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Zeusthecat

Is It Wrong To Eat Meat?

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On 1/18/2015 at 0:03 AM, Gormongous said:

I also want to ask about keeping pets, especially indoor-only pets, because if meat is murder, then pets are slavery, aren't they? I've just realized that there's no way to frame this question so that it doesn't sound like a troll. Please feel free to ignore it.

Yes, pets are indeed "slavery," in the same way that forcing your child to do their homework instead of watch TV is "slavery" or keeping an elderly parent with Alzheimer's in an assisted living home they don't want to be in is basically "kidnapping" or something very similar to it. The reason slavery is wrong isn't that slaves are living creatures like anyone else - the reason that slavery is wrong is because we think that certain living creatures (namely, human beings) are able to and desire to live their own lives freely in the manner they so choose. For human beings who aren't able to do this (children, people with mental issues, people who are addicted to drugs badly enough that we think we ought to confine them to a recovery program, etc.) we actually don't have a problem with limiting their freedom in certain ways. Pets are in a similar situation - as long as you treat a pet well, your dog or cat isn't the sort of thing that is able to and desires to live its own life freely in the manner it so chooses. Your dog or your cat, in fact, is happy to be your pet (and if it isn't, it's probably wrong to keep the dog or cat as your pet!). Your dog or your cat doesn't have any interests in living a free life outside of your guidance any more than a human being with the mental capacities of a dog or cat does.

 

Notice, though, that your dog or cat does have interests in being pain free, in not being killed and eaten, and so on, so just as it would be wrong to torture a human being or kill and eat a human being, even if the human being has extremely limited mental capacities because they are a baby or they have Alzheimer's or something, it would be wrong to torture your dog or cat or kill your dog or cat, even though your dog or your cat has extremely limited mental capacities because dogs and cats are dumb.

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I also want to ask about keeping pets, especially indoor-only pets, because if meat is murder, then pets are slavery, aren't they? I've just realized that there's no way to frame this question so that it doesn't sound like a troll. Please feel free to ignore it.

 

Personally I'm against keeping pets unless they are shelter rescues. Contributing to the animal breeding industry is a big no-no for me, and laden with a number of problems I don't have the patience to get into right now.

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Personally I'm against keeping pets unless they are shelter rescues. Contributing to the animal breeding industry is a big no-no for me, and laden with a number of problems I don't have the patience to get into right now.

 

Thanks, Baby. I appreciate the response, although I understand not wanting to get into more complicated reasoning because I don't have the mental energy right now to process it anyway.

 

Tycho, it makes me sad, because I don't think we've ever really disagreed on the forum, but it's been mostly unpleasant to interact you in this thread. Usually, when talking about racism or sexism, the conversation reaches a point where it becomes obvious that social, economic, and personal factors particular to each person but ubiquitous in society make it impossible to act entirely in the interests of social justice. At that point, I tend to say, "It's okay, we're all sexist and racist, because our society is sexist and racist, but we're each doing our best." I think I'm going to have to accept the acknowledgement that we agree in the abstract about animal suffering as the closest we're going to get to that point in this conversation, because I live near the poverty line and flatly lack the time, money, and energy to make the forty-five minute walk down to Tower Grove every week to buy fresh produce at the only farmer's market in St. Louis. I eat some processed foods and meat in a mostly vegetarian diet because it's the most workable way for me to stay healthy and happy, based on the six months I was forced to go fully vegetarian while living abroad, and I have always tried to eat ethically within my own knowledge of self. I wish I had the combination of circumstances that makes it work for you, because that spreadsheet is nuts, but I don't, and I've had enough issues in the past with feeding myself that I don't need to feel any worse about my less-than-perfect choices for eating right now. I know that's privilege to say so, but knowing is half the battle.

 

Seriously, thanks for the thread, everyone, and I'll catch you someplace else.

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Fliping this around, would killing invasive species of animals that are ecologically damaging (e.g. rabbits and cats in Australia) be ethically right? I would argue yes, since unlike most humans, you can't ask a rabbit to restrict their diet or move to a location that is more ecologically sustainable.

Minimising suffering is an understandable criteria for ethical behaviour, my question then is would anaesthetised killing be therefore fine?

I'm hesitant to answer that definitively or to draw conclusions about ethics from it.

If killing animals for 'food' is wrong does that mean it would be right for human intervention to prevent omnivorous animals from killing prey?

