[Buddha-l] Re: on eating meat and pets

[Hugo]

Hello Alex,

On 10/25/05, Alex Wilding <alex at chagchen.org> wrote:
> I suspect that, looking at history, it is just as "natural" (scare quotes
> because I don't want to get bogged down in the admittedly thorny question of
> what "natural" means anyway) for humans to be cruel as any other hunting
> creature (due to our ingenuety, perhaps distressingly more so). What is
> different about humans ("precious human birth" and all that, and I think the
> Christians have some similar thinking here) is that it is much easier for
> humans to reflect on our natural urges and to *choose* to either obey or
> reject them. We are, it seems to me (as what I believe to be a human), in
> position where it can be natural for us to choose to ignore our first urges
> for the sake of someone else, where the reflectivity of even someone as
> intelligent and as intensely empathic as a collie dog seems to be, if not
> absent, at least very weak compared to the scope of human choice.

I agree as long as we qualify that it is much easier for "most"
humans, but maybe not for all.

What about those with brain problems that doesn't let them have
empathy or some other disorder directly related to their physical
condition?

Even those who are physically fit but are heavely conditioned by their
environment to be agressive or defensive?

--
Hugo