Nice one - my thoughts exactly.

Pav - what you have here is the age old problem of trying to define "What is life" . Your argument that people are hypocritical in reacting to death of humans versus animals is a valid one and your notion of Vegetarianism ties into it. But then so is eating plants destroying life - is it not ??

Each person have their own way of rationalizing these thoughts , the simplest being "assuming" humans are at the apex of food pyramid, and there is nothing wrong in assuming this. The way I like to rationalize this is by applying the "theory of creative destruction" - the concept where in life (via death) gives way to more life, its principally a "cause-effect" relationship where life causes death and death causes life.

Personally loss of any life is sad – loosing human life takes it even further because I could easily substitute the family in pain with my family . Just like Asif notes - What would be my state if either my son/daughter/wife was in that theater ? . If I have a choice to save the “life” of my son/daughter with a dog – there is no question I WILL save my son/daughter

At the end of the day we are all animals ( albeit social ones) and we merely express a trait that can be found in other species of animals also - Elephants, Ants , Bees have all known to exhibit social tendencies like humans esp. in the matter of death .

My condolonces goes to all families hurt by this blast....

asif dearest, i guess you don't seem to understand my personality. I would never be in that situation. Because...??? If you haven't understood me position regarding animals from my previous posts, it's because ANIMALS ARE NOT HERE FOR OUR PLEASURE OR ENTERTAINMENT. They have their own purpose in this world just as we humans do! They should be free to live in their natural environment. If this means that they will be attacked by other animals, let it be so! If they come to illness naturally, let it be so.

to sum things up: I would not keep animals as pets. I'd rather have human scum bags are slaves instead!

PS- I'm never having children. There is enough scum in this world, doesn't need any more Guess I'm just a bit furstrated!

dvdsoil, yours is the first sensible post in this thread. but even then I don't agree with you 100%.

Yes, it is true, though I dislike MOST of my blood relatives and people that have married into our families, I love them, I pity their ignorance, I care about them, and I truly wish nothing ever bad would happen to any of them even though deserve otherwise. I would not trade the life of my family/friends for animal life, but I'm in no position to make that decision.

dvdsoil, I've heard the "plant life" argument many times before in order to justify the slaughtering of animal life. I think(??) plant life is a natural source of energy like water or fire and what not. As I see it, plants don't have "feelings". I don't think plants feel pain. Just as rocks don't. We have noticed changes in other elements due to chemical reactions, but the transformation of the elements does not justify life. I wish I took more chemistry and physics classes what i'm trying to say is that, just because Plants have transformation which seems like they have "life" (which they probably do), they don't have feeling! Despite what the Discovery Channel might tell you. If you eat an apple off of a tree, the Tree it self doesn't die or dissolve, it is when you pull it from it's roots, it dies or dissolves. EDIT: just because a certain type of rock or other elements might dissolve when in contact with water or other elements doesn't mean they have life. it's just a chemical transformation.

as per Mahatma Ji, humans don't have the natural digestion system or the anatomy to be eating meat. for example, we cannot digest raw meat, nor can we capture and pierce through animals with our bare hands or and teeth. This is why we cook the meat. The entire modern process isn't natural. We can however capture and pierce through most fruits and veggies with our bare hands without the use of external utensils. Don't even bother with the sushi argument. We are land animals. we are meant to roam around land, not water. Fish have their own purpose in their underwater world

I write all this, but like all of you, I too am a shameful hypocrite. I've done my deeds, and I'm not proud of them..nor will I try to justify my actions as they can't be justified.

I don't mean to attack any of you on a personal level. I'm just angry at the hypocracy. At least one person hear (dvdsoil) can understand my link between bombing & "meat"....and my furstration to some extent.

Being a fellow vegetarian(by choice), I salute everything you said. And to add an additional point in support of your argument. Unlike a selected amount of animals/cetacean mammals/rodents, plants can never have a sense of "consciousness". Also, no living plant has a functioning brain or a beating heart. I don't mean to condemn those that have a non-veg. lifestyle, I just think it's ethically wrong to eat meat. This isn't to suggest that I'm ethically perfect, but it's one step towards improvement in my strong judgement.

FYI: Reader's Digest magazine predicts that by the end of the Twentieth first century, atleast 50% of the entire World's population will have to stop eating meat completely. Predominately for health reasons.

I had a fantastic chicken sandwich last night.. all toasted with some mexican chicken marinade and some other stuff like onions and peppers... however today im having a tuna sandwich.. whats the crack with people eating fish.. are we all evil... and tonite.. im having a meat eating feast pizza... yum yum.. im evil.. hang me by the balls.................

There's always one that come to degrade a decent discussion.

Ali

decent my arse..... last decent conversation i saw on zulm was erm... well i cant remember.. !!

First off let me clarify - I am non-veg guy and enjoy good food ( Veg or Non-Veg). I agree that eating veggie is definitely more healthy and I am "trying" to go veggie - perhaps one day I will...

But what disappoints me is when you rationalize your eating habits, when you bifurcate life into plants and animals. Like you said "Life =Life" - be it plants, animals or humans . I think the inherent problem here is that we are trying to mix/match two schools of thought
- One that defines life in scientific terms
- The other defines life in moral terms

Personally i prefer the later approach and my way to "rationalize" this is that science is merely a "language" to simplify "existence" not to "justify" it .

Anyways the point is taken and I am happy for that - enjoy you veggie burger while I munch on my chicken briyani

Again, that is just using specifics that support your cause to justify your argument. To me life=life, when you eat a plant, you destroy its life, end of story. In the end, it all comes down to choice and the thing I value most is having that choice. I'm a non-vegeterian, my mom and many other family members are vegetarian by choice and I totally respect that, but I don't expect to be ridiculed for my choice either.

life = life. plants != life. rocks != life.

When I started this thread I just more info on this bombing. This has gone from ironic to funny to vile to angry to comments with shades of ignorance and what not.......Well I like mahi mahi marinated, mildly spicy baked not breaded.

Never bothered to this thread until this morning. A commuter train today stoped at one of the station and when its closing the door couple of "student like" people throwed what seemed to be stones, inside our car. the train started and with in a minute both the "stones" exploded, creating a stinky gas. For a second we all thought its some kind of chemical weapon (naturally since we live in NY) and the next thing, we have to pull the emergency, break the glass window/door, jump out of train, running for life.

I dont know why people do all these. Do they ever know what the people has to go thru'. Do they know how many people are disabled that they can even run from the situation.

Are they really patriotic / true religious followers that they feel affended, probably not. The root cause of all these are very clear. Money and Power. I dont know if India (or the world for that matter) will ever change.

You have got to wonder what the mentality of people is these days and what sort of education they are getting. I wondered the same reading some of the posts on this thread. Just google the great phenomena that is ‘happy slapping’ sweeping the UK streets these days to get an idea of all this absurdity.

Ali

Of all the absurd threads on Zulm so far, and there have been many, this one really takes the cake, specially when it comes to going off topic.

Coming back to the original topic of this thread, the funniest thing about this whole episode is that there is still no evidence that the bombs had anything to do with 'Jo Bole So Nihal'. It is only the media that drew this conclusion in a hurry, based on the rather weak circumstantial evidence that both theaters were showing the same film. What about the fact that Satyam is a multiplex which was screening several different movies at the time along with the film in question.

plants != life? Thats news to me. One of us has to go back to elementary school