Compassionate lessons from Eastern philosophy
Due to the compassionate nature of Eastern philosophy, many Hindus and Buddhists choose to be vegetarians. I became a vegetarian myself at a young age to due to my feelings of empathy for animals. I also began studying religion because of my curiosity about the unknown.
I later learned more about vegetarianism, and found it to be a good expression of care for the natural world, more generally. Factory farming leads to vast amounts of ecological destruction, animal suffering, and human suffering. Being vegetarian or vegan is a good way to protest that status quo. It’s an effective form of protest that actually drives the markets that produce food.
I also learned more about the early history of religion, like that vegetarianism is related to the principle of nonviolence in Hinduism and Buddhism, which is called Ahimsa in Sanskrit.
Jainism practices the principle of Ahimsa as well, some of its adherents going as far as to sweep the insects out of the way with a peacock-feather brush before sitting down in order to avoid violence to animals. Jains also have practices to avoid harming plants. Some Jains avoid eating root vegetables and try to only consume plants that they can harvest the fruits of without killing them.
Vaishnava Hindus tend to believe that the ultimate reality of the universe is a deeply personal thing that can be known about through introspection. Jains and Buddhists have similar beliefs.
I believe that the introspection required by these non-violent Eastern faiths is what led to the compassionate ethics of vegetarianism in these faiths. If you’re trying to learn about the reality of the universe by self-reflecting, you aren’t going to get very far without thinking about what it’s like to be someone else. Meditate on that for long enough and you start to have empathy for every living thing.
The utilitarian argument for fruitarianism
Meat eaters will often playfully tease vegetarians with the idea that plants might feel pain. While that argument might seem silly on the surface, it’s actually a great thought experiment.
In Western utilitarian ethics, the emphasis is on reducing the amount of suffering and to everyone involved in a situation. Strict utilitarians often become vegetarians or vegans for the same reasons as Hindus and Jains: to avoid causing pain and suffering to living creatures.
We don’t know if plants feel pain, but they are living things, and the idea that our compassion should extend to them isn’t that crazy. If you don’t believe plants have feelings, you can still make a pretty good utilitarian argument for fruitarianism on the basis of sustainability. Harvesting only the parts of the plants that you can eat without killing the entire plant, or only harvesting some of a plant and leaving the rest of its kind are both sustainable practices.
Just thinking about the idea that vegetables might be conscious is a good ethics exercise. It’s more important to consider this type of idea than you might think, even if you’re only concerned about human suffering. Like vegetables, groups of human beings have been often accused of not being able to feel pain.
For example, Black people today are chronically under-treated for pain. This is probably a systemic echo of an early racist trope that Black people couldn’t feel pain or had a higher pain tolerance than white people. There are similar harmful stereotypes with similar historic roots and currently present consequences related to women and disabled people. For some disabled people there is the additional obstacle of an impaired ability to communicate about their pain.
This line of thinking also leads to other questions, like, does eating mostly fruit necessarily lead to less suffering overall? There’s a lot of human suffering and animal suffering associated with the industrial production of plants, as well. Humans suffer because of labor practices in agriculture, and animals suffer because of practices like deforestation. It’s a nightmare of utilitarian calculus.
Ghandi, fruitarianism, and me
One of my role models is Mahatma Ghandi, who is well known for teaching the principle of nonviolent Ahimsa. Influenced by his Vaishnava parents, Ghandi was a vegetarian for most of his life.
I learned from Ghandi’s autobiography that Ghandi was a fruitarian for several years, but stopped that diet due to health problems. Ghandi also ate meat for a period of time as a young man.
Like my mentor Ghandi, I also ate meat for a period of time after being a vegetarian for many years, during a period of time when I was questioning my identity. Later I reverted to my old ethics, became a vegetarian again, and now am mostly vegan. I avoid meat and dairy products and if I eat eggs I try to be particular about how the chickens are treated.
