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Before I go on, let me warn you that I talk dirty, and that I will say things you will neither enjoy nor agree with. You shouldn't feel threatened, though, because I am a mere buffoon, and you are all philosophers.

VEGANGELICA

Why should someone apologize for breaking a taboo? Because breaking a taboo upsets people? Why care?

And isn't it taboo to hurt animals? Doesn't our culture tell us that we should be kind to animals?

My point in mentioning how most meat-eaters I've met don't seem to care that I feel sad when they eat animals was to show that Tore seems to be an unusual meat-eater because he wrote: "If someone cried and begged me not to kill the fish, I would also feel a moral obligation towards that person."

It isn't just that I don't like people eating meat in my presence, hip hop. I don't like them eating animals at all. The reason: I dislike what people are doing to animals to get them to the plate. I don't have to see something with my own eyes to know what is going on behind the scenes:







Matadero de conejos - Rabbits slaughterhouse | Investigación de Igualdad Animal - Animal Equality investigation on Vimeo

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lucifer_sam

^ You should see how my cat would deal with those bunnies. Infinitely more painful.

I'd kill my own animals, no problems there. If you've got a problem doing it the deed you probably shouldn't be eating meat in the first place.

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first.am

hip hop bunny hop

I hunt, I fish, and I've worked on a factory farm on the dairy side before (3 thousand, 1,500 pound dairy cows 3 times a day). The reality of the situation differs from your propaganda.

Because healthy, socialized individuals internalize their society's standards on most issues. Breaking these standards triggers an emotional response.

If you're referring to American culture; our culture tells us that not all animals are equal. Kindness to animals depends on the animal; we don't even have a consensus on what constitutes "cruelty" to animals.

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Have mercy on the poor.

MoonlitSunshine

Vegangelica, at the risk of falling into cultural stereotypes, there are certain areas of the world and indeed certain personalities all over the world who have an over-extended sense of self-entitlement and righteousness. I know very, very few people who don't show compassion to animals, and I would trust that none of my friends or family would ever do anything so thoughtless. It's like religion - I have no problem with someone being religious (meat-eating, in this analogy), and I would have absolutely no problem whatsoever if they wanted to say grace before they ate (provided they did not expect me to pray to their god) (had meat in their own food), but I would object if someone tried to perform a full blown mass that included a sermon that spoke out against my way of life in my living room (brought a dead animal home, slammed it on the table in front of you, and proceeded to skin and eat it). It's a question of respecting other people's choices and beliefs in ways which allow both of you to live the way you want.

My own personal views on the subject of veganism/vegetarianism are well documented earlier in this thread, I don't really feel the need to readdress them, but on the subject of moral obligation, I believe there are things I haven't said, or rather didn't really think about the first time.

To invoke the moral righteousness of a choice, one really needs to define morality. The problem is, there is no one set of choices that is unilaterally considered "moral". What are morals? That in itself is a subjective question. Personally I have a rather cynical view of morals - I think their are an entirely societal construct that formed as an extra set of rules, existing to guarantee security within societal groups. Why is it immoral to kill your neigbour? Because if you will happily kill your neighbour and take his things, there is nothing stopping him from doing the same to you. People band together for protection, for security, for prosperity. As societies got bigger, as people wanted to avoid more and more "immoral" things in order to ensure their way of life, more and more things were added to the list of morals.

There is a certain amount of circumstantial proof for my theory - babies can be fairly easily proven to have no morals they haven't been taught through their interactions with others. We have to teach children not to be selfish, we have to teach them to be patient. Teach a child early enough that it is moral to kill in order to get something they want, they won't have any hesitations (at least, until someone or something plants the seeds of doubt). Obviously there is more to morality than what we are taught (people can discard teachings, can decide that something is wrong, based on their own experiences, but I can extend this theory to cover those, it just takes a lot more time :P The basis of my belief of the source of morals is there. If that makes sense to you, well and good. If it doesn't, well, we have differing views, and I'll respect that provided you have your own reasoning!

