8 ms·

Reading this is making me want to go meatless, so thank you for not softening any details. I don't think I could handle directly killing an animal and preparin

by sizzle 8y ago

Reading this is making me want to go meatless, so thank you for not softening any details. I don't think I could handle directly killing an animal and preparing the meat unless I was in survival mode. Going to the local grocery store and picking up some neatly wrapped cuts of meat truly removes me from the suffering aspect of animals, let alone the atrocities taking place behind closed doors in mass production slaughterhouses. How does everyone deal with the cognitive dissonance of how your meat is prepared?

DaiPlusPlus 8y ago
> How does everyone deal with the cognitive dissonance of how your meat is prepared? We’re born with incisors. Everything else is an implementation detail.
subjectsigma 8y ago
There is no inherent cognitive dissonance from eating meat, so if you feel that then it's on you and your morals. I'm not sure anyone here can decide how to fix that for you.
- barbs 8y ago
  So...denial then?
  - subjectsigma 8y ago
    Nope. I know this might come as a shock, but some people think differently than you! I have killed animals for my own meat before and didn't feel a thing, except a little grossed out that there was blood on my hands. Meat is not murder. You are free to feel differently but that doesn't make me "in denial".
    - barbs 8y ago
      Regardless of whether you feel something when you slaughter animals, you are aware that animals feel pain and suffer, no? The post was talking about the current mass-production system of meat prpduction, with slaughterhouses and terrible conditions for the animals. It's easy to forget that when you see the final product.
      - subjectsigma 8y ago
        I do not think we have a moral obligation to eliminate the suffering of animals. Reduction of it is always preferable but sometimes not feasible. Take from that what you will.
Mikeb85 8y ago
Most people know how meat is prepared. Keep in mind that the worst of what we do still isn't as bad as a typical death in the wild, where animals are either eaten alive by a predator or die from starvation.
scythe 8y ago
A little over a year ago we heard some squeaking and determined that there was a mouse in the apartment. Maintenance set out glue traps, which eventually yielded a terrified wriggling little grey intruder stuck to a piece of plastic. The recommendation was to just throw the mouse in the garbage, but I know starvation is a terrible way to die, so I took it out back and killed it with a knife. It was not a fun process. I drank a lot of whisky to get up the nerve. It took a few stabs before it stopped moving. But honestly I didn't feel that bad about it afterwards. It's a mouse. When we clear a forest, drain a lake, pollute a river, or build a road, animals die worse deaths, but we don't see it happening. When we reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone a bunch of herbivores were hunted down and eaten by beasts they had never known to exist. I did the best I could to give it the least painless death I could, which is how all livestock are harvested. Other problems weigh much heavier on my mind.
- kevinmchugh 8y ago
  a baseball bat or some other club is probably a faster, cleaner, safer tool should there ever be a next time
munificent 8y ago
I think it's important to keep in mind that attitudes around death and killing vary widely. In liberal society today many equate killing an animal to violent murder. By implication, doing so for practical reasons (like food) to thus be even worse: a kind of craven, mercenary murder-for-hire which is deeply immoral. That mindset does not leave much room to interpret killing as anything but hateful and evil. The animal does not want to die any more than you or I would, and thus making it die is deeply wrong. But for much of human history, killing animals was considered a fundamentally different act from killing a human. (Heck, killing humans was also considered much more acceptable in certain situations.) If you spend time around hunters or farmers, they have much more complex relationship with animals than most urban dwellers do. The latter tend to have a simplified view that animals are sort like dumb, well-meaning people in animal costumes. The former respect that we have many things in common with animals, but also many differences. Eacn animal has a complex role in our society that has aspects of being material property, a natural resource, and a living thinking being. In an urban environment, the only killing you are likely to experience is violent acts in movies and violent attacks between humans. Out in nature, you experience a greater range of ways that animals physically interact. And, if you spend time with farmers, you understand what it means to both care for and kill the same animal, to give it both a good life and a good death. It is obviously not morally wrong for a wolf to eat a chicken. While we humans may "know better" and choose to not do that, we are also quite closely related to wolves. The chicken has a right to live a complete chicken life, and we also have some right to live a complete life as an omnivorous primate with the sharp teeth and stereoscopic vision of a predator. There is no cognitive dissonance in killing an animal for food as long as you are willing to accept that animals are different from humans in some important ways.
