Eating Plants Rather than Meat

[Bob]

Its all "existential" and depends on how we arbitrarily define living, life, and ethics. Animals, plants--which is more valuable and by whose definition? We simply have no answer to the meaning of the nature of being. LOL


New York Times

December 22, 2009
Basics
Sorry, Vegans: Brussels Sprouts Like to Live, Too
By NATALIE ANGIER

I stopped eating pork about eight years ago, after a scientist happened to mention that the animal whose teeth most closely resemble our own is the pig. Unable to shake the image of a perky little pig flashing me a brilliant George Clooney smile, I decided it was easier to forgo the Christmas ham. A couple of years later, I gave up on all mammalian meat, period. I still eat fish and poultry, however and pour eggnog in my coffee. My dietary decisions are arbitrary and inconsistent, and when friends ask why I’m willing to try the duck but not the lamb, I don’t have a good answer. Food choices are often like that: difficult to articulate yet strongly held. And lately, debates over food choices have flared with particular vehemence.

In his new book, “Eating Animals,” the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer describes his gradual transformation from omnivorous, oblivious slacker who “waffled among any number of diets” to “committed vegetarian.” Last month, Gary Steiner, a philosopher at Bucknell University, argued on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times that people should strive to be “strict ethical vegans” like himself, avoiding all products derived from animals, including wool and silk. Killing animals for human food and finery is nothing less than “outright murder,” he said, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “eternal Treblinka.”

But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze. It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.

When plant biologists speak of their subjects, they use active verbs and vivid images. Plants “forage” for resources like light and soil nutrients and “anticipate” rough spots and opportunities. By analyzing the ratio of red light and far red light falling on their leaves, for example, they can sense the presence of other chlorophyllated competitors nearby and try to grow the other way. Their roots ride the underground “rhizosphere” and engage in cross-cultural and microbial trade.

“Plants are not static or silly,” said Monika Hilker of the Institute of Biology at the Free University of Berlin. “They respond to tactile cues, they recognize different wavelengths of light, they listen to chemical signals, they can even talk” through chemical signals. Touch, sight, hearing, speech. “These are sensory modalities and abilities we normally think of as only being in animals,” Dr. Hilker said.

Plants can’t run away from a threat but they can stand their ground. “They are very good at avoiding getting eaten,” said Linda Walling of the University of California, Riverside. “It’s an unusual situation where insects can overcome those defenses.” At the smallest nip to its leaves, specialized cells on the plant’s surface release chemicals to irritate the predator or sticky goo to entrap it. Genes in the plant’s DNA are activated to wage systemwide chemical warfare, the plant’s version of an immune response. We need terpenes, alkaloids, phenolics — let’s move.

“I’m amazed at how fast some of these things happen,” said Consuelo M. De Moraes of Pennsylvania State University. Dr. De Moraes and her colleagues did labeling experiments to clock a plant’s systemic response time and found that, in less than 20 minutes from the moment the caterpillar had begun feeding on its leaves, the plant had plucked carbon from the air and forged defensive compounds from scratch.

Just because we humans can’t hear them doesn’t mean plants don’t howl. Some of the compounds that plants generate in response to insect mastication — their feedback, you might say — are volatile chemicals that serve as cries for help. Such airborne alarm calls have been shown to attract both large predatory insects like dragon flies, which delight in caterpillar meat, and tiny parasitic insects, which can infect a caterpillar and destroy it from within.

Enemies of the plant’s enemies are not the only ones to tune into the emergency broadcast. “Some of these cues, some of these volatiles that are released when a focal plant is damaged,” said Richard Karban of the University of California, Davis, “cause other plants of the same species, or even of another species, to likewise become more resistant to herbivores.”

Yes, it’s best to nip trouble in the bud.

Dr. Hilker and her colleagues, as well as other research teams, have found that certain plants can sense when insect eggs have been deposited on their leaves and will act immediately to rid themselves of the incubating menace. They may sprout carpets of tumorlike neoplasms to knock the eggs off, or secrete ovicides to kill them, or sound the S O S. Reporting in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Hilker and her coworkers determined that when a female cabbage butterfly lays her eggs on a brussels sprout plant and attaches her treasures to the leaves with tiny dabs of glue, the vigilant vegetable detects the presence of a simple additive in the glue, benzyl cyanide. Cued by the additive, the plant swiftly alters the chemistry of its leaf surface to beckon female parasitic wasps. Spying the anchored bounty, the female wasps in turn inject their eggs inside, the gestating wasps feed on the gestating butterflies, and the plant’s problem is solved.

