People have lost touch with death these days. Most people I know who
live in urban areas have no relationship at all with death. They live
their entire lives never knowing death first-hand.
They may experience the loss of a grandparent or a family pet but they
don't have a real connection with death. They are completely abhorred when someone talks about killing animals for food or research. They don't understand that death is a very important part of life. On the other hand, most people
who breed animals for food or science have a very strong knowledge of
death. Farmers and researchers are responsible
for the creation of these animals and thus, they are also intimately
involved in the destruction of them.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is true
for birth. The equal and opposite reaction is death. You can't have
birth without death. Immortality is impossible because there is always a
beginning, so there will always be an end. Death
is not something to be feared or demonized when viewed as the equal to
birth. Life begins at birth and if I were given a choice, I would prefer
existence with a finite timeline to an infinity of non-existence. If
you told me today the date of my death, I would
not fear it. I would be happy to have lived and existed in this
beautiful world. I choose existence over nothingness, even if it means
there will be death - my death -- in the end. Unfortunately people who
are not accustomed to death do not understand that
death is an integral part of life.
People get upset when animals are put to death for food or science. They
don't understand that the choice is not between the animal being born
and living forever or the animal being born and killed for humans. Those
choices are not possible. The choice is actually
between the animal being born and killed for humans or not existing at
all. If farm animals and laboratory animals were not used for food or
science, they would NEVER EXIST. If we can't allow them to die for us,
then they will never live for themselves. How
can we condemn death if it means we must also condemn life?
Requiring that farm animals or laboratory animals must stay alive and
not be used for man's purposes would severely limit the amount of
animals that will be allowed to exist at all. It's not like we can just
stop processing animals for food or stop euthanizing
them for experimental purposes and continue to create new animals. All
breeding programs will stop. My lovely baby goats who jump around full
of life in the spring sunshine will cease to exist because I will not
ever breed another goat if I am not able to
send last year's kids to the processor. I don't have enough money and
property to continuously breed goats if I do not have an outlet for
them. Some of the goats get sold to other people and those people care
for them until their natural deaths but a majority
of the spring kids get used for meat in the fall. Does the fact that
they are born with a set date of death invalidate their existence? Is it
better to never exist at all than to live and die?
