A friend of mine debated other day, "We are all part of a greater food chain, and I am not going to feel bad because I am fortunate enough to be on the top." What goes around, comes around, and payback is a bitch. Enjoy it while it lasts, because there will come a day when you will be on the bottom, not at the top, and your cries for clemency and pleas for mercy will then, as now, fall on deaf ears.
It is a fact, that all plants and fruits are also living, so even the vegetarians are murderers, of a sorts. However, there are 2 points to be made, the second point being most important. First of all, there are higher life forms and lower, a fish is higher than a carrot, a goat is higher than a fish, a cow is higher than all animals, just short of a human being. Second point, the important point, is that "nirmama" "nothing belongs to me" and everything belongs to God. Since you have not created the earth, the sky, the grains, then you cannot claim proprietorship. It was created by God, and anything you eat, is by God's mercy. Grains, fruits, nuts, milk, honey, are especially assigned foods for man by God. This is why it is not enough to be vegetarian only, as that is still a form of violence, but rather one must first offer in thanks his vegetarian foodstuffs to God, acknowledging the Source. Only then does the food become karma free and sin free, and is called "prasadam" or "mercy".
Some may argue, "well I'll just offer my steak and beer to God then, and give thanks for that and then it will also be sin free". But this is not the case, and such prayers are ignored by God. If you want to appeal to a lover, then you must appeal in a manner and with pleasing words and gifts, but bringing the one you love things which they do not like, will not help your cause. God loves all his children, including the smart (humans) and the dumb (animals), He is not at all pleased when 1 son takes advantage of his less intelligent brethren and commits unnecessary violence on them simply to satisfy the urges of his tongue and genitals. We all must eat, as the saying goes Jiva jive se jivanam, one living entity is food for another, however just as there are differing degrees of temperature in a fire, or differing degrees of purity in a diamond, so too there are differing degrees of awakened God consciousness and purity in men, and you most certainly ARE what you eat. If you are the product of cruelty and violence, then any claim to peace is unjust and simple ignorance. You reap what you sow, you sow violence, you reap violence. Only those foods which are allotted to man are to be our foodstuffs, and even then it is stealing unless first one gives thanks and offers them to God. If however a man is so fallen that he cannot overcome his cravings and must have meat, then it some inferior animal, like a fish, or chick, or lamb, but the cow is considered sacred in all of the ancient cultures in the world including India, China, Japan, because the cow is specially designed by God to be man's helper. The cow produces more milk than her own calf needs, and the bull provides labor to plow and till the field. This is why it is said in the Vedic culture " The cow is the mother, providing life giving milk, and the bull is the father, providing grains, when the cow and bull are happy, all human society is happy". All economy begins with agriculture, and indeed all the fancy gadgets and toys that wall street and corporate imperialism and credit funded consumerism provide, cannot substitute for the health, and nourishment of good food. What do family and friends do when they spend time together? They eat, and drink. Hardly any aspect of life is more important than eating and drinking, and this activity alone has a greater impact on one's psyche and subconscious than perhaps any other activity anyone does.
Speaking of global hunger, it is a fact that the single greatest cause of famine in the world is meat eating, a fact that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all were aware of, and warned their country men that meat eating would lead to food shortage, and subsequently war. For example, Europe makes enough grains to feed EVERY MAN, WOMAN, AND CHILD on earth TWENTY TIMES OVER, but more than 80% of that grain is used for slaughter house animals. Oh, and America makes even more grains, which are routinely dumped into the oceans to control market grain prices, rather than donate them to underdeveloped countries. India has the most irritable fertile land in the world, just behind America, but it's politicians are too corrupt and disinterested to have organized farming to feed it's 2 million+ children who are in danger of dying of hunger. If everyone became vegetarian, then there would be so much grains that people wouldn't know what to do with it. There is no global hunger, it's a fallacy endorsed by the beef industry.
A recent news headline reported that 1/5 people are susceptible to cancer due to the storage of rotting flesh in their colons. 1 in 5, that's 20%!!! Yet another disease, alongside heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and the host of cancers that meat eaters are prone to that vegetarians never get!
