bungalow

Where is the strawman in her argument?

VEGANGELICA

Rather than setting up a straw man argument, I see my question about whether or not you would eat an animal such as a parrot or a gorilla, who *can* say "No," as an attempt to find out what your limits are when you decide whom to eat.

I am trying to find out if there is a moral principle on which you are basing your food choices, and what that principle might be. It sounds like you'll eat any animal except humans.

So, here's my next question for all of you: why not eat humans? Under what circumstances, if any, would you murder and eat a newborn or older human? I'd like to find out if your reasons for not eating humans are approximately the same as my reasons for not eating other animals.

Ah, Bisto...we don't have that here in the U.S., that I know of, so I had to look it up on Wikipedia: "Bisto is a well-known brand of traditional British foods in the United Kingdom, most famous for its gravy products. Bisto was added to gravies to give a richer taste and aroma. Invented by Messrs Roberts & Patterson, it was named 'Bisto' because it 'Browns, Seasons and Thickens in One.' "

I think you are probably just used to thinking of pigs as food, Urban, so it would be hard not to look at them and start thinking, "Tasty." I look at oranges that way. I don't want the peel; I want what's inside: sweet, succulent little wedges of oral excitement exploding with deliciousness!

So, how do you react when you see cats or dogs prepared as food? Does it make you hungry or repelled...or both?

A cooked cat:


Cooked dogs:

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Urban Hat€monger ?

Well to be honest it doesn't make me hungry or repelled.

I wouldn't eat the cat. Maybe partly because I like cats but mostly because it looks so unappetising. It just looks like a bag of bones to me. It looks like a lot of effort for little meat.

The dog on the other hand, it looks like there are a few decent cuts of meat on there. I've never tried Dog before, I'm assuming it isn't that great otherwise given how common dogs are you would have thought more people would eat them. I don't really have any great love for dogs either. I'd probably give that a miss too, unless I tried it once & discovered I enjoy it.

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Guybrush

I might - just might - eat something of someone who's already dead if it's the only thing that would save me in a survival situation in a scenario like in the movie Alive. 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.

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Something Completely Different

Freebase Dali

I probably should have clarified that I don't think nature "intended" anything in the sense that it is sentient and bears goals in mind. What I mean by nature's intent is simply that by whatever means nature came to be, it so happens that it operates in a way that sustains itself by default without our input. It implies that the balance of ecosystems, species, climates and all other natural occurrences that make up the functioning system are to be used as a comparative of what is naturally correct and incorrect.
In this context, I simply use the word intent as a shorthand of this. Keep this concept in mind as you read my remaining replies.

If you agree with me about the dangers of exponentially increasing populations, killing of forests, ecosystem upsets, overfishing, etc... and you don't want that to happen... then you agree that we must maintain balance if we don't eventually want to push every living wild animal to extinction. I agree with most that the meat industry is FAR too zealous with their product. If we reduce mass production of meat and limit the amount of production that happens, and also switch to strictly free-range systems, this will make meat a little harder to get for cheap which might be a good thing and people might stop eating so much of it. I do believe that a compromise has to be made if humans want to be at more of an equilibrium with the world we live in. 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.

I'll give you that. But just because members of the developed world and cultures can choose to stop eating meat because they're industrialized enough to entertain an ethical argument doesn't change anything except their own conscience and a fractional number of animals dying, in the grand scheme of life, death & pain.

Well simply making everyone an herbivore, animals included, would quickly screw up the ecosystem because there would be absolutely no predatory mechanisms keeping ecological destabilization in check and due to soaring populations, the plant life needed to keep these animals alive would be an exponentially dwindling factor, eventually resulting in... death.. pain... suffering. You don't like how nature works... but you have no choice but to accept it.

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 think what's important is maintaining a balance, which you've already heard from me. I support toning our meat treatment and consumption DOWN. I do not support ceasing all meat consumption because it is not only impractical, but making meat consumption taboo throughout generations is only ensuring that options will be hard to come by if (or more likely, once) we come to a place where survival is actually a major factor again. 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.

Captain Awesome

You singled out red meat which implies you think white meat ends up on your plate by some other means.

So while I'm out getting some glasses perhaps you could go out and get some english lessons so you know how to make your point more clear? Me no speaky good english.

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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"

Akira

If I hit an animal with my car then I'll eat it, manslaughter carries less of a penalty than murder anyway.

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lucifer_sam

Less of this nonsense, please.

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first.am

MAStudent

If eating animals is wrong, then why are they made of food?

SusanMart

sorry for this late feedback...... this post is really old.....but it made me shake...

better EAT meat and be TOLERANT than to mention so many times the word HATE in your post

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