Peter Adamson contemplates non-violence in ancient Indian thought.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/113/Meat_is_Murder
Meat is Murder
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Impenitent
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Re: Meat is Murder
and vegetables are defenseless ...
the animals still had the chance to run away
-Imp
the animals still had the chance to run away
-Imp
Re: Meat is Murder
B.S., Plants are living beings just like animals, those who object to killing other living creatures to survive, should just starve to death and do the rest of us a favor. All Life survives on the death of other living things.Philosophy Now wrote:Peter Adamson contemplates non-violence in ancient Indian thought.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/113/Meat_is_Murder
Re: Meat is Murder
Peter Adamson should study the Mahabharata, and then talk about non-violence.Philosophy Now wrote: Peter Adamson contemplates non-violence in ancient Indian thought.
Re: Meat is Murder
Except most plants.thedoc wrote:B.S., Plants are living beings just like animals, those who object to killing other living creatures to survive, should just starve to death and do the rest of us a favor. All Life survives on the death of other living things.Philosophy Now wrote:Peter Adamson contemplates non-violence in ancient Indian thought.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/113/Meat_is_Murder
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Obvious Leo
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Re: Meat is Murder
Not so. All plants rely on soil in which to grow and soil is a composite material mostly made up of dead organic matter.Melchior wrote:Except most plants.thedoc wrote:B.S., Plants are living beings just like animals, those who object to killing other living creatures to survive, should just starve to death and do the rest of us a favor. All Life survives on the death of other living things.Philosophy Now wrote:Peter Adamson contemplates non-violence in ancient Indian thought.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/113/Meat_is_Murder
Re: Meat is Murder
Correct, organic material is dead mater from some living organism, so even living plants rely on the death of other living organisms to live.Obvious Leo wrote:Not so. All plants rely on soil in which to grow and soil is a composite material mostly made up of dead organic matter.Melchior wrote:Except most plants.thedoc wrote: B.S., Plants are living beings just like animals, those who object to killing other living creatures to survive, should just starve to death and do the rest of us a favor. All Life survives on the death of other living things.
Melchior, you really don't understand biology very well, do you?
Re: Meat is Murder
To put it more accurately, all life is murder, if you want to put it in those terms.
But then that's being rather Dinseyish about it.
But then that's being rather Dinseyish about it.
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Gary Childress
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Re: Meat is Murder
It seems to me that the bigger issue is not so much that we kill other living organisms for food (that's a given) but that some of those organisms may go through a lot of additional misery in order to satisfy the needs of industrialized food production. The process by which young calves are raised for veal comes to mind.
EDIT: As far as plants, I don't think plants have the same capacity for suffering that many other beings do. Therefore it's a little different an issue with eating plants than it is with eating some animals.
EDIT: As far as plants, I don't think plants have the same capacity for suffering that many other beings do. Therefore it's a little different an issue with eating plants than it is with eating some animals.
Re: Meat is Murder
There is one exception, most fruits, if not all, need to be eaten so that the host animal will carry the seeds that are in the fruit, and deposit them some distance from the parent plant. Some vegetables grow to attract animals to eat the vegetable and spread the seed, but the part that is eaten and digested is still living tissue.Gary Childress wrote:It seems to me that the bigger issue is not so much that we kill other living organisms for food (that's a given) but that some of those organisms may go through a lot of additional misery in order to satisfy the needs of industrialized food production. The process by which young calves are raised for veal comes to mind.
EDIT: As far as plants, I don't think plants have the same capacity for suffering that many other beings do. Therefore it's a little different an issue with eating plants than it is with eating some animals.
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Gary Childress
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Re: Meat is Murder
Very true. In some paradoxical ways many animal species have also thrived (at least in terms of survival and proliferation in numbers) because of their ability to be domesticated and used for food by humans.thedoc wrote:There is one exception, most fruits, if not all, need to be eaten so that the host animal will carry the seeds that are in the fruit, and deposit them some distance from the parent plant. Some vegetables grow to attract animals to eat the vegetable and spread the seed, but the part that is eaten and digested is still living tissue.Gary Childress wrote:It seems to me that the bigger issue is not so much that we kill other living organisms for food (that's a given) but that some of those organisms may go through a lot of additional misery in order to satisfy the needs of industrialized food production. The process by which young calves are raised for veal comes to mind.
EDIT: As far as plants, I don't think plants have the same capacity for suffering that many other beings do. Therefore it's a little different an issue with eating plants than it is with eating some animals.
