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Human beings may pretend there's a difference out of moral convenience, but in fact there isn't any difference at all. All there is is the lie that comforts con

Human beings may pretend there's a difference out of moral convenience, but in fact there isn't any difference at all. All there is is the lie that comforts conscience. For what it is worth, I think that culling millions of these animals is the smart move. I also believe that it is a small part of a larger evil; we as a species are committing industrialized murder on the scale of hundreds of billions a year.

etaioinshrdlu 7y ago
Is murder on a smaller scale okay? Some animals eat other animals. Maybe the natural world has no moral values and it's actually humans who have morals...
- CriticalCathed 7y ago
  I think that what applies to a cougar or a bear or a chimpanzee or some other predator animal applies to humans. It is the natural course of things. It's why I still eat animal meat. But it is one thing to kill an animal to eat it, or to kill another person to eat what he has, in the course of survival. It is another thing entirely to construct an elaborate global mechanized system in which we impersonally breed, grow, and wantonly murder animals on the scale of hundreds of billions. The entire process from fertilization to slaughter to grocery sterilized and clean, the majority of the citizens in industrialized nations never have to feel the moral weight of the acts done in their name. They never have to consider the perspectives of their quarry, of the lives they end to further their own. All the gifts that we have cognitively above the rest of the animals come with, I think, the burden of knowledge. We have the ability to see before and after our actions, to see what effect we have on every other living and unliving thing. When I think about what made the holocaust evil -- it wasn't the killing. We make war, and justify it, endlessly. So surely it isn't actually the killing that bothers us deep in our consciences. What made it different was the industrial scale, and perhaps equally horrific, the way the act was done in the name of the people without their true knowledge or consent. They never even had the chance to justify it; because through the technology we developed the citizenry didn't have to feel a single effect of the acts taken in their name. They never had to be the ones to pull the trigger. They only had to sit unseeing and unfeeling and unthinking, numb and dumb, while mass murder happened only miles from their homes. So yes. Clearly murder is okay. If only we sit and consider the acts that sustain us and then judge whether that suffering is equivalent to the value we extract from it. I think if everyone truly understood what was happening they would not tolerate it so easily.
  - etaioinshrdlu 7y ago
    This is a very reasonable point of view to me.

etaioinshrdlu 7y ago

Is murder on a smaller scale okay? Some animals eat other animals. Maybe the natural world has no moral values and it's actually humans who have morals...

CriticalCathed 7y ago
I think that what applies to a cougar or a bear or a chimpanzee or some other predator animal applies to humans. It is the natural course of things. It's why I still eat animal meat. But it is one thing to kill an animal to eat it, or to kill another person to eat what he has, in the course of survival. It is another thing entirely to construct an elaborate global mechanized system in which we impersonally breed, grow, and wantonly murder animals on the scale of hundreds of billions. The entire process from fertilization to slaughter to grocery sterilized and clean, the majority of the citizens in industrialized nations never have to feel the moral weight of the acts done in their name. They never have to consider the perspectives of their quarry, of the lives they end to further their own. All the gifts that we have cognitively above the rest of the animals come with, I think, the burden of knowledge. We have the ability to see before and after our actions, to see what effect we have on every other living and unliving thing. When I think about what made the holocaust evil -- it wasn't the killing. We make war, and justify it, endlessly. So surely it isn't actually the killing that bothers us deep in our consciences. What made it different was the industrial scale, and perhaps equally horrific, the way the act was done in the name of the people without their true knowledge or consent. They never even had the chance to justify it; because through the technology we developed the citizenry didn't have to feel a single effect of the acts taken in their name. They never had to be the ones to pull the trigger. They only had to sit unseeing and unfeeling and unthinking, numb and dumb, while mass murder happened only miles from their homes. So yes. Clearly murder is okay. If only we sit and consider the acts that sustain us and then judge whether that suffering is equivalent to the value we extract from it. I think if everyone truly understood what was happening they would not tolerate it so easily.
- etaioinshrdlu 7y ago
  This is a very reasonable point of view to me.