I don't understand what's wrong with the human mind. Even in Auroville I hear the phrase over and over again "as long as they had a happy life". A happy life seems a legitimation for killing. It really makes no sense to me. It came up during an interview with an Aurovillian girl, talking about sustainability, listening to our needs rather than our wants. Yet, when it came to veganism, she told she still consumed meat. She lived in a farm, she said, and if she saw the chickens walking around, running freely, she could not think different than that those animals have a happy life. Ok, so far I can more or less agree. Even though you can not see the inner struggles of the individual chickens, the daily frustrations of a chicken life and the possible season-depression of the feathered chicken in fire hot summer, you could say that a free running chicken on a farm has a relatively happier life than one who is stuck in a crowded, inhumane factory farm without space to move.
But then a strange loop in thinking occurs: the chicken is happy (according to human judgement) so... I can kill her. This is one of the strangest conclusions I ever heard. Ok, I have been listening to similar analogies over and over again, sometimes featuring cows, pigs, rabbits, ... but in no case I was able to see the logic of the conclusion. What would give you the right to kill a happy living being. Wouldn't its happiness just be a reason to keep her alive? Is a killer less guilty of murder if his victim was happy before he/she was killed? Is it more legitimate to throw a bomb on Auroville, as most people seem to have a happy life here, then throwing it on a hospital for depressed patients or on a prison? Are we jealous of their happiness and do we like to see it destroyed as soon as they get it? I love the fact that organic farms are getting more popular, but organic meat from happy animals, come on! We don't need meat, we don't NEED to kill to fulfill any of our daily needs. We can perfectly deal without any deadly victims. any exploitations for their mothermilk or eggs And still, even those we tell they care, those we preach to live on a higher level of consciousness serve chicken rice in the Visitors' Centre and Tuna Sandwish in the Solar Kitchen.
Humans, if you plan to kill me, please do me a favor: kill me when I feel like dying, not when I finally am enjoying life.
