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The arguments around this seem paradoxical. "Animal have a strong commonality with us, so we shouldn't eat them in the fashion that we don't eat each other. B

The arguments around this seem paradoxical. "Animal have a strong commonality with us, so we shouldn't eat them in the fashion that we don't eat each other. But "Animal has a strong commonality with us, and one species of animal will eat another species of animal. Even species considered herbivores will eat some meat when it comes to them (deer, etc). If we're like animals, what is wrong with behaving like them?" At which point, the argument skews to look at what's different about humans (most often "we can choose good versus evil" etc) That said, for all I know, some different, intelligent, omnivorous animal species has had a group or subculture that also decided to stop eating meat. Of course we actually know little about these things.

steve_adams_86 6y ago
This is part of why I don’t judge others for eating animals. Plus, I do still eat fish. If I’m to judge anyone, it should be me first. I also intended to some degree to be paradoxical, but I’m a terrible communicator so it wasn’t evident outside my mind. Like I said though, ultimately it all seems absurd to me. Digging deep into what is good or right or moral when it comes to these things is incredibly challenging. Ultimately I wonder why I’m trying to figure it out. What a strange exercise. I definitely don’t subscribe to any naturalistic ideas about how people should behave. I do believe we are much like the animals around us - far more than we’d like to believe or acknowledge at times. I don’t believe that means what happens in nature and among other species is inherently good though. I don’t believe what humans do is inherently good either. I just don’t judge people for doing what animals, or humans, overwhelmingly tend to do. Hopefully that makes a bit more sense.
- brutal_chaos_ 6y ago
  If I may, what made you become pescatarian (is that the correct term)?
  - steve_adams_86 6y ago
    I can’t pin point it and I wish I could. One significant contributor was when I began spearing my own fish and became intimately familiar with the moment of choosing if you shoot a fish or not. I realized that in that moment I’m deciding something based on a significant number of factors, but ultimately, I was deciding to take a life. I wondered how different that is from how I indirectly took the lives of fish by providing demand in a market which catches and sells fish, apart from the massive amounts of bycatch in the industry. But really, is my indirect demand different from pulling the trigger? I know those thoughts and experiences, along with experiencing fish in their environment, caused me to begin to wonder a lot more about the consciousness of other animals. Fish are quite aware of me, my eyes, where I’m looking or pointing things. They certainly suffer. It’s a good question though and I wish I understood better what really tipped the scale. Sometimes it feels very irrational, but my ‘gut’ insists it’s the right thing to do. I still question if I should be killing fish.

steve_adams_86 6y ago

This is part of why I don’t judge others for eating animals. Plus, I do still eat fish. If I’m to judge anyone, it should be me first. I also intended to some degree to be paradoxical, but I’m a terrible communicator so it wasn’t evident outside my mind. Like I said though, ultimately it all seems absurd to me. Digging deep into what is good or right or moral when it comes to these things is incredibly challenging. Ultimately I wonder why I’m trying to figure it out. What a strange exercise. I definitely don’t subscribe to any naturalistic ideas about how people should behave. I do believe we are much like the animals around us - far more than we’d like to believe or acknowledge at times. I don’t believe that means what happens in nature and among other species is inherently good though. I don’t believe what humans do is inherently good either. I just don’t judge people for doing what animals, or humans, overwhelmingly tend to do. Hopefully that makes a bit more sense.

brutal_chaos_ 6y ago
If I may, what made you become pescatarian (is that the correct term)?
- steve_adams_86 6y ago
  I can’t pin point it and I wish I could. One significant contributor was when I began spearing my own fish and became intimately familiar with the moment of choosing if you shoot a fish or not. I realized that in that moment I’m deciding something based on a significant number of factors, but ultimately, I was deciding to take a life. I wondered how different that is from how I indirectly took the lives of fish by providing demand in a market which catches and sells fish, apart from the massive amounts of bycatch in the industry. But really, is my indirect demand different from pulling the trigger? I know those thoughts and experiences, along with experiencing fish in their environment, caused me to begin to wonder a lot more about the consciousness of other animals. Fish are quite aware of me, my eyes, where I’m looking or pointing things. They certainly suffer. It’s a good question though and I wish I understood better what really tipped the scale. Sometimes it feels very irrational, but my ‘gut’ insists it’s the right thing to do. I still question if I should be killing fish.