The question about the motive behind why man kills man will go on for years. It’s difficult to pin-point just one answer as it’s driven by a variety of circumstances within and outside our control.
Likewise, the debate of being a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian will go on for years. We as a society will also dissect this issue to the core to gauge the degree of ethicalness of treating animals vs. the ethicalness of feeding ourselves. I will leave to your opinion what type of position you want to take. While I don’t want to get into the weeds about which diet is better, which is really not the focus of this site, I did want to question something a little more deeper to probe further thought:
What is the difference between a vegetarian who kills another human, and a non-vegetarian practicing peace with others?
In one case we save animal life to kill human life, while in the other we take animal life to save human life. What a dilemma? How do we know which act is more righteous? Which act is more just? Is there really a difference if in both cases, whether actively or passively, something is killed?
As I thought about this, there is no right or wrong answer to this question as our human ability to reason will somehow justify both actions. If we get into a debate about this you will have some vegetarians who will say that all animals are life and hence should not be eaten. There were also be some vegetarians who will say that in some situations, such as self-defense, it is ok to take human life to save their life. There will also be some who say that it is better to die yourself than take another person’s life.
On the other hand, there will be non-vegetarians who will make the point that eating meat is a lifestyle preference and hence taking animal life is ok. You will also have some non-vegetarians who will say that it is better to kill an animal than be eaten by it – say for example you are walking in a forest and charged by a lion and need to use your gun to kill the animal. There will also be non-vegetarians who will say that it is better to be eaten by the lion than to inflict harm on the animal. I know I may have convoluted this quite a bit – but my point is that there are so many ways to justify why one needs to kill or be killed.
Ok, so whose side do you take? The vegetarian or the non-vegetarian? Answer – neither. There is something more fundamental to this that we are all missing.
In the series of examples I have given regarding the position of man killing man, man killing animal, animal killing man – and what heck lets squeeze in animal killing animal – what is the one element that they all have in common as an output of their action?
It’s destruction.
In every situation there is some form of destruction in the form of killing taking place. In fact, what we are blind to is the fact that destruction is actually taking place right in front of our eye – daylight is destroyed to pave the way for darkness at night, your cells in your body are destroyed to allow new ones to generate, raw foods are destroyed while cooking to bring forth culinary creations, dirty dishes are destroyed in the dishwasher to come out clean, the very second that you are reading this line is destroyed so you can read the end of the sentence in the next second. These are just some examples but there are tons more.
Realize destruction is a part of life. It’s sad when human life is taken away unnecessarily such as through war or murder. It’s sad when animal life is taken away inadvertently – say when that squirrel darts out of nowhere towards your car while you are driving completely focused on the road.
What is very difficult to overcome is our ability to reason why death happens or why destruction occurs. The only thing that is the truth is that it does occur and is sometimes beyond our control.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the outcome of destruction can be positive or negative. We are not privy to this information prior to taking action. It just happens and we need to live with the consequence. In some cases we may need to destroy mankind in order to save ourselves say in self-defense or war, we may need to destroy animals to meet a dietary lifestyle, we may need to destroy forests to create new environments to live in. The reason and motive again is driven by a variety of things such as circumstance, lifestyle, heritage, and family upbringing to name a few – again, its difficult to pin-point exactly what drives destruction.
While destruction is everywhere, I am an advocate for peace toward mankind. My message to you from this post is the following – realize that destruction of animal, environment, plant or health does occur and man may be the reason behind this.
What man has full control over is the actions he or she takes toward man. This has nothing to do with what characteristics they have such as being a vegetarian or non-vegetarian. This has everything to do with human duty, and acting in a way of respect and cooperation toward all mankind.
Let’s start first with the idea of saving mankind – this is the only way we can survive the path of destruction. By being alive we can then tackle other areas of destruction such as animals, health, environment and plants.