Captain Awesome

But it does make it a hell of a lot easier.

These animals are going to die anyway, as far as I'm concerned it's just survival on our part. Like I said, we are omnivores. Why do people worry so much about other species? I mean I'm all for saving extinct animals etc but when you've got genocide, corrupt governments, disease and famine (plus a bunch of other crap) threatening your own species. You better take care of that first.

Have no mistake, if an animal (omnivore or carnivore) feels hungry it won't have any moral dilemma about eating you.

Can't remember what movie it was but there was this horror movie where this vegan chick saved a dog near the start. Later on she was cut open and as she lay there dying with her guts hanging out, the dog started to eat her. The irony amused me.

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"If we're all merely players in a play on this great stage,
the problem is the script writers ain't on the same page,
I echo through the mountain when I'm singing in the air,
from my lab a lad with lavish lyrics living in his lair."


"Wake up and listen, hear what's not for the public's ears
Pinocchio poets played by profiting puppeteers"

FETCHER.

I'm sorry Amandria, but you mean to say what I'm doing is wrong?

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My Journal.
Last.Fm if your interested...

VEGANGELICA

Captain Awesome, do you mean eating animals was a behavior necessary for survival in the past when our ancestors were gatherer-hunters? Or do you mean it is a survival mechanism required now in some developing countries where poor people are desperate for food and so will eat anything? Or do you mean that eating animals is a survival requirement in the developed world today, such as in the U.S., Canada, and most of Europe?

Since I survive fine without eating any animal parts at all, I would argue that eating animals is *not* required for survival. If it were, then I would be dead. Since I am alive, I am living proof that eating animals is not an issue of simply surviving.

Certainly, all animals, including humans, will die. Yet this fact doesn't mean we decide to eat every species of animal, including humans. Like you note, even you feel we shouldn't eat endangered animals. Why the hesitancy there? I assume it is because you value these animals' lives for some reason. So, you acknowledge animals' lives matter to you in some instances. If you increase the depth and breadth of that feeling, then my guess is you probably end up feeling similar to how I feel about animals. We don't differ so much, perhaps, in the type of feelings we have, but in how strong or broad they are.

You suggest that caring about humans should take priority over caring for other species. I would argue that people have enough time and money to care for both human and non-human animals, and often caring for non-human animals improves the lives of humans, and vice versa.

Yes, most non-human meat-eating animals won't hesitate to eat a human if able. Even humans don't hesitate to eat other humans under certain cultural, historical, and economic conditions. This doesn't mean we have to copy that behavior.

You ask a basic and important question: "Why do people worry so much about other species?" I worry because I care about what their experience of life is like. I want them to enjoy living life as long as they can and I don't want to interfere with their one chance to enjoy life.

Captain Awesome, if you happened to be a different species than I, our species classification wouldn't determine for me whether or not I should kill and eat you. What would matter to me is that you have the capacity to enjoy living and so I wouldn't want to end that for you. If you were an alien, for example, I wouldn't automatically eat you!

So, I am thinking that the issue here is not that you don't care about different *species,* but rather that you feel concern only about animals that have certain capabilities.

What do you do, though, when both human and non-human animals have these capabilities, and the differences aren't qualitative but quantitative?

For example, parrots are long-lived and can count and even talk; dogs respond to verbal commands; many animals have oxytocin and brains that appear to give them the feelings of love, based on analogy with humans. Many animals respond positively to anti-depressants that work on humans, suggesting they experience similar psychological troubles. What makes you draw a protective line around only humans, saying that only their experience of life and their feelings matter?

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Captain Awesome

The comment I amde about endangered animals was more a case of helping their species survive. Regardless of whether they taste good or not, I don't want to watch an entire species vanish overnight because of stupid decisions on part of my own species (or any other reason).

