Editor:
Mr. Bird is experiencing what is known as “Evolutionary Stress Disease,” (“The Carnivore’s Dilemma,” Nov. 17). He is still part Neanderthal (as are we all), and exhibits the symptoms of stress involved when we consciously choose to evolve to a higher human level. I salute him for his effort. The will to kill is hard to live with. Why does your heart pound and you sweat when you are 200 yards away from an animal that can do you no harm! Thrill? Adventure! Maybe if you chased it and gave it some chance!
Please listen to your conscience. (Why do you feel guilt?) Please listen to your students and to your vegetarian wife.
Please do not take your young children on a hunt to kill a helpless animal. It is not unmanly to now become a steward of the nature I believe you genuinely love. Please model the example of that love, and be a teacher (the highest calling) of our next generation of little animals … our precious children.
Don Robertson, Eureka
Editor:
Wow! It takes a special kind of man to choose to ignore the moral arguments against hunting and the health benefits of a vegetarian diet in favor of maiming and killing animals because he likes the way they taste!
While there is no justification for indulging in the acts of brutality Bird espouses, at least reading articles like his makes me value even more the enlightened men, like my husband, who choose to define their manhood through compassion and non-violence toward all creatures — men who believe as did Plutarch that “but for the sake of some little mouthful of meat, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.”
Nancy Breslin, Trinidad
This article appears in Occupy.
Eat me.
To label hunters as Neanderthals and lesser developed is misleading. Some of our ancestors grew tired of eating grubs, roots and berries. They used their brains to develop tools and move up the food chain instead of being prey. I enjoy fresh veggies, but like meat as part of my diet. As a hunter, I’m just going organic to get a leaner source of protein.
It’s funny how pretentious some people can be. The first letter by Don R. was well-written and makes his point well. The second letter by the lady from Trinidad just sounds like a snotty rich woman trying to convince everyone how superior she is to me, the Average Joe.
“Defining your manhood??” What is that supposed to mean? Hunting or gathering doesn’t define manhood or personhood for that matter. Animals hunt and gather too. What does hunting have to do with gender identification? There are a lot of women hunters too. In the animal kingdom many of the most ferocious hunters are the female of the species. Only our species is hung up on defining our gender by certain actions.
The wise man said:” Don’t make your body a graveyard for animals” , or thou shalt be it.
Whether or not your body is a graveyard for dead animals, you will eventually become a dead animal. Whoever that wise was was pretty dumb.
There is no way to say whether our life and level of consciousness is more valuable than any animals, and in the same vein there is no way to say what level of life and consciousness plants enjoy, and what the value of that is in comparison. You take life to feed yourself either way, and how much “harm” you are doing is purely academic. Some say you are doing less harm by killing one large animal rather than killing thousands of smaller animals in the process of preparing, maintaining and harvesting a garden.
What it comes down to for me, in the case of such speculation, is intent. If you intend to live mindful of your impact on existence, and respectful of all life, then do what is comfortable to you. Those who judge others are usually just trying to pull a definable certainty out of the undefinable quagmire of human existence, whose nature is to elude our attempts at pinning certainties upon it.
Also, I don’t believe that anyone has bestowed upon us the title of “stewards” of life on this planet, nor should we try to be. The name “steward” directly assumes a hierarchy, and is an idea seated in arrogance. Is a bear above a rabbit? What’s higher on the hierarchy, a frog or a toad? My point is, all animals(humans included) must find their own niche to fill in their specific ecosystem. If we truly try to find our place, our respectful equilibrium, WITHIN the ecosystem, the idea of being a “steward” becomes completely irrelevant. Who is to say that eating meat may or may not be part of that niche, depending on the specific location? Even Tibetan Buddhists ate/eat yak meat due to climactic conditions being prohibitive to a more agriculturally based society.
Whatever your decision on the whole meat thing, if you can’t respect the validity of others’ mindfully made decisions when they differ from your own, I suggest you simply dismount from that high horse… that you may or may not be eating later, and go fatten it or yourself up with hay, alone in the stable. Leave those with mutual intellectual respect to exercise their collaborative understanding of each other, and you can come out when you learn to play nice.
Also, I don’t believe that anyone has bestowed upon us the title of “stewards” of life on this planet, nor should we try to be. The name “steward” directly assumes a hierarchy, and is an idea seated in arrogance. Is a bear above a rabbit? What’s higher on the hierarchy, a frog or a toad? My point is, all animals(humans included) must find their own niche to fill in their specific ecosystem. If we truly try to find our place, our respectful equilibrium, WITHIN the ecosystem, the idea of being a “steward” becomes completely irrelevant. Who is to say that eating meat may or may not be part of that niche, depending on the specific location? Even Tibetan Buddhists ate/eat yak meat due to climactic conditions being prohibitive to a more agriculturally based society.
Whatever your decision on the whole meat thing, if you can’t respect the validity of others’ mindfully made decisions when they differ from your own, I suggest you simply dismount from that high horse… that you may or may not be eating later, and go fatten it or yourself up with hay, alone in the stable. Leave those with mutual intellectual respect to exercise their collaborative understanding of each other, and you can come out when you learn to play nice.
Very nicely put still talking about them issues.