Just a thought...

Just a thought that kicked into my brain today when we were talking about the "animals are friends" attitude that children have, and how part of growing up is letting go of that idea, and moving to the "animals are food" attitude:

I eat meat. But I refuse to eat certain meats: veal, lamb, and venison. I have my reasons for each, but the reason for venison is the one that is most pertainant to today's discussion. I don't eat venison because of the way it was first offered to me. Here's the scene:
I'm maybe five or six years old, and my cousin David, an avid hunter, offers me some venison.

Me: What is it?
David: Venison.
Me: What's that?
David: It's deer. Just like Bambi.

Every Human Being Wants to Live?

Derek made the statement in class yesterday that “every human being wants to live,” while we were discussing the morality of eating meat, in extreme situations where it’s man or beast. In my brain, this instantly raised the question of “what about suicide?” I know that begging the questions of the exceptions to what could be a rule can get rather annoying. I hate arguing semantics, but I think that the safer bet would be to say “most human beings want to live” or “human beings in a right state of mind and body want to live.” To say that “every human being wants to live” is to disregard people who are suicidal, or even calls into question euthanasia. In the case of Terry Schaivo (everyone remembers that, right?) there was a huge controversy on whether or not she should be kept on life support. Would she want to live? If anyone were in a vegetative state, would they really want to be kept alive? What do you guys think? Would you stand by the “every human being wants to live” if you were in a vegetative state?