A letter to the World Vegetarians - Writers Forum

spooky buk · 04-26-2008, 12:19 PM

It is absolutely normal for an intelligent person to be distressed by the idea of killing and devouring an animal--we experience the same discomfort about it. One can have very fruitful relations with most animals we eat and it does feel deranged to feast upon them.

Furthermore, and notwithstanding this personal relation, a sensitive Man can still sympathize with the animal’s primal urge--that we also feel--to simply be alive. We can understand that.

Nevertheless, if we confront these feelings with daily life, we will learn that eating meat, in moderation, is a perfectly healthy, natural behavior shared by many species; It is not a perversion of any sort.

If the idea of killing and eating an animal is really so hostile and deranged to you--if you find yourself utterly disgusted by the presence of a dead cow inside a supermarket--our immediate wonder is: “Why do you not feel the same way about vegetables?”

Plants are alive too, you know... Even if you have never spent time enough among them to feel it in your conscience, you most certainly have learned this in school. There is no discussion: Vegetables are alive, just like we are; They are living beings, like the animals you refuse to swallow.

However, in complete discordance this simple piece of common knowledge, we still consider (in the back of our minds) that these beautiful entities are outcasts--pagans!--probably only because they have no eyes, no voice... No immediate connection to awaken our senses out of the stupid denying of life to the vegetal world.

Though we cannot relate ourselves to a banana the same way we could do it with a dog (unless you are a pervert, of course, which would not surprise me) the fact remains that vegetables are living beings and that we rip them out of the ground and eat them.

And we--horrible hungry Men--are not the only ones doing it. Cute bunnies do it too.

#

Absolutely everything--everything--that can be fit into biology is nothing but the history of vegetables and their parasites. There is no way around it. We are bloody fucking parasites and we eat the living so that we will survive; kill yourself, or get over it. We must put ourselves in the position of a little kid who is averse to needles and needs to take an injection. We are not perfect, and some times it is wise to admit our feelings are wrong. So, despite our personal disposition towards this subject, we encourage ourselves, in moderation, to kill and eat fellow sentient beings--animals or plants, indistinctly--not only as a necessity to survive, but also as a path to enlightenment; For the pure act of eating, if properly understood and imbued with the right meaning, will help deteriorating ignorant illusions blocking our way to reality, freedom and true peace.

#

It is also common knowledge that many among your group became vegetarians not for the mere repulsion to eat meat, but as a passive attack against companies that cruelly mistreat the animals destined to become food.

“We cannot support this industry”, we have heard for a long time, from many different mouths. This is also an desire we can admire. We are against animal abuse too but, unfortunately, a passive resistance as simple as not buying meat does not appear, in reality, to have any influence over the Machine.

If the majority of the population suddenly did the same, then maybe your plan would have a chance--maybe! But, as discussed previously, eating meat is a natural behavior and it will continue. You cannot trust a plan to save the whole planet if this plan only works after 80% of the population starts an anomalous food program.

The Beast says “Fit!”, and most are not eager to be an anomaly. There are few of us out there who are willing to fight. Our individual economical power is not significant enough to make the Machine bleed. So let us think of another individual power that can work like a knife and help us in our fight: Knowledge.

#

Real knowledge begins with Socrates. Not to have read Socrates dialogues is like being an analphabet. In those books, one can find the very Guiding Manual of Being a Man.

Concerning the topic of this letter, a basic analysis of Plato’s Republic will clearly demonstrate that when Men group themselves together in a city--and divide the different jobs among different people--the removal of garbage from the streets will depend much more on the character of the garbage-man than on the character of anyone else.

Any given city can be entirely populated by recycling-freaks environmentalists who never miss a trash can and still be completely filthy if the garbage-man, for example, is a drunk pedophile fucker who never works and can only think about collecting public fees and sniffing powder with underaged prostitutes.

Through the same process, a city filled with the lamest teenagers in the world would still shine clean if taken care by a real version of the super heroes we see in toothpaste commercials.

If you are worried about garbage on the streets, creating sophisticated means to deal with your own trash and stimulating it between your neighbors will change nothing. You must aim at the garbage-man. You must attack him and take his place, or force him to work properly.

Boycotting meat, or any product sold in a large scale, is pretty similar to praying--It makes you feel better, and it changes nothing.

We need to attack--that is what we do. And as we already have a solid plan, now all we need is power to sink the knife in.

We need more soldiers by our side and for that reason we want your group to dissolve. Demons are those who deprive a society of its fighting energy. Fiends! Your whole ideology is no better than a bible with crucified broccolis in the place of Jesus. Your World Vegetarians disseminate words of a false salvation and leads people into the belief that meaningless selfishness and vanity acts resume their social obligations.