Here’s the lurid Edgar Allan Poetry of it: that benzyl cyanide tip-off had been donated to the female butterfly by the male during mating. “It’s an anti-aphrodisiac pheromone, so that the female wouldn’t mate anymore,” Dr. Hilker said. “The male is trying to ensure his paternity, but he ends up endangering his own offspring.”

Plants eavesdrop on one another benignly and malignly. As they described in Science and other journals, Dr. De Moraes and her colleagues have discovered that seedlings of the dodder plant, a parasitic weed related to morning glory, can detect volatile chemicals released by potential host plants like the tomato. The young dodder then grows inexorably toward the host, until it can encircle the victim’s stem and begin sucking the life phloem right out of it. The parasite can even distinguish between the scents of healthier and weaker tomato plants and then head for the hale one.

“Even if you have quite a bit of knowledge about plants,” Dr. De Moraes said, “it’s still surprising to see how sophisticated they can be.”

It’s a small daily tragedy that we animals must kill to stay alive. Plants are the ethical autotrophs here, the ones that wrest their meals from the sun. Don’t expect them to boast: they’re too busy fighting to survive.
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[Darth Rock&Roll]

Ch'an has led me to the understanding that if it has nutritional and caloric value and is not your own species, then it is food.
Ch'an has also led me to believe that while life is sacred, killing must be done in order to sustain life.
We cannot escape that dualism in our physical nature.

I respect people's choices in regards to their ethics of consumption.
I don't necessarily agree that their way is a truth and someone else's is not though.
That really is the way to go about it in my opinion.

[I-mon]

why rule out your own species?

[Bob]

Actually I have a lot of respect for vegans and vegetarians who have a well thought out, articulated set of values--veganisim embraced by the push of a neurotic, unexamined psyche which then becomes strident and moralistic wastes my time.

In general, for a number of reasons,
I eat less meat than I did previously and by and large is a fairly healthy lifestyle.

Its the absolute claim of universal truth and moral superiority that is the turn off.

[Dmitri]

Its the absolute claim of universal truth and moral superiority that is the turn off.

That's because you're morally inferior and therefore cannot comprehend the universal truth.
But it's OK, salvation awaits you, should you choose to embrace it.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

why rule out your own species?

Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease

This is where prions become affected.
It was discovered as an ailment associated with cannabalism.

It is especially distinct in mammals who do cannibalism.

BSE in cattle that is fed brain and spinal cord remains.
Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans who do same with their species.

Mammals can't do cannibalism without this becoming a factor in the extinction of whoever does it.

[I-mon]

sounds like this one? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughing_sickness

but there are all sorts of diseases we can get from different animal meats, organ meats, etc, as well as from fungi and plants and minerals for that matter - you can only catch the kuru disease if you eat the flesh of a person who is infected with it, like with any diseased animal meat.

It could be a factor in extinction but just as easily a factor in survival depending on the situation.

[Bob]

One of my favorite Joseph Campbell stories:
__________________________________________________________________________

Goats and the Tiger

A fable tells of a tigress, pregnant and starving, who comes upon a little flock of goats and pounces on them with such energy that she brings about the birth of her little one and her own death.

The goats scatter, and when they come back to their grazing place, they find this just-born tiger and its dead mother. Having strong parental instincts, they adopt the tiger, and it grows up thinking it's a goat. It learns to bleat. It learns to eat grass. And since grass doesn't nourish it very well, it grows up to become a pretty miserable specimen of its species.

When the young tiger reaches adolescence, a large male tiger pounces on the flock, and the goats scatter. But this little fellow is a tiger, so he stands there. The big one looks at him in amazement and says, "Are you living here with these goats?" "Maaaaaaa" says the little tiger. Well, the old tiger is mortified, something like a father who comes home and finds his son with long hair. He swats him back and forth a couple of times, and the little thing just responds with these silly bleats and begins nibbling grass in embarrassment. So the big tiger brings him to a still pond.

Now, still water is a favorite Indian image to symbolize the idea of yoga. The first aphorism of yoga is: "Yoga is the intentional stopping of the spontaneous activity of the mind-stuff." Our minds, which are in continual flux, are likened to the surface of a pond that's blown by a wind. So the forms that we see, those of our own lives and the world around us, are simply flashing images that come and go in the field of time, but beneath all of them is the substantial form of forms. Bring the pond to a standstill, have the wind withdraw and the waters clear, and you'll see, in stasis, the perfect image beneath all of these changing forms.

