You must log in or register to comment.
So being vegan makes your arrival to heaven more empty (unless you killed people).
No, there’s a vast field of rage-filled plants to wade through.
There are many problems associated with being alive. This is one of them. But it annoys me that vegans seem bent on proselytizing their viewpoint. It always seems self serving to me.
Yes yes the people that care about others dont actually its just virtue-signalling no need to critically engage with what they are saying 🥱
Because it is. It is just a lifestyle people use to feel like they are better people than meat eaters. Despite the fact that our bodies are literally made for digesting both plants and animal products. Meanwhile, the majority of them still wear clothes made in sweatshops, wear makeup by brands that actively contribute to animal and human cruelty, eat chocolate made with slave labor, buy from stores that carry animal products, and have no issue with cruelty towards people. Idk. If it isn’t a self-serving ideology, it definitely cosplays as one very convincingly.
Do you expect people to somehow be able to avoid all suffering? There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and often people don’t recognize the ethical problems with their choices. People purchase clothes they can afford at the shops available to them, and availability of stores that don’t carry animal products is essentially zero. What I find more odd is defending something we know is causing great suffering, simply because vegetarians/Vegans also do end up participating in the perpetuation of different suffering. I’m not better than you because I’m vegan, and most Vegans/vegetarians do not believe that. It’s a take I only hear from people that eat animals.
Is there any altruistic act that you couldn’t apply that logic to?
Well, I’m not applying the logic to an altruistic act. I am applying it to a group of people that claim to be altruists, when they are really nothing more than self-serving ideologues with a nice sounding motive.
So you agree that veganism is the moral option but dont like vegans because they just pretend to be more moral?
No, I just don’t care for moral grandstanding.
Ok forget about the vegans, bunch of preachy, sanctimonious, self-centered assholes every single one. Do you, as a non-hypocritical person with certain principles, think the exploitation of sentient beings is unethical and should be boycotted?
No- I know what you’re trying to go for, because it’s the same argument every Vegan thinks is their coup de grace. I, as a thinking person, am able to kill and use other animals to eat, for clothing, for protection, or for whatever else I need. I do not believe it is more or less moral to be vegan than it is to eat meat or use animal products. Are you able to prove that the plants you “exploit” aren’t sentient? No. Because sentience and life are not easily defined terms. Anyways, have a good rest of your life.
I’m sure those vegetarians will be shocked at the number of non plant based creatures they will have to make amends with. Just living causes the death of other creatures. I’m sure they don’t see it that way.
Minimizing harm should not be chastised.
Ignoring harm should.
If you’re going to go all biblical to make us feel bad then you have to acknowledge how the bible also says all the animals are here for us specifically.
I’m not religious and even I know it says that.
Funnily enough there’s actually wording in Genesis that could be taken imply humans are just supposed to eat plants, with humans just ruling the animal kingdom and not devouring it.
Feel free to look up Genesis 1:25-31 to see what I mean, though of course translations are…
Very variable.
Regardless, most interpretations agree that what humans absolutely shouldn’t be doing is causing a mass extinction that is set to kill just about every complex life form on Earth.
25 God made the animals of the earth after their kind, and the livestock after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. God saw that it was good.
26 God said, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 God said, “Behold,[a] I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed. It will be your food. 30 To every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food;” and it was so.
31 God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
Footnotes
1:29 “Behold”, from “הִנֵּה”, means look at, take notice, observe, see, or gaze at. It is often used as an interjection.
Public domain, WEB translation.
I kinda think if god made all the creatures and plants, saw them to be good and left us to tend to them, He probably wouldn’t be too pleased about the factory farming.
Like, we’re made in his image and given dominion over his creation, a microcosom of his dominion over everything. If he wanted pigs to live a life without turning around, he could have just… made them that way. Do we really interpret “dominion” as a way to OK total subjugation of the life below us? 'Cus I always thought of that more as… like, a groundskeeper/caretaker’s dominion.
“Dominion” is already an interpretation. The word didn’t exist back in the day and the translator had to choose it to interpret the original text.
I’m not a Christian, but while I was that is how I interpreted it. I was taught we were supposed to be good stewards of creation. I personally never saw a problem with things like slaughtering animals, but thought the conditions of most farms weren’t acceptable. I never had to think about it enough to really draw a line about what ways to treat animals was okay and what wasn’t, but things like stuffing as many animals as possible I to as little space as possible getting them as far as possible as quick as possible just felt like too much. I also believed things like rampant deforestation were wrong for the same reason. God didn’t give us a free pass to treat the environment how we see fit.
I mean, neither am I anymore, but yeah.
