First off, all our morals are screwy, it’s just the way we all are. So please try not to judge me too harshly for this; if the following doesn’t seem to make sense, it’s probably because I’ve never really openly discussed it. But it makes perfect sense in my head. Okay? Okay.

So. Vegetarianism. Those who read these bloggies semi-regularly may have seen one of my posts about hylozoism—the belief that life, to some extent, is present in all matter, not just in things that we classify as conscious or even just in things that are considered animate.

I suppose in a sense that my “why I’m not a vegetarian” argument stems more from the panpsychism perspective. That is, the idea that all things possess some form of sensation or consciousness (you drop an iPod, that iPod senses it or is aware of it).

I am of this view. To me, everything responds to what we do to it. If you break a pot, that pot “feels” the break, if you cut the grass, the grass “feels” itself being sliced. I’m not saying it causes pain necessarily, but who’s to say it doesn’t? I’m certainly of the idea that the material responds in some way, and I definitely think such an argument could be put out there for things we typically consider sentient.

This is where the whole vegetarianism thing comes in. If a person wants a cheeseburger, they’re aware on some level of the fact that they’re eating a part of a cow that had to be killed for the person to consume it. They’re probably less aware of the amount of wheat that had to be cut in order to create the bun (I don’t know the general number of wheat stalks that go into an average hamburger bun, but you get what I’m saying). Or the tomato that gets picked to provide a slice.

Yeah, I know that sounds crazy. But think about it. It just seems weird to me to place more value on beings that emit an audible scream when we slaughter them than silent yet still living beings like wheat and peas. Even if such “lower organisms” don’t have pain receptors and therefore don’t respond to being removed from water/nutrients/the means to continue living the same way organisms like cows and pigs do, it doesn’t change the fact that they’re being killed.

Call me a hippy, call me crazy, call me stupid, but that’s how I see it. There are only two ways, as I see it, to provide equal “ethical” treatment to both beings like cows and beings like wheat—either don’t eat either of them (or anything else that was once living), or eat both of them. And since I probably can’t live on air (like the Astomi people apparently could), I choose the latter.

Please note: I am not condoning things like inhumane poultry housing or cruel slaughtering techniques—that’s not what I mean. Read this as if the comparisons between higher and lower organism slaughter involve the most humane way of killing, say, a cow, with the most humane way of harvesting grain.

Today’s song: Crystal Ball by Keane