So this little fellow looks into the pond and sees his own face for the first time. The big tiger puts his face over and says, "You see, you've got a face like mine. You're not a goat. You're a tiger like me. Be like me."

Now, that's guru stuff: I'll give you my picture to wear, be like me. It's the opposite to the individual way.

So the little one is getting that message; he's picked up and taken to the tiger's den, where there are the remains of a recently slaughtered gazelle. Taking a chunk of this bloody stuff, the big tiger says, "Open you face." The little one backs away, "I'm a vegetarian." "None of that nonsense," says the big fellow, and he shoves a piece of meat down the little one's throat. He gags on it. The text says, "As all do on true doctrine."

But gagging on the true doctrine, he's nevertheless getting it into his blood, into his nerves; it's his proper food. It touches his proper nature. Spontaneously, he gives a tiger stretch, the first one. A little tiger roar comes out—Tiger Roar 101. The big one says, "There. Now you've got it. Now we go into the forest and eat tiger food."

Vegetarianism
Is the first turning away from life,
Because life lives on lives.
Vegetarians are just eating
Something that can't run away.

Now, of course, the moral is that we are all tigers living here as goats. The right hand path, the sociological department, is interested in cultivating our goat-nature. Mythology, properly understood as metaphor, will guide you to the recognition of your tiger face. But then how are you going to live with these goats?

Well, Jesus had something to say about this problem. In Matthew 7 he said, "Do not cast your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet and turn and tear you."

The function
Of the orthodox community
Is to torture the mystic to death:

His goal.

You wear the outer garment of the law, behave as everyone else and wear the inner garment of the mystic way. Jesus also said that when you pray, you should go into your own room and close the door. When you go out, brush your hair. Don't let them know. Otherwise, you'll be a kook, something phony.

So that has to do with not letting people know where you are. But then comes the second problem: how do you live with these people? Do you know the answer? You know that they are all tigers. And you live with that aspect of their nature, and perhaps in your art you can let them know that they are tigers.

A Joseph Campbell Companion, Diane Osbon,
1991 by the Joseph Campbell Foundation, pp 117-119

[Darth Rock&Roll]

removethe arbitrary rules and laws you place upon yourself.

seek to function harmoniously with what surrounds you.

It doesn't always work out, but if you try to swim upstream, it is difficult, takes longer to get anywhere and doesn't accomplish much more than to make you tired and to have people constantly tell you as they encounter you that you are in error and should correct your path.

[internalenthusiast]

wow, that's great, bob. thanks for posting it...

[jasonf]

Its all about what makes you feel best, I've never gone long enough as a veggie to know how it would improve my energy, mood...but I can say pretty confidently that eating a burger and fries leaves me feeling pretty shitty for the next few hours. I don't think that anyone can draw a line in the sand and state that eating meat is whats best for every human or that such and such a diet is best for all humans.
Just as some run marathons and some stand still each body has its own path to health.
As far as eating animals from a moral sense I have no issue, I think it is a good idea to kill and eat an animal at some point in your life if nothing else you more appreciate their sacrafice.

[Dmitri]

I heard exceptions like "only eat what plant gives you", i.e. without having to kill it. These "super-strict" guys don't eat, for example, root-based things like potatoes or carrots because to get one means to kill one. But fruit, berries, nuts and things like that are fine because they don't actually hurt the plant, the plant "gives" those to you.

Of course, one could look at all those "offerings" as the plant's unborn babies (which they are), but then the best thing is to just kill yourself, because, guess what, you're part of this giant bio-system with its own laws and processes on which you have zero influence. You can't help affecting it one way or another, and it is impossible to ONLY have a positive effect on something all the time, because that's simply NOT how life, the universe, and everything works. There's a yin to every yang, we're all one, and all that good stuff.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

I heard exceptions like "only eat what plant gives you", i.e. without having to kill it. These "super-strict" guys don't eat, for example, root-based things like potatoes or carrots because to get one means to kill one. But fruit, berries, nuts and things like that are fine because they don't actually hurt the plant, the plant "gives" those to you.

Of course, one could look at all those "offerings" as the plant's unborn babies (which they are), but then the best thing is to just kill yourself, because, guess what, you're part of this giant bio-system with its own laws and processes on which you have zero influence. You can't help affecting it one way or another, and it is impossible to ONLY have a positive effect on something all the time, because that's simply NOT how life, the universe, and everything works. There's a yin to every yang, we're all one, and all that good stuff.

careful, all that rationalism can give you a headache! lol

In truth, nature "gives" us, that which we can catch and consume.

Because we put effort into it doesn't make it wrong.