In evolutionary terms, domestication was reciprocal. We see them safely into the world, protect them through life, and see them out. Both species benefit. Factory farming is a short-sighted violation of that; the animals lead miserable lives, the surrounding ecosystem (as well as any human habitation) suffers, and you couldn’t design a better laboratory for new zoonotic plague if you tried.
That’s really interesting! I’d be curious to see what other translations read as (especially ancient languages, if I were smart enough to read them), but in the NIV translation, you could absolutely read that as a call to eat only plants, and to care for the animals.
It could also be taken another, slightly more terrifying way, too.
If we assume what we’re doing is right, farming and killing animals for food, and work backwards from there, the verses say that God made the animals, and gave us dominion over them. If we assume the way we currently treat animals and view them is how that dominion works, then when it goes on to say that God made man in God’s image, it could be implied to say that man is to animal as God is to man.
Which could mean God is farming and killing us for God’s sustenance. We’re nothing but chickens in cages.
This makes more sense to me than the explanations western religion normally gives
Problem is we are not herbivores. And especially back then when we didn’t have global access to food when ever we wanted being a vegan would be almost impossible in certain locations.
There is basically no pre-modern society or culture that could pull off being vegan.
But there are plenty of vegetarian cultures that have lasted a while on eggs and dairy. Buddhism and Jainism have a history of vegetarianism tracing back literally millennia. Some European religions and groups refrained from eating meat from terrestrial animals, but many of these groups still ate fish.
Veganism in the pre-modern world wasn’t feasible. It’s feasible today mainly through our modern agricultural supply chains and modern understanding of nutrition: flaxseeds and chia seeds (or processed algae oil) for omega-3, cultivation of certain yeasts for B12, etc.
New world agricultural societies were pretty vegan. Mesoamerican societies only really had turkeys, and the peasants wouldn’t have access to turkey meat regularly. You can survive off Tres hermanas (beans corn and squash) pretty well. Andean cultures were similar, they had llamas and guinea pigs but they were a very small part of a diet of mostly potatoes, quinoa, beans and tomato.
So you are saying these ancient cultures didn’t use animal products? Yeah, I’m gonna call BS.
That’s fair. I’ll admit my knowledge of ancient civilizations and agriculture are very much old-world focused, and even in the new world I’m more familiar with the cultures in the modern day geographical bounds of the United States, with perhaps more hunting, trapping, and fishing than the large Mesoamerican civilizations and their highly populated cities.
we didn’t have global access to food when ever we want
This cuts more towards herbivory then carnivory, especially in agricultural societies plant based foods were more available then animal based foods. If you were a pre-modern peasant you were eating meat very rarely, the poorer you were the more rare it was.
It’s only with modern agriculture that meat is a core part of the average person’s diet.
Then, (within this framework) it is god’s way of saying humans shouldn’t live in the place you are referencing?
If we were visited by aliens who energize through photosynthesis , we’d all be monsters to them. “You fuckers eat animals with a side of plants?!”
energize through prosthesis
I’m assuming you meant photosynthesis?
Some eat animals ALIVE. Like that lady that choked on a live octopus.
Out in the wild, the vast majority of animals are eaten alive.
Think how lucky you are to be human. Any other creature, and you would have 0 control over how to even think about your fate.
There gonna be a lot of mosquitos for me
I’d just kill them again
“I’ve already made peace with it, thank you.”
These angels are just trying to create a top ranked list so god can see how much of a lead he has on any one person.
Is it just the ones I personally killed or do you have to say sorry to like five cows for every burger you ate? Also do clams count? because they barely have a nervous system
Also other indirect murders like the calfs killed because they are considered a by-product of milk production and waste.
you don’t need to kill give cows for one burger. one cow makes many burgers
Yeah but the minced meat burgers are made from is probably mixed up from different cows.
Do some clams go to hell for dirty thoughts?
It’s randomly decided in proportion to how much you ate. A clams casino.
A tiger has every right to kill an antelope as a human has to kill a cow. The real ethical problem for me lies not in the killing of animals, but rather the conditions they live in prior to execution, and the method of execution. There is a way to ethically consume meat, and it is non industrial and requires each person to do the kill so as to not be alienated from the significance of killing an animal to feed oneself.
This line of reasoning is very flawed. Lions regularly commit infanticide and dolphins rape, therefore these must be ethical things to do? It’s a classical appeal to nature fallacy.
“Yes I killed those people my honor, but tigers kill people too, and even my fellow humans kill other humans all the time, so it’s perfectly ethical if I do it too. It’s just my way to connect with nature!”
Would it be ethical in your view to cut the throat of a dog from time to time and eat the body parts, even if alternatives are readily available? The tiger has no other choice, and no moral capacity, but we do.
