Human Ingenuity

Over dinner one day, I used to talk with a group of friends about the topic human desires and how far we would go to trick ourselves. One of the question was about the Jay (Veggie) Festival which is a Chinese festival in which for a few weeks, people of Chinese descent would usually stop eating meat to cleanse their mind and body. Talking about such huge sacrifices made, sometimes I've wondered about the following question:

Is it ethical for a vegeterian to eat veggie imitation of meat?

As you know, one of the hot menus during the veggie festival are meat imitation products that are usually made out of soybeans. Now when talking about meat imitation products, eventhough it is not technically meat, sometimes I wonder if it was ethical for these people to even be eating imitation products when the festival specifically tells people to abstain from meat, and I think even the thought of eating meat should not cross their minds if they are seriously planning to stay clean. During the discussion, I brought this matter up, and it seems most of my friends told me that it was completely okay, as it was technically still a veggie diet.

Now staying on the same topic, I've found a related topic. Talking about alcohol consumption, it is known that a number of religion has specifically banned drinking alcohol in its doctrine. However as a number of people want to get high, there has been a number of followers that drink cough syrups that contain intoxicating elements to get high. Once I've asked this case, the table resoundingly said that this was wrong.

I just wanted us all to take a step back and look at the first topic and the second topic. If you noticed carefully, both of the cases are technically the same. Both of these people have been told that doing a specific action is sinful, and they should not do it. However due to human ingenuity, there was been workarounds available that would allow the people to have the pleasure of what has been asked to be abstained which is still technically correct to the doctrine. Strange isn't it?