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SpheresOfBalance
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Re: Meat is Murder
We live in a "symbiotic" "Biosphere!" there are "ecosystems" in place! The only foolish thing that any organism can do in such a system, is to throw it off balance. The Spheres of influence must Balance, or all our spheres are lost. Mankind has upset some of the "Spheres of Balance." If he continues, he shall meet his doom due to his selfish greed for paper with pretty ink and watermarks; perceived power, when in fact we shall only ever exist, subject to the Spheres of Balance, so says the universe, the true power over us all!
If only we all could cooperate, actually being the true shepherd of this symbiotic biosphere, humankind would be unstoppable, in harmony with the Spheres of Balance, until the universe said otherwise.
Animals treating animals as they would prefer themselves being treated, is the mark of the animal actually living up to their self titled differentiation from the other animals, namely being: "humane"
humane [hyoo-meyn or, often, yoo-]
adjective
1. characterized by tenderness, compassion, and sympathy for people and animals, especially for the suffering or distressed: humane treatment of prisoners.
2. acting in a manner that causes the least harm to people or animals:
humane trapping of stray pets.
3. of or relating to humanistic studies.
............................................... --www.dictionary.com--
In such a system, it's the best the more 'intelligent' can be!
If only we all could cooperate, actually being the true shepherd of this symbiotic biosphere, humankind would be unstoppable, in harmony with the Spheres of Balance, until the universe said otherwise.
Animals treating animals as they would prefer themselves being treated, is the mark of the animal actually living up to their self titled differentiation from the other animals, namely being: "humane"
humane [hyoo-meyn or, often, yoo-]
adjective
1. characterized by tenderness, compassion, and sympathy for people and animals, especially for the suffering or distressed: humane treatment of prisoners.
2. acting in a manner that causes the least harm to people or animals:
humane trapping of stray pets.
3. of or relating to humanistic studies.
............................................... --www.dictionary.com--
In such a system, it's the best the more 'intelligent' can be!
Re: Meat is Murder
Professor Adamson recognises the difficulty of preserving ahimsa when acts that cannot be avoided- for example, the act of eating. 'Still, what are you to do if you believe that even eating plants violates ahimsa, in however minimal a fashion?'
But he sets his test case up as a strawman, ahimsa is not purely ethical, it has a deeply metaphysical origin. Adamson doesn't expand his view of such as acts as volitionally harmful, evil, to incorporate the fact that they are metaphysically harmful, evil. 'Agni became the devourer and Soma the food. Down here there is nothing else than devourer and devoured...' (Calasso, Ardor) and this metaphysical condition is not contingent on voluntary acts, it is a condition of being in ancient Indian thought- quite unlike our modern limitation of evil to volitional and intentional agency.
Adamson judges ahimsa as it were transplanted into our western ethics and our metaphysics, he does not assess ahimsa in good faith. Consequently, the resolution Adamson ascribes to ancient Indian thought comes across as snide and mocking. As if it were by a sleight of hand or some sophistry that the renunciatory tradition preserves ahimsa:
'These renouncer traditions found a solution. Buddhist and Jain monks lived on alms – food donated to them by charitable laypersons – in part because it meant allowing them to eat without killing anything. (The Buddhists even have texts applying this strategy to meat-eating.) So long as the food was not actually prepared with the monk in mind, the monk could eat these ‘leftovers’ with a clean conscience. The renouncers were above all concerned with their own purity – with ensuring that they themselves were not directly implicated in violence. Jains and Buddhists have certainly encouraged others to follow the same non-violent path, and can thus be credited with trying to reduce the total amount of harm to living things. But this wasn’t their primary goal. Rather, much like ancient Greek and Roman virtue theory, the ancient precept of ahimsa was above all about shaping the self.' (Adamson)
The article does not at all do justice to the fact that in Ancient Indian thought it is a metaphysical, non-volitional, condition of reality that 'there is no neutral state, no state in which this doesn't happen. The act of eating is a violence that causes what is living, in its many forms, to disappear. Whether grass, plants, trees, animals, or human beings, the process is the same. There is always a fire that devours and a substance that is devoured. This violence, bringing misery and torment, will one day be carried out by those who suffer it on those who inflict it. Such a chain of events cannot change. But the serious damage, the paralysis that this causes in those who become aware of it, can- we are told- by treated, remedied.
And what was the remedy? The very act of perceiving that which is- and of manifesting it, not just with words, but with gestures: in this particular case, with a series of gestures to be carried out in the agnihotra, the most basic of all rites. Pouring milk into the fire- every morning, every evening- meant accepting that what appears disappears and that what has disappeared serves' (Calasso, Ardor)
The Vedic ya evam veda, 'he who knows thus', is mechanism of rendering the metaphysical evil inherent in all that is, volitionally neutral, so preserving ahimsa and even bringing salve to metaphysical condition. The sacrifice, whether the milk libation or animal at the sacrificial post, repeats and directs the inherent harmfulness of being towards consciousness. It is not a shaping of self, it is a reshaping what is through conscious mechanism.
