You've provided such a loaded question. The lines are not so clear, and that's where I will start. The question assumes that eating food with a face somehow must be different from eating food without it. The assumption is that the animal kingdom is superior to the others, that raising animals only to eat them should invoke a moral horror that should not apply to things without a nervous system. The reasoning seems to be: if it can feel pain, you should feel pseudo-pain that you would eat it. This comes off as disingenuous as soon as you view the contrapositive. "Oooh, look at me being morally superior because I'm eating non-sentient objects! They never felt pain, so it's perfectly fine for me to grow them only to eat them. I didn't even look them in the eyes when I yanked these potatoes from the ground. You'll have to excuse me, as I need to make a virgin pressing of some olives and take out my anger on them." All agriculture is both necessary and a heavy investment of resources. It's true that raising livestock takes far more resources: you have to grow what they'll eat. However the animals provide far more resources to assist in raising the crops: they poop. Oh man, do they poop. Methane is a problem for the atmosphere. In fact many of the older reasons to raise animals came from using them to work the fields. Now we use diesel. The fertilizer in manure has been replaced with chemical fertilizers -- and the addiction to agribusiness. The more I talk about this, the less I'm coming to any conclusions. I cannot untie the assumptions in the original post without getting angry. I want to keep this separate from my own eating habits, but I just keep thinking "f*(k you for judging me, and everyone else that claims to be vegetarian but really just eats Oreos". I'll restart from here: I've met too many vegetarians that wouldn't eat my vegetarian cooking. "Eww, eggplant?" "You eat mushrooms?" Yeah, I can make so many delicious things from these items. The vege-slope (vegetarian but eats fish, vegetarian, vegan, breatharian) is just as annoying as the bacon-slope. My own mother thought I was insane for not liking bacon. I didn't even like it until I had it in Australia, where it's served with the rasher (the strip) still attached to the peen (aka Canadian bacon). It was thick, not crispy. It worked REALLY WELL with bitter greens. It was killer brekkie. I like to cook. I grew up with the big Sunday meal at my Sicilian grandmother's -- the ravioli, the three-hour tomato sauce, the works. I learned how to make her sauce and from there I learned how to make the food chemistry swing. The guilting of meat is a very Protestant, Puritan approach. It implies all food is a punishment. I like spices in my food. Scratch that -- many root vegetables require long cooking times to be digestible, so the solution is to spice them. This is the centerpiece of Indian cuisine. Lentils... I heart lentils. My wife set up the crock pot with lentils and celery for dinner. Happy... I have cut down my meat consumption over the years. I only allow myself red meat once a week, and I often skip a week. I try to eat only one meat meal per day because I don't need more. However it gets back to the vege-eww problem I mentioned earlier. So many Americans eat like children: the same few bland foods every day. You have to sneak food on them. This is why the Slow Food Movement and even the pompous angles of the Foodie culture are important: we can't fix the bad diet problems if we do not make nutritious food more readily available and appealing. If it weren't for Trader Joe's, it'd be a lot harder to eat properly. Frozen food that is worthy of your body, $4 lunch. Enough guilt and negative reinforcement about meat, I say. Create a positive movement -- that diverse food high in fiber is cheaper, easier to spice, and feels good.
Frankly, organicAnt is the one that started a loaded discussion by linking videos of animals, presumably to make the original posters feel guilty, underneath every submission to the #grubski contest that contained meat. He or she claimed that he or she "just couldn't help" it. Apparently, they just couldn't help themselves three times, which is a bit of...oh, this is perfect: OVERKILL The funny thing, by the way, is that scientists have found that vegetables and plants DO react when they/their fruits/legumes/products are gathered, so you're causing pain either way. pseyd - we are in agreement at least so far as the beginning of your post - I also agree that methane is a bad thing and a problem and yes, animals do contribute to that. However, organicAnt's tone has been unhelpful and frankly, uninterested in starting any actual discussion, but just in pushing their own viewpoint by attempting to make other users feel guilty because it so happens that animals are cute. To which I say: grow the fuck up. Either have a viewpoint, when you opt to raise it, be prepared to actually discuss it, or keep your mouth shut. If you're only going to stir the pot without throwing anything in (food metaphors, this is great) then I'm not interested.