Cliff notes for the above: Morals are subjective. (I believe) They depend on your society, what you were initially taught, and how your experiences have affected you and effected your personality. So there will always be people who feel meat-eating is morally wrong, and those who have no problem with it. Neither one of them is being immoral, by their own definition of immoral, and I personally feel that I have no right to criticise their immorality, provided their set of morals don't impinge on the morals of another. There will inevitably be clashes, but that is what compromises are for, that is what democracy is for. Let the person who stands to be affected the most have the greatest say, but let everyone have a say. Balance this with the quantity of people who feel either way, and you have a system of judging "right" and "wrong" which is probably as close to fair as you're ever going to get.

The Moral (joke) of this post: I don't think it's immoral, personally, to eat animals. I think the example of nature and everything an ecological cycle entails shows that things will eat other things. It doesn't go against nature to do what we do, and... well, I love eating meat. There are some biological cases which state that there are certain blood types and certain people who have more of a need to eat meat (I have a friend who almost died from going vegetarian, due to an auto-immune disease she has - she would like to be vegetarian for her own reasons, but she would prefer to be alive). That said, I will always buy free-range animal products and meat whenever I can afford to, and I am wholly against the undue suffering of animals. It's all, again, a question of compromise. I love eating meat, and I wish it were cheaper, but I balance that wish with an unwillingness to support battery farming, because I feel that that is immoral.

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"I found it eventually, at the bottom of a locker in a disused laboratory, with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard". Ever thought of going into Advertising?"

- Arthur Dent

Guybrush

Morals are not entirely subjective. I think of that as a really an old fashioned idea (think Thomas Hobbes f.ex). Morals arise from behaviours and feelings that at large have helped increase our fitness in our (increasingly social) environment. It could come from something as simple as the "selfish" want to not share your lover with anyone else to an inbuilt willingness to cooperate with other people for the (fitness) benefit of all (including you!). Culture's been mixed into that as well, but our capacity for moral is still very much part of our DNA and we have a moral center in the brain. It may need to be stimulated as a child grows up, but that goes for everything else as well, like fine motor skills.

We're definetly moral beings which is why a person like Erica can feel so strongly about animals. Yet, to me it seems pretty clear that in our history, it's never been adaptable for us to care so strongly about animals that we won't eat them. What's happened in Erica's case is that a lot of empathic feelings most people have towards other humans, she also projects onto (non-human) animals. Just why that happened in Erica's case, I do not know, but I feel that in general, it is something that happens more as people are removed from a natural way of life. For a lot of people living modern lives in the city, living animals are not considered competitors or potential food. Mostly, they fill the role of pets. They meet pets like cats and dogs, they may see cute cows on the television etc. Animals are cute and friendly, never food, and so when they see the reality of meat production for the first time, they are repulsed by it.

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Something Completely Different

lucifer_sam

I won't lampoon you for this statement, but if you actually believe there is an "objective morality" then you're going to have much bigger issues grasping the ideas of right and wrong that people bandy about.

Read Nietzsche, specifically the Genealogy of Morals. It will give you a much better insight into what MoonLitSunshine is talking about. He isn't blowing hot air here at all.

The ethical is not the only way of viewing human experience, Tore.

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first.am

Sansa Stark

This thread is full of wank

Guybrush

What issues and why?

Morals have evolved and evolution is predictable. Some strategies/behaviours help maximize fitness and so are rewarded and sustained through evolution while others are not. Rather than saying morals are objective, I'd say morals (unless you're one of the special few damaged people who don't seem to posess any) ultimately come from the same place in all of us.

There's a wealth of litterature you could learn a lot from as well. For example I'm sure you could learn a lot from reading Richard Dawkins' classic The Selfish Gene. And I'm not blowing hot air either.

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Something Completely Different

Goofle

Is meat murder? Yes. Do I care? Wait while I munch on some lamb chops.

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