Myth #71: “But killing animals is part of the Circle of Life”
Obligate carnivores & “true omnivores” do kill other animals, and they do so only when they need to in order to survive … Neither of these conditions applies to the vast majority of humans on the planet at this time (certainly not a single one of you currently reading this book). We humans have no carnivorous instincts, are not natural animal-killers, and most certainly are not by nature carrion feeders. And yet these are the niches that meat-eaters have chosen to occupy in their human-imagined & human-biased “cycle of life”. As such, it proves to be most ironic that what non-vegans call “natural” is about as unnatural as it gets.
Indeed, we need to be very careful about using “the natural cycle of life” to justify our choices, for the same reasoning could be used to justify rape, slavery, murder, war, genocide and any of the other human vices that are an unfortunate part of our human legacy. What comes “naturally” to us does not automatically qualify as good or ethical (or in this case even beneficial). So if we are going to talk about what is “natural”, then we need to be very careful — indeed, very Care-full. Do we really want to continue to make excuses for our barbaric past? Do we really want to champion being “only human” when we have the ability to become fully Humane? Is it really in our inherent nature to imprison others who are weaker or less intelligent or less aggressive than we are? Is that all that we can ever hope to become?
Well to that I say NO! I say that free will is also natural, I say that with the choices we freely make comes a responsibility to weigh the negative and positive impacts of those choices, and I say we can choose differently … I say that we can be more than “only human” … I say that we can be a noble Force of Compassion instead of only a destructive cancer of consumption … and quite fortunately, there are already millions of vegans around the world (and more & more of us every minute) proving me right every single day.
Current status of this Myth: Terminated
Justification it provides for eating animals: NONE
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