Ultimately the heuristics that I find most useful and tenable for constructing ethical guidelines are based on a consideration of the ecological effects of human (or animal) behaviour, rather than arguing from the position that 'animals' and 'humans' have fundamentally equal rights.

Humans are a predatory species with no higher predators, or competitive rival species. The only way to mitigate the damage we cause is through systemic self regulation (such as consuming less meat as an entire species), or catastrophe. I'm open to the (very unlikely) possibility of a future scenario where some other animal instead of humans are the main source of ecological damage, and would be 'fine' with killing if that was the only solution.

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Is it wrong to kill animals to provide needed sustenance to pet animals who cannot be sustained by non-animal food?

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Only as wrong as killing humans to provide needed sustenance to pet non-human animals/killing non-human animals to provide needed sustenance to humans/etc. Obviously those can come apart in some instances - for instance, you might think it's wrong to kill a human to feed a cat that you could just as easily not have adopted, but if you've already got the cat (or the kid) then maybe there can be instances where something has to die and it's not obvious whether it's better to let your cat/kid starve to death than it would be to murder a cow/human/whatever. As you might expect, for someone who thinks non-human animals and human animals are morally equivalent, the question becomes less "when it is okay to kill a non-human animal?" and more "when is it okay to kill an animal, period, whether it's human or not?" Since most people don't really have worked out views about when it's okay to kill humans (or more accurately, they've got views, but they turn out to be pretty strict and thus maybe rule out some stuff they wouldn't want to rule out), this is an area that lots of people are sort of fuzzy on.

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Reason #2 why I hesitate to discuss Veganism: being repeatedly queried with moral conundrums to test the precise priority of my ethics, especially if is done in bad faith to force some kind of contradiction. Meanwhile, I never have to ask meat-eaters to justify why they think cannibalism is wrong. But would you eat your dead neighbour if it would save the life of your first born child? Really, if you genuinely want to know more about Vegan ethics then there are plenty of resources and literature out there. If you're trying to find a loophole so you can win an internet argument, give it a rest.

 

I want to explain I don't think owning a pet is tantamount to slavery, it is more like adopting a child. The simple act of caring for a pet I don't take much issue with. Assistant dogs for blind people and other less able people are great. It is the pet breeding industry that I have a problem with. Imagine if you wanted to adopt a child and instead of a shelter for homeless children you went to a dealer that breeds children with all the physical/psychological traits that you desired in a child. Where women used for breeding are held in cramped captivity with poor living conditions and are not socialised to other humans. Where the women are constantly in pregnancy and there are generations upon generations of inbreeding. Where the industry is very loosely regulated, profits take high priority over human welfare and medical records are not always kept. Where "defective" children are culled because they will never be adopted, along with women that are beyond the age of childbearing. Unless you do very diligent research on where you are buying your pets from, this is part and parcel of purchasing from a pet dealer.

 

This is before you even touch on the percentage of people who impulse-buy pets only to abandon them at shelters when they change their mind, often simply to be euthanised later. Human's love affair with quaint domestic animals wont disappear so I don't think making this illegal will ever work, but there needs to be much better regulation to make it as safe and ethical as possible. Even the animals that humans ostensibly love the most are not free from animal rights abuses.

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Reason #2 why I hesitate to discuss Veganism: being repeatedly queried with moral conundrums to test the precise priority of my ethics, especially if is done in bad faith to force some kind of contradiction. Meanwhile, I never have to ask meat-eaters to justify why they think cannibalism is wrong. But would you eat your dead neighbour if it would save the life of your first born child? Really, if you genuinely want to know more about Vegan ethics then there are plenty of resources and literature out there. If you're trying to find a loophole so you can win an internet argument, give it a rest.

 

I'll take this as pointed directly at me. If you perceive my moral questioning to be in bad faith, then I'll stop participating in the thread. Because honestly, I want to understand and it seemed to me that people wanted me to understand. But if "read the fucking manual" is really the advice that I deserve then I'll gladly take that and be done with this.

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I'll take this as pointed directly at me. If you perceive my moral questioning to be in bad faith, then I'll stop participating in the thread. Because honestly, I want to understand and it seemed to me that people wanted me to understand. But if "read the fucking manual" is really the advice that I deserve then I'll gladly take that and be done with this.

