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Vegan food
Posted on: December 29, 2010 - 1:19pm
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Vegan food
Hey Blake, what are some of your favorite dishes?
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
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Let me ask this.
It is agreed that eating meat is inefficient correct? I mean much of the crops we grow are feed to animals rather that humans. So if everyone were to become vegans all the jobs in the meat industry would be lost. correct? This cannot be made up by farmers switching to crop farming because not nearly so much of it would be needed right, considering most of our crops are currently fed to animals which would no longer be the case? Considering most meat farms jobs would not be able to be replaced as well as butchers and slaughter houses and likely many other meat related fields. Potentially millions of jobs would no longer exist across the world. This would result in a lot of unemplyment admitedly over a period of time. a very slow change to veganism would be less dramatic but with ever increasing population rates its unlikely that new jobs being created would be able to keep up with the demand with all these meat jobs continually being lost. would this not result in human suffering? Bare in mind this is not just first world but also third world.
It's just a thought. I don't even know if this would happen but is the suffering of animals worth causing the human suffering?
Btw in not suggesting we all eat meat to save jobs.
Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.
I think my point on Epicureanism in the prior post speaks to this most.
There are some things in our lives that have simple alternatives that wouldn't change the baselines of pleasure we have- like switching diets. The same with a smaller or bigger house (one grows accustomed fast, and smaller residences have many advantages), and thousands of other things in life. Super fancy cars vs. something more humble, etc.
Where something has a logical alternative that- while it may inconvenience me briefly- is superior from a perspective of moral utility and efficiency, I do my best to adapt my habits and adopt the new behavior. I don't feel any worse off for it, because objectively I am not; due to the relative nature of experience, I enjoy every facet of my life as much as somebody living in a mansion does of his or her own.
In surveys, it's shown that there is a kind of baseline of poverty, below which your life really is shittier- but anything above that is all pretty much the same.
The only element of "life satisfaction" that comes into play, where richer people report higher amounts, is with regards to income, since richer people perceive themselves as more successful (it's really just a bunch of cock measuring- reporting lower satisfaction when you see that you're at the lower end)-- this shouldn't be a problem for an intelligent and rational person who can understand that income and bling is not a measure of how successful one is in life.
So, basically, there are some things that we can do at insignificant cost to ourselves, in adjusting our lives a little bit and managing more modest experience.
I should say that my 'prime directive' in a sense is first to not-as a person- increase the suffering in the world more than were I not to have existed. I don't think that's a particularly difficult goal to achieve (not eating meat is a huge step in that direction in avoiding harm). I also now do what little more I do now, which likely offsets any other peripheral harm, so I'm probably pretty good on breaking even.
I feel like the "break even" point is actually a pretty reasonable plateau of morality to rest on- that is, there is no dissonance if one says "I'm not a saint, but I'm also not making things any worse"- frankly, if everybody did that, we'd be pretty well off. I don't think it's immoral to stop there- sure, you could *always* do more- but that is a potential defense against a slippery slope to "too much" altruism. People universally avoiding harmful actions (even if they don't spend more effort actively trying to make everybody happier) would be a big step in itself.
That said, beyond what I take is my most essential obligation not to make things *worse*, I feel like making things better is a very worthy goal, and it is a large part of my life's aspirations (which could probably be called my secondary directive).
You say that like devoting your energy to activism and charity is a bad thing, or can't be fun.
People who do spend their lives in pursuit of helping others, or higher goals such as that do report significantly more satisfaction and meaning to their lives. Now, if enhanced self actualization isn't enough, I can tell you anecdotally that I know quite a few people who are 'addicted' to charity in one form or another- whether they're working hard for CFI, Humanism, PETA, Food not Bombs- and they are some of the most fulfilled people I know. Seriously, beats the shit out of an office job selling widgets you couldn't care less about.
There are so many kinds of good you can do for the world- from science and engineering, to secular activism (which you already take part in by being part of RRS), to intelligent and educational entertainment (like writing, film, television- my take is that as long as you're making something a step better than the crap that gets slopped around out there, you're doing good. I work in entertainment and I consider that a moral prerogative, because there's no better way to reach people and get them to think), to even posing as a good example for others who might adopt just a bit of what you aspire for. If you can't find something meaningful that you enjoy, I'd argue that you aren't really looking very hard.
Anyway, I think that should be a core part of any overarching moral life goal... but it doesn't necessarily need to be a time vampire, obliterating every trace of unrelated pursuits. I don't think we have to rationalize or suffer dissonance to say we aren't completely selfless "saints", provided we get at least over the hump of "do no harm", we know the rest is gravy and we can feel good about what we do, always aspiring to do more where we feel inclined.
I think you can to an extent- as not *immoral* once you're over the hump of not causing harm yourself (otherwise your existence is kind of like a parasite of suffering, which might be more problematic). It should be morally suggested that you always do more, but like I said, I don't think one should necessarily have to suffer that (the "I'm a good person, but I'm not a saint" argument is fully consistent).
Saying "don't do more harm" prohibits the baby eater doing his baby eating thing, though doesn't require him to selflessly build an orphanage either. I think it's a pretty reasonable plateau for social morality, as a standard. That's where most hippies are when they talk about their "footprints"- they aim for small footprints, but don't necessarily aspire to more than that (though when they do, they are admired for it).
Anyway, if we hold ourselves to the standard of doing more, overall, that also *so* doesn't suck. It gives new meaning and motivation to everything you do, and at the end of the day you know you've worked for something worth while. The people who live the most charitable lives I know are also some of the most satisfied and fun-loving... it's kind of a false dichotomy to suggest otherwise.
Given that said person has paid his or her dues, so to speak? By saying "I'm not immoral, but I'm also not a saint" A moral kind of neutrality.
I try to be as efficient as I can in most things, though- even transnational flights have a purpose for me, because they extend my professional connections, and give me an edge in bringing what I see as the ideal of intelligent and educational entertainment to people (which I see as a crucial utility for human social and moral progress).
In part I agree- the ability to eat meat did weather humans through some situations they may not have weathered otherwise.
However, for nutritional reasons I don't think it was cooking meat that really helped the most (raw meat is almost nutritionally identical, and is eaten by Inuit despite fires), but cooking starchy tubers does a world of difference- changing them from bitter and potentially toxic to perfectly healthy fluffy globs of nearly pure starch/energy (also very easily accessible and very high caloric content).
It was calories they needed; even a diet of potatoes ostensibly provides enough protein for full brain and muscle development, so I don't think the theory that meat helped with that holds any water.
That is, the protein just isn't a limiting factor, but instead the calories, and I think starches were an easier and less intensive way to fill that need in most cases (and better explain the movement to cooking) though the ability to fill gaps in the availability of tubers and the like with meat would have been crucial to long term survival.
Smoking of meat for preservation could have contributed (by making it last longer), but I'm not sure when that came into practice.
Of course, as you already said, that doesn't really have anything to do with the morality of eating it today. Interesting subject, though.
I don't think, with our population, an animal diet would be any more practical without modern farming methods. Those things just kind of go hand-in-hand with any advanced society, I suspect.
Good question.
I expect the crops to transition to biofuel and production of plastics. I can't imagine job loss there; it would be absurd to throw out that infrastructure.
As far as the slaughter industry... well, that's one of the worst jobs in existence (very high rate of on the job injury). I would expect, though, a larger industry of mock-meats to come up to replace it (like the tofu production industry in China, which is pretty damn big and doesn't really exist in the West). I don't imagine any net human jobs would be lost in the process. The resultant jobs of manufacturing veggie burgers and tofu, though, may be more sanitary and of better working conditions than slaughter houses. People might also start to eat more vegetables (the kind that require manual picking or collecting), which would open up more agricultural jobs.
How do you establish a baseline though, or a standard of 'do no harm' that is reasonable?
To keep using the flight example, so your plane sucks a few geese into an engine one day, how is that offset by anything? Not eating goose doesn't make up for that, you would have to have some way of balancing the moral equation back to neutral in an objective way. Fully off the wall, I'd say a modern human life is going to kill, at a minimum, hundreds of animals even if you go out of your way to avoid causing that kind of harm. Do you just build that into things so finding neutrality actually requires a good amount of pro-active commitment to make up for the harm you''ll cause simply by leading a modern life?
Do you spend most of your time deliberating over the consequences of every minor action that is likely to result in some sort of destruction, or do you make the idea more nebulous and try for more of a 'best effort' in your calculations?