I don’t think that serious violence against animals without necessity to do so can be justified, and taking a life is one of the worst things you can do to a sentient being that doesn’t want to die.
I already have stated a thousand times that this is not an appeal to nature, the claim is not universalist it is strictly related to the killing of animals in the context of subsistence. All animals have a right to live and as part of the right to live there is a right to kill in order to live and substist. Furthermore part of the scaffolding that I do not want to get into because then I have to write even more is that death itself absent pain is of no moral significance because the subject cannot be present for their own death and therefore cannot suffer it. Suffering is the only universally significant moral concept because all beings share in it and actively avoid it. Therefore we have a moral responsibility to not inflict suffering, but suffering ==death.
Yes it is ethical to kill a dog to eat it. I mean I wouldn’t do it but it is ethical. Just because I emotionally have a response to it doesn’t change the logic of the matter. I never justified violence against animals fyi, I’m absolutely against that because it inflicts suffering. So in this case you would need to kill the dog without it suffering.
But yeah the line of thinking in order to convince others requires a lot more elaboration than Im willing at this point to give here.
Maybe I’ll put it to paper and tag everyone here, it would at least make for some interesting discussion.
Maybe I’ll put it to paper and tag everyone here, it would at least make for some interesting discussion.
Yay! We could have ethical discussion part 2. I’m on the side of the tigers.
And a male lion after defeating and taking over the pride has every right to kill the children of the former leader, because they’re animals and act on instinct and can’t make moral decisions. Humans can.
You can make other arguments about eating meat but appeals to nature like this don’t work in a modern enlightened era where we have more decisions and understand the consequences of them.
Morality isn’t some special thing humans have. Morality is what makes us succesful as a species, put through a filter of language and culture.
Who says that the lion isn’t just needlessly cruel? You can only assume that it lacks the ability to make moral decisions, but then again humans kill children all the time for incomprehensible reasons. How are these lions and humans different except your perception that one has moral agency and the other doesn’t based on absolutely no empirical evidence except your belief in your own superiority.
Again this entire thing hinges on the notion that animals lack rationality, but the evidence increasingly dies not support that. But that’s neither here nor there, the nature of a lion is different to the nature of a human. And even then, we still do what you have described all the time. It may be wrong but we do it, and we will still do it a thousand years from now if we are still around. Now the argument is not because “it is part of your nature, you’re allowed to do it”, the argument is that all animals have a right to kill other animals in order to defend or feed themselves.
The other part of the argument is that unless you think for example another omnivore like a chimp (which fyi we have absolutely no reason to believe are any less rational than us ) is immoral if they decide to eat meat having plant based foods available then you shouldn’t think that about human beings.
If you want to improve animal welfare, you need to start believing that all animals, including human animals are equal. While society continues to believe humans are superior in any way to animals we will not be able to create a world in which all species are equally respected.
Who says the lion is just needlessly cruel? Fundamentally neither of us can know what’s happening in the lions head so there is no empirical evidence to be had. With passing judgement I tend to work on innocent until proven guilty so I’m just gonna assume the lion is acting on instinct.
As for your main argument of “all animals have a right to kill other animals in order to defend or feed themselves” if you combine that with your other argument of humans and animals are equal, can a human kill another human for food? Can a human kill another human in defense of a slap? This right your proposing is missing a key part and that’s necessity. If it is necessary, or the animal thinks it’s necessary for its survival, then that animal has a right to kill for food or defense. This is where modern humans and animals are different, humans are far more aware of what is and isn’t necessary for survival. A chimp doesn’t know whether it will or even can get enough food from just plants. Your average human, at least in the developed world, is aware that you can survive off a vegetarian diet and there is food available to do so. They wantonly choose to kill animals because they taste good. I also don’t judge people close to subsistence eating meat because they need every calorie they can get.
Your first point is exactly my point, but extended to humans. The idea that we are above instinct is so absurd, it requires putting us on a pedestal of rationality for which there is little evidence of. Is it more logical to think that all animal mental processes operate in much the same way or that for some reason humans simply are built different? There is some evidence that rationality is simply us justifying things we already decided instinctually.
My argument is not, “it is natural therefore it is right”, my argument is only and absolutely only about the morality of killing animals for food and is centered on the right to live of every animal. There’s other scaffolding about the insignificance of death but it’s unlikely to change your mind so I won’t go into it. Anyways should be obvious that Intra species relationships are different from interspecies relationships, human moral judgements are almost purely intra-species regulations. We don’t need to extrapolate my argument to make a universal claim about other things when I’ve been very clear that I’m simply talking about this issue specifically.
But to not sidestep around your argument yes there are instances in which humans may kill humans for food. Because survival overwrites any moral principles due to the right to live of every being which includes the right to kill for your own survival. How can you judge someone in a position in which there is only enough food to sustain 1 person as immoral if they are both thinking the same thing and one decides to take action? Should they both let themselves starve? Or how would you mediate it?