 

No not directed at anyone in particular, it's just a common problem with this issue being discussed. If anyone wants a dose of Veganism 101 this is a good video.

 

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I thought that was directed at my line of questioning. Sorry if i'm asking the same qeustions you get all the time from people telling you that veganism is wrong.

I don't think outlandishly constructed thought experiments with arbitrarily limited options are very useful for deriving practical ethical principles from either. I hope my questions didn't come across that way, and I tried to choose circumstances that I think are relatively common and mundane.

My intent was not to force any contradiction or 'win' a debate, but rather to provide examples for the reasons why I think the ethics of killing animals is not an absolute.

Just so I am clear, I DO think killing animals is unethical, but I also think there are many(?) common scenarios where killing animals IS ethical (or at least not unethical if that distinction needs to be made).

Aside - I was tempted to go on a lengthy post about cannibalism, but realised that wouldn't amount to much more than intellectual masturbation, and i've done plenty of that already.

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Hoo boy, looks like I missed a fun thread. Very exemplary of why discussing being vegan is so fraught with anxiety, boredom, and annoyance.

I have been happy and healthy as a vegan for over three years now and literally the only downside is a) planning meals at restaurants with folks who don't know/don't get it and B) people demanding answers and moral arguments.

 

People, you can use Google.

You can morally interrogate yourself without bringing other people into it. In fact, that's probably a good rule for generally not acting like an asshole.

 

If you want to have a debate, sure, but understand that the framing of this particular debate is almost always terribly broken.

 

edit: sorry if a little strong-worded in anti-debate terms. blame it on one too many open discussions in freshman-level philosophy courses

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As far as I can tell, the meat-eaters are not being assholes, they're only being ACCUSED of being assholes over and over, sooooooooooo...

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No this thread is definitely as civil as I've seen these debates go, which is a good testament to the Thumbs community!

 

But when you're asking questions like "oh but how can you have pets?" and "but your cat eats meat?" and especially "but don't plants feel pain too?"... I can't even count how many times I've heard these same questions, usually from people with shit-eating grins. Maybe I am just being defensive from those less-well-intentioned previous encounters.

 

Yes they are framed innocently here, but I'd say the premise is still pretty wrong-headed.

Sort of like guys on Twitter asking women to explain feminism instead of just looking things up and listening (NOT that this debate is the same as ones around racism/feminism, it can just sound like it some time)

 

Also I think it's worth mentioning and remembering that as these dietary things are a matter of choice. The reasons for choosing them are going to be different for every single person and there's never going to be singular or easy answers

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Yeah frequently an issue with these discussions I've found is that you need to remember a key fact. That you are discussing the issue with someone who fundamentally values animals differently to you.

 

I think of other animals as being just as important as people. That's not the same as treating them exactly the same, but it means that I don't consider the lives of humans worth more than other animals. However clearly other people here don't feel the same and we'll get into unproductive conversations with each other if we don't recognise the other's viewpoint.

 

That said, if you don't have a specific belief in this field then it's worth thinking about times you've tried to discuss sexism or racism with people who don't consider it a big deal and how frustrating it is to try and having a dialogue with them. The situation is not the same, (because hopefully these people don't consciously feel like women or people of colour are worth less than them) but the frustration is familiar to me.

 

And to be honest, TychoCelchuuu, I think you need to bear it in mind more. I do feel the connection between human and nonhuman prejudices. But you can't aggressively argue with that as a foregone conclusion and expect people to fully engage with you. A frank and honest explanation of your belief system without challenging theirs (or the lack of theirs) will give someone far more to think about than trying to call them out on behaviour you feel is inherently immoral.

 

Anyone here absolutely doesn't have to share my outlook, but sometimes discussing stuff like this can feel like the other person/people being sceptical is an active attempt to dissuade your own beliefs and invalidate them, rather than an explanation of personal disinterest. ie. The desert island question could certainly be a curiosity but could just as easily feel as poking holes in someone's logic to undermine their whole idea. I've only been able to skim most of this thread, so I'm not accusing anyone of that here but I've definitely had it before.

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No this thread is definitely as civil as I've seen these debates go, which is a good testament to the Thumbs community!

 

But when you're asking questions like "oh but how can you have pets?" and "but your cat eats meat?" and especially "but don't plants feel pain too?"... I can't even count how many times I've heard these same questions, usually from people with shit-eating grins. Maybe I am just being defensive from those less-well-intentioned previous encounters.