The easy way of course is just to justify anything by saying, "well, I could be worse, at least I'm not as bad as I could be", but if I'm willing to do that then heck, I don't give a shit about the pig my bacon came from and it could be worse, I could be torturing the pig. The 'reasonable' test seems like a arbitrary cop-out to me, when the whole point of following an objective system of morality is to avoid being arbitrary.
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Also, on the altruism being fun...I'm not sure if that is a learned behavior or just a personality type. Just because some people are highly fulfilled by that doesn't necessarily mean you will be fulfilled by doing that. I know I've brought this up before, but I *really* don't seem to have any general empathy for my animal based food. It is totally intellectual for me. The only reason I would become a vegetarian is to reduce dissonance, it wouldn't bring me any pleasure. The only reason I have dissonance about it is I like to think I'm a rational person. Once that 'door' is opened I'm not sure how to stop it. I know you say being 'neutral' is a potential stopping point, but we both know that is not a result of any objective standard. If your premise is to cause no harm, and secondary premise is to make things better, anything less than a maximal effort to do those things is a moral failing and you have to justify that somehow.
And now I guess that is what it comes down to. If I adopt a vegetarian lifestyle to reduce dissonance, it isn't really going to help, because I can already see a million other things that will, based on the reasoning used, be required of me. It isn't about vegetarianism, it is about adopting a moral system with massive ramifications that all sound unpleasant. Abandoning my career, moving to a new area, breaking my family apart, devoting my life to some nebulous ideal that may or may not bring me some measure of satisfaction in the moments before death...yikes. I would be abandoning a lifestyle that I enjoy a great deal for something that I currently have no interest in, all for the sake of being internally consistent. Yikes again.
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Anyway. Whatever, I hope I can stop wasting time on this one way or another.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I think there would be net job loss. Those things are all much more trivial to mechanize, and your net caloric efficiency is much higher too, with fewer total steps. Half the point is how much more efficient plant based industry is over animal.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Actually, you are right, I had mis-remembered the content of a documentary from the BBC which went to air here recently "Did cooking make us human?" - it was much more cooking than meat which made the difference. Must watch again, I recorded it.
I think I was remembering a number of scenes where they followed Africans in the Kalahari hunting various animals to survive, which left me with that impression of meat being more important than it was overall.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Utilitarian comparison to what things would be if I didn't exist, more or less. If I didn't eat anything/ do anything.
Yes, precisely. Although it doesn't necessarily require much work. Lets say the airplane sucks in three geese (which might be a bit unrealistic, as that might down the plane, but anyway), and there are 300 passengers. I'm responsible for 1% of one goose, and I need to do something good to offset that if I'm aiming to break even. Lets say I feed some people some vegetarian food (which I pretty regularly do) and offset a little meat consumption. It's not difficult to offset 1% of a goose in the society in which we live. I could also, barring that, maybe donate a hundred bucks to some charity for the third world, such as birth control education, offsetting suffering there; secondary things like that become harder to estimate.
Reducing or eliminating commercial animal agriculture seems to be the greatest "bang for the buck" with regards to the trivial simplicity of reducing suffering.
Another good method might be raising chickens myself, and selling the eggs to my neighbors to offset commercial eggs (each representing about 24 hours for the chicken, I believe, in nasty conditions). There are many, many means of compensating for trivial amounts of suffering most actions cause which at most amount to a hobby requiring maybe an hour a week- it would be more difficult to account for the larger bulk of suffering in a diet high in meat. Though, remember earlier (perhaps in another thread), I postulated a meat eater who pays a bunch of Chinese to not eat meat for him.
Carbon credits, moral credits- it's all logistically identical. Practically, though, it's much easier to account for an international flight than a big-mac, and I only do it a few times a year, so making up for that and surpassing the break-even point is pretty simple. If you look at the numbers, most of the things we do or consume are pretty trivial compared to meat products.
It starts with a best estimation, and then I go for liberal overkill rather than get hung up on the details. Any excess naturally applying to the secondary directive (I don't necessarily need to know how much that is, as long as I'm reasonably confident that I'm making up for my bit). If you wanted to be lazy about it, you could do more precise statistical analysis- I don't think it would take very long. I've added things like that up before, and it would probably only be a few hours of investment a year.
A social application might provide for a "harm tax" to those things which didn't have more ethical alternatives- like airplanes- which is applied to reducing suffering elsewhere where it couldn't be reduced further in the primary venture.
I don't think that the break-even point is arbitrary in the least. You really just have "break even" and "the best I can do"- the latter, that 99% of time devotion bit. That is, two potential prerogatives that are non-arbitrary; don't be *immoral*/don't make things worse than they would have been without you, and be as moral as possible.
Accounting for your own harm is anything but arbitrary. I've never heard anybody make that argument, because it seems pretty intuitive.
My secondary premise is secondary for a reason- I don't necessarily put a maximal effort into it (if I did, I would have trouble justifying some things I do- although not many). To that extent, 'making things better' is arbitrary, and it only goes as far as I'm willing to take it.
Causing no harm, though, I think is easier than you make it out to be to go whole hog- I'm not quite sure were you think the lack of objective standard comes in there. Hippies aspire for a 0 carbon footprint, and that goal of "no net carbon" is very objective (probably the most objective thing hippies do or think about). Once you have succeeded in balancing things out, well, more effort wouldn't seem to be demanded of it.
Now, aspiring to cause no harm while eating meat would be a pretty complex proposition, but I can calculate the number of mice and insects, and the respective moral value of those animals based on estimates of suffering and respective values of physical and emotional distress, and lost self actualization, that I indirectly kill each year and find that the displacement, and other things I do easily accounts for that.
Try applying the logistics of "no net harm" moral utility to a society with regards to the baby factory and the like; what we're going for here, ultimately, is something that is rationally consistent with reasonable results, right?
It doesn't necessarily mandate personal vegetarianism- it would just be very inconvenient not to be (quite a bit more to make up for).
Wow I said that ALL VEGANS mentioned this? Really how about you fucking read first, I said those that do equate animals as equals to humans or that humans are not predators at all, that's what I said, I never SAID ALL VEGANS now did I? wow and I am a fucking idiot? So please tell me how a species that eats meat is not a predator either? Tell me the logical fallacy I have committed by stating that in my personal opinion that we are predators?
As for the modern era concept, nope i do not agree, I still love my steak, pork and chicken, sometimes snake goat and lamb with my veggies. Personally you haven't convinced me to give up meat, but then again I wasn't saying anything about you or your entire argument, just a very select few that equate animals with humans or that humans are not naturally meat eaters and yes those types actually do exist in the vegan culture and it is to those that I am address not your comments all, why are you taking it so personal?
Only if your fucking retarded do you make that argument, one is about consuming food, the other makes a major impact on not just the opposite sex but on society as a whole, I am sorry eating meat hasn't caused a major set back nor emotional or physical harm to society or individuals. Fucking retarded fucking argument you just made and you say I am an idiot?
I am fucking ignorant? Your a fucking moron of major fucking proportions then, I just had this exact argument with a what I would say hardcore vegan just before christmas, that was his reasoning that human and animals have the same fucking rights and that animals are equal to humans, that humans are not naturally meat eaters, and your saying I am making a strawman argument? I never ever claimed all vegans make that argument, I said some do, and yes there are some, it ranges from religion to cultural to personal reasons to be vegans, then you get the types I am talking about, you don't like the fact that there are some that do that, fine you want to stick your head up your ass and say they don't exist fine, but don't think for a minute I am making a strawman argument. I am directing to a select few vegans. Now if you like to point out my flaws in arguing with that specific person then please do.
why have you applied already? because they take the ignorants as well you know you will fit in perfectly.
mine is full of arrogance? Have you read yours? It's fucking right down condescending, like you actually think you know exactly what I am saying, but you can't even fucking see that I am address a very select group of vegans, that make a very select reasoning as to why humans should not consume animals, and you taking it that I am making this as a broad statement towards all vegans, which I never was, and I even stated that...and yet you ignore that part and start acting all fucking high and mighty, fuck you and your arrogance.
Why would I read your previous fucking arguments? When I was never fucking address you at all or your arguments? And you call me fucking ignorant and arrogant? Your a fucking moron just for saying that. I never address you at all.