If you teach a warrior he is doing enough by simply buying selected products while the enemy burn our houses and rape our women you are evil and you must perish--this is why we have kidnapped your leader.

#

A minor boycott will never cause the food industry to collapse. Even at the impossible perfect scenario of your deceiving plan, if you had magically convinced the whole world population to stop eating the animals, you could not simply stop to eat at all.

The big companies are not a bunch of balls inertly falling. They are not commanded by gravity or any other unmollifiable law; It adapts! And even now, as the percentage of non-meat-eaters is ludicrously small, these companies already make a gravy train over your silly utopia of breaking them.

All they need to do is change a logo and dive at the pool of any other market; Suddenly you are feeding them again, giving your money away for those nice soy products--and if you are infuriated about the animals, do not dare thinking they treat those grains any better.

#

In forests all over the world, where many of us were raised, there are indians who feel they must excuse themselves to a three before cutting it down. They ask the trees for their permission and then they apologize.

We have spent most of our lives among plants and we know they are alive.

When you look at all the vegetables we eat, you should also realize they did not come from a beautiful hilltop, where they had the best cozy sun every morning and the fairly undisputed floor from which to suck different dishes from time to time. They are not given the joy of the refreshing surprise of the rain. Most of the vegetables you eat never felt the rain, or even natural sunlight. These plants did not have a normal wild life where they could get some kind of affective relation with other elements of Nature.

Plants can also sense things and communicate, in some levels, with whatever surrounds them, be it a Man, a passing fox, a bird nesting upon them, or even just another plant living nearby.

The vegetables we eat lived confined and planted in series, artificially lighten and fed and abnormally grown with chemicals to please our tastes and commercial conveniences--just like the pigs, ducks and cows you say you are willing to fight for.

spooky buk · 04-26-2008, 12:24 PM

Do not fool yourself. Our food industry is perverse, but that is only a small part of this huge industrial evil that took hold of our society.

The garbage-man is a hooker and the actual hookers became role models! The mayor is greedy, the police is blood thirsty and the workers are drugged; The doctor is sick, the teacher is crazy, the layer is guilty and the list goes on and on forever...

You can not change all of that with a fucking diet! There are few of us willing to fight, and you collect these golden seeds for what? Fiends! You guide them into your infantile playground, where they are taught that all we need to do in order to save the planet is wasting our blessed time in futile forgoings, such as longing for a roast beef.

#

Leading people into the belief that boycotting meat will solve things is preposterous. It is criminal! Reducing people’s capacity to fight by giving them a social religion that turns recycling into prayer and donation into tithing is wrong. You cannot make people feel ok about themselves as the world around us burn. Just look around! The rivers are poisoned, the smoke rises and the buildings fall. People must fight!

People must get mad, first, so they will be eager to do the things that really matters--and that is what we do. We take action.

You, members of the World Vegetarians organization, take away from the individuals their desire for revolution and their ability to engage combat. You canalize these feelings into a bunch of useless, fairytale crap--the same way religion exploits the good intentions of a population, turning them into a bunch of humble, humiliated slaves.

You teach this people that by staging insignificant personal behaviors they are actually doing what is necessary and that, after becoming vegetarians, they do not need to think about revolting any longer. Your organization has been considered harmful, and the kidnapping of your leader is actually a good deed by your own standards.

We are not open to negotiation and we do not ask for a ransom. We simply want your group to dismember. It will not be a great loss.

You are nothing more than silly dreamers and amateurs--there is no point in keeping a conglomerate of these.

We are true revolutionaries. Actually, not revolutionaries; this word has already lost its monster-like significance. They ripped it out of its true meaning, so that old fighters could have their stamp sold as another market-related, harmless products to satisfy people’s rebellion desire.

The proper word to describe our potential is not revolution, but terrorism. This is what the Machine reports to be fighting against, so that is exactly who we are.

We will not seat upon your asses and read nutritional information out of colored packs--suspecting soups and risotto, insanely looking of any traces of Rennet or gelatin, as if they were the true enemies--while the whole world collapses at our feet.

We act and we fight, and we have a wise knife.

#

We want those among you who share our honest rage against the Machine o join our cause. And we know they will eventually come to us, as soon as we release them from the clutches of these deceiving fantasies you create. We need these soldiers, and we do understand that simply dismembering your group will not help. They could simply join any other (or none) and keep this vegetarian nonsense till their dying day; and that is why we needed your leader. We are prepared to create a counterpoint which will release our brothers.

#

Our organization has planned in silence for many years. We do not want to call attention to ourselves. We do not want special products or any other type of insecurity driven social self-imposed status.

We waited patiently. During these long, productive years we have done much and said nothing.