Ghandi said in his autobiography that he tried meat because a friend of his older brother told him that it would make him stronger. The friend even argued (using an offensive poem) that eating meat had made the English stronger, giving them the power to rule over Indians.
This story made me think about the impact of people practicing nonviolence in their daily lives overall. Was there a connection between the kind of hierarchical thinking associated with meat eating and the kind associated with colonialism, like what the British did to Indians? If more people thought about the suffering that they caused to other living beings on a daily basis, would we be able to avoid bigger and greater instances of authoritarian violence?
Ghandi referred to his fruitarianism as “penance” for the guilt he felt over his various sins. I felt like doing “penance” as well for my meat eating after I stopped doing it. So I considered trying a fruitarian diet as a way of becoming more conscious of the things I eat. I tried to eat more fruits as a way of balancing the karma of the meat that I consumed during the period of time when my moral fiber had wavered.
Is a fruitarian diet healthy?
Besides helping me feel better about my own meat eating, I thought that a fruitarian diet might be a good option for any person who is trying to think about the utilitarian impact of their actions.
It’s tough to get adequate nutrition eating only fruit, so I thought about what the Jains had to say about eating only the parts of the plants that one can harvest without killing them. This broadens the options a bit from a fruits-only diet. Then the diet could include nuts and seeds which are rich in fats and protein, and vegetables and grains and legumes which could provide more carbohydrates, protein, and other nutrients.
Assuming you’re keeping track of your micro and macro nutrients to make sure you’re getting enough healthy proteins, fats, carbohydrates and vitamins, a fruitarian diet with those restrictions is possible to maintain. The biggest problem I see with this diet is the difficulty in getting Vitamin B-12, which can be difficult in any vegan or vegetarian diet. Good vegan sources of B-12 include mushrooms and seaweed.
Are mushrooms the “fruit” of the mycelium? You can certainly harvest them without killing the entire network beneath the soil. And seaweed can be found washed up on the beach, already dead. I could also harvest it, theoretically, without killing the entire seaweed plant.
This thought experiment also got me thinking about the lack of Vitamin B-12 in other plant-based sources besides mushrooms and seaweed. While there are trace amount of the vitamin in many fruits and vegetables, it’s not as abundant as it is in say, the state mushroom of my home state Oregon, the chanterelle.
Is this the result of industrial agriculture breeding plants for high yield instead of nutrition? I’ve heard from numerous sources that nutrition in produce in the United States is declining due to unsustainable farming practices. Maybe if we bred more fruits and vegetables for their B-12 content, everyone would get better nutrition?
Why diet is important to personal ethics
One thing that pretty much begins to learn about when they begin to embark on any kind of restrictive diet is where they food they eat actually comes from. You can’t be vegetarian or fruitarian or keto or wheat-free without starting to read labels.
It is said that “you are what you eat.” That’s true, in a sense from a nutrition perspective, but I also think it’s true from a kind of cosmic, karmic perspective. Eating is a big part of the life of any living organism. Since food is such a big part of our lives, the story of where it comes from is important.
We carry the suffering associated with the food we eat in a moral way the same way we might carry extra pounds if we eat too many calories. Still, it’s not a hopeless position to be in. Even if you eat meat, you can still reduce the suffering involved by choosing meat and dairy products that come from farms or hunters who have better practices.
While factory farms are well-known to be awful, there are many things that farmers can do to reduce suffering to animals and to reduce the impact that farming animals and plants has on the planet. And many are doing it! Check into the environmental and labor practices of the companies that you’re getting you’re food from.
If you’re able, I recommend checking out a local farmer’s market. Eating locally-produced goods is one great way to eat ethically and sustainably. This is because of reduced shipping costs, the production of native plant and animal products, and the ease of following up with the farmer. Cut out the middleman and get your produce directly from the farm!
As for me, I’ve been eating more fresh fruit and nuts as part of my diet. I’m still not fully fruitarian for health reasons, but keeping fruitarianism in mind is making me think more about where my food comes from overall. When it comes to eating ethically, that’s all that really matters.
Esoteric Epistemology 