1) you forgot to tell that to my family, my grandparents, uncles and aunts, great aunts/uncles and great grandparents all long lived, all ate meat regularly, it's what is in our food such as preservatives and other crap that came in the late 40's and 50's that started to raise our heart problems and cancer rates as well. I do my best not to eat processed meat, my grandparents nor my parents ate processed meat, however my generation did grow up on processed meat, and processed food, the rate of health problems have risen as well, not just that but the lack of proper exercise that has lead to obesity, not the consumption of meat, that is a logical fallacy. The reasons for societal obesity are varied.
2) sure I agree that factory farming animals is not the best at all, and I agree with you on that, however eating isn't always just for pleasure, and in countries which vegetables do not grow easily, eating animals is a better choice than starving, however the world population we have to come up with a far better why to feed us all that does not involved processed food. I doubt that will be happening any time soon however, and as such you will see the rate of cancer and other health issues rise, it is not due to the consumption of meat, but the chemical put in the food to make them last longer, and that happens in vegan food as well.
3) pretty much goes with number 2 I don't agree with factory farms be it animals or vegetables.
4) Until humans cannot consume animals, then animals will be consumed by humans, yes there are some that will not, but that's fine with me, don't eat meat for what ever reason you want. I personally don't care. What I do care is that we take care of those animals and don't cause unnecessary suffering such as having them in small pens/cages or other practices that can occur in some factory farms. I personally love my aunts ranch which then animals are grain/grass feed and are free to roam. But then again i am biased on that one.
As for me making a strawman, shit you make one really good to. Love your stupid rape scenario, but then again, when you start off with a stupid premise like you did, you make stupid arguments like you did.
It's definitely more efficient resource-wise, but most of the industry is in packing and product marketing, and those things are identical for vegan products. The slaughter industry does employ a bunch of illegal immigrants for messy work, but I'm not really sure of the numbers here.
We could do a comparison in slaughter and tofu manufacture, but you're probably right on that point. Human jobs vs. technology is a more complicated issue than all of that, and these kinds of mechanized jobs will ultimately take over short of labour union/government interference (in China, there are laws mandating that companies hire a certain number of workers, for example).
The singularity has the potential to really f*ck the economy, in general.
Wouldn't that be the easiest way to achieve the goal of being net neutral? Convince a few westerners to change their lives and then you wouldn't ever have to worry about your own impact again.
Even simpler, figure out how much money it takes PETA to do it for you and just make a one time donation.
I think you even brought this up yourself once. Would there be any reason not to approach the problem in that way?
Now that I think about it though, you're probably right...in reality, by turning vegan or careful vegetarian it really wouldn't be hard to come to net neutral for everything else. You could literally buy your way out of it with some careful thought and it wouldn't even be that inconvenient.
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As usual you are being disgustingly convincing.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Aside from your obsession with frightening "chemicals" and useless anecdotal evidence being almost amusing, this isn't really worth replying to since you didn't understand my post or raise any points I haven't already addressed in the unnecessarily block quoted regions of your post. I didn't really expect anything coherent from you. If you want to engage in actual argument, I suggest you read my post more carefully, and if you have two brain cells to rub together, use them to understand why I noted that you were making straw-men arguments and an is-ought fallacy.
You should read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem
Or even read: http://www.animalethics.org.uk/is-ought-fallacy.html
Lets see if you can figure that one out (unfortunately, probably not).
As a rule, I don't waste time arguing with brick walls, much less those who somehow manage to achieve intellectual inferiority to said walls (walls, at least, don't assert logical fallacies- props on that). If anybody else didn't catch the fallacy, or thinks I haven't explained all of this well enough already, I'm happy to elaborate.
Yet again, here is your reading comprehension problem arising, I don't care for your arguments, I was never addressing them in my initial statement, it was never about you but about a very select few vegans, but however if you like you can debunk my statement that health and cancer issues rose substantially in the 50's, and even more so more health issues in the 70's and 80's and even to now, it has nothing to do due with meat consumption, but the type of food we put into our bodies, processed food being the worst to do, but yet again, just ignore my entire statement about this and of course about the lack of proper exercise in the general population has given arise to various health issues. No by your statement it's just the meat consumption, not processed food. Oh who said anything about chemicals? Large amounts of salt and sugars are used in processed fruits and vegetables as well as pre-made meals which gives arise to various health risks when consumed in large quantities. Talk about the strawman again huh? Of course hydrogenated oils that became popular to be used in processed foods in the late 40's and then what happened in the 50's, heart disease rose, wow there is no connection at all to trans-fats and heart disease right?
At no point in time have I said vegans are wrong to be vegans or vegetarians are wrong, or meat eaters are wrong, what I did state that we should have respect for animals that we do consume and not cause unnecessary suffering, but humans will continue to consume animals, that is a fact, and with that fact we should do the best to treat the animals with respect. lets see your next strawman please.
Unfortunately, pyramid schemes don't work- because each of those people could then do the same, and so on, and no net change could take place (e.g. only the one person at the end actually has to break even, when in fact, it should be additive). Pyramid schemes are an interesting logic puzzle, though, particularly with regards to morality.
This is going to get logically confusing (pyramid schemes are already confusing enough without bringing in morality): Once a Westerner chooses to take responsibility for his or her own moral actions, he or she is paying his or her own "moral debt" rather than yours (this seems logically necessary, due to averting the consequences of a pyramid scheme)- but at the same time, we couldn't say that convincing others has no moral utility for the one doing the convincing, because there are situations in which there could be an increase. One might have to run computer simulations on memetic propagation and probability to figure it out precisely, but I think it would come out that it only has moral utility if it grows by some measure (guaranteed growth) at each step- really any measure would be alright; even the tiniest one (which in theory could happen, but in practice it is only guaranteed if you stay even yourself, because you don't know what the other person will do)- and that guaranteed growth (if really guaranteed and spreading) would create an infinite loop of feedback in a finite population (eventually everybody is taken and it has to sweep in for another pass across the population)- which would increase the morality of the entire population exponentially until they were all breaking even anyway. So, if it was really a guaranteed increase, everybody ends up even (although you might get a delay while it propagated, before it got back to you). If it's not guaranteed, you have to stay even to assure it in order for the action to have moral utility.
Hopefully that explanation makes sense; I can try to draw it out or try to find some applicable pyramid diagrams if not. Complex social dynamics and game theory; seems a computer model would be really helpful here.
It seems that only if it was a constant effort on your part (e.g. bribery, or free food) whereas they otherwise had no reason to act in such a way would it really apply. The tricky part is if they covertly decided that they liked the lifestyle (maybe they save money on groceries, or they read up on the health info, or something else) and that they'd keep doing it anyway even if you didn't pay them, the payment arguably ceases to yield moral credit on the basis of the pyramid function (can't pay somebody to be a vegetarian if they would be otherwise)- so that might be practically difficult (also ensuring adherence).
Right, it's generally pretty easy. I just go with feeding omnivores vegan food whenever I can- people like free food, even free vegan food. With as much food as I feed other people, and the passive increased chance of a group of friends going to a vegetarian restaurant, for example, it's hard to imagine that not compensating for fractional geese or mice per year. And then, of course, despite the difficulty of computing the complex contributions in any exact detail, there's always donating to wildlife funds, or contraception education, etc.
and generally enjoy the experience. Not much of a meat eater at home - few cans of tuna, maybe. Like bob I tend to the salads and olive oil. The lack of home meat thing is in part sloth. Cooking hunks of spitting flesh is a messy business. I find salads and tomato soup with garlic, chilli and rosemary suit my single man lack of interest in cleaning up far better. Ryvita and bean dip with basil from the garden works well, too.
Even shopping for meat is onorous. All that bleeding flesh with people hovering over it staringly selecting. Creepy.
I think I've mentioned before in a similar thread that once I went to a meatworks. That was a fucked up experience. The sheep had very little obvious idea of what was happening to them. They were collectively unhappy but clueless for the most part. But the cattle knew. They had to be driven onto the killing floor by electric shock - I could not watch it and the experience has spoiled my appreciation of steaks to a certain, but not total, degree.
Personally, I think if kids visited a meatworks - killing and all - before the age of ten, many, many people would go the veg. In fact if I had to watch my meal being slain I would go the veg. Choosing a fish to die from a tank in a restaurant is spooky enough for me as an aquarist. Tho' as LatinCanuck has pointed out there's an element of anthropomophism in apportioning human feelings to all animals.
Perhaps we could establish which creatures are oblivious and which we should leave alone. I could stick with whitebait fritters if that were the option. Not sure about snails. I'm less sympathetic to chickens and fish abnd kangaroos than to cattle - tho' I'm sure their instincts are not to be chawed up by my mouldering fangs. Blake's probably right. We should all be eating plants, ethically speaking, tho I think we'd agree we are genetically related to plants in some fundamental way.