- jahabrewer 8y ago
  > In liberal society today many equate killing an animal to violent murder. I kinda feel like it's seen as the opposite--a very controlled thing that has been industrialized to a huge scale. > If you spend time around hunters or farmers, they have much more complex relationship with animals than most urban dwellers do. I don't think it's these hunters and farmers who are running CAFOs.
- 8y ago
docker_up 8y ago
If you spend some time on /r/natureismetal you will realize that concepts like "fairness" or "caring" simply doesn't exist outside of human brains. Animals do whatever it takes to survive, and we're no better or worse than them. Eating another animal is completely natural and how the planet works, outside of humanity. Most animals die cruelly and painfully, but that's just a fact of life.
- ridgeguy 8y ago
  > concepts like "fairness" or "caring" simply doesn't exist outside of human brains. We can test for a sense of fairness in animals. One test is the "inequity aversion task". Non-humans showing a sense of fairness on this test include dogs [1] and nonhuman primates, ravens and crows [2]. [1] https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)30627-9 https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)... [2] http://theconversation.com/animals-know-when-they-are-being-treated-unfairly-and-they-dont-like-it-73152 http://theconversation.com/animals-know-when-they-are-being-...
  - sizzle 8y ago
    This is a great point thanks for sharing the links.
- DanBC 8y ago
  > you will realize that concepts like "fairness" or "caring" simply doesn't exist outside of human brains. Here's the well known capuchin fairness experiment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo
  - docker_up 8y ago
    I can post a video of an impala giving birth, and then a panther coming moments later and eating the newborn. From a human perspective, this is shocking and incredibly unfair, but the panther doesn't care, it just got its next meal. This is what I mean by "fairness".
tathougies 8y ago
> How does everyone deal with the cognitive dissonance of how your meat is prepared? I find no dissonance in it. I find no atrocity in killing an animal for food. It sounds rather tasty, TBH.
mikekchar 8y ago
I was vegan for about 10 years, and it's kind of a long story how I became vegan, but I'll say that oddly I became much more accepting of this as a process of being vegan. I originally was ovo-lacto vegetarian for cost reasons and also because I just really like vegetables. Having become a ovo-lacto vegetarian (for something like 10 years), I thought why not go the next step and become vegan. Over time I realised that while I really like animal products and that there is no real acceptable substitute, I also really like plant based food. Not eating something you like because you have filled up your plate with something you also like is actually not a bad way to live. I never felt deprived, and always enjoyed my food. But the odd thing was that during the time I was vegan I thought a lot more about my food. I started thinking, what's the difference between eating a cow and eating a horse (actually, I'll tell you: the horse tastes a lot better if you can believe it!) What's the difference between eating lamb and eating a puppy? I think it's that kind of place where most people try to avoid thinking about it, or swear off eating things. For me, I became more accepting of eating "strange" animals. I became more accepting of the reality of the death of an animal in order to feed yourself. I think before I was vegan, I just saw packages of food in the supermarket and felt vaguely guilty that there might be some suffering involved. I got married late in life and my wife is not vegetarian at all, so now we eat meat and fish (but not puppies, I'm afraid to say). It doesn't bother me as I've come to terms with the reality of it. I guess in some people's mind I'm all the more a monster for it -- I know what I'm doing. We don't eat much meat or fish -- probably only about 50 grams (2 oz) a day and for a really special meal we might eat up to 150 grams (6 oz) each, but never more than that. Anyway, it's a kind of rambling post, but if this stuff is bothering you, I actually recommend the route I took. I didn't do it intentionally, but for me it was a pleasant way to sort out my own feelings over a period of decades :-). I think the key for me was getting to the point where I could cook really delicious vegetarian and vegan food so that from there it really was an equal choice. That takes a fair amount of practice and exploration of different ethnic diets (You can't have a satisfying meal by taking a typical western diet and simply omitting meat, IMHO). It will time and effort to really dial in a way of eating that appeals to you. After that, though, it just becomes a matter of choice.