Now I may be predisposed to not do it due to social conditioning but I will not rationalize it by saying that it is because I’m more moral or ethical, I’m simply programmed differently and would not be able to kill another human for food. Or at least I do not think so, I don’t know what happens when my very life is on the line. I’m not sure that I would even be capable of killing an animal to be honest.
But again, that’s not really related to my argument in any direct way except that you are trying to turn it into a universal claim, which it isn’t.
I’m not saying humans are above instinct or lions have no rationality. I’m saying humans use rationality way more because of our far greater understanding of the world. Rationality requires knowledge of the world in order to form decisions, and humans have far more knowledge of the world then a lion.
I’m sorry for misunderstanding your claim as universal, but if it’s not you shouldn’t use universalist language: “all animals have a right to kill other animals in order to defend or feed themselves.”, rights, as I understand them, are universal as the more exceptions you have to a right the less it becomes a right.
I don’t understand them intra species vs inter species distinction, is cannibalism more wrong then inter species carnivory?
Back to the main point though, your initial claim that it’s fine to kill for food if you do it yourself and aren’t alienated from it, you said this is one requirement, are there any others? I’m saying that the necessity for survival is one of them. I think we agree on this as you base your claim for this “right” on the right to live of every animal, therefore an animal should not encroach on that right unless it feels its own life is threatened. If you live in the developed world with ample access to plant based foods and access to knowledge of how to eat a vegetarian diet, then it doesn’t matter if you go out into the woods naked armed only with a spear, your still wantonly killing. Your not killing to protect your right to life, your killing for the taste of the animals flesh, or sport, or to prove your masculinity etc. Those are not valid reasons to kill.
This seems like a lot of work (both practically to do this and mentally to make this argument) when you could just…not eat meat? Seems a lot easier and more ethical.
The easiest path is not necessarily the best or right path. Though I do agree that in the context of modern industrial meat production the more ethical thing to do is not consume meat. But that is not the same thing as saying that eating meat is wrong, or immoral. The immoral thing is the way the animals suffer before being killed.
It’s also unethical because it destroys the planet, harming everyone and everything on it. That is baked in. Producing meat will always take several times more resources than an equivalent amount of plants. Since our society refuses to limit usage of water, ground nutrients, etc, to sustainable levels, eating meat will harm the environment. Every bite of meat you take steals from future generations.
Killing animals that don’t need to be killed is also wrong. And in a modern society, there is no requirement for us to eat meat, as we can live full lives on wholly plant-based diets.
Killing animals that don’t need t be killed…
Agreed! That’s why I’d only kill an animal when I’m hungry.
I agree, but a tiger doesn’t breed antelope into being, and feed them at the expense of all life on earth just so they can have a nice meal.
If you’re hunting, fine. They were eating grass and stuff from the ecosystem.
If you’re farming then you’re creating massive amounts of waste to generate meat.
That’s basically the same thing as what they said though.
And let’s be honest, if a tiger was capable of farming livestock, it probably would.
Tigers are big cats, hence they are like their little domestic cousins, lazy as fuck. I doubt tigers would enjoy having a job.
Tigers aren’t as smart as you think.
If they were smart, they’d do what their domestic counterparts do - make themselves masters of a family of human slaves. They’d be much better off at the price of a few purrs.
The smart ones found their way into Disney, the rest are dumb.
Tigers are too big and dangerous to humans to be good candidates for domestication. Cats are just the right size to not be much of a threat.
Sure, but that right is in question. Being a part of the ecosystem is fine, animal or human (which is an animal). It’s when we destroy the ecosystem to satisfy ourselves where I question the right to do so. It doesn’t matter what the animal is, except we’re the only animals capable of doing so.
We are destroying our only home for fake shit. The only reason we do anything is for fake made up money.
Maybe in the past humans had to, but thats not the case anymore, as we have more thenen enough different sources.
But thats not even the issue. The issue is the gross amount of meat most people eat, that is not backed up by any kind of “but we allways did it this way”I agree with you 100%. It baffles the mind how many chickens we kill so that some fatass can order a bucket of KFC every night.
And you know the thing, most people when shown the conditions of these animals and how abhorrent it is do create a consciousness about it and often try to do things better, though it almost always fails because our society is kinda set up in this way. But I do think that’s one day, maybe a millennia in the future we will look at how we treated animals today with the same sort of apprehension that we think of slavery.
But again my argument is that killing animals is not wrong, that is a right that every animal has. What is wrong is at the scale, and sheer barbarism in the way we do it.