To be honest, I had bacon and eggs on sourdough with my triple shot flat white this morning. P'raps I'll choose a cheese omelette with tomatoes, mushroom and onion tomorrow.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
I understand that, if the objective is to make up for your own specific moral impact. But why would it be? More than once you used the standard of neutral as, "The world without me". Since we're not talking about a mystical moral scale like karma, we're talking about actual results. Essentially the problem is a pyramid scheme, but this wouldn't be a pyramid scheme, it is only a ploy by the originator. The only problem then would be the person would need to keep an eye on those they have converted to make sure behavior stays altered. Let's call this person Mary, for simplicity.
Mary is never born. Moral value = 0
Mary is born, lives standard western life. Moral value = -100,000
Mary is born, turns conscientious vegetarian or vegan. Moral value = 0
Mary is born, starts moral pyramid scheme. Moral value = -100,000
Mary is born, converts ten people to 'real' vegans, lives life of terrible hedonism. Moral value = +800,000
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Again, the problem only arises if this is a pyramid scheme. Obviously this 'moral system' of...paid indulgences wouldn't be sustainable for society, but why should Mary care? All she cares about is her personal net cost. From your own writing you say a logical moral standard is net neutrality, it doesn't matter how that happens.
I don't see why you would need to even be rigorous about it. You could just spend one day a month teaching veganism to young teenagers...even if you only got a month of change out of them, that is still a month of *real* net reduction in suffering. Or, again, just pay off PETA to do it for you. That seems to be no different from you feeding omnivores vegan food, the net result is the same.
Heck, the pyramid scheme would even work for Mary, for the same reason pyramid schemes always work...for the people at the top of them. Does it help society much overall? No, but that isn't Mary's problem, because if Mary didn't exist there would have been zero net change. *any* net positive change is a win for Mary.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I'm not sure if that would work out. If a parents tells the child this is horrible, then perhaps. However, by nature children can be *completely* remorseless when it comes to animals they don't have a direct emotional attachment to.
I grew up around a slaughterhouse and it never bothered me. The first time I killed a deer, I was *ecstatic* with joy.
Naturally, it will vary by child and upbringing. But my overall point is that children have such a strong instinct of separating the 'us' from the 'them' that their reaction to such a thing would be dependent on upbringing. I've seen innocent little kids do things to animals that would make most adults throw up, because no-one ever taught them to be empatheitic towards non-humans.
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Now, having said that, take a bunch of 14 year olds to the slaughterhouse and I'd say your hypothesis would be spot on. Maybe I'm wrong though, that empathy might develop earlier. I mostly have experience with toddlers.
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How can you still eat meat if you have that strong of an empathy response though? Are you just able to shove it out of your active thought process when it is two steps removed?
+5 to Blake's net moral worth
And...hey, I started it, so I figure half those points are mine!
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
It's bloody Blake's fault. He keeps signifying at me. Ultimately, like our maple syryp swilling compadre LatinC, I am a bloodthirsty carnivore. It's a crime but from an evolutionary perspective, at least I am reducing the outpourings of methane that threaten our wee blue dot. It's a tough chaw but some one has to do it.
Don't congratulate yourself too soon, buddy. I had lamb for dinner. Poor, innocent, fluffy (woolley?) lamb. And like that Avatar dude on Pandora I apologised with love for it's predicament, my dental bacteria and praised to the heavens its antecedents before I chomped it down.
In my defence, as a north european I am 4 per cent neanderthal. There's part of me that thinks the ice ball is looming. Every time I see a beeve a creative instinct I never knew I had sends me to the walls of caves to ochre-ise my preferred nosh for posterity. Right now that's licorice with a hint of cocoa. And later, ice cream.
And by the way, Captain Pineapple, this is me after 12 beers. Pretty steady, huh?
P.S. When it comes to my culinary ethics, Melles, it's not two steps removed, it's two canters...
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Bloody Blake. He's under your skin with this ethical eating business, isn't he? This is not the first time you've sounded him out about it.
You know that vegans smell funny, don't you?
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
I never paid much attention to the relationship between diet and body odor until while living in Hawaii, a lady got on the bus. Have you ever smelled someone whose pores seemed to exude soy sauce? It was rank.
Cattle are spookier than sheep. "Spooky" is a common word used by town dwellers who are attempting to learn to herd animals with their dogs. Some sheep breeds are spookier than others, but in general cattle are spookier than most sheep. Sheep have been bred for different climates and pastures so some are more likely to cluster around a leader and others are more likely to scatter to feed. Those most likely to scatter when feeding are most likely to scatter when herded.
Watch cattle feeding - they aren't all clustered around each other. So if you try to herd them anywhere - slaughterhouse or barn or from one pasture to another - they do not group up tight. If you habituate the cattle to going into a barn to get fed, they will willingly go to the same barn every day with little stress. Most dairy herds are very calm moving in and out of the milking barn as they do this every day, twice a day, and so far all that happens is good from their perspective. Take the same herd and try to get them to go into a strange place - a trailer or a different barn or a different pasture - and you will all of a sudden have a spooky herd that refuses to go willingly.
We all anthropomorphize livestock and pets. Herd animals such as sheep and cattle do not "know" what is going to happen in that big building. They know the smell is bad, they know the building is strange, the ground is different, they know their instincts say to run. They do NOT know it is a slaughterhouse.
This doesn't mean I believe most large scale commercial slaughterhouses are nice places. Many are needlessly cruel and unsanitary. Can I fix it? No. If everyone were vegan would that fix it? We would just be changing one set of problems for another. As in where are all those cattle, pigs and sheep going to go, who is going to feed them, what are we going to do with all the carcasses of those that starve or get run over, and what are we going to do when they start crowding out other native species? We are not talking about 10 or 20 animals, but millions.
http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extnews/newsrelease/2003/101603/06livstk.htm For a quick look up this article is dated 2003 and compares numbers of cattle in the US and Canada. 103.9 million cattle in the US. 15.728 million cattle in Canada. And what do we do with them - turn them all loose? Insane.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
After all this, I think the moral arguments against eating meat, based on the awareness, etc of the animals are a wash.
Emotionally I would stick with my basic repugnance at eating a close relative, the likelihood that a given animal really had a 'good' or 'bad' life while being raised, manner of execution.
There are good environmental arguments against meat, since it is a far less efficient use of resources and usually generates a lot more methane, so we should be moving away from it, and developing more benign and tasty substitutes for those whose tastes still tend in that direction.
I also keep across health issues, as to current best dietary recommendations.
I find I have no special difficulty adjusting my taste preferences. I was brought up on a high meat diet, steaks, stews, sausages, or whatever virtually every day sometimes for every meal.
I have no difficulty with my current diet mix.
If you get too involved in a detailed tracing the impact of our life-style on the third world it is hopelessly complicated.
We could argue that all the effort we put in in developed countries into cute gadgets such as iPhones and such is a terrible waste, an indulgence, but then we find that such devices are being used in Africa to devise new models of small business, to help farmers in rural areas better keep in touch with market conditions, assist education, etc.
So without the by-products of our self-indulgence in such gadgets, they might in fact be worse off.
We should though be doing everything we can to push for lower CO2 and CH4 emissions, since the impact of higher temperatures and sea-levels is likely to have a big impact on many poorer nations, especially in tropical areas.
Actually that's another example of high-tech benefits to the less-developed world - alternative energy sources, especially photo-voltaics, make a lot of sense in places with decentralised populations and no decent power grid.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Yea, but it would be a problem limited to a very short time-frame, then it would be over. That is like getting shot and not wanting to take your hand from the wound once you get to the hospital because it might start bleeding again.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I agree with bob, cj and AE on this topic on various levels, and yes blake i have read your statements about it all, and yes I agree one certain topics, although having everyone change to a vegan lifestyle I personally believe unrealistic. Reason for me saying this is because the price of food imported can get expensive, I am not speaking about 1st world countries, but in 2nd or 3rd world countries the price of food goes up drastically in the off periods, and should a drought occurred in said country then prices increase even more, making certain foods beyond price range of local people. For example in the mid 2000's it was cheaper to buy a pound of streak in argentina than a pound of flour, or a head of lettuce or even half a pound of tomatoes, the prices of vegetables and fruits had gone sky high because of import price increases, due to fuel costs as well as a drought in the farming provinces of argentina. When your earing 400 to 600 pesos a month or about 40 to 60 dollars a month, suddenly eating nothing but a vegan lifestyle goes out the window when you can't afford it.