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  > I think the key for me was getting to the point where I could cook really delicious vegetarian and vegan food so that from there it really was an equal choice This is exactly the problem that I think western society has with its meat eating habits. People feel obligated to eat meat, like a meal isn't complete without it. Try feeding someone a vegetarian dish for dinner, and far too many people will complain that it doesn't contain meat. Even if they admit that it's tasty, they'll complain that it's vegetarian.
robaato 8y ago
I grew up on the Moray coast in Scotland, with a shotgun and shooting pigeons, rabbits etc from the age of 9. I used to sell them to my mother - the key was she bought them "dressed for the table" as in plucked/skinned/gutted. At the time the going rate was 1 pigeon = 2.5 cartridges. On a good day I made a profit, but plenty of not so good days! Anyway, we ate what I killed. And it seems a good understanding to have. What one then does with said understanding becomes a personal issue... That said, times have changed, I live in London and my teenage sons don't have easy way to experience this should they be interested (plus gun laws totally different due to sundry incidents)...
MisterOctober 8y ago
I was an avid fisherman and hunter in my youth; it's a tradition in my region[s] and in my family. I still support fishing and hunting for the already-stated reasons that it puts one in much more intimate contact with nature [i.e., the natural order of predation / food chain / realities of acquiring food]. When I killed an animal that I had caught, I did feel very sorry and regretful, as most people do, and I think that's part of what makes hunting and fishing beneficial for people. As Daniel Beard wrote over a hundred years ago in "The American Boys' Handy Book" : "[the] author must confess that as a man or boy he never killed any animal without a feeling of remorse for what he had done, and it was only after long thought and study upon the subject that he decided to put anything about hunting and trapping in this book. But after mature deliberation the conclusion was reached that other boys must have the same sensations as himself, when a bloody little trophy is stowed away in their game-bag, and that these feelings will prevent the average lad from killing for the sake of killing; for there is no fun in wanton destruction of life for a properly-educated boy..." As I got older, I involuntarily developed a lot more empathy for nonhuman animals and subsequently went meatless / vegan. I'd still sooner eat an animal caught by hunting / fishing than one raised in captivity [let alone, as you say, in a 'factory-farming' hellscape] -- by a country mile p.s. gotta put my favorite joke here as it's apropos : Q: How can you tell if somebody's vegan? A: They'll fucking tell you.
archagon 8y ago
Unless you’re trying to change someone’s mind, why strive for internal consistency at all? I like animals; I hate killing; I like meat. Over time, I think this will push me in the vegetarian/vegan direction, but the contradiction does not bother me in and of itself.
hyperbovine 8y ago
I have flip flopped back and forth between vegetarianism and not several times now, always motivated by precisely these sorts of moral quandaries. I would just like to make what seems like a shockingly overlooked point whenever this debate comes up: there is a middle ground. If the thought of going meatless appeals to your heart and mind but not your tastebuds, why not try eating simply less meat. Every bit helps. This is my current strategy and I find works well — mostly plants, meat sometimes added for flavor, fish > fowl > mammal. It has health benefits and you feel like less of a jerk every time you see an article about CAFOs.
TaylorAlexander 8y ago
I went vegan.
sytelus 8y ago
It is very likely that sometime during next 100 years, people in that generation would look down on us as barbaric as Gengiz Khan cutting off people from his horse while laughing as if that was perfectly normal thing to do. I have never understood people eating meat for taste, let alone as leisure activity. If you had grown up never eating meat and then during your youth if you tasted it, the meat would be revolting in texture and least flavorful thing you would have tasted. So I tend to assume lot of people get used to it is because of their exposure to it since childhood. If you ever looked at chicken farm or industrial beef facilities, you would never want to eat meat again. The key to leaving meat behind would be artificial food that is wildly tasty and nutritious than anything we have from plants or animals.
magic_beans 8y ago
I can't deal with it. I've been a vegetarian since I was 12.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

