Guilty evil eaters

Courtesy: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/science/22angi.html

Trying to put myself to sleep here I am wide awake, to digress I read for the first time Vice magazine and was blown away by it's fiction issue, but that's not what's keeping me awake.

It's guilt. For being a man, not that I want to be a woman or a horse, man like in being of mankind. Actually more than that, guilty for being a mammal that's part herbivore.

All animals, and since mammals are the dominant part of the animal brigade, eat more of other animals/ mammals which is fine since there is karmic retribution in eating and being eaten.

What's totally unconscionable is eating plants. Be it that cow, or sheep, horse, rabbit or vegetarian, eating something that itself or its relatives cannot eat you or even bite you back is preying on innocent living beings.

“Plants are not static or silly,” said Monika Hilker of the Institute of Biology at the Free University of Berlin. “They respond to tactile cues, they recognize different wavelengths of light, they listen to chemical signals, they can even talk” through chemical signals. Touch, sight, hearing, speech. “These are sensory modalities and abilities we normally think of as only being in animals,” Dr. Hilker said.

Since the above is from New York Times it's not from New York Post therefore warrants attention, and since the same article explains how plants protect themselves from predators, except humans, its fair to feel bad for them. 

There they are, drawing nutrients from the Sun n' Soil, minding their own business, not creating noise or scenes like mating in streets or fighting in public, and then we the people go eat them and cow, goat, sheep and rabbit do too, and on and on and on go on eating these beautiful, green things. 

And what's totally weird is that some feel badly, including my parents, wife and lots of other people too, about eating cow, goat etc. instead of feeling good about ridding a predator from a plant's life.

It's good to give a plant a chance. If eating chicken is fair, then eating another socially, legally edible mammal is noble. 

Since I know plants are alive, and rather than eat them and feel guilty about being  herbivorous I am all for giving up eating plants, giving up the aforesaid guilt thus becoming a solider man, turning into a non guilty Hindu, which is rare with all that guilt instilled into us, so I am all for guilt free rare - goat!

Vegans and vegetarians there's still a chance to make penance to plantkind - so ....