This is where we must have a reality check, that it's not always feasible for large population to have a vegan lifestyle, although a vegetarian lifestyle is probably more realistic using some animal products, milk, eggs etc, vs a strict vegan lifestyle. However to improve our health, and due to the size of the population and the amount of food requires to feed us, is where we are finding a problem due to the fact that we cannot due without factory farming at the time. Strict organic farming is out because it could not feed the worlds population and there isn't enough land to do so either, maybe a population of 4 billion, maybe, but at almost 7 billion it's not possible. With that said, factory farming of animals i believe is not the best possible use of our resources either, however coming up with an alternative to this is probably going to be hard to come by due to the amount of money being made in the food industry currently. Which alternatively has given rise to this pre-made and processed food crap that we have today, which also has rise the health problems and obesity in various nations around the world.
How is it a wash though? You details the cons but you have not detailed any pro's, unless you buy Latin's argument, but that seems pretty weak.
-------------
Extremist: Lol, yes, he has gotten under my skin.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
My argument is just regarding on very specific type of argument against consuming animals. However there are various reasons to consume animals, including high protein content and amino acids, as well as iron and nuclein which helps a growing body. With that said how the meat is cooked is important as well, well cooked is not always the best, were medium to medium rare is far far better than medium well or well done.
There are pros and cons to both lifestyles, which is why i go with a balanced meals some meat during the week lots of veggies and fruits and pasta in my diet, of course working out as well keeps the over all health.
Hmm... not so much pros, but for all the arguments against it, it seems that for each negative pointed to in each 'con', there are arguments that they have been or can be addressed without stopping that source of meat.
And if you assign value to an animal having had a reasonable life vs. not having been born, that could be a positive in a humanely run cattle farm. I'm not sure what, if any, value I personally see there, but it is arguable, and like much of this, ultimately a personal subjective assessment.
it isn't that strong, but then I don't think the cons are all that strong, in general, either, if you exclude the more extreme and unnecessary cases.
As you go up to more apparently self-aware critters, the harder it would seem to me to find any decent moral case, but in the case of domestic cattle, I see little indication of significant distress under even fairly restrictive factory farming conditions, let alone traditional settings.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Yea, but none of those things are meat exclusive, so...?
So far I've brought this debate up probably four times, and no-one has given a decent pro-meat response that rises above, 'excuse'. I'm starting to think their isn't one. I can't think of one and believe me, I've tried.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I agree, you can minimize the cons, but when it isn't a necessary behavior can a person justify even a small net moral negative?
Although that is a decent point...if you have cows living in conditions of abject happiness for 99% of their lives, that might be a net positive as long as death was clean. That doesn't avoid the efficiency complaints, but I don't see those as central.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
If the possible moral negative is small, then it can readily offset by other things, like where I choose to buy what meat I do eat. If it helps a small family business thrive, that may be enough.
And when you get down to small levels, I don't think you can completely ignore a small amount of personal pleasure to lift my spirits and allow me to carry on contributing to society in whatever way I do.
There has to be a practical cut-off level, given the fuzziness of the calculations.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
But the rate of absorbtion of iron, protein and amino acids are better from meat products than from vegetables or vegan diet, which is where if you can afford supplements thats fine. however that is not always the case, as well you are going to be expecting people to be preparing properly balanced vegan meals to make up the deficiencies that can occur, and well lets admit the truth people have problems from eating properly in the first place, forget the fact that they have to actually properly plan their meals to make up for deficiencies in calcium, iron, proteins and various other vitamins and minerals.
The other issue is actual studies don't really answer the quesitons of which is better for children, england and german studies states that meat products are better for children, seniors and pregnant women. While some from the US and canada said that IF properly prepared vegan is fine.
Alas it really is more of individual tastes. I have and do what can be considered vegan meals, merely because i like them, but I do eat meat because I have found it that it helps in muscle building, which I work out and I find it works for me.
IF you want to go with the moral argument there are animals are killed in harvasting and preparing crops for human consumption as well, field mouse, gophers, rabbits etc, are killed during the harvesting of these crops, but again, this is really just nitpicking, but is an argument in some vegan circles.
How so?
That's not a problem; such a scenario assumes the entire infrastructure is abandoned over night.
This was a problem with abolition of human slavery through legislation (the sudden abandonment of the infrastructure).
A gradual (even over just a decade) change in the population, person by person, does not yield this issue.
Nonetheless, even if it did, that's not an argument for perpetuating the industry because such a problem could be solved over time, whereas perpetuation is indefinite.
As to what cows know; I think the smell probably tips them off that it's bad news- not knowing the details of what's going on doesn't preclude not having some sense of the situation. Most humans don't know what the hell is going on most of the time, but they have a general sense of it. I think one would have to do a blind study v.s. taking the cows into a similar environment that was not a slaughter house to really have a good idea of what they have a sense of.
Dude, you're doing precisely the opposite. Your support for the industry sustains a population of methane producing animals that otherwise wouldn't exist, or would be replaced by wild animals in a woodland or plains environment which represents insignificant methane production, and net CO2 capture.
See Bob's comments on this for more clarification on greenhouse gases.
Hippies who don't shower smell funny. Also, people who eat far too much garlic (most vegans eat more garlic than omnivores- this is anecdotal experience on my part, but it's pretty overwhelming). Lay off the garlic and shower, and there's not a human noticeable difference in smell- although I have heard suggestions that animals can smell more ammonia on omnivores, and things like that, those don't seem relevant and are dubious as it is.
I shower daily, and I don't eat all that much garlic, thank you very much
[scatalogical]
The only really supported odor difference is in feces; vegan shit doesn't stink as much (higher fiber content, and the kinds of fats, proteins, etc- it has to do with the microbial composition). Raw vegan shit doesn't usually stink at all (seriously high fiber content).
I shit you not, their shit doesn't stink.
They're also in and out of the WC in about 30 seconds from a full movement and don't have to wipe at all.
Best. Shit. Ever.
Awesome shit, and a washroom time savings of two or so minutes daily isn't enough of an advantage to me to offset the superior taste, cheaper cost, and greater convenience of a mixed raw and cooked food diet though.
[\scatalogical]
Right, it's not specific.
I thought about it a little more this morning, and I believe I can explain it better.
You could convert somebody to vegetarian and reap the moral benefits from that *provided* they didn't convert for moral reasons (to reap their own moral benefits) because you have already reaped them. That is, they would be converting on false pretenses to reap moral benefits that don't exist. So, converting somebody for health reasons would be legit.
So, lets say we have three people. These people don't care about animals at all, so would never go vegetarian for moral reasons, but they do care quite a bit about health. These people are, lets say, 30 years old, and have something like 60 years left on their lives. While these people are concerned with health reasons, each one only has a 75% chance of encountering convincing health arguments and adequate motivation (people usually have to be prodded or motivated into action, even if they agree with it) for conversion to vegetarianism in the remaining 60 years.
Left alone, 2.25 of them would be likely to become vegetarian anyway, lets say averaging in at converting in 30 years- so dividing by two for a full 60 years, you'd have one and a little change that would have converted of the three. If you converted all three (and they stayed that way), then you'd have produced a little more than one vegetarian (and with enough change even to cover extras and past expenses).
Of course, if one of them had a change in heart and started enjoying the moral ramifications, then to whatever extent they are vegetarian for moral reasons, that wouldn't count towards your total, and if the response to the question "would you still be vegetarian if there were no health benefits?" was a "yes", then that one is a wash and you probably have to go find another.
Right, I don't see any problem with this provided that it takes into account the chances of them becoming vegetarian anyway, and that the conversions aren't on the basis of any moral benefit for the convert (even implicitly) because that would be illegitimate, since you're already using that.
That's probably true; with a statistical measure of duration and recidivism (which is very high for health reasons, just as it is for gym memberships, etc.), you could figure out the needed frequency of convincing people to go vegetarian (for health reasons) to add up to sufficient moral change you could cash in on.
PETA mostly pedals moral reasons, but you could probably earmark the donation for health propaganda only. Arguably, though, funds that would have gone to health arguments would then be redirected to moral ones, so that earmarking wouldn't be meaningful.