You can’t ethically take a life. A tiger has no choice whereas a human does.
I have so many arguments against this I don’t even know were to start, so I’ll keep it simple: you need to abandon anthropocentrism.
Humans are animals and not particularly special or even intelligent ones. (Intelligence being defined as the ability to solve problems and learn from them) Our “intelligence” is actually just cumulative generationally passed knowledge. It is not clear that humans are indeed more rational than a tiger or that tigers or non human animals in general lack rationality, except only in the way in which a human would define rationality which cannot be a universal claim.
I’m not op and I’m an omnivore and i have to tell you, your reply is … not a good response to what op said. It’s full of strawmen arguments and nonsense. You seem to be arguing that humans can’t choose to be vegetarians? And you veer way off into nowhere arguing about what you think intelligence is? I dunno, for someone who said they have a ton of arguments, you sure picked a bunch of bad ones
I believe they are saying you can’t place a universal standard of behaviour or ethics onto the multitude of human animals that live on the earth
Even if that’s what they’re saying, that isn’t a meaningful argument against what op said.
It is possible for a human to live a long and healthy life without eating meat.
It is not possible for a tiger to live a long and healthy life without eating meat. (without human intervention)
Humans can choose to be vegetarians of course, that doesn’t mean that killing animals is immoral or wrong, necessarily. That notion can only exist if you think humans have a superior place in the world to that of animals. Anthropocentrism is central to this idea that humans are the only animals who cannot kill other animals to feed themselves without it being immoral.
Ie a chimp could choose to eat fruits if he wanted but they also often eat monkeys even if fruit is available. How is that different, from a human choosing to eat a cow even if he could eat grain? The difference is only that you think the human “knows better” than the chimp.
Your argument is: If animals do a thing then it can’t be immoral for us to do it. I’m sure at this point in the discussion you realize that that’s not a valid argument
That is not my argument at all. I never made such a universal claim.
My claim is that all animals have a right to feed themselves and as a part of that right there is a right to kill other animals. Therefore it is not more immoral for a human to kill an animal than it is for a tiger. I say that only in this context, because our biology evolved to also use meat. We can survive without it sure, but it is suboptimal. It is also true that we should be eating way less meat than we do. Therefore the immoral thing is not killing or eating animals but rather the industry around it.
Look at human history we ate each other and other human species. We are not special we are not chosen by God. We are just animals that think we are special. Even being vegan has an effect on the earth destroying habitat ruining bio diversity chemicals getting into the environment.
No one said any of the stuff you seem to be arguing against. This is called a strawman fallacy if you’re unfamiliar with it.
In relating to other animals, there is no reason our standard should be any different than animals to one another. In relating to other people, it is reasonable to have a different standard.
Would you consider bestiality immoral then? The animal equivalent of bestiality (interspecies sex) occurs regularly between different species after all.
I am not able to provide an objective moral reason if other animals may be treated differently from humans. If consent cannot be taken into account, raping animals is not immoral.
The sole argument could be that bestiality harms or at the very least exposes an animal to a significant risk of harm. But then again, killing an animal certainly harms it much worse but this would be morally acceptable in such a system, so the harm an animal faces isn’t really part of the equation.
Nobody invoked intelligence or rationality. You have misread and now you are just confusing things.
To keep it simple: A tiger’s life depends on killing other animals. A human being can live to a record-setting age and never kill another animal. The tiger has no choice but to be violent to vulnerable individuals, but when a human does it, the lack of necessity makes it cruelty and abuse. When a human does have such a necessity, the math works out differently, but in the context of the comic strip, the subject had no necessity to kill those vulnerable individuals.
All life is supported by displacing or ending others. Even if you don’t view plants as ethically problematic, the agricultural practices to feed civilisation, by definition, must upset the natural ecological balance and harm animals.
The reason a vegan doesn’t feel upset about eating produce is the degree of removal from the animal harm. They don’t see the deforestation or destruction of wetlands or the damage done by pesticides or in fertilizer production. It’s no different than an omnivore not feeling guilt when a butcher kills an animal (even if they wouldn’t do it themselves).
This harm has always happened since we developed coordinated agrarian societies. The most ethical stance is that humans should return to their natural ecological niche, hunter-gatherers with minimal reliance on agriculture.
However, veganism isn’t possible in such a society. The ability to supplement the human diet with plant based alternatives at scale requires disruptive agriculture. Thus strict veganism* in this lens is inherently self defeating.
*The vegan concept of harm reduction isn’t impacted here, there are still lots of reasons to go plant based
I’d like to see a single human alive today who because of their actions has not killed another animal? I guarantee every single human alive today has been responsible for killing an animal. Sure it might not have been for food but your actions have resulted in the death of an animal.