Concerning particularly this vegetarian problem, it is time for you all to know that we have infiltrated strategic targets of your food industry.

In the specific cell under my supervision, the youngest generation of our silent warriors spent almost their whole life among plants. I, myself, and my two immediate managers come from so deep in Brazilian forests that the simple fact of living in a modern city--in order to finally set our candles on fire--feels immoral and oppressive. We are not afraid to sacrifice our very lives; none of us!

And by now we have huge farms; we have gigantic crops and we know everything about them.

Needless to say that this ability to sacrifice and this knowledge about what we do granted us a top position among the vegan/vegetarian market. In a way that (through your own reasoning) as long as you keep this foolish lifestyle, maybe you are no longer supporting the farmers who abuse animals--but you are supporting us!

You have funded the very kidnapping of your leader and many other revolutionary acts that will be developed in order to force the potentially active population out of their alienating contention cells.

We are rising and you will help us, one way or the other.

Please, do not be too sensitive about it. We live in a harsh world--you must understand that. If you see a snake ready to bite you, will you not kill it? To live in a harsh world, but as free, enlightened Men!

Your leader, it feels appropriate to say, is being treated with great hospitality and he even gained some weight.

He does not know it yet, but he is destined to provide us with further enlightenment, as he is about to find the same end of all our vegan/vegetarian strategic targets:

We will eat him.

RAGTFTP|JPNRDC
(Red Alert Group--Through Freedom we will have True Peace!
Jonathan Pearce, Neal Richman and Douglas Cassady)

spooky buk · 04-26-2008, 12:25 PM

I'm Brazilian, and i'm just trying to learn how to write in English.
Any correction is welcomed as a friend

nacreous · 04-27-2008, 08:52 AM

hooey. its wrong to pose your opinions as the hard facts.
mammals have feeling. they have elaborate cns, and plants have no cns at all. two totally different situations. dont blur issues.
calling vegetarians "Silly dreamers" does little to win them over, including myself.
use your writing to persuade others, not to knock them over the head.

spooky buk · 04-27-2008, 09:32 AM

uheauheauheauhea
You should at least read something before giving an opinion. I'm sorry, but i just can't really take this kind of fake pretension of being reasonable seriously.

You throw some pseudo-scientific facts about cns from a distance, without even knowing what are you talking about, as if it meant something real, to put a cherry over the top, telling ME not to blurry issues? hueauheauhea I can't take it seriously, I'm sorry.

uheahuehauea, I mean, you start your critic by saying it's wrong
to put my opinions as the hard facts, but you're exactly imposing your opinion from the start, by discarding a "i do believe it's wrong to do it" and saying "IT IS WRONG TO" - man, i'm sorry, i can't take you seriously

As i can't take you seriously, i won't waste my time to really argue anything. It's useless. And if you had at least read the text, you would know i don't mean to win you over, and there's no necessity to discuss anything, for it's a short story.

Even if i had to take you seriously, you're actually saying that three letters you read in a magazine can make a point? If i had to take you seriously, i'd simply ask if are you really, really denying feelings to the plants? cns or no cns, are you really saying that plants don't feel?

You are ignorant, man. I have problems making hard statements like that with no solid ground, but no wise person would pose as judge like you did before reading the victim. It's a short story about a terrorist letter, it becomes quite obvious that it's not the writer opinion, but a character - if you had read it, you'd know. And your comment works exactly as if you had read a selected part of Lolita and wrote to Nabokov telling him he is a disgusting man - it's so pathetic that it's funny

No wise man would tell me so easily it's wrong to do this or that, when you yourself is not righteousness. And no wise man would tell me to use my writing to persuade others. This is one of the most disgusting things i've ever read about writing.

I don't want to "win you over", man. You are ignorant and pedant to come discuss something you didn't read as if you had higher knowledge about it. You are exactly the opposite of the people i try to get in touch with, and to be honest i don't even want to speak with you any longer, for ignorant pedant people is something that really brings the worst in me.

nacreous · 04-27-2008, 09:47 AM

alright, relax dude, keep your knickers on...
I didnt understand it the first time. sorry.
cns - central nervous system.

