli, bending in the wind or moving by phototropism,etc.
From this presumption of consciousess, we move to a sense of identificaltion of the animal as a being with thoughts and emotions in some way similar to our own - and from there, we feel compassion, and we seek to protect them rather than eat them.
But I do sometimes wonder - is it possible that a plant might think and feel, though those thoughts and feelings would be so alien to ours that we would not recognize them as such? Many plants live a single season, or less - redwood trees live thousands of years. How different might cognition and affect be when describing such creatures.
Or, other people might just short-circuit the whole thinking/feeling pain route entirely and simply assert an (admittedly unprovable) conviction that all life has value and should not be sacrificed merely for our own survival.
That might actually be going beyond the compassion argument entirely - it's really mysticism, I suppose - but the point I'm getting at is that whether or not plants have sentience, they are clearly alive, much different in that respect from rocks, mud and gravel. Simply by existing and reproducing, they exibit, well, a desire to live and reproduce ... and if we prohibit ourselves from interfering with the rights of animals to pursue these things, then what moral basis do we have to curtail and manipulate plants either?
| Quote: |
| Quote: |
| Let�s imagine a particular subspecies of broccoli that is capable of movement, and will make a cry of distress when being uprooted � will the vegetarian feel the same about broccoli as a food source as he or she does now? |
I wouldn�t eat that particular subspecies of broccoli, at least not knowingly�I�d eat conventional broccoli instead. If they were indistinguishable by the time they got to the supermarket, I�d seek out other (plant) sources of nutrition. |
Ah, this is the crux of the matter, and perhaps I had not explained it well enough before: the new and improved subspecies of broccoli feels exactly as much (or little) pain as any other broccoli - BUT it has the ability to move and verbally protest being removed from the ground. That's all.
Thus, you see, it is our PERCEPTION that the broccoli feels pain that is the deciding issue, not whether it actually DOES.
A slightly similar example, and I believe this was actually performed at MIT several decades ago. A very rudimentary robot is assembled, much like the little vaccuum cleaners you can buy today that run about the place while you are at work and plug themselves in for recharging when their batteries are low.
The researchers at MIT made their robots with very limited abilities, to sense light and move toward it, and to change direction when confronted by an obstacle, that kind of thing. Each one has an on/off switch, of course, like most other machines ... but just to make things interesting, some of the robots were made so that if someone touched their switch, they would spin their wheels flash a light on and off and produce a long, low, sad-sounding whine that became a loud shreik when the switch was finally moved to its off position.
It's a just a toy, about the size of a toaster and not a lot smarter ... but the reactions of people were vastly different when asked to turn off the second group, the ones that shreiked as if in pain. In many cases, the volunteers involved expressed a desire not to want to turn off another similar machine, even one that did not produce any struggling behaviors.
And that's really what I'm getting at, these words "AS IF." You see, we are using certain criteria to decide which living creatures we allowed to kill and devour, and for many vegetarians I've talked to, the ability of animals to feel pain and avoid death is a major consideration.
In the case of animals, there is evidence that pain exists - for plants, little or no evidence. My question: IS THAT ENOUGH? The absence of evidence does not equal the evidence of absence, though.
The fact that a common broccoli does not struggle and cry out, might not necessarily mean that it feels less pain or would not prefer to continue living any more than a dog or a cat. All it would really mean is that, as yet, we lack the ability to observe and evaluate any pain they might feel.
The experiment with the toaster-looking robots at MIT was intended to ask the question: if we were succeed in creating artificial life out of mechanism ... how will we KNOW? And I think you could make a similar argument for the broccoli. One struggles and cries out, the other does not - we only know what we observe, but there could well be important aspects that we are unable to observe.
And that really wouldn't change anything. The broccoli that struggle and cries is the same broccoli, except it can struggle and cry. Life that does not struggle and cry is life, all the same, and if we afford animals or assign or recognize animals as having "rights," then we have to accept that we are doing some dsimilar injustince to plants. I suppose.
peppermint
| Quote: |
| I usually find your form of discussion on theoretical matters to be a bit bullying. |
You unsought efforts to improve my character will be taken and given the exact amount of due consideration they are deemed to deserve. I must be a pretty lucky guy if people who've met me exactly once care so much about me that they will take time out of their busy day to offer imporovements like this.
Me, I just wish that when I hear the word "bullying," I could somehow avoid getting the image of someone writhing on the floor in agany, pleading, "Please don't make me feel weak by having opinions and expressing them directly and with an effort to provide such kinds of rationale for them that I might have to think a little bit about my own ... please, that hurts me, and I wish you'd stop!"
Bramble is the only one who has addressed the topic in the OP so far, and I've offered her my apology privately for my curt response and rude reply of yesterday. She has opinions, and I will never share them, but I respect the strength with which she carries them, and lives them.
Thanks for the well-meant advice for the household, peppermint, and I'll keep it in mind if we decide to make any lifestyle changes, but at the moment it's just on the level of the occasional ponder, the surmise, and the tossing the odd idea around. Should it come to that, I'd likely start a different thread asking people's advice about how one becomes a vegetarian - at the moment, it's more a matter of asking questions about why and why not.