However, since a percentage of their activities are based on health, you could analyze that, and the number of people who are convinced on health grounds, and the durations of their adherence and recidivism rates, and then calculate a donation that would provide that.
I can't find any holes in that logic. Perhaps we have some numbers to crunch?
I have to thank you; with this pyramid scheme stuff, you're the first person I can remember in years who has asked questions that led me down a previously unexplored avenue of logic. It has been profoundly interesting having this conversation.
I don't think it would be all that short. Given some of them will quickly acclimate to local conditions and become feral. Feral pigs are a serious problem in some areas and this would just make it worse. Maybe the vast majority would die out. But invasive species are a bitch to clean out. Look how unsuccessful we have been with zebra mussels and English ivy and kudzu - just to name a few I know that are long, expensive irradication projects and largely winning the battle with mankind.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
I think the aspects of minimizing resource usage and methane production as a greenhouse gas are the major moral issues for me with regard to meat production.
That is balanced, for me, against what I can find are the possible health benefits of modest amounts of meat consumption, as a supplement to getting protein from oily fish, eggs, and/or enriched vegetable protein products.
Fish raises sustainability issues and eggs raise the specter of what seem to be pretty horrendous conditions for chickens in many cases. I guess I should make sure I buy claimed 'free-range' eggs.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Thank you, and thank you for making an argument.
Regarding economics: It is entirely possible that in some countries and conditions, and vegan diet would be too expensive for the people there to live on. This is probably true of many third world countries. I know it's not true in Latin America, though, due to the prevalence of beans and certain grains, and while corn is more expensive than in the states, it's also fully viable as a food stuff is prepared with lime. Yes, flour, lettuce, and such things are usually not viable products due to the cost in second world countries. No matter where you live, if you analyze the available goods with the tables of nutritional data (from amino acids to minerals- which are easy to find online), you should be able to come up with a healthy vegan diet for $2 or so a day. The math is not difficult, and calculating this tabular data in a spreadsheet is trivial (an effort of a couple hours at most).
As to the health arguments you are making: Only B-12 supplementation is necessary in a completely vegan diet (in a country with modern hygiene- B-12 is from bacteria, and occurs in dirt, dirty water, on unwashed plants, etc. and particularly in animals due to bacterial fermentation in the gut)- any other health arguments (from bioavailability of iron, to the notion that somebody actually has to eat properly) are superfluous and have profoundly simple solutions. The cost of B-12 supplementation is extremely trivial (a few dollars a year, but it could be done for less), and large amounts of it are added to many commercial foods anyway.
As to body building, Hugh Jackman getting into vegan bodybuilding has been stirring up pop culture circles lately:
http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/blogs/hugh-jackman-may-use-vegan-diet-for-wolverine-sequel
And as always:
http://www.veganbodybuilding.com/
There really aren't any notable challenges to body building on a vegan diet. High quality protein is high quality protein, no matter where it comes from. Hemp and pea protein are particularly good, as I understand. Soy protein is cheaper, and still alright but not quite as useful. I just do pushups and pullups, though, to maintain lean muscle mass, so I don't really follow very much of the bodybuilding culture (it's too much work to upkeep heavy muscles, no matter what you eat). I might get more into it if I had a home gym, but as I move around quite a bit these days, weights aren't good luggage.
Extremely large amounts of muscle, however, are completely unnecessary to maintaining good health, and it's hard to make the argument that eating babies would be O.K. if it helped you bodybuild on those grounds.
Regarding animals killed in harvesting, the numbers there are pretty trivial, and these kinds of animals are frequently killed in harvesting food for cattle as well, which eat more plants than one would have to eat personally (so a pound of beef kills more mice and insects than a pound of wheat anyway).
Just because a problem could hypothetically be solved, doesn't mean it can be ignored. This seems like a bit of hand waving. If the problems are addressed, then the arguments can no longer be made, but until such a point, they still are very real arguments.
If the animals' lives were the same or better along every metric than a wild animal, then that argument could be made (because you aren't doing anything worse than what the default would be were the land left fallow).
Raise the animal, protected and safe, yet entertained, with plenty of room and a comfortable environment until such a point as the animal reaches a natural end (or close enough to it to be providing mercy by euthanizing)- entirely possible.
Hell, if you treated humans like that, I doubt there would be much in the way of protestation. In the sense of 'If you want to eat my meat when I'm done with it, by all means'- but regarding the extent an animal has interest in the deliberate continuation of life, and doesn't want to be killed, this is only really applicable when the animals have reached the ends on their own, rather than having things cut short for them (with any greater statistical odds than were the situation perfectly natural).
This would seem neutral.
Short of this ignoring any meaning of self actualization (which I don't think you've made any argument for ignoring), I find it dubious that you think you can measure the distress of cows that accurately...
What would be significant, in moral terms, is anything in excess of a natural condition. I don't think it's that subjective.
However, we would need the input of neuroscience to have a good understanding of it.
Blake, I really can't get into this "self-actualization" thing, as a separate issue. I guess you mean something like limiting their options for whatever degree of choice they have.
I can't get too excited about that, specifically, honestly, since I would see that as encompassed by my problems with treating any higher-level conscious creature as a food-source.
If you want to use the idea to apply to 'lower' animals which may not qualify from a self-awareness PoV, which is my angle, I don't quite see that it can have much meaning independently of the self-awareness issue.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
That, in a sense, and the degree to which they are able to actualize future ambitions.
It is an extension of self-awareness, but I think you're forming a kind of misleading boundary between "higher" and "lower" animals that really amounts more to a gradation.
We can logically understand that sedentary mollusks such as oysters don't need any intelligence or self-awareness, because they simply can not use it. They only need very rudimentary pleasure and pain-like responses in order to open and close, or suck in food, or whatever else it is they do. They don't plan for tomorrow, because they really have no control over it at all, and they don't necessarily have a sense of body, because they can't use that sense to reorient themselves in any practical way.
A small fish or shrimp, on the other hand, is motive and responds in a dynamic way to the environment indicative of a basic ego.
A thumbnail sized fish's sense of planning and future ambition may be no more complicated than:
"Ooh, what's that? Is it a food particle? It is! I'm going to eat it. I'm going to swim to it and bite it, and swallow it. Now I've arrived, I'm going to bite it. Yeah, take that food particle! Swallowing now. Ooh, what's that over there? Another food particle!"
So, we may be dealing in ambitions of matters of seconds or minutes. Larger fish with a few days, some with weeks or months. Octopus, probably much longer. Pigs, dolphins, humans, longer still. Interfering in those conscious ambitions is not fundamentally different, with differences in complexity and length, just gradationally different.
It's a matter of comparatively valuing these qualities for what they are (not blindly treating them equal, or disregarding those entirely which are notably less).
If a two centimeter long tetra has five minutes of ambition, and the average person has aspirations stretching out some 50 years, it may very well take a five million tetras' ambitions to add up to the value of self actualization of that person, but being small doesn't mean it doesn't add up.
DAMN, there has been 65 new responses in just a couple days since I was last here! This is stirring up more passion that a religious debate between Christnuts and atheists/agnostics!
LOL!
Click here to find out why Christianity is the biggest fairy tale ever created!! www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm www.JesusNEVERexisted.com
I think it's because it is more interesting. Ethics is an active topic of discussion, whereas deities are long dead (some people just haven't heard the news yet).
Although there are some vegan that are into bodybuilding, I personally found meat to be far better for me, and that is just my experience so far, I also need to bulk up for work purposes, although I am seeing which will be more effective, lean muscle or inbetween lean and bulk muscle. However my argument really is just people's lack of proper eating, and having to plan meals that balance out possible iron deficiencies and other minerals, as I know people that do not like to eat beans, chick pea, tofu or spinach, even worse are beets, turnips or asparagus which are iron rich, but not nearly as iron rich as meat, which I know many younger children do not like to eat, and meat does have higher iron and protein content than most vegetables. This is one issue I find as a society at large, which is to get everyone to eat a proper diet, rich in the vitamins and minerals required, it's hard enough with all the food available, taking food options out makes it even harder. But I could be wrong.
How much flesh can I eat before becoming unethical, Blake? Are there any creatures you'd consider worthy/acceptable of becoming manna for my mandibles? As I've pointed out before, I really don't eat a lot of meat. In fact, I didn't have lamb last night as I cheekily told Melles, I had Watties Baked Beans on toast.
Nevertheless, there are times when salads and vege slow-cooks will no longer do and something must die to appease me. Is it ok to eat a juicy steak with a peppery shiraz just for the sheer joy of it? Say, once a month?
