All life deserves respect ..... weather it's animal, vegetable or mineral . Killing animals is harder for some because they remind us of ourselves. They have those eyes looking straight at you ..... they scream ..... they fight .... all just like us. No one wants to die.
Plants and minerals ....... well . . . . most of are not so in tune to to them. They are as "alive" as any other atom in the universe , just in ways we are not capable of recognizing at this time.
This is where us humans are so ignorant. We think we're in charge of the universe. All one needs to do is be eating your dinner in your home and have a tornado rip the roof off. Tell me who's in charge? Take a look at the marvels of space, with all the destruction of planets and stars that makes our might night sky so utterly beautiful.
Polyarmour is correct ..... I don't think one can complain about meat eating when one eats vegetables that have also died. You can complain of course, and many do .... it's just the pot calling the kettle black.
However .... intent needs to be measured. There are many cultures where the killing of an animal for food is what we in the West would call a religious ceremony. They recognize the paradox of life, that something must die for them to survive. Most of our meat in the US at least, is raised and killed like a machine. Devoid of any respect for the life of the animals or themselves. Few are willing to raise and kill their own animals for meat. I suspect even fewer respect the cycle of life and death.
Look at how Native Americans used every part of the Buffalo for their survival. They used the hide, the bones and every other body part for something useful. Then came the white man and his ruthless ways ..... just killing off the Buffalo's for their meat, but not using the rest of the carcass. No respect.
About the tree video posted here ..... while I may not understand their grief, I do respect them for their human-ness. We all have our issues. While we may make fun of people crying over fallen trees, we need to look no further than our own mirrors to see how easily we are upset. How easily do we get angry over the smallest of things? How easily are our days ruined because we think something did us wrong? Our ideas of how things should, could and would be are so fragile, literally anything can come along and knock us off our self-crowned temple. The ones that are not able to recognize this, they are the most brutal, ignorant and cruel persons to themselves and everyone around them.
We could all use some respect for what we eat I suppose. .... whatever that food may be. The division between meat-eaters and non meat-eaters is downright silly. It's no different than any other feud, and rooted in ignorance. No one really wants to hear that . . . . because it sucks have your own stuff thrown back at you. So we attack ..... each other .... ourselves. Yeah ..... we're all in the same boat..... if we spent as much time cleaning up our own stuff as we do throwing it at others , maybe we'd ALL have a better life. Easy to say though..... not so simple.
On a lighter note ...... I'm diggin' melons this summer. Watermelons especially. I can't believe how much energy I get from them. I'm going through one large melon every 2 or 3 days. I eat the sweetest red part, then juice the rest down to the white part, getting about a gallon of juice. It's one of the few foods I can eat a stomach full before riding and have gastric upset. I only wish I could take it riding.
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