The sacrifice does not expunge human guilt, the Vedic sacrifice is not the pia fraus of the abrahamic lamb, but a supreme effort of becoming conscious of the condition of reality, 'fire in fire' (Śatapatha Brāmana) and surviving it, conscious and respecting all beings everywhere rather than 'shaping self' as Adamson alleges, egotistically wrapped up entirely in ourselves, wrapped up in our haemophiliac vocation- even a blade of grass can pierce our skin. Humans are not invulnerable to the metaphysical condition of nature, our skin might be the only thing more fragile than our ego! The practice of ahimsa mitigates our guilt regarding what is metaphysically necessary. The doctrine of reincarnation further upholds our position as devourer AND devoured.
Sacrifice, emphatically immolatory, merely reflects that reality is 'fire in fire'. Life, is matter alight, a slow continual flame- whether the combustion is invisible as the mind devours sense data or visible as it assails the physical world.
But he sets his test case up as a strawman, ahimsa is not purely ethical, it has a deeply metaphysical origin. Adamson doesn't expand his view of such as acts as volitionally harmful, evil, to incorporate the fact that they are metaphysically harmful, evil. 'Agni became the devourer and Soma the food. Down here there is nothing else than devourer and devoured...' (Calasso, Ardor) and this metaphysical condition is not contingent on voluntary acts, it is a condition of being in ancient Indian thought- quite unlike our modern limitation of evil to volitional and intentional agency.
Adamson judges ahimsa as it were transplanted into our western ethics and our metaphysics, he does not assess ahimsa in good faith. Consequently, the resolution Adamson ascribes to ancient Indian thought comes across as snide and mocking. As if it were by a sleight of hand or some sophistry that the renunciatory tradition preserves ahimsa:
'These renouncer traditions found a solution. Buddhist and Jain monks lived on alms – food donated to them by charitable laypersons – in part because it meant allowing them to eat without killing anything. (The Buddhists even have texts applying this strategy to meat-eating.) So long as the food was not actually prepared with the monk in mind, the monk could eat these ‘leftovers’ with a clean conscience. The renouncers were above all concerned with their own purity – with ensuring that they themselves were not directly implicated in violence. Jains and Buddhists have certainly encouraged others to follow the same non-violent path, and can thus be credited with trying to reduce the total amount of harm to living things. But this wasn’t their primary goal. Rather, much like ancient Greek and Roman virtue theory, the ancient precept of ahimsa was above all about shaping the self.' (Adamson)
The article does not at all do justice to the fact that in Ancient Indian thought it is a metaphysical, non-volitional, condition of reality that 'there is no neutral state, no state in which this doesn't happen. The act of eating is a violence that causes what is living, in its many forms, to disappear. Whether grass, plants, trees, animals, or human beings, the process is the same. There is always a fire that devours and a substance that is devoured. This violence, bringing misery and torment, will one day be carried out by those who suffer it on those who inflict it. Such a chain of events cannot change. But the serious damage, the paralysis that this causes in those who become aware of it, can- we are told- by treated, remedied.
And what was the remedy? The very act of perceiving that which is- and of manifesting it, not just with words, but with gestures: in this particular case, with a series of gestures to be carried out in the agnihotra, the most basic of all rites. Pouring milk into the fire- every morning, every evening- meant accepting that what appears disappears and that what has disappeared serves' (Calasso, Ardor)
The Vedic ya evam veda, 'he who knows thus', is mechanism of rendering the metaphysical evil inherent in all that is, volitionally neutral, so preserving ahimsa and even bringing salve to metaphysical condition. The sacrifice, whether the milk libation or animal at the sacrificial post, repeats and directs the inherent harmfulness of being towards consciousness. It is not a shaping of self, it is a reshaping what is through conscious mechanism.
The sacrifice does not expunge human guilt, the Vedic sacrifice is not the pia fraus of the abrahamic lamb, but a supreme effort of becoming conscious of the condition of reality, 'fire in fire' (Śatapatha Brāmana) and surviving it, conscious and respecting all beings everywhere rather than 'shaping self' as Adamson alleges, egotistically wrapped up entirely in ourselves, wrapped up in our haemophiliac vocation- even a blade of grass can pierce our skin. Humans are not invulnerable to the metaphysical condition of nature, our skin might be the only thing more fragile than our ego! The practice of ahimsa mitigates our guilt regarding what is metaphysically necessary. The doctrine of reincarnation further upholds our position as devourer AND devoured.
Sacrifice, emphatically immolatory, merely reflects that reality is 'fire in fire'. Life, is matter alight, a slow continual flame- whether the combustion is invisible as the mind devours sense data or visible as it assails the physical world.