It doesn’t need to be invoked, the higher moral agency placed on humans hinges on the notion of superior human rationality. You could choose to be a vegetarian and choose not to kill animals, but that doesn’t mean that it is a more ethical or moral choice because human biology evolved to require meat other wise it requires planning and supplementation that is not necessarily possible outside of industrial societies. I do agree that choosing not to eat animals due to the industrial nature of meat production is a more ethical choice, but not that killing animals is necessarily wrong.
I may not be explaining it well but basically: the idea that humans killing animals is wrong can only exist if you think humans are superior to animals. I reject that notion and that’s where my argument comes from.
That’s a really bad argument, sorry. Of course we place a higher moral agency on humans than on animals - otherwise you’d have yo argue that other atrocities like rape and murder shouldn’t be morally judged either.
A tiger cannot make moral decisions. You can. So you will be judged if you don’t.
Not to hold yourself to a higher standard morally than a literal predator would be downright psychopathic.
You are placing a higher moral agency on humans because you make some special distinction between humans and other animals.
Humans are just other animals and they have diverse conceptions of morality and ethics. Rape and murder are not equivalent to killing for sustanance.
Comparing our moral behaviour to a ‘literal predator’ is a value judgement where you denigrate animal behaviour and elevate human behaviour as somehow superior.
You are placing a higher moral agency on humans because you make some special distinction between humans and other animals.
Well, obviously. Because I believe I can be held to a higher standard than a tiger. They kill and eat disabled babies. Is that something you would deem acceptable for humans to do?
I have so many arguments agains this doesn’t make even one
Well you certainly made a case for your own level of intelligence. At least word salad is vegan.
I have a mostly vegan diet but can’t updoot this enough.
You’re not vegan if you have a mostly vegan diet, sorry
Cool thanks for letting me know
I think this is fundamentally true (although it has issues when it scales down to insects and below that requires an arbitrary line to be drawn) but I’m not convinced that being absolute about it is useful in harm reduction.
It’s objectively better that someone looks to buy meat from a farm that cares about the welfare of its animals than one that maximizes profit at the cost of the wellbeing and happiness of the animal.
Naturally it’s better still if they reduce or stop their meat consumption, but making it black-and-white can potentially result in a worse outcome by setting the bar higher than the consumer is willing to jump.
Which killing of a cow is objectively better?
This is not a good-faith response. I’m not engaging further.
Yeah I’d bow out too if I were wrong.
The one that has a life out in the field and then just dies one day without any stress. The one that is in a factory farm never sees the light is stressed their whole life. Guess what life is a bitch and unfair everything dies.
I genuinely can’t understand the disconnect you people have between the value of one life lived versus another only to be OK with that life being ended for the indulgence of your average McDonald’s customer.
Meat is not a dietary requirement. Full stop.
I genuinely can’t understand the disconnect you people have between a plot of ecologically diverse forest life and a sterile field of corn just for the indulgence of a bag of Doritos.
See, it’s not hard to make disingenuous leaps. If you’re going to tell me about sustainable local farming don’t bother, I’ll dismiss it like local animal farming vs. factory slaughter.
Quick and fast
So the method is what’s important not the result? Just say you don’t value animal lives.
It’s a lot better than dying painfully and slow
Yes if an animal had to die then the less suffering way is better, but they don’t have to die.
You can so ethically take a life.
I’ll just take you’re 7 word reply as the gospel then…
What is asserted gratuitously is denied gratuitously
You absulotely can, that’s an absurd oversimplification.
But, if the human has the option not to, that option should always be exercised, which is currently not the case.
So what is your solution for when a species is getting over populated and destroying an ecosystem? Is it not more ethical to kill some and preserve the ecosystem for the rest of the wildlife in that area?
Why’d the overpopulation happen?
Not enough or no natural predators usually.
And why did that happen?
Could be any number of valid reasons that have nothing to do with eating meat. For example, human safety. Unless you’re arguing for a dismantling of civilization due to its natural encroachment, I don’t know where you’re going with this.
I didn’t ask how these situations could have been prevented. That ship has sailed. I wish we hadn’t caused it to be this way, but here we are. Now the two options are to kill them back down to sustainable numbers, or allow them to destroy the ecosystem thereby condemning themselves and a host of other animals as well.
I’m not a hunter myself, and I personally probably don’t have what it takes to kill an animal even in these circumstances, but I also can’t provide a better solution. So I’m not going to shame people for hunting when it both provides food for them as well as brings balance to an ecosystem.
I will, however, shame them if it is done purely for sport and against non problem animals. I hope those folks that go to Africa and hunt elephants and lions and shit get eaten. Slowly.
How about a third option:
Reintroduce predators that were native to that ecosystem.
