shankara
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- Joined
- Apr 23, 2018
- Messages
- 1,322
Well I'm not such an orthodox Hindu or Buddhist... A lot of Buddhists eat meat actually, the Tibetans for one, also some of the Theravada. As for Hindus it's mostly Shaktas who eat flesh, but not only.
Honestly reading "The Vegetarian Myth" was really an awakening for me, understanding that animals are an essential part of the ecosystem. I mean, what if we all go vegetarian today? We release the cows into the wild? That would mean a lot of ecological havoc from huge populations of animals which aren't native to most place they're kept, and then what? They get eaten by wolves when the wolf population grows big enough. One of the things that shocked me most in the book was this:
"But one post marked a turning point. A vegan flushed out his idea to keep animals from being killed—not by humans, but by
other animals. Someone should build a fence down the middle of the Serengeti, and divide the predators from the prey. Killing is wrong and no animals should ever have to die, so the big cats and wild canines would go on one side, while the wildebeests and zebras would live on the other. He knew the carnivores would be okay because they didn’t need to be carnivores. That was a lie the meat industry told. He’d seen his dog eat grass: therefore, dogs could live on grass."
Madness...
It's like the whole transhumanist idea, that we can somehow improve on nature, replace it with something more "decent". Which for me is basically matricidal, separates us from our roots and puts us in a neon scientific nightmare.
Grain cultivation is destroying the soil. The best solution so far as I can see right is to eat animals, but grass fed animals. As well as a reduction in population, which will probably happen inevitably when the fossil fuels run out, we're living way beyond the level of agricultural production possible without fertilizers made with vast amounts of energy from oil.
If eating grass fed isn't possible, maybe it's ok to eat a little meat, there's a section on the benefits of carnivorous nutrition in the book as well which makes some good points. Evidently eating flesh at every meal is extreme and unnecessary. All life though feeds on death, it's unavoidable, even if it's just the mice and worms killed in harvesting.
Interesting though their diet (blood aside) is heavy in meat and dairy, and their health-- including dental-- is remarkable.