Monday - May 05, 2008

Plant Rights?

Rancino sent me this link several days ago, to the story about the Swiss ethics panel that has decided that plants have rights. I declined to write about it at the time, because i thought it was either a hoax or a misapplied extension of religion. While I really appreciate Rancino and the other readers who send me links - thank you thank you! - I think I saw through to the heart of this article in a flash. I replied to Rancino that

Which cracked him up but he still felt I was full of it. Who, me?

Now that the whole blogosphere is chewing on this tasty story, I felt moved to actually back up my assertions. Here ya go:

• Jainism may be the oldest surviving religion on earth. All life is sacred to them, including plants. They feel that all life has a soul, and classify it from a “one sense” soul that an amoeba or simple plant would have, up to a “five sense” soul that a human would have. Jains refuse to eat root vegetables such as garlic and potatoes. I don’t know why, but I would assume this kind of plant is a little higher on the soul list and thus commands enough veneration not to be eaten.


• Hinduism believes that everything has a soul, right down to plants and even minerals. The soul is the Atma; without Atma there is no life. Hindus are also vegetarians.


• Buddhism also believes that plants have a soul.


• Taoism may also take this view. Spiritual Essence can be redistributed through reincarnation, and can move closer to God (nirvana) or further away.

Nature is cyclic. What comes around goes around. The circle of life. These three religions all appear to be based on the extension of that concept; the soul, the life force, is part of the same cycle, but one assisted or held back by karmic maturation. Ok, I’m no expert on these faiths. I just looked the stuff up today, so I could be quite wrong, but I picked up a lot of this from working with loads of Indian people in the IT world. Quite a lot of it makes sense, but it only seems right to me if you don’t push things to an extreme.

Ok, several billion people believe plants have some spiritual aspect, with some awareness of the world. If a lifeform has awarness and a soul, does it not then also have rights? (avoid the abortion issue here please, we’re not talking about that though there is a MAJOR parallel). If not rights, then shouldn’t these lives be treated with at least some respect, and not destroyed indiscriminately? I think that’s the idea the worldly Swiss ethics committee is developing. I think it is more than a stretch however. You do not have to push recognition of life to the extreme of “endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights”, because if you do the next step is creating laws to protect those rights. And that would be kinda silly, though we do call in the EPA and the Endangerd Species Act when things get too far out of control.

I disagree with the Plants Rights philosophy. I don’t deny that plants and animals are alive. Being aware of only this iteration of my life, I can’t speak to the Wheel Of Souls ideas. But I won’t deny the other truth about life either: all life sustains itself by taking life from other things. Amoebas eat other amoebas. Many plants create poisons that keep other kinds of plants from invading their space. Many plants are destructive parasites, like clinging vines that grow up trees yet choke them to death. Animals eat plants. Animals eat animals. That’s the way of the world. That’s always been the way of the world. Avoiding being Of the world is not something people can do and still be alive at the same time. If you buy into the Swiss conclusion then it is your duty to starve yourself to death. I ugess that’s what all the bloggy yelling and screaming is about. I’m not screaming because I spent 10 minutes and thought a little deeper about it. However, if you utterly reject every aspect of the underlying concept the Swiss were expanding on (ie the rights of living things), then you can’t really argue against cannibalism. You’ve got to find that balance point, and that’s a personal and cultural development.

There is nothing wrong with respecting nature. Killing animals, and even plants, for no reason is not right. However, people and animals, being higher on the awareness pyramid, can be thought of as karmic instruments to the rest of the world. It’s what we do; it may even be one of our hidden duties. So my swatting bugs because they annoy me, mowing the lawn because the grass is too long, or even tearing out some plants because I don’t like them anymore and want to replace them with a brick patio could just be me helping turn the old Wheel. You can’t prove me wrong.

I think I’ll go down to the kitchen now and do my karmic duty.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/05/2008 at 11:12 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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