 

Yes they are framed innocently here, but I'd say the premise is still pretty wrong-headed.

Sort of like guys on Twitter asking women to explain feminism instead of just looking things up and listening (NOT that this debate is the same as ones around racism/feminism, it can just sound like it some time)

 

Also I think it's worth mentioning and remembering that as these dietary things are a matter of choice. The reasons for choosing them are going to be different for every single person and there's never going to be singular or easy answers

 

I said I wasn't coming back to this thread, but I asked about pets in good faith and apologized for the obvious implications in the process of saying it. I'm not trying to catch anyone out on their beliefs here, but I am curious and figured that since the opening question of the thread had been so definitively answered in the affirmative, we could feel around a bit more. I regret it entirely now.

 

Honestly, the issue I've always had talking with certain vegans, who are always in the infinitesimal minority as far as the entire community of vegans go, is that it's impossible to have a productive conversation about diet because theirs is wholly correct and mine just isn't, simply by virtue of me eating meat. No matter how much I've thought about my food consumption, there is nothing I can say, even about my own experiences, that actually reaches them or changes their mind about the smallest thing. If I'm really lucky, I get told that I should cut that last bit of meat out of my diet, even after explaining how sick I got in Greece eating near-vegan and showing them the scars on my arms from it, because that low-level self-harm is better than eating meat. For some reason, that level of open disrespect flies in discussions about food consumption where it doesn't in discussions about racism or sexism. That's where I get off the train and just focus on cutting unethical foods out of my diet in general, because neither of us is going to be improved by further discussion.

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I'll take this as pointed directly at me. If you perceive my moral questioning to be in bad faith, then I'll stop participating in the thread. Because honestly, I want to understand and it seemed to me that people wanted me to understand. But if "read the fucking manual" is really the advice that I deserve then I'll gladly take that and be done with this.

 

Look at it this way... core of veganism is deeply rooted in practical concerns because it is about an act that we go through so regularly (what do you eat).  It is not those strange-real questions such as "is it ok to kill few to save many" that most of us don't have to decide on regular basis.

 

Vegans face so many people who have zero intention of good-faith discussion and just want to point a hole at veganism so they can go and say "aha, so you are just full of shit and I'm not wrong for eating meat".  And the most common tactic is that they just bring up endless permutations of these strange, irregular hypotheticals for the purpose of challenging practical concerns.

 

Say I'm building a house and I declare the house to be structurally sound.  Then someone points out "well if superman were to blow at it, it would surely crumble".  And they would be right.  But it's like, that has zero bearing on the structure of a house.  Now if I said that "This house is so good that it'll even withstand Superman's punch", then I would most likely be full of shit and fine for me being called out on that right?  But my full of shit statement doesn't really say anything about practical applications for the house and its purpose so if you found such hole in my argument about why my house is good, it still doesn't say much about the house.

 

The house, in veganism term, for me, is the simple premise of "it is wrong to hurt animals for no other purpose than pleasure".  That's the same principle that's used against animal torture, something that most of us embraces without much second thought put into it because animal torture is such irregular activity in most of our (based on location thread, I'm assuming most users here from from city centers in NA and Europe) lives.  So say you find the premise "animal lives are equal to human lives" ridiculous as "this house can withstand superman's punch".  What me, CollegeBaby and few others were trying to say was, such extreme premise is not necessary!  But still people often get hung up on such far strung out example because this debate has implication (no matter how minor) on stuff we actually deal with regularly.  It is probably the reason why SuperBiasedMan brought it up in a passing because he/she knew if those more extreme stances were brought up, it would be the focal point of every non-vegans trying to poke a hole at even if it's really not central to the issue at hand.

 

Earlier you asked this following question

  • What do you think of effects on animal ecosystems that come hand in hand with being a person living in a modern society? Is it immoral to participate in modern society knowing full well that certain animals will be killed as a result of such a society existing?

And I answered because I believe that you are asking in ernest, even if the second half of that question is so broad and vague.  Most of us rely on modern society that comes with loads of morally questionable end results.  Yet how often do you end up asking that same question in regard to sexism, militarism, racism or any other nasty stuff?  I am not accusing you of making bad-faith questions, but rather trying to highlight how reluctant we are (I sure was stubborn fuck when I first heard about it) when it comes to not eating meat because how ordinary the question is and the implication it has on our moral failings.

