Quote:
Originally Posted by tore
I would not kill a person and eat him or her, baby or grown up. I'm sure I wouldn't have much of a life worth living afterwards anyways. I feel I'd rather die without experiencing the regret of having killed and eaten someone in my life. 
edit :
I think we're wired that way. Very few cultures practice cannibalism and we're a social species. I wrote in my last post that I think compassion for animals is in essence a byproduct of our compassion for people. I don't think most have the "amount" of byproduct you do and I think your compassion for animals and dislike for suffering in nature is atypical. Because people tend to be a lot more emotionally protective in regards to people than they are to animals, I don't think eating people and eating animals is necessarily morally comparable. From a logical point of view, there may be arguments as to why it's similar, but like you base veganism on emotions, we have them as well .. we are not meat eating machines. |
I agree with you, Tore, that compassion for non-human animals is mostly an evolutionary byproduct of our ability to have compassion (for certain) people. My observation is that humans have the innate ability to feel empathy and caring for others, both human and non-human animals, but
environment has a big hand in shaping whom we include within the circle of compassion.
Evidence that whom we care about, and don't want to eat, is primarily learned rather than inherited:
(1) Some people truly love their pets, wanting these individual animals to have full, long and happy lives for the pets' sake, and they would adamantly refuse to eat their pets. This shows that people, even meat-eaters, *can* feel great compassion for animals. If people can feel compassion for one animal, two animals, three animals, etc., then they have the capacity to feel it for more.
(2) People who are meat-eaters sometimes convert to vegetarianism for emotional, ethical reasons: they begin to feel regret about killing and eating an animal...just like you would feel regret about killing and eating a human. People's emotions toward animals can change and are *not* fixed.
(3) People's compassion for other humans is *very* much shaped by their environment/culture...and so it is logical to conclude that the degree to which they value animals' lives is also greatly affected by experiences/culture.
If you have not done so, I recommend you read some Holocaust concentration camp survivors' accounts of people's brutality and callousness toward other humans, for example Ana Novac's
The Beautiful Days of My Youth, or Schoschana Rabinovici's
Thanks to My Mother. Also, observe the development of genocides (common around the world) and the policies that exacerbated them. For example, the U.S. intentionally limited the number of Jewish people who could come here during WWII, even after the U.S. government knew of the Holocaust and what such limitations would cause: more deaths.
History and the present show that people are very capable of feeling other humans' lives have little or no value, just as people are capable of feeling animals' lives are of little or no value.
I agree with you that people are not meat-eating machines: many thoughts are involved in the process by which people learn to feel that some other individual, whether human or non-human animal, has no inherent worth and is expendable. However, I feel people do sometimes end up as meat-eating machines, lacking feelings and thoughts as they eat animals as if those animals were no different than oranges. Remorseless. Unperturbed. Unable to comprehend or be affected by the fact that the victim's life had value to her.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freebase Dali
I just don't believe your solution is the answer, especially considering that if we were to stop farming and eating meat altogether, we would undoubtedly need far more land to grow crops and vegetables on a scale large enough to supply a world population in the place of meat. You may then be at odds with your own position on land-mass usage.
|
Because people feed massive quantities of grain to livestock animals, removing meat from the human diet would in fact free up more food (protein, carbohydrates, vitamins) as grain, vegetables, and beans to feed to people...and it would reduce the use of resources such as fresh water and petroleum, which are guzzled by the animal industry.
If humanity right now tried to raise all livestock "free-range," the quantity of meat that people could consume would
plummet...either that, or the human population would have to be severely reduced to maintain (or achieve) the current per capita level of meat consumption.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freebase Dali
I understand that we can definitely make things better for the animals we farm, and definitely increase their perceived freedom, and even decrease the volume of processing we do. If anything, THAT's at least meeting halfway in the industry, but your wishes that it would all stop altogether isn't even halfway between your own values and nature, much less competing with values of other humans.
|
I agree with you, Freebase, that my vegan wishes are far from the values of most humans. I am not trying to get compromise by asking just for compromise; I am trying to show that people can go farther than compromise, and that the benefits of doing so outweigh the negatives some feel exist.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freebase Dali
To think we'll go on living this easy-get developed, industrialized life forever is a little naive.
I believe that humans, with all our choosing power, sometimes misplace our priorities. Sometimes our values get in the way too much, sometimes not enough. But I think that if we want something at least objective enough to compare by and know our actions aren't futile, we should look at nature because it has and will work correctly and efficiently, which is the most basic aspect of survival no matter how diluted with cultural value systems you are.
And as long as we make sure we don't interrupt that process, then we won't have any REAL problems.
|
I agree with you that people are naive when they believe this easy-get developed, industrialized life (in the developed world) is forever. Eventually, when petroleum and coal runs out (in the not-to-distant future), our standard of living by some measures will decrease. Hopefully during that time we will work to help raise the standards of living of the billions of people living on a few dollars a day...and not decimate what remains of natural ecosystems through direct destruction and climate change.
I do not "look to nature" to support humans eating meat because (1) people do not require meat in their diets to live healthful lives, (2) efficiency in nature can be cruel and undesirable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freebase Dali
I'm neither a vegetarian nor a vegan... But I won't sit here and say my ideals are any better than theirs. The most I can do is create a reasonable argument to loosen the perspective of my meat-eating behavior. This does not include demonizing the perspectives of those who don't share my beliefs.
|
Freebase, do you feel justified in feeling
any set of values is better than another, or do you follow relativism?
I feel the Nazi ideal of killing Jewish people was wrong, and assume you do, too. I feel it was wrong when the U.S. military exploded women and a child in Iraq to capture al-Zaqawi
USATODAY.com - Military says bomb killed Zarqawi. (I wrote the newspapers about my horror at this "U.S. success.") I assume you also dislike it when the U.S. accepts killing people as "collateral damage" to achieve goals. Finally, I feel it is wrong to raise animals to kill them and "harvest" their parts, even though doing so has some benefits for people.
All my moral stands have the same basis: I have the ideal that it is good to let sentient beings live and enjoy their lives, and I feel this is a better ideal than wanting to kill others and take pleasure from their deaths. I do
not feel I am "better" overall than you, Freebase (I know you know I quite like you despite...or maybe because of
...our chafing) but I do feel my ideal for how people should treat animals is
kinder than yours.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DeathBreath
If you disagree with me that eating meat is cruel, watch Meet Your Meat by PETA (I don't support the organization, just the video is what turned me Vegetarian)
It will change you!
|
DeathBreath, I think many people who feel eating animals is acceptable simply don't *feel* empathy for animals, and so such movies don't stir them...as you can see from responses in this thread. When people feel another individual's life is of little value (not worth saving, for that individual's sake), then the movies that affect you and me will not have an effect on them.
Here's a short movie I'd like people to watch so they can share their reactions: a young man and some friends surround a frightened lamb (they call it "Jumpy"), preparing to decapitate it, and the movie shows the "hilarious" decapitation. I am revolted by their lack of concern for this animal...they reduce its life and death to a joke. My guess is DeathBreath and other vegetarians feel the same. I wonder what most meat-eaters feel when they watch this movie and hear the giddy laughter of the videographer?
Lamb Slaughter: the decapitation