PageOfCups · 04-27-2008, 09:56 AM

Attacking someone that gives you fair critism isn't particularly polite. Especially since he was right. Plants don't feel pain and don't suffer. And this is coming from someone doing a biology degree.

nacreous · 04-27-2008, 10:03 AM

no, no Page of Cups, he was right. I didnt finish the story before I commented. If I had, I would not have nay-sayed his work... It is just a letter his charachter is writing in the story.
my fault. again, I apologize and have sent him a personal apology as well.
hope he knows about flipper dough, too.

spooky buk · 04-27-2008, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nacreous

no, no Page of Cups, he was right. I didnt finish the story before I commented. If I had, I would not have nay-sayed his work... It is just a letter his charachter is writing in the story.
my fault. again, I apologize and have sent him a personal apology as well.
hope he knows about flipper dough, too.

nacreous, as i sad in the personal message, i'm sorry as well. I had just woke up, and maybe i was in that just-woke-up humor. I do think you wrote something inadequate, because you hadn't finished reading - but it don't mean you are inadequate yourself, in a personal way (as i'm already pretty convinced you are not)

I ended up writing an arrogant, ignorant message myself - everybody has bad moments, and i neglected that - for this i'm very sorry and i did feel i owned you an excuse.

Also sorry about the flipper dough

spooky buk · 04-27-2008, 12:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PageOfCups

Attacking someone that gives you fair critism isn't particularly polite. Especially since he was right. Plants don't feel pain and don't suffer. And this is coming from someone doing a biology degree.

It seems the critic agrees with me it wasn't fair criticism.

About the other point, stating that plants don't feel things the same way we feel do not implies that they can't feel at all.

A bat sees no light, and yet it sees, by his own ways.

If it just happens that you are a scientific loony (i don't know) there are also many scientific data pointing towards my point. Plants can have their growth altered by music, for example.

Anyone arguing that plants can't feel - to me is pretty obvious - haven't spent time among them.

To say a plant can't feel because they have no cns is doing like Lavoisier when asked about meteorites (still unexplained at the time). He said: "It's impossible to fall rocks from the sky, because in the sky there are no rocks"

Maybe there is more to plants than you know. It's just a thing for you to consider. I hope you don't think that the degree you're doing is any kind of "I know everything about this" magic spell. I had the impression people work on science to discover things we don't know yet - opposed to just gathering some absolute knowledge that's hidden inside the universities.

If you're doing a biology degree and says that plants can't suffer of feel, i'm sorry to get the impression you know few about life. Maybe you are too confident about the degree you're still doing, and maybe you should make some effort to learn more, in order to become less confident.

Besides, you're apparently also commenting issues about the text without having read the text, which is kinda risky.

PageOfCups · 04-27-2008, 12:38 PM

I always read the comments before reading the actual work so that I can get a good idea about if I'll like it or not. As a vegetarian myself I'm not exactly going to read something that preaches at me for my choice (now I know that's not the case I'll read you work through and leave another responce if I have anything to say).

As for my degree, all the work we've done about plants so far has lead me t the conclusion that they can't suffer. They my respond to things but that is what a successful living thing does. If a plant is damaged it releases hormones to make it more difficult to eat and actually slightly poisonous. This doesn't indicate pain, it's just a way that they prevent themselves fom being eaten so they can pass on their genes.

I'mnot a scientific loony, I just trust in science. If it showed that plants suffered then I would accept that.

Pluss the bat analogy doesn't really work. Bats are mamals. Mamals have brains with which they sort and interperate information that their senses gather. Plants don't.

spooky buk · 04-27-2008, 02:27 PM

It doesn't really matter to the analogy if bats are mammals, for the only relevant thing in it was their specific relation with seeing - i did not mingle their relation with light and seeing with their ability to feel and interpret information they gather - but only their ability to gather this information without the tools we use for the same means.

Bats have no tools to see what we see, yet they manage to see. This is a closed and apparently uncrackable statement on it's own. From this point on, i'll state that maybe plants can manage to feel, yet they don't have the tools to feel like we feel.

It really seems to me that the analogy works perfectly, even if your interpretation of it was a little bit confused.

About your scientific conclusions, do you think plants actually have any conscious will to pass their genes? Well, they can't even have any conscience, according to your view, can they? How could they worry about genes? If they protect themselves, how can you say they do not suffer? Are you telling me a plan with no brains, unable to feel anything, can actually have a logical strategy about passing genes?

We, humans, do worry about genes, since a few years back. And although science loonies insist we do things to pass then forward, can you really argue that this was our main worry as we built History?

So you're a vegetarian. How nice

But do you care for dead animals?
They're not really hurt, you know. They're just crying and suffering because they're worried about passing genes around

It's not even suffering, is it? Semantic matters...

If you were an alien studying humans, wouldn't it be pretty fair to say that a hurt man protects himself to prevent himself from being killed, so he could pass on his genes? Yet isn't it also because he suffers?

Have you being hurt, pageofcups? Did you worry about your genes then?

And if these aliens could only see like bats, and if they felt like plants, couldn't they say that we cannot see or feel at all - according to their standards?

I do believe that plants feel. And i'm also tended to believe your conclusions came prior to your experimenting.

But please don't be fooled by my first just-woke-up message. I mean you no offense at all. This arguing rather pleases me