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I said I wasn't coming back to this thread, but I asked about pets in good faith and apologized for the obvious implications in the process of saying it. I'm not trying to catch anyone out on their beliefs here, but I am curious and figured that since the opening question of the thread had been so definitively answered in the affirmative, we could feel around a bit more. I regret it entirely now.

 

Honestly, the issue I've always had talking with certain vegans, who are always in the infinitesimal minority as far as the entire community of vegans go, is that it's impossible to have a productive conversation about diet because theirs is wholly correct and mine just isn't, simply by virtue of eating meat. No matter how much I've thought about my food consumption, there is nothing I can say, even about my own experiences, that actually reaches them or changes their mind about the smallest thing. If I'm really lucky, I get told that I should cut that last bit of meat out of my diet, even after explaining how sick I got in Greece eating near-vegan and showing them the scars on my arms from it, because that low-level self-harm is better than eating meat. For some reason, that level of open disrespect flies in discussions about food consumption where it doesn't in discussions about racism or sexism. That's where I get off the train and just focus on cutting unethical foods out of my diet in general.

 

Yeah I think it's worth pointing out that many vegans, myself included, kind of hate PETA. Preaching and histrionics are not very effective advocacy

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But when you're asking questions like "oh but how can you have pets?" and "but your cat eats meat?" and especially "but don't plants feel pain too?"

 

As opposed to asking if people condone human sacrifice, which happened before any of those questions?

 

This thread is a mess. There's no defending it.

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As opposed to asking if people condone human sacrifice, which happened before any of those questions?

 

This thread is a mess. There's no defending it.

Touche

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On 1/18/2015 at 1:15 PM, Twig said:

As opposed to asking if people condone human sacrifice, which happened before any of those questions?

 

This thread is a mess. There's no defending it.

I wasn't literally asking if people condone human sacrifice - the answer is obviously no. I was asking on what basis people reject human sacrifice but not various treatments of non-human animals. That this was seen as something like histrionics or whatever is more of a reflection on the state that non-human animals rights are in than it is any sort of craziness on my part.

 

You can go back a few hundred years and people who say things like "you have to treat black people the way you treat white people" or "you have to treat women the way you treat men" get as much shit as I get for asking whether it's okay to kill human beings for no reason other than pleasure if it's also okay to kill non-human animals for no reason other than pleasure.

 

You'll notice my specific interlocutor in that conversation, Akidu, did not reject the question as so patently ridiculous that the correct response was to leave the thread and continue to murder non-human animals for no good reason. In fact Akidu's final words on the question were "Yeah ok fair enough I think you've swayed me."

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Oh, also, I missed this point:

On 1/17/2015 at 10:03 PM, Badfinger said:

Ok, I'm really uncomfortable with basically obliquely being called a racist because I eat meat. I am not sure this is a subject where a discussion can have inroads, because it turns from a discussion into an accusation no matter how we try to be civil, but I was at least trying to articulate my thoughts or feelings in a cogent way. Now what I feel is attacked. Not my ideas, me personally.

Um, no, you're not racist if you eat meat. You're speciesist. I of course think racism and speciesism are analogous in one important sense: neither are justifiable. Presumably you disagree: you think one is justifiable and the other isn't. This doesn't make you a racist, either obliquely or directly. It does, however, make you an avowed speciesist, and what I'd like is some defense of the speciesist position that does not also serve as a defense of the racist position. I understand that you were trying to articulate your thoughts or feelings in a cogent way, and I apologize if it sounded like I was attacking you.

 

If it makes you feel better, we can, for the purposes of the argument, turn me into a racist. (Hopefully this will show that I bear no ill will towards people who, in the context of an argument, get pinned with one view or another.) As a racist, let's say that I think black people can be permissibly enslaved, tortured, killed, and eaten, but I think this would be gravely immoral and beyond the pale if this is done to a white person. Since you are presumably very, very unhappy with my racism, I would appreciate being told where I've gone wrong: what mistake have I made about the moral status of individuals, such that I've reached the incorrect conclusion?

 

The usual move for animal rights activists is to take whatever response you give and show that this similarly suggests that we ought not to be speciesist. How that conversation specifically goes depends upon your answer, though, so the ball is in your court now. The other option is to admit that there's nothing wrong with my racism, which is logically consistent but, I take it, objectionable for other reasons, namely, that we think racism is wrong.

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