5 ms·

You're not the only one I think that all this time, human beings have been watched by creatures whose perceptions and understanding have been so far in advanc

by okasaki 10y ago

You're not the only one I think that all this time, human beings have been watched by creatures whose perceptions and understanding have been so far in advance of anything we have been able to accept, because of our vanity, that we would be appalled if we were able to know, would be humiliated. We have been living with them as blundering, blind, callous, cruel murderers and torturers, and they have watched and known us. And this is the reason we refuse to acknowledge the intelligence of the creatures that surround us: the shock to our amour propre would be too much, the judgement we would have to make on ourselves too horrible: it is exactly the same process that can make someone go on and on committing a crime, or a cruelty, knowing it: the stopping and having to see what has been done would be too painful, one cannot face it. -- Doris Lessing

y4mi 10y ago
hah, as if the abuse would stop with that acknowledgement. its beyond unlikely that we, as the human race, become vegetarian. as such, we'll never stop abusing other animals beside us. on that note: i'm not a vegetarian either, nor am i planning to become one.
- andai 10y ago
  I'm curious, could you kill an animal and cut it up? Do you realize you pay people to do this every time you buy meat? Are you cool with that?
  - MawNicker 10y ago
    No, I couldn't do it. Too disgusting. Yes, I do realize that's what I'm paying for. It's expensive but then I don't have to do the icky part. I'm cool with it. I watched a video of a guy jabbing a cow with a pitchfork. It was pretty shitty. I think you could withhold any violence until the animal's final moments. That gets into realities of industrial efficiency and not the eating of meat. Things die. Should we cremate them? I realize going vegetarian solves the problem right now. That doesn't mean that eating meat is necessarily a part of the problem. I eat out a lot so I don't get all my meat from one source. But the meat I use at home I buy from a friend of my family. He raises the cows himself and "loves" them. My sister likes to go out there and feed them. It's a bit too mushy for me but I still like to think their happiness makes them taste better.
  - Amezarak 10y ago
    I have, and it's not really a big deal. Humans and many other great apes are opportunistic carnivores. The idea that we should have moral compunctions about biological reality seems absurd to me, and I have yet heard any argument than "suffering is evil; animals experience suffering; killing animals necessitates their suffering; therefore eating animals is evil." I don't deny the second proposition, I deny the first, and my personal feeling is the reason some of us now feel differently has much to do with the enormously sheltered and privileged lives modernity has afforded us.
    - senand 10y ago
      So if suffering isn't ethically inacceptable, then torture of human beings is also OK for you? To me it seems that what you're saying essentially means that you just don't have any morality at all.
      - Amezarak 10y ago
        I take the view that morality is herd instinct in the individual, and that it is more productive to look at it as a sociological phenomenon instead of resurrecting platonic idealism. Whatever the herd deems good is Good, whatever the herd deems evil is Evil. There is no objective morality written on stone tablets that we can consult to determine that torture is Evil or that killing animals is wrong. That's why we have plentiful examples of cultures throughout human history, composed of intelligent, thoughtful people, who saw absolutely nothing wrong with torture. This 'herd instinct', by evolutionary necessity, will tend towards in-group altruism in any social animal, but the details, the bylaws, and everything else will be driven by accidents of history and by fashion. It may be that one day that the great human herd of western civilization will collectively decide that eating meat is evil; I sure hope not, I prefer our current fashions (but then I would, having grown up with them.)
