In regards to eating meat

[Monica]

So then we are not our bodies? Is that what you are saying? What does that say for the cow?

We are more than our bodies. Our mind/spirit complex incarnates into a body. Once an entity is self-aware, it begins its individual evolution, incurring karma.

I think higher 2D entities begin to have a spark of self-awareness, and then live many lifetimes as higher 3D entities. The cow is somewhere in that process. Some cows might be more self-aware than others, as with dogs, cats, or even humans.

Exactly. Now, did we design ourselves? If not, who?

The Sub-Logos, presumably.

Charles Wallace would say it was your farandolae.

That's digging deep in the recesses of memory! I had to look it up...then thought, oh yeah, I remember that.

Right. That is the point... it is an argument ad absurdum. More solid principles for vegetarianism- of which there are many- don't result in such absurd scenarios when taken to the extreme.

I don't think such extreme scenarios negate the vegetarian premise of avoiding cruelty. We cannot avoid killing microbes, but that doesn't negate the value of avoiding the killing of those we can avoid.

I cannot control the microbes I breathe in. But I can control what I eat. To shirk that responsibility just because I might also kill some microbes, makes no sense to me.

I wouldn't avoid helping a human victim if I could...so why would I avoid helping a cow? I see the cow. I hear its wails of pain and terror. I see it frantically trying to escape. I feel compassion. Seems pretty simple to me.

That I am unaware of the suffering of a microbe, does not absolve me of my responsibility to help the cow, whose suffering I am aware of.

The ad absurdum argument is the one perpetuated by the meat-eaters who refuse to do what is right in front of their noses, preferring instead to argue absurdities.

Fussing over microbes, which we cannot control, is absurd. Saving a cow isn't absurd.