Everybody has different reasons on why they eat or do not eat something. I am a vegetarian and have a philosophy which someone can agree to or not. I don't enforce anything on anybody. And the research here is typical Swedish. Believe me, I live in Sweden. I once went to a doctor to get my diet prepared. And he started with a lecture on why I cannot survive which I very am doing since I have been vegetarian for 35 years of my life.
Between, my philosophy is very simple. I believe that each living organism be it plant or animal has varying levels of consiousness. For example a mango growing on a tree has less consiousness than a cow or pig who is moving around, who cries when it feels pain and has certain basic tendencies like need to eat, sleep, have sex, etc. I also believe that when a living animal is about to die (even if it knows or does not know about it), the brain will release a certain type of chemical which will reduce brain activities as well as help the animal go insensitive to the rising pain.
So if you understand the above statements, my being vegetarina boils down to 2 points.
- The chemical released just before the animal was killed is something I don't want in my body. It basically can make me insensitive to a lot of things.
- This point might be a bit complex to understand, but keep reading: It is better to eat things with low consiousness than with higher levels of consiousness. It is morally much better sleeping at night knowing that you didn't eat something who had similar feelings and tendencies as mine.
And this is the reason why we don't indulge in cannibalism! And why we don't eat our dogs, cats or bird pets to whom we are attached because we know about their increased levels of consiousness. I hope it makes sense.
