[Buddha-l] "Nature" and eating meat

[Joy Vriens]

Jim Peavler wrote:

> I'm likely to get in trouble for this, but people often excuse things 
> because they are "natural". Why is it more natural for a mountain lion 
> or a coyote to kill for food than it is for a human.

Because they're natural creatures placidly complying with their nature 
and humans try to run away from theirs? Hybris? The human project 
started by the statement that humans are not animals. "We are different! 
they said in the pathetic joke of a language that was theirs at that 
time" That made those unwashed savages feel good for a while, but then 
they had to find ways to show to themselves that they were indeed 
different. Some scientists believe that is how civilisation started. 
Before that founding statement humans ate animals because they were 
animals themselves. After they declared themselves humans they had the 
right to eat animals because animals weren't humans. Later this 
*evolved* into the idea that one could also kill and eat humans if one 
somehow managed to convince oneself that even though they looked a bit 
like humans (the deceptive evil terrorists), they actually were animals.

> Humans spent a few 
> million years evolving as hunters, as the long history of artifacts of 
> weapons, scrapers, etc. attest. Perhaps virtue lies in the strength to 
> overcome "nature". But, then, why would that be true?

Overcoming nature? Humans? Human evolution is the continuous refusal of 
their nature, which happens to create a viscious circle of a 
continuously changing nature. Human evolution is the continuous running 
away from their own tail, or whatever is left of it. It's a perversion.