M3005: Question no. 05 on death by starvation because of a lack of vegetarian food being the "greatest evil"

M3005

On death by starvation because of a lack of vegetarian food being the "greatest evil"

Martinus Answers Readers' Questions

Question:

If one makes, for example, an emergency landing in arctic territory where access to vegetable nourishment is excluded, and there is therefore access only to animal food gathered through hunting and fishing should one then forgo this food and thereby surrender oneself to death from starvation?

Answer:

To surrender oneself to death from starvation is to commit suicide; to commit suicide is to kill; to kill is a violation of the fifth commandment. But in a situation where the keeping or violation of a commandment is to an equal degree a violation of its wording or precepts, this commandment revokes or obliterates itself. The fifth commandment does not exist in this situation and cannot thus be violated. Here, however, there is another cosmic law which is valid, namely that which says that "of two evils one must choose the least evil". The question then becomes whether it is "the least evil" to surrender oneself to death from starvation, or it is "the least evil" to maintain one's life by means of animal food until one has fought one's way out of the above-mentioned situation.

To go on living will thus here only be possible on the basis of the physical destruction of other living beings. But a developed human being who in his normal life avoids the killing principle both as regards food and his relation to his fellow-beings, and furthermore with his will and reason works for the removal of this principle from the human way of living is a more protective and life-giving being for other beings than the animals which he, in the existing unfortunate situation, must kill if he himself is to live and manage to get through the crisis. If such a being therefore chooses death from starvation what happens is that "the more significant being" is sacrificed to the advantage of "the less significant", the greatest evil is practised instead of the least evil which is in turn the same as a violation of the law of love. The opposite solution to the problem would therefore be "the least evil" and must be preferred in this situation.

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Question no. 5 First published in Danish in Kontaktbrev no. 2, 1950. Translated by Mary McGovern, 1989.

Article ID: M3005
Published in the English edition of Kosmos no. 3, 1989 and no. 2, 2011

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