by sizzle 8y ago

DaiPlusPlus 8y ago

> How does everyone deal with the cognitive dissonance of how your meat is prepared? We’re born with incisors. Everything else is an implementation detail.

subjectsigma 8y ago

There is no inherent cognitive dissonance from eating meat, so if you feel that then it's on you and your morals. I'm not sure anyone here can decide how to fix that for you.

barbs 8y ago
So...denial then?
- subjectsigma 8y ago
  Nope. I know this might come as a shock, but some people think differently than you! I have killed animals for my own meat before and didn't feel a thing, except a little grossed out that there was blood on my hands. Meat is not murder. You are free to feel differently but that doesn't make me "in denial".
  - barbs 8y ago
    Regardless of whether you feel something when you slaughter animals, you are aware that animals feel pain and suffer, no? The post was talking about the current mass-production system of meat prpduction, with slaughterhouses and terrible conditions for the animals. It's easy to forget that when you see the final product.
    - subjectsigma 8y ago
      I do not think we have a moral obligation to eliminate the suffering of animals. Reduction of it is always preferable but sometimes not feasible. Take from that what you will.

Mikeb85 8y ago

Most people know how meat is prepared. Keep in mind that the worst of what we do still isn't as bad as a typical death in the wild, where animals are either eaten alive by a predator or die from starvation.

scythe 8y ago

A little over a year ago we heard some squeaking and determined that there was a mouse in the apartment. Maintenance set out glue traps, which eventually yielded a terrified wriggling little grey intruder stuck to a piece of plastic. The recommendation was to just throw the mouse in the garbage, but I know starvation is a terrible way to die, so I took it out back and killed it with a knife. It was not a fun process. I drank a lot of whisky to get up the nerve. It took a few stabs before it stopped moving. But honestly I didn't feel that bad about it afterwards. It's a mouse. When we clear a forest, drain a lake, pollute a river, or build a road, animals die worse deaths, but we don't see it happening. When we reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone a bunch of herbivores were hunted down and eaten by beasts they had never known to exist. I did the best I could to give it the least painless death I could, which is how all livestock are harvested. Other problems weigh much heavier on my mind.

kevinmchugh 8y ago
a baseball bat or some other club is probably a faster, cleaner, safer tool should there ever be a next time

munificent 8y ago

I think it's important to keep in mind that attitudes around death and killing vary widely. In liberal society today many equate killing an animal to violent murder. By implication, doing so for practical reasons (like food) to thus be even worse: a kind of craven, mercenary murder-for-hire which is deeply immoral. That mindset does not leave much room to interpret killing as anything but hateful and evil. The animal does not want to die any more than you or I would, and thus making it die is deeply wrong. But for much of human history, killing animals was considered a fundamentally different act from killing a human. (Heck, killing humans was also considered much more acceptable in certain situations.) If you spend time around hunters or farmers, they have much more complex relationship with animals than most urban dwellers do. The latter tend to have a simplified view that animals are sort like dumb, well-meaning people in animal costumes. The former respect that we have many things in common with animals, but also many differences. Eacn animal has a complex role in our society that has aspects of being material property, a natural resource, and a living thinking being. In an urban environment, the only killing you are likely to experience is violent acts in movies and violent attacks between humans. Out in nature, you experience a greater range of ways that animals physically interact. And, if you spend time with farmers, you understand what it means to both care for and kill the same animal, to give it both a good life and a good death. It is obviously not morally wrong for a wolf to eat a chicken. While we humans may "know better" and choose to not do that, we are also quite closely related to wolves. The chicken has a right to live a complete chicken life, and we also have some right to live a complete life as an omnivorous primate with the sharp teeth and stereoscopic vision of a predator. There is no cognitive dissonance in killing an animal for food as long as you are willing to accept that animals are different from humans in some important ways.