I do find this interesting and have questioned my own limits before (almost on a weekly basis as there is always something in the news about meat and vegans etc). For example I have to pet dogs (which some Vegans would despise me for - having pets). And I could tell you right now I wouldn't willingly eat dog meat. I find the methods of which dogs are killed/cooked etc in asian countries to be disgusting (especially when they're skinned alive). However this is only because the animals are domesticated and I have developed a bond with my "pets" to the point of them being treated like members of my family. And yet I condone the mass slaughter and consumption of cows? I can already tell you If I had a cow as a pet for a year, when It came to killing it I wouldn't be able to (unless I was at gun point or something). But then I wonder if you can really develop a bond with such an animal. Dogs are incredibly intelligent and very similar to humans in some ways(as you've already stated) that is why you can develop such a strong bond with them. Perhaps it's easier for me to kill something that has no awareness or understanding of what's actually going on.

You don't stop a lying eating a gazelle and offer him some tofu. Why should I be stopped from enjoying a nice piece of steak.

As for surviving. Again there is things you get from animal meat and animal products which supplements are no alternative for (unless consumed in a ludicrous amount). However we've already had this debate and It was clear neither of us were going to change our mind.


I'm not drawing a protective line around only humans. I'm just saying our own species should be our priority. We can't worry about and protect every single species in our world. We're only human, we can only do so much. Humans come first, then everything else(usually endangered animals then the rest).

__________________

"If we're all merely players in a play on this great stage,
the problem is the script writers ain't on the same page,
I echo through the mountain when I'm singing in the air,
from my lab a lad with lavish lyrics living in his lair."


"Wake up and listen, hear what's not for the public's ears
Pinocchio poets played by profiting puppeteers"

NumberNineDream

If you worry are about the human race "surviving", the only threat to humanity is its own greed. I guess if we can lay off ruining nature for a year or two, maybe we can buy some time to keep our dear Earth from burning.
Plus, it doesn't seem like they'll be enough food resources in the next few years, which brings me to my point: Humans can't survive on their own.

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Guybrush

It's generally the "fate" of every rapidly increasing population such as our own that they eventually reach a point where they deplete/don't have enough resources, get stressed from being too many lumped together, easily spread diseases through the population and other negative effects so that the numbers drop. Sometimes, population growth stops increasing and "stabilizes" and other times, they crash leaving only a relatively few survivors compared to population height numbers.

The crash scenario is most easily illustrated for us if you imagine billions of people eating all the food there is to eat .. and then starve to death.

I think there's a fair chance we're heading for such a scenarion and shifting diet to plants may increase the amount of time it takes until we get there. That alone wouldn't solve the problem, though, we can still deplete edible plant resources. What we need is to live sustainably, but what's sustainable with a world population of 7 billion people is not necessarily sustainable in a world with 14 million people.

In other words, veganism is not a solution to that problem. You'd need something more extravagant like a way to control the world population and keep it from increasing to the point where we're too many .. for example by controlling how many kids families have. On a global scale, that's a near impossible political task. Divided nations and all that aside, we're not exactly bees working in the best interests of the collective hive.

edit :

Well, Erica is

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Something Completely Different

Captain Awesome

lol yeah because global warming was entirely our fault

I'm not worried about the human race surviving I'm just ashamed to be a part of it's species. We've got people starving, being murdered, raped, enslaved etc and we're worried about people eating cows? give me a break.

__________________

"If we're all merely players in a play on this great stage,
the problem is the script writers ain't on the same page,
I echo through the mountain when I'm singing in the air,
from my lab a lad with lavish lyrics living in his lair."


"Wake up and listen, hear what's not for the public's ears
Pinocchio poets played by profiting puppeteers"

MAStudent

I don't know if meat is murder, but I almost died laughing when the weird uncle hit Napolean Dynamite in the face with the steak and knocked him off his bike.

hissundaygirl09.

naa .. meat is good..
i love chicken though
and steak is good also..

bubu

Why are you ashamed of being part of our species? You don't think people are beautiful? Don't you like to talk to people?

As a species our only problem is that we're cowards, and the few who rule are left alone because of that. But you should cherish being part of humanity because it is the greatest thing to be able to laugh and have fun with another member of the species