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There’s a bunch of good reasons you should reduce or eliminate meat from your diet, including environmental effects but also including your health and mistreati

There’s a bunch of good reasons you should reduce or eliminate meat from your diet, including environmental effects but also including your health and mistreating and killing intelligent creatures. If your diet requires people to do things to thinking, feeling animals that would be criminal to do to a dog, maybe having some bacon on your breakfast plate really isn’t that important after all.

lovemymeat 8y ago
Millennials are so freaking obnoxious. You should leave your comfortable 1st world environment and go tell this to someone less privileged to see the reaction you get. Hint: eating domesticated meat has been done for thousands of years and your “think of the pigs!” argument is both laughable and insulting.
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
I don't eat bacon. I also don't share your view on the ethics of eating other intelligent beings (from different species). Many other animals eat other animals, and for this they have to kill them and cause them pain. The pain comes from the fact that animals do not easily die, and our death is almost always painful and horrifying. But- why shoud humans be any different than other animals, when it comes to the ethics of killing other animals and causing them pain in order to feed on their meat? Other animals don't have any compunctions about doing the same to humans. Why are humans so special that it is immoral for us to eat meat?
- cageface 8y ago
  We are special in that we have evolved to be utterly dominant, which gives us privileges and responsibilities other animals don’t share. Also, other animals kill out of necessity. We don’t need to kill to survive at all so why are we justified to do so?
  - YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
    I don't see what dominance has to do with privileges and responsibilities. Besides, humans "dominate" only in a very narrow sense. Most of the biomass on the planet is not human. There are many species of insects and microorganisms that are much more "dominant" than we are. Other animals don't necessarily kill out of necessity. For example, many animals perform surplus killing [1] - I personally know of two dogs who, together, entered a coop and killed about 40 chiken without eating any. In the same farm, dogs have often killed chickens and goats, which they just eviscerate without eating them. Then of course there's the killing of young animals by older males- like male cats sometimes kill kittens, etc. Besides, why is "need" to kill the only justification to kill? For example, if it's very difficult to survive without killing an animal, say because you're putting your health and that of your children at risk with a diet poor in animal protein- then why are you not justified to do it? ______________ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_killing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_killing
    - cageface 8y ago
      First of all it’s not at all difficult to get plenty of protein from plant sources. You are most likely putting your children at much greater risk by feeding them factory farmed meat than not feeding them meat at all. I guess for me it just comes from a desire to respect and value all life. It’s in our power to create a world full of unnecessary death and cruelty or without it. Why would we choose the former? I found I became a much kinder and more empathic person when I stopped eating animals. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
        >> I guess for me it just comes from a desire to respect and value all life. All life? I think you mean all animal life.
        cageface 8y ago
        No all life. When we treat animal life as worthless we also come to value human life less. It’s a connection that’s hard to see while you’re still eating meat IMO. At least in more “primitive” societies they would often acknowledge that the animal had given its life and thank it and treat the act of eating an animal with some solemnity. We instead do our best to forget that what we are eating was ever alive.
dang 8y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19798753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19798753 and marked it off-topic.

lovemymeat 8y ago

Millennials are so freaking obnoxious. You should leave your comfortable 1st world environment and go tell this to someone less privileged to see the reaction you get. Hint: eating domesticated meat has been done for thousands of years and your “think of the pigs!” argument is both laughable and insulting.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

I don't eat bacon. I also don't share your view on the ethics of eating other intelligent beings (from different species). Many other animals eat other animals, and for this they have to kill them and cause them pain. The pain comes from the fact that animals do not easily die, and our death is almost always painful and horrifying. But- why shoud humans be any different than other animals, when it comes to the ethics of killing other animals and causing them pain in order to feed on their meat? Other animals don't have any compunctions about doing the same to humans. Why are humans so special that it is immoral for us to eat meat?

cageface 8y ago
We are special in that we have evolved to be utterly dominant, which gives us privileges and responsibilities other animals don’t share. Also, other animals kill out of necessity. We don’t need to kill to survive at all so why are we justified to do so?
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
  I don't see what dominance has to do with privileges and responsibilities. Besides, humans "dominate" only in a very narrow sense. Most of the biomass on the planet is not human. There are many species of insects and microorganisms that are much more "dominant" than we are. Other animals don't necessarily kill out of necessity. For example, many animals perform surplus killing [1] - I personally know of two dogs who, together, entered a coop and killed about 40 chiken without eating any. In the same farm, dogs have often killed chickens and goats, which they just eviscerate without eating them. Then of course there's the killing of young animals by older males- like male cats sometimes kill kittens, etc. Besides, why is "need" to kill the only justification to kill? For example, if it's very difficult to survive without killing an animal, say because you're putting your health and that of your children at risk with a diet poor in animal protein- then why are you not justified to do it? ______________ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_killing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_killing
  - cageface 8y ago
    First of all it’s not at all difficult to get plenty of protein from plant sources. You are most likely putting your children at much greater risk by feeding them factory farmed meat than not feeding them meat at all. I guess for me it just comes from a desire to respect and value all life. It’s in our power to create a world full of unnecessary death and cruelty or without it. Why would we choose the former? I found I became a much kinder and more empathic person when I stopped eating animals. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
      >> I guess for me it just comes from a desire to respect and value all life. All life? I think you mean all animal life.
      - cageface 8y ago
        No all life. When we treat animal life as worthless we also come to value human life less. It’s a connection that’s hard to see while you’re still eating meat IMO. At least in more “primitive” societies they would often acknowledge that the animal had given its life and thank it and treat the act of eating an animal with some solemnity. We instead do our best to forget that what we are eating was ever alive.

dang 8y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19798753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19798753 and marked it off-topic.