        ZeroFries 10y ago
        Suppose the "subject", the one who experiences all your perceptions, all your qualia, is the same subject who experiences all qualia of every entity (see open-individualism). If this is true, then all suffering is YOU suffering. Would this change your opinion?
  - sanjeetsuhag 10y ago
    > I'm curious, could you kill an animal and cut it up? Done that on several occasions. > Do you realize you pay people to do this every time you buy meat? Yes. > Are you cool with that? Yes. Because, essentially, we are animals.
  - AlexeyBrin 10y ago
    Yes, I done it. It is a question of where you were born and the culture in which you were born. Don't extrapolate your own feelings and cultural idiosyncrasies to everyone. People live in wildly different circumstances even today. It is interesting that personally I find more disgusting the mutilation of animals (castration for example) than actually killing them for food.
  - harshreality 10y ago
    Our primate cousins tend to eat a lot of insects. We (except for those with belief systems like Jainism) have no innate moral compunction about killing insects, yet people in western societies rarely eat them, preferring to eat stuff that we do have moral compunctions about killing. For some reason, the western high-tech solution to this is to focus on developing lab-grown mammal meat (and then no doubt seafood and fowl). Is there any chance this vat-grown meat will be cheaper or more sustainable than raising mealworms and crickets?
  - ntumlin 10y ago
    I'm not an idiot; I know where meat comes from. I just don't care at all. You can have a holier than thou attitude about being a vegetarian than me all you want, but the reality is that I'm not a carnivore out of ignorance. I eat meat because I like it. A hundred thousand cows could die for a single hamburger and I'd still eat it. If you want me to not eat meat, give me something cheaper, tastier, and easier to prepare. Until then, I'll lick clean the blood on my hands.
    - tim333 10y ago
      I know where meat comes from too and eat it but if I had to shoot a cow and cut it up to get beef I'd probably pass and have cheese fries instead. Too much hassle.
      - Dylan16807 10y ago
        Slaughter is a hassle, but so is harvesting berries. And you get a lot of burgers from a single cow; you'd have to do it significantly less than once a year. I'm not sure if that's a very strong argument against a food.
      - mikestew 10y ago
        You spend a weekend butchering and you're set for the year, assuming a large enough freezer. No more trips to the store for meat, just walk to the freezer. The equipment to make the job tolerable is a large initial expense, but it'll probably last you the remainder of your life. In the end, the fries are probably more hassle because you're less likely to have a year's supply of cheese fry ingredients lying around. Source: I haven't always been a vegetarian.
- jsnathan 10y ago
  I believe that the development of synthetic meats that are both cheaper and of a more homogeneously high quality will supplant butchered meat, and eventually enable us to outlaw it. The science is happening as we speak.
  - abecedarius 10y ago
    And meanwhile, you can help by consuming from pastured animals in preference to factory-farmed ones (if you're not vegetarian). This seems to be a trend, though one with a long way to go.
jschwartzi 10y ago
Suppose that we discover tomorrow that animals are not alone in feeling pain. Are plants then deserving of such consideration? What about bacteria? Fungi? Where would we draw the line? Should we quit eating and die of starvation? It seems like there needs to be some acknowledgement that one form of life has to die in order that we may live. What gives us the right to declare that animals are the "higher" form of life simply because they're less alien than plants?

