It seems that every generation has its own special memes for worship. Some times it is a product of misinformation. This is understandable since there is so much crap out there one can hardly make any good sense out of it. Often times though is because we fail to use our minds rationally. Emotion takes over, then mass hysteria and then all hell brakes lose. Such is the case with what people call vegetarianism. Nonetheless, as we will examine, eating plants makes you vegetarian as much as standing in a garage makes you a car.
We think that food follows a linear path. You know, we grow grass, the cow eats the grass and we eat the cow. Vegetarians think that just because they take out the middle man (cow) it makes them different. It doesn't. The logic might help in the construction of kindergarten projects about the food chain but doesn't really cut it for real life.
Life moves in circular chains, not linear. The cow eats the grass, we eat the cow, then the worms, roaches, fungi eat us, the grass then eats them. That's how life works. That's how life evolves. One cannot be a vegetarian on a planet were plants eat animals just because one choses to narrow focus on a small part of the food chain. Even so, If one is still in doubt of the intentions and actions of plants here is a more straightforward plant in some meat action.
Now to the next, more intricate part. Have you ever paid close attention to things around you? Have you ever wondered how the fire extinguisher foam is made? How about the buttons from the shirt you ordered from ebay? Perhaps your tennis racket? How about jello? Sure,.. you don't eat jello. How about your medication then?
Vegetarians (and vegans) claim that they always check the labels for items that incorporate animal products. Well, this might be true for some countries but we forget that 90% of everything we use comes from China. And really, they are not that politically correct like the touchy West. Unless you are a photosynthesizing hippy, you are guaranteed to be using animal products for almost everything in your life. For example, here are few applications for a cow:
As if this was not enough, in some parts of our pale blue dot at least, vegetarians might actually be killing more animals that the rest of us miserable omnivores. Mike Archer argues the case of Australia. Modern Agriculture practices for producing foods such as wheat and rice has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Australian animals and plants per hectare. The arrival of Europeans caused the eradication of most unique native vegetation, mostly to increase production of monocultures of introduced species for human consumption. This is also the case for much of the rest of the world.
Even if one is a well intentioned vegetarian, killing for food production is inevitable. In some cases the death toll is even higher than raising cattle or sheep. Mass agriculture demands a lot of sacrifices e.g eradication of millions of sentient lives every year such as mice. We could include in the list non-sentient life such as worms and bugs since higher cognition can still exit without our infamous cortex.
The moral argument for vegetarians has no basis either. Plants are sentient and can also suffer. They have biochemical reactions to noxious stimuli that are very much like ours. Just because they don't say "ouch" doesn't mean they don't experience pain. Pain, after all, is nothing but a mechanism for self-preservation. For every form of life is different because we all have different physiology. No life is better or worse, more or less evolved. Just different.
Remember, plants have been on this planet billions of years earlier than animals. If a romantic alien poet visited our planet the irony would be self-evident. We are plant food in every way. We are able to survive because they have created ecosystems that produce oxygen for our consumption. Our dying flesh becomes their nutrients. They can do just fine without humans surviving on the naturally occurring soil and carbon dioxide. They are farming us, we are not farming them. Claiming the title vegetarian is to say the least, intellectual hubris.
Much like most things human, arrogance blinded us, creating bogus terms such as vegetarianism. We are not at the top of the food chain. We are part of it. Every single thing on this planet eats and gets eaten either directly or indirectly.
