| My position here is no so much that everyone should convert to a vegetarian diet. Evidently not all are destined to be vegetarians nor will they ever be. Ethical vegetarianism requires a certain amount of emotional development. First to experience the level of empathy necessary to care about the plight of an animal, and secondly to have the integrity and willpower to do something about it.
There are simply some who due to their limited emotional evolvement or development will never be capable of truly placing themselves in the position of another. Is this their fault? Perhaps not. We don't blame people for having a low general intelligence quotient, therefore why would we blame those who have a low emotional IQ?
Now I'm not saying that all those who choose to eat meat are necessarily low in the emotional IQ dept. As I've stated before I believe many truly do empathize with the plight of animals, yet decide to go ahead and eat meat anyway (prehaps this could be viewed as a lack of willpower or possibly integrity)....this is different from an individual who has no regard or compassion for an animal's suffering whatsoever (there appear to be a few of these here participating in this thread)...these individuals are lacking in emotional development or growth. |