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Originally Posted by MoonlitSunshine
From what I remember of that movie, doesn't the lion just go on a fish diet? ain't very fair on fish :P
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Yes, I think you're right...the lion in Madagascar ended up eating sushi to survive. In the movie, eating fish was not considered an ethical issue, and that isn't fair to fish. I think the movie reflects that many people don't feel concern about fish experiencing pain and stress when they are caught, torn, and suffocating.
How people decide which animals, if any, they feel are okay to kill is a great question I wish more people would consider, and RVCA does that here:
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Originally Posted by RVCA
I find vegetarians a bit wishy-washy myself. From what modern science can determine, no other species on the planet is capable of metacognition, or thinking about thinking. Sure, animals feel pain and perhaps other more complex emotions, but where does a vegetarian draw the line? It's not okay to eat cows, chickens, and pigs because it's "unethical". Is it okay for primitive African tribes to eat insects as a source of nutrition? Surely they're animals as well, and on a psychologically evolutionary scale, they're on the same playing field as the aforementioned meats. Is it okay to exterminate ants because they're invading your home? Aren't they animals as well?
If you think it's wrong to eat cows but okay to eat insects and kill ants, you need to describe to me how and where you made that distinction.
One might ever go as far to argue that because animals like cows are bred exclusively for our consumption, it's even less ethical to consume insects that were born of their own accord, so to speak.
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I think what you see as wishy-washyness of vegetarians is actually their thoughtfulness about where we draw the line between whom we do or don't eat.
I feel most meat-eaters are very arbitrary (wishy-washy) in making decisions about whom to eat. Most meat-eaters don't seem to even develop a rational reason for the line they draw. They will concoct some excuse to feel good about eating pigs but bad about eating dogs, even though dogs and pigs have very similar intelligence levels, playfulness, and other attributes (including tastiness).
For example, consider your reason for valuing human lives the most. I have never read any modern science study proving that only humans think about thinking. Also, I'd be very surprised if babies and young children think about thinking. So it isn't even clear that people always think about thinking. And why should the ability to think about thinking be more important than an animal's ability to love, feel friendship, feel playfulness and pleasure?
You wrote that you feel insects, "on a psychologically evolutionary scale," are "on the same playing field as the aforementioned meats" (cows, pigs, chickens), but I don't agree with that at all.
I see humans and other animals as often being on a continuum according to mental abilities, rather than there being sharp divides between species. If an animal appears to have a greater mental capacity to enjoy and appreciate being alive, then I feel a stronger need to avoid killing that animal. A pig has a much more developed emotional life and intellectual interaction with its environment than an invertebrate like an ant does, so I feel more concern about the pig's life than the ant's life.
But I try to give animals the benefit of the doubt. If I know the animal has a brain, I know it is thinking or experiencing *something* and so I try to avoid killing it, even if it is an invertebrate animal whose life I value much less than the life of a pig because the pig is so much more mentally aware and capable. I rarely go out of my way to kill creepy-crawlies. Even as a little child I'd rescue worms from sidewalks so they wouldn't get stepped on.
If, to save time for myself, I vacuum up a spider rather than do catch-and-release, I feel bad about that because I know I'm valuing a minute of my time more than that spider's little life. And yes, the spider's life may be little, and the spider may be only dimly aware of the experience of life, but it is still probably aware so I feel selfish to have killed it.
So, how *do* you decide the value of someone else's life? I feel it is best to try to figure out what the life experience is like for that being, and then make ethical decisions about how to treat that animal from there. Simply saying "only humans matter" isn't a convincing argument to me, because it ignores or trivializes the ability of many other animals to have a wide range or emotions and thoughts.
When I know that animals have strong emotional attachments to their family and friends, and they like to play, and they enjoy basking in the sun...I don't want to end that for an animal.