The philosophy behind vegetarianism and veganism due to animal cruelty -

WHO ARE WE HUMANS?

During my research on vegetarianism and ethics, I discovered how inhuman we humans are; we are an auto-destructive race where cruelty is part of our nature. I am a human but choose not to be part of this ignorance, I find this world in it's current state a very hard place to live, a place where I feel ashamed for our race and apologetic for what harm we do, I wish we all understood…

Earth could be the PERFECT place if we would only evolve that one step further to understand who we really are and what our purpose in this life is. We are so small in the full scheme of things, compared to time and space we are nothing, our existence has been temporarily granted, we are a blink, a fraction of a second, and still we know not what to do with our limited time here, as a race, we need to stop and think.
Many believe we've reached the peak of our evolution, we couldn't be more wrong, we will be fully evolved when we learn to respect the rights of others, on that day there will be true peace and harmony, and that is the day I hope I see before I die.

Sometimes I feel that our materialistic lives cause us to forget to think, I don't mean just think, but contemplate, in detail, who we are and what we are to this planet.
While many people in the developing worlds starve, live in war, and fight to survive day to day and minute to minute, we and our capitalist world are only concerned about our personal well-being and what possessions we need to buy that we don't yet have.
We humans have the wrong idea and don't know how to live in harmony with our planet, people and other animals.
My mission is to try to help make this world a liveable place, a place where I can dare to procreate, where people can teach real morals to their kids and dispose of the inherited aggression and ignorance that characterises our society; Where there is no abuse from one human to another, where there is no abuse of the weakest and the silent, where people understand.
There are so many animals being abused every second in this world and this abuse takes many guises, animals deserve respect, and to instil that respect, we need to understand that afforded by nature, they have exactly the same rights to exist on this planet as we humans do. We can reason and create and some believe that this justifies our abuse of animals, the very fact that we're able to reason, clearly demonstrates that the exact opposite should be true, we should realise that the abuse of anything is wrong.
All animals, including we humans, belong to this earth and were reared by it, to the human race at this point in time, the earth is ours to do with as we wish. This way of thinking needs to be changed as soon as possible as if it doesn't, we will lose our planet for good, and for what? For GREED.

NEED NOT GREED

In the 21st century, meat is no longer needed for healthy living, It is medically proven that humans can live far healthier lives on a vegetarian diet. There are a lot of substitutes for meat, such as quorn and tofu which give you all the protein that you need for a healthy balanced diet and by eating these replacements which taste almost the same, you are saving the lives of many animals.

If you don't need meat, why sacrifice animals just for your pleasure? Animals suffer throughout their lives when they are separated from their mothers; cows, pigs, sheep, all these animals live in groups when in their natural habitat, they have feelings, they have a life expectancy of about 30 years, (reduced to about 1 year when farmed!) they are not for our use or amusement! Other than suffering throughout their lives in the farms where they are bred with chemicals and stimulants for their fast growth, despite what everyone says, they are killed in a horrific way in the slaughter houses, what is killing humanely anyway? Is it not like shouting quietly? In the world millions of animals are slaughtered every day just for consumption, do you think that every single animal is killed in order so they don't suffer (in a 'humane' way?)
The best thing is to have an open mind to changing this world, to evolving, to not be afraid of leaving behind what we were and forget about what our past generations have taught us to do, after all, what have the past generations done but made mistakes, such things as human sacrifices, decapitations, conquests, inquisitions, slavery, the holocaust, all these things that we have done throughout history, and we have stopped doing them because we realised they were wrong, meat eating will be one of them, along with hunting, bull-fighting and animal experimentation, etc.
The human race started out as a herbivore race; we started eating meat because we needed more protein ironically for such activities as hunting and also to save us from eating several times a day! The skin was also used for keeping warm during the cold days, now days we have an extensive range of fabrics and protein sources and so wearing leather & fur, and eating meat is only done because we don't really reflect on the suffering that it takes, because of mere tradition.
It is strange though, we humans are 'complex' because we have evolved to create so many alternatives to everything, we have created advanced technologies and made incredible discoveries but still we abuse other forms of life. In many ways we are a poorer race than we were 130,000 years ago when the first homo sapiens sapiens populated the earth, the only difference is that it's difficult to imagine that they killed for any other reason but survival, a necessity, whereas we now kill for greed, fun and ignorance. We are responsible for the torture and abuse of animals for our entertainment and all because we can; There's no greater power telling us we cannot abuse and so we run amok with our meat cleavers and circus tents. We've been handed the permission by our generations of forefathers to do such things and so we assume our roles with gusto.
If animal abuse were to cease, the world would begin a new cycle, a new era for mankind (such an ironic word!)
There's also a lot of money involved in animal exploitation, the many drug companies that claim they'd be unable to survive without the use of animals for experimentation would close, leather shops, slaughter houses and butchers shops would all be closed. Other business' would undergo upheavals but would easily survive none the less - restaurants, shoe shops, circuses, pet shops, farms, etc. would all find alternatives for the cheap and easy to acquire abused animal products.
Obviously we could create alternatives for every animal product currently available in the world but we choose not to because it's far easier to exploit animals, and that is the sad truth.

DON'T BE AFRAID TO CHANGE YOUR MIND… YOU ARE NOT DOING ANYTHING BUT BECOMING A BETTER PERSON, AND IS THAT NOT WHAT WE REALLY WANT IN LIFE, TO BE THE BEST THAT WE CAN?