Humans and animals seem to be getting a free ride of respect in our society. I simply don’t understand why people constantly overlook our earth loving friends the potato. Why don’t we give the potato the credit, and respect it deserves? In the following paragraphs I intend to single-handedly eliminate vegetarianism as well as hopefully dramatically increase the amount of respect the average person has for our spuddly friends from a not so distant planet.

This great respect comes at a good time for the potato as well since 2008 has officially been named “International Year of the Potato”. As the world starts to eat these fabulous spuds in greater quantity we should take a humble position and respect the great sacrifice that these noble spuds are making for the well being of the human race.

If I suggested to you that you should take a knife and stab an animal in the reproductive organs, rip it out of its home, slice the skin off of it, dice up the remains, and then toss it into a pot of boiling water all to lead up to finale where you grind the remains of it into a mush…you would likely throw up on my nice new shirt and then refuse to pay the dry cleaning cost.

Though this same sort of thing does happen to cows and other animals, the majority of people in our culture seem totally unwilling to participate in this actual process for the great majority of animals. The number of people willing to participate in this brutality to animals does seem to increase with fish, and go down with house pets, but this is really getting away from the point of this piece.

As humans we seem to place a much larger value on animals that demonstrate intelligence, and more important those species that demonstrate pain and suffering. The problem here is that we use our own physical forms and perspective rather than considering the perspective of the life that is getting taken by our tools so efficiently designed to murder them. I hope that by the end of the next couple paragraphs you barbarians will perhaps have the common decency to take others perspective into account before designing your weapons of mass torture and destruction.

Let us take a moment to get back to what it would take for humans to properly respect a life form and treat it with respect and perhaps even stop shoving it down their noise hole. I will start off with intelligence. Intelligence is generally defined as a capacity to acquire and apply knowledge, or the faculty of thought and reason. We unquestionably credit fish with having these attributes to a very small degree as well as many other forms of life on the planet. The demonstration of any form of intelligence is very easy and could be as simplistic as something like very simple operations that are purely instinctual (bees).

I’m sure everyone has seen, at some point, the effects on a potato that has been sitting in the cupboard or on the counter for far too long. The potato will eventually sprout roots in an attempt to sustain its own life. The potato understands that it is going to die if it does not gain more nourishment and so it makes an attempt to save its own life. The roots will sprout out in a number of directions in an attempt for life. Not only will the potato look for life in a number of different directions, it will avoid objects in its way. If a sprout hits a wall in one direction it won’t simply stop producing that root, or try to go through the wall, that root will actually change direction. The potato will use every last bit of life it has in it in an attempt to find its source of sustainment.

This analytical approach of attempt and failure is a demonstration that not only does the potato want to live, but it has the ability to reason and evaluate its attempts to find food. Though a very simplistic form of deduction and instinct, the potato knows when to look for life, knows when to avoid objects that are blocking its way. This self-survival instinct is a clear demonstration of intelligence and deductive reasoning.

Summary: Potatoes demonstration intelligence.

The next issue to address is the demonstration of pain and suffering. The potato has a very slow response time. This is obvious in its slow reaction time to look for nutrition after it has been torn away from its relatives at home. The speed of this species should not be seen as an inability to express pain and suffering when someone stabs it with a knife. You just need to look at the result of the stabbing to see the blood on the knife, counter, and your hands from your brutal deed. When you stab any mammal you will draw blood. The blood is a primarily water based compound that also includes other substances required by the body. This is not dissimilar to the product of water and starch that you will see after inflicting mortal wounds on little Timmy Russet. Your knife pierces the skin, and then the body of Timmy as you carve into his body rip the life force out of him just to satisfy your cruel desire for the blood of the innocent to lead the way as a side-dish to your potential crying baby bird and the pig formerly known as Porky, sweet kind and innocent Porky. What a dreadful meal involving many segments of your brutal lust for murder.

Screaming is a very common demonstration of pain. Potatoes have not yet developed a scream that we can hear, but that is no reason to assume that the sound of the knife slicing into its body is not a sufficient scream.

Summary: Potatoes bleed and suffer.

Lastly I would like to talk about a comparison between the poor spud and the mighty human. A basic necessity to life is the desire to live. Humans have shown an immense capacity to not only kill each other, but more specifically kill themselves. This desire to end one’s own life is simply the lowest level of intelligence when we think about instincts. It defies all logic and reasoning to end one’s own life prematurely. Potatoes have not, to date, demonstrated the capacity for this weakness. Potatoes will always fight for life as long as they have the ability to. This is a clear demonstration that some potatoes are smarter than humans. Even if the human is capable of understanding how to fly a plane, but flying that plane into a building you are demonstrating immense amounts of stupidity in that you are defying your primary function in life which is simply to live. Only one conclusion can be made out of this, and it is the right one.

Summary: Some potatoes are smarter than some humans.

If we apply all 3 summaries we will find that indeed potatoes are worth our great respect and admiration for the sacrifices that they make. We can only hope that they don’t have the capacity to remember or record history since another war is the last thing that humanity needs right now. We can’t seem to keep from killing ourselves long enough to consider the potential for an external opponent that would oppose all humanity for our crimes.

As for vegetarians, I think that this is a clear indication that if you want to truly respect life and suffering you will stop eating potatoes. Or, even better, would be to consider that other forms of life may also be as intelligent as potatoes and perhaps you should just accept that you are what you are…an omnivore.

I hope this has been an educational read for all of you. I hope that you were able to acquire some enlightenment on the subject, and I hope that you nurture your new found knowledge into an immense respect for the noble potato. If you are religious, perhaps you can pray to your god and thank him for producing such an incredible species for us to share this planet with. A species that we can learn from and perhaps one day become great friends and partners with.