by okasaki 10y ago

y4mi 10y ago

hah, as if the abuse would stop with that acknowledgement. its beyond unlikely that we, as the human race, become vegetarian. as such, we'll never stop abusing other animals beside us. on that note: i'm not a vegetarian either, nor am i planning to become one.

andai 10y ago
I'm curious, could you kill an animal and cut it up? Do you realize you pay people to do this every time you buy meat? Are you cool with that?
- MawNicker 10y ago
  No, I couldn't do it. Too disgusting. Yes, I do realize that's what I'm paying for. It's expensive but then I don't have to do the icky part. I'm cool with it. I watched a video of a guy jabbing a cow with a pitchfork. It was pretty shitty. I think you could withhold any violence until the animal's final moments. That gets into realities of industrial efficiency and not the eating of meat. Things die. Should we cremate them? I realize going vegetarian solves the problem right now. That doesn't mean that eating meat is necessarily a part of the problem. I eat out a lot so I don't get all my meat from one source. But the meat I use at home I buy from a friend of my family. He raises the cows himself and "loves" them. My sister likes to go out there and feed them. It's a bit too mushy for me but I still like to think their happiness makes them taste better.
- Amezarak 10y ago
  I have, and it's not really a big deal. Humans and many other great apes are opportunistic carnivores. The idea that we should have moral compunctions about biological reality seems absurd to me, and I have yet heard any argument than "suffering is evil; animals experience suffering; killing animals necessitates their suffering; therefore eating animals is evil." I don't deny the second proposition, I deny the first, and my personal feeling is the reason some of us now feel differently has much to do with the enormously sheltered and privileged lives modernity has afforded us.
  - senand 10y ago
    So if suffering isn't ethically inacceptable, then torture of human beings is also OK for you? To me it seems that what you're saying essentially means that you just don't have any morality at all.
    - Amezarak 10y ago
      I take the view that morality is herd instinct in the individual, and that it is more productive to look at it as a sociological phenomenon instead of resurrecting platonic idealism. Whatever the herd deems good is Good, whatever the herd deems evil is Evil. There is no objective morality written on stone tablets that we can consult to determine that torture is Evil or that killing animals is wrong. That's why we have plentiful examples of cultures throughout human history, composed of intelligent, thoughtful people, who saw absolutely nothing wrong with torture. This 'herd instinct', by evolutionary necessity, will tend towards in-group altruism in any social animal, but the details, the bylaws, and everything else will be driven by accidents of history and by fashion. It may be that one day that the great human herd of western civilization will collectively decide that eating meat is evil; I sure hope not, I prefer our current fashions (but then I would, having grown up with them.)
      - ZeroFries 10y ago
        Suppose the "subject", the one who experiences all your perceptions, all your qualia, is the same subject who experiences all qualia of every entity (see open-individualism). If this is true, then all suffering is YOU suffering. Would this change your opinion?
- sanjeetsuhag 10y ago
  > I'm curious, could you kill an animal and cut it up? Done that on several occasions. > Do you realize you pay people to do this every time you buy meat? Yes. > Are you cool with that? Yes. Because, essentially, we are animals.
- AlexeyBrin 10y ago
  Yes, I done it. It is a question of where you were born and the culture in which you were born. Don't extrapolate your own feelings and cultural idiosyncrasies to everyone. People live in wildly different circumstances even today. It is interesting that personally I find more disgusting the mutilation of animals (castration for example) than actually killing them for food.
- harshreality 10y ago
  Our primate cousins tend to eat a lot of insects. We (except for those with belief systems like Jainism) have no innate moral compunction about killing insects, yet people in western societies rarely eat them, preferring to eat stuff that we do have moral compunctions about killing. For some reason, the western high-tech solution to this is to focus on developing lab-grown mammal meat (and then no doubt seafood and fowl). Is there any chance this vat-grown meat will be cheaper or more sustainable than raising mealworms and crickets?
- ntumlin 10y ago
  I'm not an idiot; I know where meat comes from. I just don't care at all. You can have a holier than thou attitude about being a vegetarian than me all you want, but the reality is that I'm not a carnivore out of ignorance. I eat meat because I like it. A hundred thousand cows could die for a single hamburger and I'd still eat it. If you want me to not eat meat, give me something cheaper, tastier, and easier to prepare. Until then, I'll lick clean the blood on my hands.
  - tim333 10y ago
    I know where meat comes from too and eat it but if I had to shoot a cow and cut it up to get beef I'd probably pass and have cheese fries instead. Too much hassle.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      Slaughter is a hassle, but so is harvesting berries. And you get a lot of burgers from a single cow; you'd have to do it significantly less than once a year. I'm not sure if that's a very strong argument against a food.
    - mikestew 10y ago
      You spend a weekend butchering and you're set for the year, assuming a large enough freezer. No more trips to the store for meat, just walk to the freezer. The equipment to make the job tolerable is a large initial expense, but it'll probably last you the remainder of your life. In the end, the fries are probably more hassle because you're less likely to have a year's supply of cheese fry ingredients lying around. Source: I haven't always been a vegetarian.
jsnathan 10y ago
I believe that the development of synthetic meats that are both cheaper and of a more homogeneously high quality will supplant butchered meat, and eventually enable us to outlaw it. The science is happening as we speak.
- abecedarius 10y ago
  And meanwhile, you can help by consuming from pastured animals in preference to factory-farmed ones (if you're not vegetarian). This seems to be a trend, though one with a long way to go.

jschwartzi 10y ago

Suppose that we discover tomorrow that animals are not alone in feeling pain. Are plants then deserving of such consideration? What about bacteria? Fungi? Where would we draw the line? Should we quit eating and die of starvation? It seems like there needs to be some acknowledgement that one form of life has to die in order that we may live. What gives us the right to declare that animals are the "higher" form of life simply because they're less alien than plants?