If the rampant species has flourished for some time without predators, then they might be less agile in avoiding them, leading to better outcomes.
Tigers also lick their own bums clean, is that a good thing to do? Tigers don’t have dentists, so humans have no right to dentistry.
Or maybe you mean to say that hurting other people for your own pleasure is only ok if you do it close enough to see the whites of their eyes? Does a single tear need to roll down your cheek.
You are so stupid it actually hurts me. If you want to argue about the morality of killing you could at least pretend you have read a book.
That is a complete misrepresentation of my argument and it seems that you’re the one that needs to read a few books so you can develop your reading comprehension.
So those unable to kill are less ethical than those able?
There is a way to ethically consume meat
This is correct, but not how you mean it. The way to ethically consume meat is to be starving and have no other alternative.
Or to grow it without a central nerve system.
I like this idea on paper though in my imagination it looks horrible. But I do think it’s the ultimate solution. My biggest concern is that if we do not abandon Anthropocentrism we will continue to commit crimes against animals that are much worse than killing them for food (which I don’t think it’s wrong as I’ve stated here) . Like keeping them in cages, or using them for experiments that often don’t really replicate on humans. Etc.
is he like an oil baron, wtf is this shit
Holy hell he ate an elephant?
I don’t think he ate the japanese soldier either
While I am pretty ignorant on Vietnamese culture I don’t think they bow like the Japanese
Fair. Edited, thanks
Were they a butcher?
Taking out those animals lives by themselves is different from using their flesh as product. They are further down the line.
Because otherwise a worm eating my shit would also “contribute” to the death of those animals I’ve eaten. The shit wouldn’t have existed.
Was the butcher going to kill all of those animals if there was nobody to buy them?
A worm does not directly order you to eat food and pay you for the benefit of your refuse.
This line of thinking would make terrible lawyers…
Your honour, my client only ordered the hit, and is therefore not guilty of the crime of first degree murder; it was the hitman - by his own confession. I declare mistrial by further down the linedness and award myself a million bucks.
This line of thinking would make terrible lawyers…
Proximate cause arguments have entered the chat.
Joe didn’t order any of those animals killed, either. He bought parts of them that were packaged and made available for anyone to buy.
Brb, gonna buy some organs from the black market. Sure, I know that it’ll fund further illegal organ harvesting, but I’m not responsible for what my money enables them to do, so no problem.
The lobster tank may make things awkward.
Those one are indeed selected by an individual, but killed by another person. So how does it work? Does the lobster show up whenever anyone in the chain dies, from the fisherman to the diner?
Being dead as an animal in heaven requires a lot of “showing face” at events. The animals don’t mind though. Before this became the norm only dogs went to heaven.
Seems to be a take on The Five People You Meet In Heaven.
In the book, a man named Eddie dies and is sent to Heaven. However, he must first meet five people whose lives were completely altered by him.
The first person the protagonist meets was a man who was turned blue due to silver nitrate. When Eddie was a child, he ran into the road chasing a ball. The man was driving a car and swerved to avoid him. While there was no accident, it caused the man to suffer a heart attack and die.
The point was to show that there is no such thing as coincidence and that your actions can indirectly have an effect on others, even people you never have met.
The point is “fuck you, you will always be guilty of something”.
And I of course took it, by no longer giving a shit.
Well, the book actually ends a bit more positively. Your actions will indirectly affect others isn’t just about the bad. It’s also the good.
The protagonist was haunted since he fought in the Vietnam War. He was ordered to burn an abandoned village but he thought he saw a shadow. He tried to see if someone was there while his commander told him to leave. He went anyways but was shot in the leg.
For his entire life, he was haunted by that.
The final person he met was a little girl. She was the shadow he saw. He broke down about how he wished his life could have been taken instead but she comforted him. Because of his guilt and pain, he was extremely cautious at his job as an amusement park maintenance employee. He went above and beyond what anyone else would do.
She showed him examples. Kids who were playing on the boardwalk that would have died after stepping on a broken plank. Rides that would have crashed because of a missed problem. Teens who would have plunged to their death because no one yelled at them to stop leaning over the rails. Even the action that caused his death - he saved the life of a little girl who was about to be hit by a roller coaster car.
Your actions can indirectly lead to bad things happening but they can also directly or indirectly bring about good.
I’m just roughly 24kb worth of ram. I do what big man says good, and hope for the best.
I was gonna say, my guy Joe worked at an exotic slaughterhouse.
Really brings a different context to the first dude that showed up.
‘I wasn’t a hideous butcher! I just ate what the hideous butcher put before me! It was slightly easier and tastier than the salad. I mean, bacon, amirite?’
