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Monday, July 12, 2010

Life

I have spent a great deal of time over the last however many months and years really trying to explain my view of life to people.  I feel that it might just be easier to put it down on paper and send people here to read it.

Before I get into the ills of society and what we are doing to offset the balances of life on our planet, think it best to jsut state my position.  I believe first and foremost that we are all equal.  By this I do not mean "we", as in all of us Americans, or Westerners, or Ethnicities and Races, creeds and religions, or even ever so more broadly, humans.  I mean ALL of us.  All of the living things that inhabit our earthly environment.  From the most arrogant of humans to the most "ignorant" of algae - plants, animals, insects, bacteria, and both the earthly and unearthly particles that may or may not surround us.  I see the earth as an holistic entity that works uniformly together, and thus everything in it should be valued and respected as such.  A wise old man name Mozi, once espoused a principle of "universal love" for all.  And by "all" Mozi - to my interpretation - was generally speaking of people (though his works are some 2500 years old and translated so one can't be certain).   But anyway, I take this concept further than this interpretation.  I think it is about universal 'love', or as I prefer universal 'respect', for ALL things on earth.

So what does this mean?  Everyone can easily say that they love all things, but do we really show it, practice it?  When was the last time you killed a fly?  A spider?  An animal?  Pulled out a weed?  Chopped down a tree?  All of these are things that many of us do in daily life - get out the fly swatter and kill one.  This is not right.  That fly - along with every other thing in the world - has just as equal a right to live as you and me and everything else.  Who are we as humans to decide what or who lives and dies?  We call war and killing a travesty, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International beat the drums of individual rights to life/liberty and of the 'inhumane' treatment of those less fortunate and suffering, but for the most part we stop there.  Yes of course we try to protect animals.  We value them right below us on the arrogance chain.  We choose not to include other living beings.  Some do, Buddhist principles respect the life of all things, yet the rest of us don't head their lesson.  Why not try not to kill worms or whatever else doesn't have to die for survival?

I often have a disagreement with some vegetarian friends over this basic principle.  Some vegetarians don't eat meat because they physically feel better when they don't, others may find it a positive social scenario, others about the mistreatment of animals in slaughterhouses, etc, the list goes on infinitely.  I however have a serious problem with people that say they don't want to kill animals - yet they have ABSOLUTELY no problem killing a plant.  In simple terms this is 100% hypocritical.  Your problem is with death, yet you put a value judgement on who's or what's life is more important than another's!!  A living thing is a living thing and no values should be attached to them.  

Now most often, the first thought in people's minds is usually: but we have to eat, we have to do things to maintain our lives.  Of course we do.  And the basis of my concept is that we have to find a balance and put in an effort - at all costs - not to harm things that do not explicitly need to be done or killed/harmed.  We have to eat, so we kill animals, plants, etc.  So this in my view is a necessary scenario, just as a spider kills and eats a fly.  But these killings should be done respectfully and only out of necessity.  Not as we do now in overcrowded slaughter houses that take nothing into account but the cost of production and killing.  We should all do what we need to do to survive but work within a balance of nature that goes way beyond one's own 'self'.  And I know this is difficult to understand because we have been taught and socialized to see the world solely through our own eyes and in hierarchical terms based upon us at either the center or the top.  In terms of our own individual quality of life, killing a fly makes our lives 'easier', convenient.  Are we so arrogant to think that we are above another living thing that we share an entire ecosystem with?  Without flies we would not exist, just as without spiders there would be to many flies.  A friend said, yes but flies spread disease and in refugee camps this is one of the leading causes of sickness and death.  But when was the last time someone died in suburban New York from disease spread by flies?    It is not the flies, it is the cleanliness and unsavory conditions that these people are living in that then can be spread by ANYTHING, including flies.   In my opinion, we kill flies mostly because they are annoying and because we have been taught they are "bad."

So here we sit, at the top of the arrogance chain, speaking as if we are the almighty overlords of our world.  Who is, or how, our population growth is being checked is sadly not at issue.  We are the one's putting the world's ecosystem and living scenario at risk with our overpopulation and over consumption.    Is arrogance civilized?  It is certainly not team oriented, or cooperative in nature.  It is a value judgement, I/We are 'better' than something else.  What do you think of when you see an arrogant person in your daily life?  Do you respect them, or do they rub you the wrong way?  We are that person in the world we live in.  We should strive for compassion, and equality in value in an attempt to universally respect ALL living things - not just humans or sometimes animals, but EVERYTHING that we SHARE our world with.  Give life everyday...  Share life everyday...

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