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Enneagram Type 5 Board Archive Re: animal compassion?Posted by Heidi on December 07, 2000 at 01:34:19: In Reply to: Re: animal compassion? posted by Lynn on December 06, 2000 at 14:10:45: why arent issues like animal rights or perhaps anti-globalization, etc, ever really common things 5s seem to be interested in? I only speak for myself, but when it comes down to it, it just doesn't make very much sense to me. Maybe it doesn't make sense to other fives either, with varying slants on the issue. If you can explain this to me to my satisfaction, perhaps you'll have a convert: Many vegetarians I've known say that they don't eat meat because they didn't want anything to have to die for them. Plants are alive, too, right? A cow is no more alive than a bean plant, so why do vegetarians give the cow more "rights" than the bean plant? If you disagree prove to me that animals are MORE alive than plants. In my mind, killing life is killing life. In the case of human "food" it applies to both plants and animals--I can't logically give preference to one life form over another...because they're BOTH alive, and they BOTH have to die for me. Since I'm not able to sustain my existence on rocks or sand, etc., I'm pretty much out of luck. Something has to die no matter what. On a more spiritual note (this is a personal hypothesis, but stay with me on it), it makes sense to me that what differentiates an animal or a plant from a rock is the presence or absence of a "life force," ie. the thing that makes something alive. I equate "life force" with the word "soul," so I don't buy that animals have souls and plants lack them. What proof do you have that plants don't suffer in their own way somehow when their life force is snuffed out? What proof do you have that they don't have a consciousness of some kind...as part of a collective life force? I'm not being perverse, I'm totally sincere. I would love to resolve this in my own head, so if you have the answers I seek, hats off.
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