P.S. I nearly had an omelette instead of bacon and eggs this morning...
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Does anyone but Blake seriously think eating animals is the same as raping women?
And I simply cannot believe there has ever been a time when women were just objects to be sexually abused without regard by men, to be raped in passing with no defence, recourse, or respect.
The feelings that exist between men, women and children are old and powerful. They are not some sort of recent development, the product of the last couple of thousand years. In days of yore, did fathers idly stand by while their daughters were raped? I think not.
When Roman troops raped Boudica's daughters after the Roman's seizing her dead husband's lands, the Celtic queen lead 100,000 Iceni warriors and their allies on a bloodbath of revenge that Tacitus' Annals suggest cost the lives of 80,000 Britons and up to 80,000 Romans and Roman Britons.
Boudica's grievances were numerous but the public rape of her young daughters was mentioned by Tacitus as the primary cause of the fury of the Queen's reaction. Such acts were forbidden to the Roman military after this crisis.
I think sexual mores could be shown to vary but I doubt the reaction of women to being raped and the reaction of their men to the hurt of their partners and to the shame of their failure to defend them from rape has changed.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
The other question is what life is worth more? Again a dispute between a vegan couple that I personally know, and I found very amusing, was the consuming of insects. One was completely against it, the other didn't view it as animals but as insects and that they did not feel pain as do other animals that we consume, as such it was perfectly fine to eat insects, I will admit I have eaten grasshoppers, not the greatest, but not the worst either, oysters have got to be the worst things....then again I did puke 3 hours later. However blake do you have an issue with people eating insects?
This is a straw man. The rape argument was a counterpoint to the "natural and therefore right" argument. Obviously it is not O.K. to rape women just because it is natural to do so. That does not follow. What is natural is not necessarily what is right- if you assume it is, you have to admit a number of other things at the same time.
People who subscribe to the "natural and therefore right" argument regarding eating meat must also agree that rape (because it is natural) must be right. That's just one example, though.
Not necessarily all women, but many women in general, who were not one's close relatives- the old testament is sufficient evidence of this. If you like, look into some of the lectures by Jared Diamond; he goes into tribal morality (or rather, the lack thereof) quite a bit. A woman who was not part of one's tribe would be used. A victor in a war would take the women he liked as slaves, rape them, and get children out of them.
Ultimately, in these cases the women eventually develop attachments to their captors (and possibly vice versa)- we know the psychological tendency today as Stockholm syndrome, but that was its fairly obvious evolutionary utility.
You can eat as much flesh as you want; the question at hand is what kinds of damage and suffering- physical, emotional, and to actualization- have you caused.
Buying meat is paying the farmer to raise more animals in the same way that animal was raised, perpetuating the practice on your behalf (so, all of the suffering that occurs in animal agriculture is the prime responsibility of the consumer- as they are the only ones with the power to stop it- not so much the farmer who is doing a job demanded of him).
If your meat came from an unethical source, and the consumption of it fuels an unethical process, and you didn't do anything to make up for that (like the hypothetical case of paying somebody else who would otherwise have eaten meat of similar unethical origins *not* to do so) then any amount that was eaten deliberately- a single bite; a crumb.
If your meat came from an ethical source, then certainly quite a fair amount (providing all elements are taken into account, from suffering to CO2 and CH4 emissions). It's difficult to guarantee that meat has been sourced ethically, though, and it seems unlikely that there is any on the market.
I went into all this a bit above in addressing Bob, but sedentary mollusks such as oysters are probably safe- because they don't really need conscious self-awareness for anything after they've settled down, unless it is vestigial, they probably don't really have any (evolution is pretty efficient). So, there all you deal with is the potential for them to experience pain (as a connection to more rudimentary intelligence), which is also pretty minimal and could be avoided by killing them in the right manner.
There are also animals that died in matters unrelated to your demand to eat them- such as road kill, or old-age. Because you don't precipitate their deaths, you can be justified in eating them (unlike when you purchase, or somebody purchases for you as a gift, meat). You could also "dumpster dive" for meat that would otherwise be sent to a land fill. Wherever you live, there's probably one-day-expired meat still in a package being thrown away that you can get for free. This is called freeganism.
There are also animals whose death you could cause, but for reasons otherwise morally justified- such as, possibly, in the case of invasive species that are destroying natural ecosystems (provided the suffering they are causing is greater than the suffering caused to kill them), as Lionfish from the gulf of Mexico.
http://www.reef.org/lionfish
You could only eat those fish caught there, though, and not in their natural habitats. Importing would be expensive. And once they are so established that they can not possibly be fought/eradicated, then there is no longer a moral justification.
There are also cases of pigs that are demolishing delicate habitats on some tropical islands (You'd have to search this out).
And then the final category: Creationists. Unfortunately, that one is illegal in most jurisdictions.
You make jokes about neanderthal origin, but really, there are vegetarians with DNA not notably different from yours. There isn't any sort of person who can't be vegetarian*, and there's no reason any animal must die to appease you.
You just need to break your addiction to meat (foods are addictive). If you stopped eating it, you'd get intense cravings for a few weeks, then they'd seem to go away for a while, and then sudden and intense cravings off and on for a few months, which fade after a few hours each, on for a year or so at diminishing frequency until they're virtually non-existent. The only way to break the addiction is to not give into the cravings (otherwise they'll just keep coming back). It's the same with cigarettes, or sweets for the people addicted to those. We're talking a small amount of short term discomfort, and then a lifetime of not eating meat (and not causing suffering to animals which goes with the acquisition of that meat) without any problems- it's an overwhelmingly fair trade off.
You aren't really a special case. Every person who becomes vegetarian feels about the same way initially. It's just a matter of adjusting your diet and your palette.
That said, see my first post in this thread; I don't really consider salads to be food, so perhaps you're eating the wrong sort of vegetarian food as well.
* (Except for one rare reaction I've heard of to cellulose which makes a person unable to eat any plant matter- but realistically there are only a few cases in the world, and this could still be solved by removing the cellulose from plant matter; mostly consuming well filtered vegetable juice and tofus)
I was by no means suggesting you thought rape was ok - I meant you see these 2 acts as the same sorts of things from an ethical perspective.
Yes, I see that what is natural might be considered socially immoral but I question whether or not rightness is not part of our cultural evolution - what seems right is what is broadly right from a group survival perspective. That means what is right is what is most effective at preserving social bounds through respecting group members and the like.
I just don't see rape as natural and I question that it has ever been socially acceptable. Those bible passages are dubious if you ask me. Fathers love and protect their daughters and this is no new thing. It's hard to imagine fathers not doting on their daughters. I was with a mate and his new-ish daughter this morning and his performance was gag-worthy. At one point I thought he was going to actually melt.
I'm prepared to be argued out of my position on this - perhaps I am blinded by my Gen X perspective of gender equality. It just seems wrong.
Anyway, I take your point from an ethical standpoint with the meat thing and generally agree with what you say. It's a position of elevated empathy. Not sure I could rule meat out entirely but as I say, my footprint on my earthly brethren is fairly light, tho' I do love stew and dumplings in the winter.
In terms of my neanderthal jokes, I felt it was high time some levity was introduced into the latter part of the debate.
I'm eating a salad right now and feeling most pious.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
You don't really know that, though. This assumption is likely biased by what you want or expect to be the case. You would have had to spend a few months working out eating vegetable protein, and measuring your progress carefully, and then a few months working out eating animal protein, and measuring your progress. Most importantly, you couldn't cheat and use more weight or do more reps while eating the meat; it would have to be a steady progress of weight and reps, measured against your weight and BMI to see how much bulk you put on.
Either way, even if it was impossible to build muscle as a vegan (which there has been plenty of proof against), does building muscle really justify immoral actions?
Lean muscle is usually more functional than bulk, but it depends on what your job is. What do you do for work?
Well, this is a different argument.
If we made everybody go vegan tomorrow, definitely many people would do it wrong and become very ill because they'd try to eat junk food. A gradual change to a vegan diet, though, would provide more healthy and delicious staples in stores which have all of the needed vitamins and minerals (in North America and Europe vegetarian products are specially fortified). A social change to veganism wouldn't have any additional problems.
This is an argument against making an irresponsible person go vegan without education or infrastructure to make it foolproof... but it's not an argument against you going vegan. As a body builder you know about eating a careful diet, and I doubt you'd have any real problem figuring out what was good to eat and what wasn't. You already listed a bunch of things, and a little more research would tell you even more.
