To the persecuted carni/omnivores:

I apologise for being so confusing in my previous post. I will clarify with a more organised version:

Given:
X.) As we live on earth, we must eat to survive.
Y.) Anything we eat must die.

Scenario # 1: ''Hierarchy''
ALL lives are valued differently, and some lives are more valuable than others.

What we can conclude:
A.) Cows deserve to live more than plants.
B.) Humans deserve to live more than cows.
1.) Wait, how did I arrive at Conclusion B?! The same way anyone arrived at the conclusion it was less evil to eat plants than cows.
C.) It is not wrong for humans to kill cows for food.
D.) It it less wrong for humans to kill plants for food.

IF Scenario # 1 is wrong to say that some things deserve life over others (Human > cow > soy ), then everything has the same right to live as everything else (human = cow = soy).

Scenario # 2: ''Pervasive Equality''
ALL lives are valued equally and have an equal right to life.

What we can conclude:
A.) It is just as bad to kill a cow or plant for food as it would be to kill a person for food.
B.) Humans still must kill in order to eat.
C.) Rather than killing humans; cows and plants are killed, incurring the same guilt nonetheless.
1.) if you have killed a carrot by eating it, you may as well have killed a cow or a person.
D.) In this scenario, killing a cow or killing a plant deserves no condemation, since all must kill to eat, so all are equally guilty.
1.) if you farm cows for food, you ARE killing more plants than those who eat strictly plants; however, ALL are murderers in the gravest degree.
a.) Mathematically speaking, the cow farmer has caused more death, but how many times must one kill before he is considered a murderer?


Conclusion:
Scenario # 1.: Eating animals is okay. Eating plants is ''more okay.'' Neither action is bad. Eating humans is the most evil thing to eat.

Scenario # 2.: Eating animals is terrible. Eating plants is terrible. In order to survive, we must do terrible things. Eating humans is just as bad as eating anything else. Just...please, don't eat humans, okay?

What cannot be is (human = cow > soy) Either there is total Pervasive Equality, or there is a hierarchy. If some lives are equal to humans, and other lives are not, who gets to make such an arbitrary judgement which determines the morality of everyone else's food?

*here's the reason this post was originally written*
Those who still eat meat are made to feel guilty (by SOME vegetarians/vegans, not all) by means of the ''Pervasive Equality'' idea. If Pervasive Equality is true, then everyone who lives is a murderer, and to point a blood-stained finger and shout through dripping red teeth at your brother or sister they are a murderer is more evil than necessary.
*that was the reason this post was originally written---^*

For the record, I identify with the ''Hierarchy'' idea. I addressed ''Pervasive Equality'' to show, in its entirety, the reasoning being used to condemn omnivores/carnivores for eating animals when, according to some, there is more equality across different life forms than others are aware of.

For example, let's say you draw the line at cows, and say it's wrong to eat cows. That's fine for you, but to push that guilt system on someone who loves hamburger is wrong. You have drawn the line, but what about that other person? What if THEY want to draw a line? Doesn't it matter what they say, every bit as much as what you say? Who wins? Either: (Scenario#1).: lines can be drawn by everyone, or (Scenario#2).: no lines can ever be drawn; otherwise it just gets tainted by one person's personal arbitration. This means that ''Pervasive Equality'' is the only other viable scenario to the ''Hierarchy'' idea (i.e.: ''If they're not all unequal, then they are all equal.'')

This is different from your own personal code of ethics. I won't touch that. This is talking about the institution of a policy on all people (something I wouldn't attempt, but it seems others are more bold than I am.) in Scenario # 1, it's not wrong to eat cows. Stop putting guilt trips on me. In Scenario # 2, how can you condemn me while the blood is still fresh on your hands?

Also, please don't ask me to defend ''Pervasive Equality'' (questions/statements such as ''why don't we eat humans, then?'' and ''well, your cow farms kill more plants than we do.''). It's not my stance. I know that cow farms cause the death of countless plants. I don't care about plants that cows eat. You (though not ALL of you) wanted to condemn me based on ''Pervasive Equality,'' why are you asking me to defend your own position?

Cali Pics

Click the pics for larger versions :-)

My first night in California, Miss Ortal took me to Moonshine, an adorable restaurant in Malibu, just off the Pacific Coast Highway. It was perfect. Good food, fresh ocean air... :-)

A few days later, Miss Joni and I met up at In 'n Out and fed the little birdies our leftover french fries :-) awwww look at 'im! :-)

Then we went to huntington beach, where we first met :-)

I wrote in the sand and took a picture of what I wrote, because that's how I roll.