jahabrewer 8y ago
> In liberal society today many equate killing an animal to violent murder. I kinda feel like it's seen as the opposite--a very controlled thing that has been industrialized to a huge scale. > If you spend time around hunters or farmers, they have much more complex relationship with animals than most urban dwellers do. I don't think it's these hunters and farmers who are running CAFOs.
8y ago

docker_up 8y ago

If you spend some time on /r/natureismetal you will realize that concepts like "fairness" or "caring" simply doesn't exist outside of human brains. Animals do whatever it takes to survive, and we're no better or worse than them. Eating another animal is completely natural and how the planet works, outside of humanity. Most animals die cruelly and painfully, but that's just a fact of life.

ridgeguy 8y ago
> concepts like "fairness" or "caring" simply doesn't exist outside of human brains. We can test for a sense of fairness in animals. One test is the "inequity aversion task". Non-humans showing a sense of fairness on this test include dogs [1] and nonhuman primates, ravens and crows [2]. [1] https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)30627-9 https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)... [2] http://theconversation.com/animals-know-when-they-are-being-treated-unfairly-and-they-dont-like-it-73152 http://theconversation.com/animals-know-when-they-are-being-...
- sizzle 8y ago
  This is a great point thanks for sharing the links.
DanBC 8y ago
> you will realize that concepts like "fairness" or "caring" simply doesn't exist outside of human brains. Here's the well known capuchin fairness experiment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo
- docker_up 8y ago
  I can post a video of an impala giving birth, and then a panther coming moments later and eating the newborn. From a human perspective, this is shocking and incredibly unfair, but the panther doesn't care, it just got its next meal. This is what I mean by "fairness".

tathougies 8y ago

> How does everyone deal with the cognitive dissonance of how your meat is prepared? I find no dissonance in it. I find no atrocity in killing an animal for food. It sounds rather tasty, TBH.

mikekchar 8y ago

I was vegan for about 10 years, and it's kind of a long story how I became vegan, but I'll say that oddly I became much more accepting of this as a process of being vegan. I originally was ovo-lacto vegetarian for cost reasons and also because I just really like vegetables. Having become a ovo-lacto vegetarian (for something like 10 years), I thought why not go the next step and become vegan. Over time I realised that while I really like animal products and that there is no real acceptable substitute, I also really like plant based food. Not eating something you like because you have filled up your plate with something you also like is actually not a bad way to live. I never felt deprived, and always enjoyed my food. But the odd thing was that during the time I was vegan I thought a lot more about my food. I started thinking, what's the difference between eating a cow and eating a horse (actually, I'll tell you: the horse tastes a lot better if you can believe it!) What's the difference between eating lamb and eating a puppy? I think it's that kind of place where most people try to avoid thinking about it, or swear off eating things. For me, I became more accepting of eating "strange" animals. I became more accepting of the reality of the death of an animal in order to feed yourself. I think before I was vegan, I just saw packages of food in the supermarket and felt vaguely guilty that there might be some suffering involved. I got married late in life and my wife is not vegetarian at all, so now we eat meat and fish (but not puppies, I'm afraid to say). It doesn't bother me as I've come to terms with the reality of it. I guess in some people's mind I'm all the more a monster for it -- I know what I'm doing. We don't eat much meat or fish -- probably only about 50 grams (2 oz) a day and for a really special meal we might eat up to 150 grams (6 oz) each, but never more than that. Anyway, it's a kind of rambling post, but if this stuff is bothering you, I actually recommend the route I took. I didn't do it intentionally, but for me it was a pleasant way to sort out my own feelings over a period of decades :-). I think the key for me was getting to the point where I could cook really delicious vegetarian and vegan food so that from there it really was an equal choice. That takes a fair amount of practice and exploration of different ethnic diets (You can't have a satisfying meal by taking a typical western diet and simply omitting meat, IMHO). It will time and effort to really dial in a way of eating that appeals to you. After that, though, it just becomes a matter of choice.

