agreed. no more octopus with potatoes for me.
they are too clever.
I will just eat the potatoes.
"The potato says these things by doing them, which is the best of languages. What is consciousness if this is not consciousness? We find it difficult to sympathise with the emotions of a potato; so we do with those of an oyster. Neither of these things makes a noise on being boiled or opened, and noise appeals to us more strongly than anything else, because we make so much about our own sufferings. Since, then, they do not annoy us by any expression of pain we call them emotionless; and so qua mankind they are; but mankind is not everybody.
From Samuel Butler's Erewhon. (The same chapter that inspired the eponymous Butlerian Jihad in Dune, incidentally.) I don't agree with the conclusion here, and I doubt Butler did either, but the whole book is a great read.
[1] http://www.online-literature.com/samuel-butler/erewhon/26/
"Sadhguru: Now, if you eat a mango, this mango becomes a woman in you. If I eat a mango, the same mango becomes a man in me. If a cow eats a mango, the same mango becomes a cow in the cow. Why is this happening? There is a certain information or software in you – whatever you eat it transforms it into a woman. If I eat, it transforms into a man. If a cow eats, that becomes a cow. So every life is happening the way it is happening because of a certain dimension of information or in modern terminology, let’s call it software. There is a certain software, which is an arrangement of information.
Now, the idea is to eat as simple a software as possible. If you eat that kind of life, which is a very simple software, your ability to override that software and make it entirely a part of you is very good. As that software gets complex, more and more complex, your ability to integrate it goes down. So, especially if it’s a creature which has some sense of thought and emotion, if it has emotion, then you should not eat it. This is the understanding. An animal, which has any emotion, displays certain emotions… especially if it displays emotion which is near to human emotion, you should not eat it because it will not integrate itself. That animal nature will start manifesting itself."
- From http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/video/basis-for-beef-ban/
And, this idea is in Western civilization too. Look at the origins of the phrase - "you are what you eat".
I could eat babies and they would keep me alive. How does one tell if they are able to "integrate" their food without the baby nature "manifesting itself"?
Not the same as me now because currently I'm not eating babies, but it would be the new me.
Even if I never start eating babies, I'm still not the same person a year from now.
"You" is a very fluid concept.