Yes, I do know potato-chip vegans in the U.S., and they are not very healthy. Sometimes they get sick and go to a doctor to reveal they've only eaten chips and iceberg lettuce with vinegar for several years- it turns out they need to not be idiots. They either give up, thinking veganism unhealthy (which it isn't, chips and lettuce are unhealthy), or they fix their diets (sometimes get a few vitamin shots to jump start them) and then they're fine.
A meat diet is more fool-proof, but if you're not a fool about diet, there's nothing to be proofed from. It's actually hard to mess up eating a sane vegan diet.
Just because one life is worth more than another, doesn't mean the other is worthless. It's a gradation- in a pain-based system of moral utilitarianism, we have to compare things based on their capacities for pain, and experience. No moving animal lacks pain entirely- pain is an inherent form of feedback to any neural network; if an animal can be conditioned, then it feels pain and has at least rudimentary intelligence.
How much pain do insects feel? To what degree do are they conscious? To what degree can they self-actualize?
I don't know. We need to look to science to tell us that. It's inevitably going to vary by species of insect, and even individual.
The most important point, though, is not whether I have an issue with people eating insects, or fish, or dogs, or other people- it's whether those people implicitly value morality, and make moral judgments of others, and whether the moral systems they hold are coherent and allow them to engage in the behavior they so engage in.
I generally have more of an issue with hypocrisy than any particular behavior. I have more of a problem with an immoral valley girl who protests hunting and medical animal testing and then goes to eat a burger than an amoral hunter who legitimately doesn't care what people do to themselves or each other as long as they stay away from his family.
I am absolutely hostile to illegitimate or illogical moral systems- but providing the system is coherent and logical, I have difficulty issuing any absolute condemnation (I may like or dislike it, but that seems irrelevant).
The bottom line is that if you *have* morals, they should be consistent, and you shouldn't violate them. If you don't have any morals, then don't judge other people for the same thing no matter how much you don't like what they're doing (the standard example was the baby factory, yielding children as sex-slaves/ food sources).
You can eat your own children, provided you don't judge other people as immoral for doing something logically comparable based on your own axioms. Now, I'm not necessarily going to be friends with a baby eater, but I can at least respect consistency- that's not to say I won't still call the police if baby eating happens to be illegal (unless the baby eater revealed the infantivorism in confidence, of course).
I know that may not have answered your question clearly, but I'm not sure what else to say. My opinions of insects seem entirely irrelevant; I base my world view on objective science, so I could only defer you to insect behavior research (the same I'd look up if I wanted to consider a diet of insects).
I tried it for a year as it was with a friend who wanted to try this out, it worked for what he was doing lean muscle, but it hasn't worked that well for me, although I did get the lean muscle tone, I never really was able to bulk up as i felt necessary. As for the morality part, that's really not an issue with me as I don't have a moral problem eating meat. I do have issues with how animals are treated in factory farms, but that is now a different issue, as the type of meat I consume in my moral compass is fine with me.
Security, we do all types of security installs however we have been getting into more providing physical security and I am researching within the industry that does provide physical security what over all is better.
Being a buttinsky again -
http://www.eatwild.com/index.html
For those who can not navigate to the website, it is a source for grass fed meat in the US. There are farms that will ship to you as well. I didn't look to see if there are any that will ship internationally, but probably not out of concerns for freshness. The state of Oregon, where I live, has lots of farms on this list. But then, Oregon also has many many u-pick farms and farmer's markets. You can join a club where a farm will deliver a very large box of fresh vegetables to your house every week all summer for a fixed price. Many grocery stores - including big chain stores - have vegetarian and vegan choices - even desserts. The vegan oatmeal cake is very good. And, in addition to restaurants that offer one or two vegetarian/vegan choices on the menu, there are restaurants that serve nothing but vegan. Availability all depends on where you live.
And here, vegan is a religion for some, but most everyone else lives and lets live. Your menu choices are yours, and not the business of the people at the next table or in the queue.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
If you are really interested, read Temple Grandin.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_tc_2_0?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3ATemple+Grandin&keywords=Temple+Grandin&ie=UTF8&qid=129403559...
Animals in Translation
Humane Livestock Handling
Making Animals Happy
Are probably most relevant, though her books on autism are also interesting.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Again, I never indicated anything of the such. Eating meat, as I have discussed it ethically, has been a criticism of the methodology of producing the meat- not the eating. It has to do with *purchasing* and otherwise demanding that process, and it is a criticism of the process.
Rephrase that to "Causing animal suffering and death and rape", and you'd be a little closer, but whales and laptops are also the same sorts of things from a material perspective- they're both made out of matter. What the F*CK dude?
You're really singling me out for a very nebulous claim that you have formatted deliberately to appear absurd. In the least, this is a red herring.
Raising animals in miserable conditions and killing them is a contribution of suffering. Raping women is also a contribution of suffering. I have made no indications of magnitude or qualities. If this is something you are disagreeing with, then you have some very bizarre and unscientific superstitions regarding the nature of pain and suffering.
I am certainly not the only person here who acknowledges that.
By the metrics of objective utilitarian morality founded on the axiom of reducing pain/suffering and optimizing pleasure, these things are both ethical wrongs.
However, and most importantly, when I mentioned rape I wasn't comparing it to meat eating on an ethical ground by my axioms-- I was explaining that it is a conclusion of the "natural and therefore right" argument; an argument I disagree with.
(underline mine)
I covered this axiom of evolution being the essence of morality earlier to its logical end. If evolutionary success is the essence of morality, all humans should be enslaved to technological progress and building probes to expand to other plants.
This is a perfectly viable form of moral axiom as far as I can tell, but if you hold to it then you're a hypocrite if you don't get your ass in gear to implement the new world order.
Note that meat would not be eaten in this case, either, because it is inefficient (humans would eat all the other animals, and then start on some form of algae based gruel).
I don't know if there is anybody on Earth who subscribes to this axiom.
This is social contract, which is foundational in amoral hedonism. I have explained this at length in other threads. Social contract does not prohibit a child sex slave factory, and many other things that we would arguably not appreciate. Social contract is not a form of morality- it is the application of mere self interest.
Social contract is suited to a stable society, but that's *all* it does. I already know you don't subscribe to a pure social contract theory, and even if you did, as I have pointed out, it is not part of morality, it is a matter of self interest.
Well, you're just wrong there. I advise you to do more research on the subject.
Well, I am not willing to argue it- you have no possible viable argument. This is a matter of simple empirical fact; I am only really interested in discussing more advanced topics. I'm trying to be nice here, but in this case I am correct, and you are incorrect; contemporary sources in modern tribal amorality, historical documentation, and the observable behavior of our closest ape relatives is overwhelming to the point that your claim is outright absurd. You reject recorded history, deny tribal behavior, and ignore biology- why? To what end? I don't know what else to say.
Yeah, it sucks... so? That's why we aspire to something a bit better today, and I think that's a good thing.
Sorry, but you really need to do more research on the topic on your own.
I hope we can just move past this, because it's not going to go anywhere, and just accept my argument that natural does not necessarily dictate right.
It can be a position of elevated empathy, but it's also a position of logic given the axioms of suffering in regards to morality. As mellestad noted, he doesn't feel empathy for a cow, but might consider vegetarianism to simply be consistent based on his moral reaction to the harm of animals and children who would be objectively equivalent to the cow in terms of suffering.
The key point is consistency and objectivity.
If you consider dogs or young children to have moral worth, on what grounds do you discount the more conscious and intelligent pigs and eat them needlessly when you could eat plant products which actually do lack suffering and actually aren't conscious?
A light footprint, as we discussed here, is still a net negative effect of your existence on others' suffering- that is, that your very existence is in a sense immoral based on your own metrics. It seems like the least one might aspire to is to break even, and above all to do no harm. Any good we do beyond that is fantastic, but to not harm others seems like the most foundational basis for what we could call morality.
I'm wary of jokes in situations where people may be feeling dissonance. Humor is a coping and rationalizing mechanism; it distracts from the matter at hand. Try to be aware when you're making jokes- it is to be funny, or is it because *you* feel uncomfortable due to dissonance, and are trying to distract yourself?
Humor is great, but we mustn't abuse it and allow it to turn into a foil for rationalization or a defense mechanism.
EDIT:
I see there are more posts posted since I typed this, but I must sleep now; just saying I'm not ignoring them, I'll reply tomorrow.