There are a few more reasons why the cow is considered sacred, so much so, that even farmers who live in remote areas and have no religious faith what so ever, automatically revere the cow and while they will eat any other meat, refuse to eat cow because generations of their forefathers have taught them that they owe their entire livelihood to the cow. We know that even Europe alone can grow enough grains to feed the entire world more than 20 times over, and that's not even counting the grains grown in America, Ukraine, etc. However some people have argued the problem is feeding the world's population with enough protein, an interesting point. For example to grow soy protein, gradually leeches and weakens the soil, so that crop rotation, lots of fertilizers, and "rest periods" must be used so the soil can replenish itself. Some soy farmers use a method of recycling, where they will simply plow under the entire crop of soy after X number of crops, to strengthen the soil. The cow produces naturally, the best fertilizer on earth, and for free! Cow manure when heaped in a compost of dry grass and allowed to ferment, becomes THE BEST fertilizer on earth, and totally free. I knew 1 farmer in southern Mississippi, who despite the other professional farmers who all relied on chemical fertilizers claiming that the Mississippi soil was so sour it couldn't grow anything without tons of expensive fertilizers, managed to grow his crops completely fertilizer free. He simply let a small herd of cows winter on his field and just plowed under their cow dung and urine, which has the most fertilizers in it. This takes care of the fertilizer issue for growing enough protein through beans, soy and legumes. The second issue is protein, as cows can take grass, leaves, any other randomly growing "garbage" plant or weed, and convert it somehow, miraculously, in their stomach, into THE HIGHEST QUALITY protein on earth, whey protein, which is more than 50 times bio-available than the next runner up or egg white protein. 1 cow or ox, can plow 11600 square meters (roughly 3 acres), and even a 7 year old boy can work a train ox to plow the field using no more strength of his own than a flick of his fingers while taking a walk, plus it only takes a few acres to feed the cow FOR FREE with the grasses that simply grow on their own, no cultivation, irrigation, fertilizing required. So the cow takes care of fertilizer, protein, and labor, all in one. Generally with physics, the rule is output = input, but with the cow, the output it produces in labor, fertilizers, and highest quality protein in milk is simply unbeatable, and it does not rust in the rain or need repairs, it just eats grass, which grows everywhere, free, and produces the best quality fertilizers, free, and the best quality protein, free. The only thing the cow needs, is protection.
But modern man has become too debauched and warlike, to appreciate a gentle creature, who is created by God to be Man's helper. They say the dog is man's best friend, perhaps true, at least sentimentally, but the dog provides nothing more than whines and emotional comfort, or alertness, whereas the cow provides labor, fertilizer, grains, and highest quality protein in the form of milk. Milk is actually the cow's blood, only violence free, and this is why vegetarians who eat a pizza or large quantity of cheese report the same feelings of fullness and being energized that some meat eaters report after a large steak. But killing your source of food, labor, fertilizer, milk, for only 1 meal, aside from being unethical and morally wrong, equivalent to matricide or patricide, murdering the one who feeds you and clothes you, is also materially stupid, akin to slaying the golden-egg-laying-goose, rather than keeping that goose around to lay golden eggs, daily.
"We are all part of a greater food chain, and I am not going to feel bad because I am fortunate enough to be on the top." Fortunate enough to be on top? For now perhaps, every inmate gets up for parole and eventual release sooner or later, but if they continue to misbehave they just end up back in the slam. What goes around, comes around, and payback is a bitch. Enjoy it while it lasts, because there will come a day when you will be the one on the bottom, ensured by your own doings today, and your cries for clemency and pleas for mercy will then, as now, fall on cruel deaf ears.
On both sides of the argument for and against vegetarianism, you will find scholars and pundits and educated men and women who all pipe in their 2 cents, and use their intelligence to try and rationalize and justify their predispositions based on what they like. As Adolf Hitler once said, and many political leaders who are expert in inflaming the masses know, "I use emotion for the many, logic for the few". The reality is that at the end of the day, men make decisions not based on logic, but on feelings. People first decide "I like this" and then seek to justify the desires and lust driven by their senses, tongue, genitals, and false ego, by finding "reasons" and rationalizations in pseudo-science terms. But the hard evidence is there, for anyone who will see the truth, unbiased, uninfluenced by predisposed preferences. "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. that is contempt prior to investigation." Herbert Spencer.
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