Inb4: I realize that every acre of wheat and corn my basic vegan ass has obliterated probably killed some field varmints. It’s still less destructive than someone eating a burger.
I don’t know. That field that grew the grains you eat was probably carved out of a savanna/prairie/forest and permanently altered the ecology of the area and preventing an untold number of living things to exist. So you would bear the same burden s everyone else.
In the end, there is no life without death.
No, it really isn’t. The “some varmints” number in the millions. That’s not even going into how current crop farming practices reduces natural habitats, exhausts soil, destroys biodiversity, and is responsible for the endangerment of species due to all of the above.
And that’s just farming to keep us fed. If we look into other industries we see that they’re all doing the same as well.
We have to make a massive shift in how we do industry as a whole, because simply not buying a burger doesn’t amount to anything beyond being self-congratulating.
ffs Joe, did you kill a fucking elephant?
Yeah I thought this was a carnivore joke, but some of those animals do NOT check out 😨
Could be saying he is liable for ivory trade.
Does the elephant only haunt the people who buy the ivory? The people that killed it? The people that were middlemen and simply profited off the trade? The mules that smuggle it internationally? This is a lot of work for the elephant to be doing after it was already killed for its ivory.
Yes this is overthinking it, but why else are we on the internet? :p
Joe was actually an insurance agent. Most of the animals were killed by vehicles insured by his company.
How does insurance cause animal deaths?
I want to point out this is only me being silly, and not my actual belief.
So, he provided a service and the poachers utilized the service in the action of transporting the ivory back. The elephant gets to haunt every human tangentally related to his death until he is properly interred.
Museum workers actually get the worst of this system.
or maybe he ate elephant meat at Zimbaue
Climate change? I don’t know.
I was a bit worried about the bat
Lots of interesting points at various levels of the comments.
I’d like to offer the idea of, just because we can and have eaten meat as a species, should we continue to?
Why not try something different?
If we are going to try something different, how about start by cutting the religious bit? Easier to worry about the people and animals and ecological present without all the wild focus on necrodestination.
I think that’s meant towards the comic artist, right? My question existed long before I ever saw this comic.
Yes, for this specific instance that’s what I was meaning. The relationship to this comic idea as presented is the tie in.
What if this isn’t a statement on eating meat. What if this guy just loved to kill things? There are turtles and elephants in there.
Since the Japanese soldier is the first person he meets, that means he didn’t kill anything until after the soldier. Either he was a vegan (and very careful) before that, or he killed a japanese soldier as a baby, at the start of his reign of terror.
There’s always the worse answer 😬
I hope not.
Maybe because we are omnivores and require what meat provides us in order to thrive?
Love how vegans/vegetarians will stand in complete ignorance of how the world works just for some misguided empathy towards our food supply. Grow up from the little child crying over the idea of eating some animal you saw looking “cute” or behaving “humanlike”.
I’m not even vegetarian/ vegan, but you just come off as a giant asshole.
It is a well known fact that it’s entirely possible to thrive on a non meat diet. So your argument that we need meat to thrive is a really bad one.
The world works the way we make it work. Imagine wanting to end slavery, and there you go “Grow up from the little child crying over the idea of slaves deserving their own lives, you just don’t understand how the world works!”
You don’t have to justify wanting to eat meat for sustenance. And you also don’t need to be an asshole about it when engaging in civil conversations.
Wrong. Please stop spreading dangerous misinformation. Most should probably be eating LESS meat than they do, but none? You’re harming your body. Plain and simple.
Veganism is a dangerous death cult and needs to be stopped.
What you are saying has no scientific basis. What your body needs are vitamins, minerals, protein, and glucose.
The body is harmed to various degrees if you stop your intake of either of those. But meat isn’t the only source of protein. Just from the top of my head, oats and green lenses are excellent sources of protein.
Your body does not care where you get your protein from. As long as you get some.
This is elementary school level biology.
Like I said. Eat whatever you want. I don’t care what you eat. But fact remains that your body doesn’t need meat. It needs protein.
I hope you find peace 😎
The black in the background are all the bacteria.
it’s all the bugs from the zapper
Don’t forget the plants!
Seeing this is going with the Christian idea of heaven, you’ll have to use Christian beliefs.
Acts 10:9-16.
9 About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. 10 He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. 11 He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. 12 It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. 13 Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
14 “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
15 The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
16 This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.
Oooof sorry so close but no cigar. I’m sorry everyone but the answer was vegans. Yes, vegan was the correct answer.
Correct answer to what? Answering for your life’s decision in the after life?
So Peter had to refuse 3 times and finally God gave up?
Probably the significance of 3. Mosiac law established that no one can be tried by the testimony of one, but by the word of two or three could the matter be confirmed. Possibly God’s way of ensuring that the matter is established.
