One Last Sunset
Here is the truth:
When I pull up a leek, I am keenly aware that I just ended its life. I thank it for the gift of sustenance. I ask it to join me on my life journey and partake of the experience of "being human" with me. I believe in reincarnation in a way very few ever consider. When people insist that eating meat is immoral, I simply consider them poorly informed plant haters. ALL life is precious, and the rules are that life kills to stay alive. Doing it with honesty, awareness of the life cycle of which I am a part, and with true compassion for whatever is dying that I may live is "the warrior's way" that I was taught.
The chickens are not easy. I took a year off last year because I was worn out with the whole thing. The wildfires last year REALLY burned ME out. Last winter, I would wander over to the meat counter and try to buy a chicken but I could not. I would see what was in the package and my stomach would turn... I like to KNOW that my food was treated like royalty while it lived. I can only know that if I raise it, or personally know the farmer who did. This year, I got chickens again. As per the Salatin doctrine, I gave them the very best life I could. Fresh well water, non-GMO feed, fresh pasture every day... then comes their one bad day. It is the circle of life, and it is terrifying and beautiful if you really understand it.
I am always a little melancholy on their last night. This year it was truly a stunning sunset, and I let the birds stay up past bedtime to enjoy it. They are in the freezer now. Seventy six pounds of well loved and cared for poultry to feed my family. I blessed and thanked those birds, and together we watched one last sunset.
NAMASTE, chickens.
RESPECT
Thank you. Not everyone understands, but I do appreciate people who do.
If 'the rule is that life kills to stay alive', where does eating an apple fit into that? We don't always have to kill to survive, so that isn't really a rule at all, but a convenient overgeneralization, used to arrive at the wrong conclusion.
Does 'the cycle of life' truly always involve dying by violence and murder?
Is it being treated 'like royalty' if you're not allowed to leave, if your mating and breeding is strictly controlled, and you live under threat of the axe?
Would you like to be treated that way, 'like royalty'?
Is that how your 'cycle of life' will end, violence and murder?
If I killed and ate you, would that actually be reincarnating you, and thus, a natural and moral thing?
Scary questions, but they logically follow directly from what you just wrote.
Eating the apple kills the apple, the apple's destiny was to die. Just like me. Some day I will be eaten by worms. That is how it goes. And if you think the only way to die is with "violence and murder" that is very sad. What happened with my chickens was not violent or murder any more than going out and cutting a salad from my garden is. It is part of a cycle. Sometimes violence and murder are part of life, but more often it is merely a passing from one state of existence to another.
An apple on the grocer's shelf represents an absolute holocaust of insect life. Even organic farmers are killing insects by the millions to produce an apple. Non-organic apples represent even more insidious death to every living thing on the planet. Organic apples contain within them the seeds for perhaps a dozen new trees. Unless you save those seeds and plant them, there is the loss of a dozen trees and all the apples they would produce in a lifetime. If the are GMO apples, they have been sterilized and no longer have the capacity to create offspring, their entire genetic future has been robbed. We are part of the life and death cycle. You cannot "virtue signal" your way out of it, you can only deny your place in it, and that is not healthy.
For many generations, warriors atte the hearts of the enemies they conquered. It was a sign of respect, they considered the opponent worthy enough to consume his heart and gain his ferocity. If I were eaten by you and you were part of that culture, I would consider being eaten an honor.
If what you did to those birds wasn't technically murder, would it be okay for someone to do exactly the same to you? Assuming they were going to benefit somehow from your death, like you were to be their food, belts, wallets, and shoes? I don't think so. Do you?
If not, then why is it okay to do it to the chickens? (If it's because "we are humans and that puts as above the other animals", please, just tell me that's your belief. At least I can understand that, and it fits logically with the rest of what you're saying! Is that it?)
"Eating the apple kills the apple"
The apple, having fallen naturally from the tree, or hanging by the dried out stem, is already dead. You're eating dead apples - and dead birds. Dead only means 'previously alive', not 'rotten'.
The point is, the birds were killed. The apple died when its stem dried out and became disconnected from the tree, in a way that caused no harm to the living tree. The apple was not killed. This is the same for many plant crops. The plant isn't killed as part of the production of food. So, no,
The only reason I respond, is that I consider you a friend, and I'm duty-bound to my real friends to let them know when I see them beginning with bad premises and using logical fallacies. I hope you would do the same for me. I see this stuff all the time, and don't respond, because those people aren't my friends. If we aren't actually friends, that's news to me, but please let me know, and I'll stop feeling the need to point it out when you appear to be wrong and I've got science and logic to back it up.
Here, you're beginning with false statements like "life must kill to stay alive", and using weasel words and fallacies to reach the conclusion you want - it looks like there's some cognitive dissonance going on. You're not able to hear arguments against your case, as flawed as it is, because it makes you emotional and upset, and you want to withdraw, or accuse the other person of being fanatical, etc. But I'm not fanatical, and what I say is actually backed up by science and good logic, so I'm quite willing and able to have this conversation on that level, or on a moral/philosophical level, or both.
How would us common folk feel, if the elites allowed us to see our 'first and last sunset', before mass murdering us? Is that how the chickens felt? At least, the more aware and intelligent of them? I'm sure many of them had no idea it was even happening until the blade went in.
Would we remind ourselves that it's the cycle of life and therefore moral? Nah, we would huddle for comfort, go into shock, cry as we're separated, and suffer as we die. Like chickens do. Like apple trees do not.
This is tough. You're getting a little glimpse that the way you've done things all your life was actually built on lies and bad logic. I'm sorry about that. It's part of waking up, like, all the way up. The food groups were invented by big agri, 2 generations before you or I. No nutritional science (or moral thought) went into the food groups, yet we're all still taught them today, and even still arrange our plates that way. Meat, potatoes, veg, and a glass of milk, right? Wrong, that's brainwashing, that's adherence to rituals that make no sense, that's unscientific, illogical, and immoral. We now know better. The reason you feel guilty, and made this post in the first place, is you're starting to connect it all. Justifying your behaviour is a sign that you know it's wrong. You admit it's hard for you, and there's actually a good reason for that! Part of you has already figured it out, and the rest of you is struggling to deal with the discrepancy there. You know you don't need bird meat, you know it causes undue suffering to sentient beings, you've got everything you need to finally wake up, finally let the shame of your past and current actions be felt, and then use it as motivation to make the change you need to make. Your health (physical and mental) will improve in ways you didn't think possible, and you'll be able to stop repeating these false statements, and blending them up with bad logic, which leads to anywhere but the truth.
Don't shut it out on the gut reaction. This is the truth, and when you're willing to look at it with that clever open mind of yours, you'll never be able to see it the old way again. I can tell you're close. I'm sorry it's stressful, but you're going to feel so much better once you figure it out.
Lol! That was a lot of words that have no impact on me at all. Sorry, I know what I know, it is sad and a little funny that it bothers you so.
I won't bother you any further, and wish you well on your willfully ignorant way. If you resume your search for the truth, let me know - I'll still be here.
When I joined Steemit, I thought comments didn't get downvoted unless they were actually spam or inappropriate. Sorry @Drutter, to see your correct and honest comments get censored. All you can do is be right when it matters, lead by example, and discourage or ignore emotionality when it shadows reason.
Let me guess... you are "pro-choice" too?
Enjoy that ride on your high horse. I am not a bit angry that you do not appreciate the life you take to survive, but you sure are in a twist over how I live, and that is just silly.