And here's California, being photogenic, again ;-)

Then today, I was driving around and found this place near Camino Estrella and Camino Capistrano, in Dana Point. That's a good view of Dana Harbour in the distance.

High tide of the same scene I took pictures of about a year and 5 months ago.

Look at all those pelicans hangin' out on that rock... pelicanning.

That's right between the pelican rock and the big rock. See in the distance, there would be a walking trail to go around to the cave, but it's allllll under water! So, I went to the jetty.

This is about halfway on the jetty, looking south.

Same picture, with the moon at the top :-)

Hey man, you should watch where you're walking. I bet that rock's slippery.

Oh, hey guys! I mean...gulls ;-)

This one gallie said...

Warning! Warning! Rant in... 3... 2... 1...I'm sick to death of listening to people talk about how much they love animals and care about the environment, how much they want to save the world...PUT DOWN YOUR STEAK! If you loved animals and the environment so much, you wouldn't be eating animals and thusly killing it. There are so many facts and figures I could throw at you, but instead I'll repost something from this...

"#6, is a first time mother. She is frantic. Her baby is missing. She is pacing desperately up and down the paddock, bellowing and crying, and calling for her lost boy, fearing the worst, having her fears confirmed. She is one of the thousands of defenseless females born into a quaint, verdant, organic dairy farm. She will spend her entire short life grieving the loss of baby after baby. She will be milked relentlessly through repeated cycles of pregnancies and bereavements. Her only experience of motherhood will be that of a mother's worst loss. In the prime of her life, her body will give, her spirit will break, her milk 'production' will decline, and she will be sent to a horrifying slaughter, along with other grieving, defeated, 'spent' mothers like herself.

She is the face of organic milk.

"You cannot care about animals or the environment THAT MUCH as long as you go on consuming them and their bi-products.


So I said:

Dear _________, you had to know you'd get some people riled up with a post like this. I love ranting like this, though, so I can't say much about that.

I will say this, though: soy is still murder. It's just that soy doesn't scream when you kill it, so those who kill it don't feel so guilty.

We're a part of the earth, so eating other things on earth will happen.

Suppose eating soy is decidedly not as bad as killing cows. Fine. In that case, some lives are more valuable than others.

1. Is a human life, then, more valuable than that of a cow?
2. If so, then why is it less important that humans to live and be happy than it is for cows?

However, if a cow's life is significant to such a degree that humans ought not eat cows, then all life, likewise, shares that same pervasive significance; even though one must still eat living matter to survive.

1. In that case, it is the same sin to eat soy as it is to eat cows, and we might as well eat cows if we're going to ''mercilessly slaughter'' countless soy plants.
2. It would be better to kill just a few cows, so that less lives will be snuffed out.

either way, using cows for food is not as evil as you make it out to be.

you're as ________ as you think you are

having things and being happy are two different things.

1.) it can be right in front of you, everything you wanted, but if you're not convinced in your own heart/mind that you are happy, you will be miserable.

2.) on the other hand, you can have what some would consider a ''shit life'' but can be convinced that you are truly happy in it.

a person is rich in proportion to the things he is willing to live without.

100% of people who live will die. the things that make you cry the happy tears on your deathbed can't be bought with money.

And really, the ''things'' that make you cry happy tears on your deathbed aren't ''things'' at all. they're ideas.

happiness, or more accurately, your state of mind, has effects on the physical world, not the other way around.

That which you imagine, feeling its end, will bring itself about. your imagination is creative. it creates what you live: happy or sad.

disagree? well it sure isn't gold that makes you happy ;-) it isn't a bunch of ppl who make you happy either. you know you can be surrounded by lots of friends, and yet feel all alone.

you also know you can talk to just one really good friend, and they don't say a word, and you feel better. what has that good friend done to make you feel better? nothing. absolutely nothing. the ''healing'' took place in your mind, in your perception of your friend. it all depended on what you were convinced of.

you are convinced of the truths that govern your life, and that is the only thing that makes them true. yes, the line is drawn in some places; proving that there is an absolute truth** that keeps everything within certain boundaries. but as far as having a happy and successful life are concerned, it's what you imagine, feeling its accomplishment, that shows itself on the screen of your ''life movie.''




