Life and Death

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?