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I went on a philosophy bent for some reason years ago and read a bunch of popular philosophy reads to get a sense of what that space is. I still read a lot of p
by steve_adams_86 5y ago
I went on a philosophy bent for some reason years ago and read a bunch of popular philosophy reads to get a sense of what that space is. I still read a lot of philosophy but much less obsessively.
One of the things it did to me was totally transform my perception of animals, humans as animals, our relationships, and cause to me to realize I have no way to verify that animals don’t experience life in a way that’s as meaningful or as sentient as mine. I can’t even properly define those things. I do know that I share a LOT with mammals especially and they appear to possess a lot of the faculties required to feel good, suffer, have temporal awareness, relationships with other animals, etc. That’s not what was taught to me as a child.
I like to go spear fishing and that’s a very changed experience. I learned how to originally so I could be more selective about food and where I harvest it, reduce bycatch, etc. So I cared before to some degree. Now shooting a fish involves this internal struggle of deciding if it’s necessary, if it makes sense, what it means about me, what the experience will be like for the fish. It feels a lot more like killing someone rather than something. I guess that sounds silly.
It’s a rabbit hole. You can go down so far and maybe not turn up much that’s very useful. I think animals aren’t very discernible from human animals in the big picture though. I’m basically a murderer, but the legally sanctioned kind. I bought the license.
I strongly prefer to eat the food I murdered myself now. I occasionally eat farmed meat, but it’s rare and comes from local farms with unscalable high standards. I’m fortunate that I can do that. I mostly do it to appease my family - they feel weird when I skip dishes at special meals.
Anyway I wanted to share that because this thought experiment about the experience of animals in farms means a lot to me lately, and I find it all fascinating but important as well. Like you, I’m increasingly uncomfortable with it.
- yboris 5y ago> It feels a lot more like killing someone rather than something. I guess that sounds silly. No it does not. Animals and fish are sentient beings with their own set of perceptions, feelings, thoughts, desires, and more. I do not think there is a defensible way to consume animals if you're living on above-poverty wages in a developed country and don't have some extremely rare health problem. Killing is problematic (ending a life prematurely), but worse yet is the experience animals have on factory farms. In your case of hunting your own fish seems less morally problematic than most animal consumption, but I understand the sentiment of "do I really need to eat that when there are plenty of non-sentient alternatives". Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
- soperj 5y agoWhat about killing plants (ending a life prematurely)?
- __MatrixMan__ 5y agoIt's pretty easy to find examples outside of the animal kingdom where an organism's lifecycle depends on it being eaten at some point. So far as I know, there are no animals with this property. Also, it's clearer to us (since we're animals) what sorts of events count as ending another animal's life. Elsewhere it's trickier (Is a field of grass one life, or is a blade of grass one life? How should mycelial networks be counted? etc). For these reasons, I think it's that applying different logic to different kingdoms is a fairly defensible move.
- soperj 5y agoI disagree. What organism are you talking about exactly? Any plant I can think of doesn't require being eaten to live.
- throwaway09223 5y agoThe lifecycle of an organism includes reproduction and propagation. Many plants have evolved specifically around being eaten by other animals.
- soperj 5y ago>The lifecycle of an organism includes reproduction and propagation. No, that would be different organisms.
- __MatrixMan__ 5y agoAnything that bears fruit is relying on an animal to come by and eat that fruit so that the seeds will be spread (either because the pit is hard to eat and the animal drops it, or because the seeds survive the animal's digestive tract). There are also several fungi and protozoans who migrate between the digestive tracts of animals that eat each other (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii for instance). I'm not enough of a biologist to defend the point especially well, but doesn't it make sense that one would use different types of reasoning to manage relationships with different types of life?
- musingsole 5y ago> Now shooting a fish involves this internal struggle of deciding if it’s necessary, if it makes sense, what it means about me, what the experience will be like for the fish. These considerations are originally critical to what it meant to be hunter. Hunters are shepherds to their prey, just from a distance. You can't kill with reckless abandon because of realities like supply and spoilage. Livestock can be seen as a practice of a hunter bringing their prey closer to home so as to protect them from harvest by other hunters.