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Vegetarianism The theory behind vegetarianism as a means of preserving life is that eating animals is wrong because animals have rights, too. By slaughtering and eating them, we are taking away their natural right to live. A common belief amongst vegetarians is that animals have a natural right to live and by slaughtering them we are somehow suggesting that we deserve more rights than they do and that we are somehow superior to them. Well, let's look at the facts. First off, we are superior to animals. Our technology, our culture, and our biological developments are, to be blunt, better than those of animals'. Does this also mean that an animal's right to live is less important than our own? By no means. I will say this now: I do believe one thing I've pointed out already, which is that animals, being sentient beings, have just as much a right to live as human beings. Consider the fact, however, that living requires us to eat. Living healthy requires a sort of nutrition which cannot be gained solely through the dependence on nutritions received from fruits, wheats, and vegetables. That being understood (hopefully), we can move on once again to the sanctity of the animal's life. An animal, like a human, as I've already suggested, has as much a right to life as a human does. That means that an animal is also required to eat, and in many cases, the animal eats the meat of other animals. Is this not precisely what our concept of vegetarianism is about? Should these animals, despite their animalistic nature, also resort to vegetarianism? To hold such a belief would be absurd. We should not persecute an animal for eating another animal, for it is simply doing so in order to survive. But humans and animals are different! Are we really so different? What is so different between an animal interfering with the right to live of another animal and a human interfering with the right to live of another animal? The argument of differentialism would have to suggest that neither humans nor animals should interfere with each other's right to live. But are you going to be angry with a lion who, acting out of nature, attacks and kills a human being for food? You may say no, because the lion would be, like I said, acting out of nature. But are humans not also simply acting out of nature when we, too, have hunted in order to gain meat as food for thousands of years? I think the question I'm trying to ask is this: why should we protect the rights of other species at the expense of our own rights? back |
