Hmm this is kinda brilliant :)
" Our insulation from the fact of death extends far beyond the food industry. Accumulating worldly treasures--wealth, status, beauty, expertise, reputation--we ignore the truth that they are impermanent, and therefore, in the end, worthless. "You can't take it with you," the saying goes, yet the American system, fixated on worldly acquisition, depends on the pretense that we can, and that these things have real value. Often only a close brush with death helps people realize what's really important. The reality of death reveals as arrant folly the goals and values of conventional modern life, both collective and individual.
It is no wonder, then, that our society, unprecedented in its wealth, has also developed a fear of death equally unprecedented in history. Both on a personal and institutional level, prolonging and securing life has become more important than how that life is lived. This is most obvious in our medical system, of course, in which death is considered the ultimate "negative outcome," to which even prolonged agony is preferable. I see the same kind of thinking in Penn State students, who choose to suffer the "prolonged agony" of studying subjects they hate, in order to get a job they don't really love, in order to have financial "security." They are afraid to live right, afraid to claim their birthright, which is to do joyful and exciting work. The same fear underlies our society's lunatic obsession with "safety." The whole American program now is to insulate oneself as much as possible from death--to achieve "security." It comes down to the ego trying to make permanent what can never be permanent. "
Modern Dualism
Digging deeper, the root of this fear, I think, lies in our culture's dualistic separation of body and soul, matter and spirit, man and nature. The scientific legacy of Newton and Descartes holds that we are finite, separate beings; that life and its events are accidental; that the workings of life and the universe may be wholly explained in terms of objective laws applied to inanimate, elemental parts; and therefore, that meaning is a delusion and God a projection of our wishful thinking. If materiality is all there is, and if life is without real purpose, then of course death is the ultimate calamity.
Curiously, the religious legacy of Newton and Descartes is not all that different. When religion abdicated the explanation of "how the world works"--cosmology--to physics, it retreated to the realm of the non-worldly. Spirit became the opposite of matter, something elevated and separate. It did not matter too much what you did in the world of matter, it was unimportant, so long as your (immaterial) "soul" were saved. Under a dualistic view of spirituality, living right as a being of flesh and blood, in the world of matter, becomes less important. Human life becomes a temporary excursion, an inconsequential distraction from the eternal life of the spirit.
Other cultures, more ancient and wiser cultures, did not see it like this. They believed in a sacred world, of matter infused with spirit. Animism, we call it, the belief that all things are possessed of a soul. Even this definition betrays our dualistic presumptions. Perhaps a better definition would be that all things are soul. If all things are soul, then life in the flesh, in the material world, is sacred. These cultures also believed in fate, the futility of trying to live past one's time. To live rightly in the time allotted is then a matter of paramount importance, and life a sacred journey.
When death itself, rather than a life wrongly lived, is the ultimate calamity, it is easy to see why an ethical person would choose vegetarianism. To deprive a creature of life is the ultimate crime, especially in the context of a society that values safety over fun and security over the inherent risk of creativity. When meaning is a delusion, then ego--the self's internal representation of itself in relation to not-self--is all there is. Death is never right, part of a larger harmony, a larger purpose, a divine tapestry, because there is no divine tapestry; the universe is impersonal, mechanical and soulless.
Just a small piece Taken from
http://www.westonaprice.org/healthissues/ethicsmeat.html
It is no wonder, then, that our society, unprecedented in its wealth, has also developed a fear of death equally unprecedented in history. Both on a personal and institutional level, prolonging and securing life has become more important than how that life is lived. This is most obvious in our medical system, of course, in which death is considered the ultimate "negative outcome," to which even prolonged agony is preferable. I see the same kind of thinking in Penn State students, who choose to suffer the "prolonged agony" of studying subjects they hate, in order to get a job they don't really love, in order to have financial "security." They are afraid to live right, afraid to claim their birthright, which is to do joyful and exciting work. The same fear underlies our society's lunatic obsession with "safety." The whole American program now is to insulate oneself as much as possible from death--to achieve "security." It comes down to the ego trying to make permanent what can never be permanent. "
Modern Dualism
Digging deeper, the root of this fear, I think, lies in our culture's dualistic separation of body and soul, matter and spirit, man and nature. The scientific legacy of Newton and Descartes holds that we are finite, separate beings; that life and its events are accidental; that the workings of life and the universe may be wholly explained in terms of objective laws applied to inanimate, elemental parts; and therefore, that meaning is a delusion and God a projection of our wishful thinking. If materiality is all there is, and if life is without real purpose, then of course death is the ultimate calamity.
Curiously, the religious legacy of Newton and Descartes is not all that different. When religion abdicated the explanation of "how the world works"--cosmology--to physics, it retreated to the realm of the non-worldly. Spirit became the opposite of matter, something elevated and separate. It did not matter too much what you did in the world of matter, it was unimportant, so long as your (immaterial) "soul" were saved. Under a dualistic view of spirituality, living right as a being of flesh and blood, in the world of matter, becomes less important. Human life becomes a temporary excursion, an inconsequential distraction from the eternal life of the spirit.
Other cultures, more ancient and wiser cultures, did not see it like this. They believed in a sacred world, of matter infused with spirit. Animism, we call it, the belief that all things are possessed of a soul. Even this definition betrays our dualistic presumptions. Perhaps a better definition would be that all things are soul. If all things are soul, then life in the flesh, in the material world, is sacred. These cultures also believed in fate, the futility of trying to live past one's time. To live rightly in the time allotted is then a matter of paramount importance, and life a sacred journey.
When death itself, rather than a life wrongly lived, is the ultimate calamity, it is easy to see why an ethical person would choose vegetarianism. To deprive a creature of life is the ultimate crime, especially in the context of a society that values safety over fun and security over the inherent risk of creativity. When meaning is a delusion, then ego--the self's internal representation of itself in relation to not-self--is all there is. Death is never right, part of a larger harmony, a larger purpose, a divine tapestry, because there is no divine tapestry; the universe is impersonal, mechanical and soulless.
Just a small piece Taken from
http://www.westonaprice.org/healthissues/ethicsmeat.html