This may be a bit fractured, but I’ll try and circle in the dark until it is likely mostly clear. Two parts, then a connection.
Part one, vegetarianism. I have had, if memory serves, 5 dreams at least in which it was more or less directly suggested to me that I become a vegetarian. I have had very lucid conversations with both a turkey and a fish, a pig for a friend, and been shown meat as death twice.
Yet, I am not a vegetarian. I was for two years many years ago, and I never felt healthy. I lack the discipline to do it right this time. In my considered, mildly erudite view, our bodies ARE in some respects machines, and they are machines programmed to eat meat. This is their natural condition. One can plainly see that when agriculture became the norm, people got shorter, less healthy, and seem to have lived shorter lives.
I don’t want to get into a discussion on diet though. Right or wrong, this is my belief. Now, I have a choice to make: do I heed the dreams, or do I heed my reason? My dreams tell me to abandon meat, and my reason tells me that I will be stronger, healthier and likely live longer with meat. I can justify either action. If I choose the former, I may be more spiritual. If I choose the latter I will be more vigorous and feel stronger, emotionally and physically.
Can we not posit that both options are partially wrong and partially right? If that is the case, I will be a “sinner” no matter what I do.
Here is a larger context: the only large scale, intentional experiment in long term vegetarianism I know of is in India. Specifically, it is integral to the doctrine of ahimsa, or non-violence, which is part and parcel of most Hindu belief systems (and there are quite a few). As one goes up in caste, the more is one expected to abstain from all meat, and even spices thought to cloud the mind. The Brahmin caste–varna–is of course at the top of the pecking order.
Here is the interesting thing: this caste has presided over the subjugation through culture of countless billions of people over the last 2,500 years or more. There are formally four castes–varnas (colors, if I’m not mistaken)–but there have apparently always been people who did not even fit into that system, who were by design and tradition OUTSIDE the social system, who could not be members of the community. Such people were held in contempt, and higher caste people could, did, and probably still do abuse them when the spirit takes them.
Is this just and right? Has vegetarianism solved the problem of violence, actually, or does it exist simultaneously with violence expressed in an unjust social order? One story that made an impression on me was of a very talented archer, who could hit anything from anywhere, having his thumb cut off because only the Warrior caste was allowed to shoot bows. If I recall, this was a teaching story, in which he of course realized that he had been wrong to be so bold in the first place, and only got what he deserved.
What of cows who live their entire lives in comfortable pastures, protected from wolves, and who are slaughtered humanely? They were going to die sooner or later anyway, and they would not have lived at all if not for their ability to provide good quality protein to humans. We all die: they will have their revenge in the end. None of us endure forever, at least on Earth.
George Bernard Shaw, who came up with the idea of Zyklon B, and Adolph Hitler, who put it to use, were both vegetarians, as I understand it. Which is greater, the sin of eating meat; or the sin of dreaming of mass murder of humans? Are cows equal to people? I don’t know and I don’t care. For my purposes, they are stupid animals that taste good when they are roasted. I may learn differently someday.
My point here is that I am a sinner. I was going to be a sinner one way or the other, and in my view I am slightly less a sinner if I pursue what I view as the pathway towards health and vigor. I may be wrong. In my view, there is no perfect answer to this question, but a decision nonetheless has to be made.
This leads me to what I will call “The Teacher’s Dilemna”. I don’t have the faintest idea if anyone will read this; for me, it doesn’t matter, since the point of writing is to figure things out that were latent by making them manifest. I have broad ideas, but don’t sort out the details–really the details don’t pop out–until I start typing.
But let us say that somebody out there thinks I’m smart. If I say it, they listen to me. I want this and I don’t want it. I want it, if what I said was actually smart; but I realize full well that I am stupid, intemperate, impatient, and probably just plain childish sometimes, and I don’t want anybody mimicking that.
How to tell the difference? This is the question. Practically, what happens is that a teacher will emerge who teaches a system. Somehow, somewhere, the Ten Commandments appeared in the Jewish people. This is a system. There are dozens or hundreds of additional commandments in the Torah.
So the Jewish people have this outline, this behavioral and cognitive template, and now they can say valid teachers teach this template, and invalid teachers don’t. This is a sustainable system, that can be replicated across many generations, and which can only be changed gradually, such that very few people see the changes that are happening, and which are normally forced by circumstance. It’s hard to say, but it seems likely that if the Romans had not conquered Israel and destroyed the (2nd, I think?) Temple, then priests might still be slitting the throats of goats on altars. They got kicked out, though.
To be clear, as I understand the matter, the method of repentance, T’Shuvah, which had literally previously involved sacrifice, had to be internalized, since they no longer had a place to ceremonially kill goats. They evolved, but not by choice.
But in a system which only recognizes congruence with the past, how is progress possible? It isn’t. It really isn’t. Conservatism is only progressive when one considers that the ideas of leftists and social radicals make things worse by contrast. This makes staying still effectively forward progress, but it is still not optimal. I discussed this in the last month or two on a post called, I think, “The Turtle, the Rabbit, and Sleepy the Dwarf”.
Useful teachers innovate. They have large dreams, which they work to implement in practical plans. But the process of creation requires a certain “distance”, shall we say, from the rules. It requires you to be able to imagine existence outside of what has always been. It is a chaotic system. It is unstable. It requires you to be able to make jokes about the system, to tease, to ruffle the feathers of others. It requires irony, and the ability to laugh.
In a system which is too tight–and I have several books on the engineering consequences of what are called “tightly bound systems”–you can’t do this. You get shut up. You get shot.
When you think of Muslims, or certain types of Jews and Christians, do you see laughter? Do you see any capacity for irony? They have a belief system in which they MUST do certain things, and not do others, or they face Hell for all eternity. That is a large burden. Failure is not an option, so fear must rule every day. Is that not true? Is fear not the inevitable, and unavoidable consequence of making failure utterly and completely an end of everything, which cannot be corrected in any way?
Is fear not the consequence of believing that your every last act is measured, and weighed, and counted? That there is a ledger counting every last thought, every last action, every last little, bitty thing you did in a long life?
Do you believe successes are few, and failures many? I don’t. That is not my metaphysics. If you can get some space in a religion, step back from it, and ask questions like: “what patterns can we get from actually observable things today”, then you can slowly integrate the scientific method into religious belief. None of this requires renouncing your identity, but I think just from a psychological perspective it is obvious that fearful people make lousy human beings, and one would think that the point of religion is to help people become better people, to progress and grow.
Oh, that should do. Hopefully this makes sense. I’m going to read a bit then go to bed.