It's a snooty, holier-than-thou approach. They shan't actually form an argument or debate! it's much easier to act superior by throwing something sarcastic in and leaving it as if they've won. It's shit-flinging and then saying you've won because nobody slung shit back, or sitting with a (heh) shit-eating grin when someone does.
I agree with nearly everything you say, and I say "nearly everything" only because I wasn't reading closely, not because I disagree. The problem is that everyone here is fully willing and able to have a nuanced discussion about eating meat, but we're having this discussion because one person insisted on having a binary discussion about eating meat. It's gonna be challenging for anyone to learn anything from anyone else because most of us agree on the gray area and we aren't committed enough to convince or be convinced as to its shade.
The consensus is therefore in the superstructure: we agree that we're not absolutists, so we reject the polarizing process as a means to discussion. Too bad we aren't in an actual room. This would be the moment when a bunch of us look at each other, get up, and go to a brew pub. Instead it's quarter after 2 on a Tuesday and I think the closest person to me is around 15 miles away. Thus I'm off to do something constructive in my company's lab.
I'm sorry that you feel this way. Sadly there's no way of bringing this topic up without people feeling judged. I'm pointing at something you do so it's a natural reaction, but tell me how can this ever be talked about without you feeling like I'm pointing at you? Imagine one day you wake up and realise that there are concentration camps everywhere and not only is everyone ok with it they attack you and accuse you for even bringing the subject up. How would you feel?f*(k you for judging me
No. Stop right there. Do not continue. I intentionally left out this subsection of vegetarians because I would never dare accuse anyone here of being ones of these people. This is the last group of vegetarians: the vile, dehumanizing people that put eating meat on fucking par with genocide. Do you not realize how disgusting that is to do? When millions of human beings were systematically murdered, you see no problem with saying that's the same as animals being herded and eaten? It comes dangerously close with equating minorities with lesser people. That there's a separation between humans and them.there are concentration camps everywhere
Your shocked reaction sounds as if I just showed support for human genocide! We should be horrified at all kinds of biased discrimination, exploitation and murdering. There's an interesting philosophical question here. Why are you appalled at human genocide and not non-human animal genocide? What makes a human life worth more than other animals? Just because you are lucky enough to be part of the human tribe? We are an animal, which happens to have developed the capacity to higher thinking and with that comes great responsibility. We seem more evolved than other animals but which species would not think that of themselves? Other animals have also shown capacity for learning and creating social bonds. If all animals (us included) are capable of suffering why is it wrong to compare suffering across species? Billions of animals are bred, live their lives in cages and get murdered every year for no good reason other than, we can and we want. If this isn't a genocide of sorts, I don't know what is.
Which part of my argument do you have an issue with?
Your definitions. A concentration camp is a device used to achieve a political end, the destruction, complete destruction of a group of humans, for no profit or reason other than politics. A farm, even a factory farm, is an engine of PRODUCTION. It is the result of market forces acting upon those who at one point (And some still do) cared for their animals with love and attention, under divine command to be good stewards of the earth, as the apex sentient beings. All life is not equal. Life in a meat farm is nasty, brutish and cheap. But no more or less so than nature is nasty, brutish and cheap.
Well, I have an issue with YOUR definitions. Do you really not see anything wrong with the reduction of a living sentient being to a unit of production?! A century ago we would be having this discussion about slaves. Life is "nasty, brutish and cheap" in nature because survival is at play. A factory farm is a controlled environment for the enslavement of sentient beings. Two very different things.
If you believe that all( ANIMAL ) life is equal, do you believe that all death is equal? I'm against factory farming. When possible, I get my meat from wild game, or local farmers who love and respect their herds/flocks. I'm also a broke college student, so such ethical high ground is a luxury.
I believe that all suffering is equal and therefore we should do all we can to avoid it or minimize it regardless of species. Life preservation when having the choice. A plant based diet is not more expensive than a meat based one. Veggies are cheaper than meat.
I would hope you'd jump in on this too haha I was having a productive morning at work, but no way would I allow that to go without being said. The same argument comes out of pro-lifers, but at least when it does there, it involves what they think is human. Comparing to animals is just... putrid.
It's so good to know that now we are literally hitler if we eat meat
I like to sit in the double Hitler section at Denny's. "Come eat mit us!"