toomanybeersies 8y ago
> I think the key for me was getting to the point where I could cook really delicious vegetarian and vegan food so that from there it really was an equal choice This is exactly the problem that I think western society has with its meat eating habits. People feel obligated to eat meat, like a meal isn't complete without it. Try feeding someone a vegetarian dish for dinner, and far too many people will complain that it doesn't contain meat. Even if they admit that it's tasty, they'll complain that it's vegetarian.

robaato 8y ago

I grew up on the Moray coast in Scotland, with a shotgun and shooting pigeons, rabbits etc from the age of 9. I used to sell them to my mother - the key was she bought them "dressed for the table" as in plucked/skinned/gutted. At the time the going rate was 1 pigeon = 2.5 cartridges. On a good day I made a profit, but plenty of not so good days! Anyway, we ate what I killed. And it seems a good understanding to have. What one then does with said understanding becomes a personal issue... That said, times have changed, I live in London and my teenage sons don't have easy way to experience this should they be interested (plus gun laws totally different due to sundry incidents)...

MisterOctober 8y ago

I was an avid fisherman and hunter in my youth; it's a tradition in my region[s] and in my family. I still support fishing and hunting for the already-stated reasons that it puts one in much more intimate contact with nature [i.e., the natural order of predation / food chain / realities of acquiring food]. When I killed an animal that I had caught, I did feel very sorry and regretful, as most people do, and I think that's part of what makes hunting and fishing beneficial for people. As Daniel Beard wrote over a hundred years ago in "The American Boys' Handy Book" : "[the] author must confess that as a man or boy he never killed any animal without a feeling of remorse for what he had done, and it was only after long thought and study upon the subject that he decided to put anything about hunting and trapping in this book. But after mature deliberation the conclusion was reached that other boys must have the same sensations as himself, when a bloody little trophy is stowed away in their game-bag, and that these feelings will prevent the average lad from killing for the sake of killing; for there is no fun in wanton destruction of life for a properly-educated boy..." As I got older, I involuntarily developed a lot more empathy for nonhuman animals and subsequently went meatless / vegan. I'd still sooner eat an animal caught by hunting / fishing than one raised in captivity [let alone, as you say, in a 'factory-farming' hellscape] -- by a country mile p.s. gotta put my favorite joke here as it's apropos : Q: How can you tell if somebody's vegan? A: They'll fucking tell you.

archagon 8y ago

Unless you’re trying to change someone’s mind, why strive for internal consistency at all? I like animals; I hate killing; I like meat. Over time, I think this will push me in the vegetarian/vegan direction, but the contradiction does not bother me in and of itself.

hyperbovine 8y ago

I have flip flopped back and forth between vegetarianism and not several times now, always motivated by precisely these sorts of moral quandaries. I would just like to make what seems like a shockingly overlooked point whenever this debate comes up: there is a middle ground. If the thought of going meatless appeals to your heart and mind but not your tastebuds, why not try eating simply less meat. Every bit helps. This is my current strategy and I find works well — mostly plants, meat sometimes added for flavor, fish > fowl > mammal. It has health benefits and you feel like less of a jerk every time you see an article about CAFOs.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago

I went vegan.

sytelus 8y ago

It is very likely that sometime during next 100 years, people in that generation would look down on us as barbaric as Gengiz Khan cutting off people from his horse while laughing as if that was perfectly normal thing to do. I have never understood people eating meat for taste, let alone as leisure activity. If you had grown up never eating meat and then during your youth if you tasted it, the meat would be revolting in texture and least flavorful thing you would have tasted. So I tend to assume lot of people get used to it is because of their exposure to it since childhood. If you ever looked at chicken farm or industrial beef facilities, you would never want to eat meat again. The key to leaving meat behind would be artificial food that is wildly tasty and nutritious than anything we have from plants or animals.

magic_beans 8y ago

I can't deal with it. I've been a vegetarian since I was 12.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]