Chicken Soup for the Soul

Chicken Soup for the Soul - the first thing that came to my mind as I cursorily glanced over the book's title was - it must be something to do with cooking recipes. But, wait, the title says something about the soul... so there must be a spiritual undertone to the book. On reading the book, I found that it contained short stories about normal people going about in their lives. Each story had someone helping the other person showing kindness of the kind that is isn't very common these days. (Not that the people earlier were any kinder!)

Each story about hope and kindness was meant to be some kind of a soup for the soul. Just as a chicken soup makes your body feel good, these stories were meant to make your soul feel better. This was a well-intentioned comparison but it irked me a little. What about the chicken that was killed only to be put into the soup? Didn't that chicken also have a soul when it had life? What about that? Or is a chicken soul so low in the hierarchy of things that it can be sacrificed only to provide some moments of pleasure and a little nourishment to the human body?

Please don't think that I am some kind of a propagator of vegetarianism or one of the founding members of PETA. I am neither. In fact, I enjoy eating chicken (and without feeling guilty, if I might add!). Then, why, you might think, am I making such a big deal of the issue? Chicken Soup for the Soul makes me think about the larger issue of how human society divides things into moral and immoral, ethical and unethical. Most people in the West are non-vegetarian and chicken forms one of the items of daily consumption. So, in the West, there is nothing wrong per se with killing a chicken to eat it. It was always meant to be this way. And in that sense the book conveys its meaning pretty well. However, in India, there are many vegetarians. Most of these people do not consume meat because it comes from killing an animal (that has a life and a soul) and is therefore considered a sin. Now, try explaining to any such vegetarian in India that Chicken Soup for the Soul is a book that is meant to make you feel good by teaching good morals and you will get weird looks. The title would be so contradictory. Something like - Adolf Hitler's Essays on Benefits of Non-violence!

So the dichotomy is clear. While most people in the West easily understand the meaning the book's title delivers, the same is not so obvious to a large number of Indians who are vegetarian. In general, in India, I do not think such a title would strike a direct chord with the people. The point is that there is a difference in the way different people consider what is ethical and unethical - even when living in the same age. Now, let me make things dirtier. Morals and ethics, to most people, are ways of walking the path that God has told them to walk on. It is the right way of doing things. Most people in the West and in India believe in some God - I can't cite a source right away but I read somewhere that a survey concluded so. Also, in most religions, not doing something that God preaches brings you one step closer to hell. This means while Indian vegetarians do not eat chicken so as not to disobey their ethics (and their God), many in the West do so regularly without ever feeling so -- implying that their ethics do not consider it wrong. Now, how can one God consider something wrong (punishable by hell) while the other choose to remain neutral, if not positive?

I guess there is something wrong somewhere. Either morals are not given to us by God or most people in the world are deliberately committing sin each day of their lives by consuming meat! If the latter is not the case it means morals are man made. And they might have been conceived by "wise" people who have already thought of the consequences the society would have to face in the absence of these morals.