** Note: absolute truth has been dealt with in the previous entry ''perception is delusion.''

you'll never get the patent for this idea...

brake lights that extend all the way across the back of the vehicle, and the harder the brake pedal is pressed, the more of them light up. THAT way, you can tell how hard the person in front of you is braking, so you can either avoid being in a pile-up, or tell if the person in front of you is just riding his brake down the hill.


And while we're at it, let's add a similar apparatus to the dash, so the driver can tell if he or she is braking harder than normal because let's face it...some people brake extrememly hard: they wait till there's 15 feet of stopping distance to go from 50 mph to''0.''


and don't give me that ''oh, that's a worthless invention.'' The WHEEL SENSOR was a worthless invention. just check your air monthly like you're supposed to, right? All it does is cost ABSURD amounts of money, be complicated, be easily broken, slow down the tire changing process, and my idea would actually be used all the time to save lives and improve the flow of traffic...make it not so much of a stressful thing, too.

Awww look at little Plantie! he thinks it's springtime. Aww :-)

And here is Little Sprout. i know the seed came from plantie, i'm positive. maybe it was the milkman... i don't even have a milk man, so i should have suspected something when he showed up that one day...

don't worry, i'm going to find out very soon what kind of plant Little Sprout is...he's actually starting to form bark already, and he's got a few flowers starting. he's only a few months old!

perception is delusion

i think the biggest enemy to us is misconception. ever see the movie ''the labyrinth?'' in that movie, david bowie (the goblin king) is contact juggling a crystal ball, and he says to hoggle (a troll-looking feller) ''give this to Sarah.'' he tosses the ball to Hoggle and it instantly becomes a peach. like, he was incapable of understanding it for what it was. it turned into something he could grasp the moment it became his.

i think that's what happens to us all the time. the moment any truth becomes ours, it is instantly down-graded by our own limitations. maybe that's why love is so different to so many people. no one knows fully what it is because no one can know it fully.

i wonder why hate isn't as different to very many people? why is it so hard to define love, but very easy to define hate?

it's like there's a principle of love, but not one of hate. like there's a principle of harmony, but none of dischord. there's a principle of truth, but not one of lies.

then each person has their own version of truth. like each person is carrying around their own shard of a mirror. what they see in that mirror is not false, but it's not accurate because of all that it leaves out. we can't behold a virtue in its fullness as we are now, limited beings.

like chuck missler was talking about two dimensional characters on an overhead transparency: if they looked at each other, all they would see is just a straight line. if you put your finger down between them, they would perceive a miracle. if they looked at us, all they would see is cross-sections of us. just like, us, three dimensional beings when we perceive time, the fourth dimension, in cross sections. we see it as it passes by, but we can't behold the whole thing. ''we can't remember tomorrow'' as chuck said.



and in another journal, this same entry got some comments:

Perception is altered do to our experiences. We are defined by our decisions we have made in life. People struggle with defining love because they haven't experienced it. True love is far deeper than our minds can wrap around it. Hate however, we have all experienced, we have all felt the dischord and strife in life. This is because sin is a part of us all. Love however, when sought out and captured, covers a multitude of sin. We just as people haven't grasped a hold of that concept. How can someone love me enough to erase all the hate? The only answer I know to relate it to, is the love of Christ. That is the true meaning of love. When someone embraces that, and understand that love is unconditional and has greater depth than hate, we can bein to define it.
-magen

''but now we see dimly, as in a dull mirror, then, we shall know fully, as we are fully known.'' ...and it's been a while, but i'll take a stab at somewhere after first corinthians 13.

i say ''perception is delusion'' because (from earlier entry) suppose we were walking in a park, and we both observed a flag, flapping in the wind. you might say ''the wind is moving around the flag.'' and i might say ''the flag is moving in the wind.'' [[we're both right in what we assert, but wrong in what we deny. the ''river of truth'' flows straight between what each of us has said.]] (borrowed bracketed material from Chuck Missler...i guess i'm guilty of ''bracketeering'' :-D )

in other words, to define something like love, truth, etc., we capture it in our own distorted view. our perception is delusion.
-me


