Quote:
Originally Posted by Dolazy  Statistics and scientific facts about veganism are not so significant to this discussion. My question is not whether veganism is really more healthy or not, this discussion is purely intellectual. Namely: Does it make sense to be vegan in a subjective reality.
The question that I really want answer for is this one:
If all other living beings are part of my consciousness, does that mean it is possible for me to raise my level of awareness to such a high level where all animals would stop eating each other?
I think I haven't really gotten an answer that doesn't expose the assumption of reality being objective. You can say "Animals eat each other. That's just the way things are.", but that's not true in a subjective reality. I would answer: "No, it is the way I created it. My fearful ego caused animals to eat each other." |
Hi DoLazy
I suppose that everyone has a subjective reality; their own world so to speak. What we subjectively believe though, doesnt have to conflict with the objective material world. It is for me similar to what Descartes was saying when he talked about truth and what we can be sure of. Can we really be sure that what we observe through our (fallable) senses is the truth. Are we being decieved by an evil demon, who is playing tricks with our minds? Is the only truth, the position where we know we exist because we can posit the Cartesian,
"I think, therefore I am"?
All that is well and good, but we quickly have to move away from metaphysics and meta-philosophy unless we will come crashing down to reality city pretty quickly when the alarm clock goes off at 5 am!
As far as veganism is concerned: I became vegan amost overnight when I started studying the various arguments for and against animal rights. (Tom Regan, Peter Singer). The objective reality was that (if we use Hume's Naturalistic fallacy argument) "what is-is not what ought to be".
If animals can have emotions, feel pain, play, have social groups etc then this was enough for me to objectively observe that humans are also just human animals only more 'intelligent'. But isnt it true that the way the 'big' man treats the 'little man' is more a mark of character and 'intelligence' than any other marker? The DNA of humans is
almost exactly like that of the great apes. If we prey on someone or something only because they are of lower intelligence than us, then why not prey on the mentally retarded or infants. If we respond by saying that is because they are humans, then we are admitting we are discriminating on the basis of species (like race, colour, gender etc). Its all discrimination.
I can objectively observe that we are killing the planet through factory farming, over grazing, destruction of the rainforests to rasie cattle etc.
In the case of veganism, subjective and objective reality run in parallel.
The default position for humans should be veganism. If we know that survival or progression does not require consumption of animal products and simultaneaously observe that animals experience a life of their own and can feel pain, then as compassionate beings we should be compelled to act in a manner that not only decreases suffering and exploitation, but will possibly halt the destruction of the earth through wantan greed and wastage of finite natural resources.
No matter how much I subjectively create an alternative reality, the plane is still going to crash, so to speak, unless we do something about it.