But, hey, if you'd rather spend your time offering advice that will make me a better human being, or explaining to people your reasons for not engaging in discussion on the topic, well, by all means, I'd never try to tell you how to spend your time ... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Bramble
Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Location: National treasures need homes
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 11:17 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| The Bobster wrote: |
| Bramble wrote: |
| Quote: |
| 3. And if we cannot find a method that does not give favoritism to one phylum over another, |
3. It�s unclear what you mean by this�please explain. |
I used the wrong word, and that's why it's unclear. Rather than phylum, I ought to have spoken of "Kingdom," in the manner of taxonomy , where the major divisions between animal life and plant life are described. By the above I was trying to say that favoritism occurs toward animals as opposed to plants. Apologies for the lack of clarity. |
Thanks for the clarification. That's what I thought you must have meant. (Oh yeah, and I know what taxonomy is, thanks.)
| Quote: |
4. how can we really say we are reducing the amount of death and pain, overall � especially considering that many of the animals we spare from our own stomachs will later dine on other animals and plants? (E.g., by refraining to eat a very large fish for dinner and allowing it to live, we are condemning a host of smaller fish to be killed and eaten by it.)
| Quote: |
| 4. That�s a silly way of framing the issue. You could �reduce the amount of death and pain, overall� by using living human beings as organ donors without their consent, but your actions would still be morally repugnant. I prefer the animal rights argument, as it seems sounder and more logically consistent. |
I may be wrong, but the way I've heard it spoken of by most vegetarians, I think the reduction of death and pain in the world is large part of the argument in favor of vegetarian as an ethical endeavor. That's most vegetarians, not all, but that's the topic of this threead, after all, to examine the notion of compassion as it relates to dietary choices. Some people just think meat is icky. And some people think that animals (all animals) are "closer" to humans than plants. |
That sounds like Peter Singer's philosophy. Singer is a utilitarian who wrote a book called Animal Liberation in the 70s, and it got a lot of people thinking about animals and convinced many of them to change their diets. He deserves credit for that, but even so, his thinking is problematic in many ways. I don't think it's fair to say that "most vegetarians" are utilitarians unless you have a source.
I'll let someone else tackle the whole issue of "compassion for plants" ... I don't really have time at the moment.
Last edited by Bramble on Wed Feb 20, 2008 1:46 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 11:30 pm Post subject: |
|
|
The deciding issue for me is summed up in the first mantra of Sri Isopanisad:
Everything animate or inanimate that is within the universe is controlled and owned by the Lord. One should therefore accept only those things necessary for himself, which are set aside as his quota, and one should not accept other things, knowing well to whom they belong.
Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, a bona-fide spiritual master in a disciplic line of succession going back over 5000 years, elaborates in his purport to the verse as follows:
...Human beings are not meant to quarrel like cats and dogs. They must be intelligent enough to realize the importance and aim of human life. The Vedic literatures are compiled for humanity and not for cats and dogs. Cats and dogs can kill other animals for food without incurring sin, but if a man kills an animal for the satisfaction of his uncontrolled taste buds, he is responsible for breaking the laws of nature. Consequently he must be punished.
The standard of life for human beings cannot be applied to animals. The tiger does not eat rice, wheat or drink cow's milk because he has been given food in the shape of animal flesh. There are many animals and birds that are either vegetarian or carnivorous, but none of them transgress the laws of nature as these laws have been ordained by the will of God. Animals, birds, reptiles and other lower life forms strictly adhere to the laws of nature; therefore there is no question of sin for them, nor are the Vedic instructions meant for them. Human life alone is a life of responsibility.
It is wrong to consider that simply by becoming a vegetarian one can avoid transgressing the laws of nature. Vegetables also have life. It is nature's law that one living being is meant to feed another. Thus one should not be proud of being a strict vegetarian; the point is to recognize the Supreme Lord. Animals do not have developed consciousness by which to recognize the Lord, but a human being is sufficiently intelligent to take lessons from Vedic literatures and thereby know how the laws of nature are working and derive profit out of such knowledge. If a man neglects the instructions of the Vedic literatures, his life becomes very risky. A human being is therefore required to recognize the authority of the Supreme Lord. He must be a devotee of the Lord, offer everything to the Lord's service and partake only of the remnants of food offered to the Lord. This will enable him to discharge his duty properly.
In Bhagavad-gita (9.26) the Lord directly states that He accepts vegetarian food from the hands of a pure devotee. Therefore a human being should not only become a strict vegetarian but should also become a devotee of the Lord and offer the Lord all his food. Then only should one partake of prasada, or mercy of God. A devotee who can act in this consciousness can properly discharge the duty of human life. Those who do not offer their food to the Lord actually eat sin and subject themselves to various types of distress which are results of sin (Bg. 3.13).
The root of sin is deliberate disobedience to the laws of nature through disregarding the proprietorship of the Lord. Disobedience to the laws of nature or the order of the Lord brings ruin to a human being. If one is sober, knows the laws of nature and is not influenced by unnecessary attachment or aversion, he is sure to be recognized by the Lord, and he is sure to become eligible to go back to Godhead, back to the eternal home.
http://www.prabhupadaconnect.com/Isopanisad_mantra_one.html
We can think and theorize whatever we want, but in the final analysis it has no bearing on the absolute authority of God's law (expertly applied by a spiritual master according to different times and circumstances...) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