Any perception outside of our own perfect perception IS delusional. Hatred is the easier road to travel because it doesn't leave us feeling vulnerable. Vulnerability brings out our true intentions. Most people have poor intentions, thus shun the idea of love even when it falls in their lap. I don't believe we are limited beings. I believe that we live without limitations. We must first find the fortitude to acquire the focused vision in our minds, the will and persistency to endure error, and the energy to make it a reality. The only limitations you have are those that you put on yourself. Limitations are akin to viruses to a computer. Just like the elephant at the zoo. You see those little baby elephants held there to that stake and chain. Years and thousands of pounds later they are still stuck to that same stake and chain. Why? Could they break away if they tried? ABsolutley. At some point, they were convinced that they cannot break away from it. We are all held down in similar beliefs. It is up to our minds to rid ourselves of these beliefs. Just because we do not have the conciousness to comprehend something doesn't mean that it can't happen. Excellent commentary, thank you for posting that.
-matt



I like your analogy about the elephants. There are many ''chains'' that hold down mankind, chains that can be broken easily, but ultimately, it's the belief, not the potential of a person, that determines where they will go. ''imagination triumphs over desire'' It is foolish to hold onto damaging beliefs, I agree.

However, I disagree with the idea that our perception is flawless. If perfection were to change, it would no longer be perfection. Any deviance from perfection is imperfect. If our perception is perfect, then how is it that we all see different things?

We all see different things, so at best, we have to conclude that not everyone's perception is not deluded. Which single person has perfect perception, if no one sees things precisely the same as another person? Who will define love in the exact same way as this one person?

Hate is easy to define and easy to grasp. People have so many differing opinions on love, and for the most part, they're all correct in what they assert, but wrong in what they don't. Why is love so complex? Why do we all have different ideas about it? We can't all be totally right when someone else says something that we missed, but is also true. It would seem we've been handed a very lovely, perfect thing, but all we can make of it is something confined to the scope of things we're capable of understanding.
-me



EDIT:

perception is often times defined by experiences, but experiences, in truth, are defined by perception. why can we not define love? it is because we cannot perceive love. why can we not perceive love? it is because love is beyond the grasp of the constituents of our perception.

perception is the combined product of:

1. imagination
2. expectation
3. belief
4. feeling

that which you visualise, accept as truth, and expect, feeling its completion, that is what your perception is b/c that is what will be manifested in reality, for you. (example: About 40 years ago, Dr. Joseph Murray cured himself of sarcoma, when no doctor could help him. He used this very principle to do it. Several other examples exist, such as curing paralysis, blindness, and various other deformities of the body and the mind; but in the interest of space, i won't cite them here. If you doubt these conclusions, then cure yourself of one of these things, apart from the principle of ''the doctor dresses the wound, but God heals it.'')

William James, father of modern psychology said this: ''we weep not because we are sorrowful, rather, we are sorrowful because we weep.''

• it is what you believe, essentially, that becomes your experience.
• you perceive the things that you have already believed into existance.
• not everyone believes precisely the same thing, and therefore, not everyone perceives in the same way or the same things, as others.

to me, someone else might be creating truths that are not at all true. likewise, i might be creating truths that others know to be absurd. how can such a paradox exist so universally, unless all human perception is just a fabrication?

What, then, is good? What is bad?

It still remains that there are principles to one thing, yet no principles, save the lack thereof, to other things.

There is no principle of disorder. There are; however, intangible, unreachable principles of love, truth, and ''good'' (the last one might seem like a stretch, but contemplate the idea of ''a higher lesson.''), just to name a few. I will expound on love, but any of these concepts can be switched in place of the word love:

1. Love MUST have come from something we don't understand fully.
2. Love MUST have come from something that understands love COMPLETELY.
3. If love were our own, we would KNOW IT FULLY.

• As it is, love is just ''a peach.'' That is, love (as we know it) is the best we can imagine it to be.
• Love, really, is better than, or more accurately, ''more than'' we can imagine.

Maybe we're just viewing love in our limited dimension, like we view time. If so, does love has cross-sections to us, so we can only feel one KIND of love for one person at a time? like, the love for a partner and the love for a friend are very different to us.

• Maybe, love is a miracle that we cannot understand, like two-dimensional figures on an overhead transparency, looking at a three dimensional object between them both. They have no ability to percieve all three dimensions, so one says ''it is long'' (but not wide or deep) another says ''it is wide'' (but not long or deep)
• neither view is wrong, but they can only grasp things in a limited way. Everything beyond that gets ''truncated.''

How can i perceive love when all i have are senses that work in 3 dimensional existence?

1. There is a key ingredient to love that we are missing.
2. We see it in our dimensions as something that is less than what it really is.
3. Love came from something not confined to our limited dimensions.