5 ms·

Could it be someone else's business if you, say, killed a dog or cat every day, or are saying that you should be able to do literally anything you like to any a

Could it be someone else's business if you, say, killed a dog or cat every day, or are saying that you should be able to do literally anything you like to any animal in the privacy of your home?

codefreeordie 4y ago
Whose dog or cat is it?
- sky-kedge0749 4y ago
  You raise an interesting point -- which you may not have intended, I don't want to put words in your mouth -- that once you treat sentient animals as disposable property, it becomes difficult to draw ethical lines. Surely a chicken and a cat have approximately the same moral worth, and in the U.S. you can buy whole cooked chickens at the store for $5. Buying a chicken and throwing away the meat is just as pointless as killing a cat, and a factory chicken's life is torture from beginning to end. So any difference between the chicken and the cat is sentimental at best.
  - codefreeordie 4y ago
    [citation needed] on "sentient". Insofar as that word actually has a concrete, specific meaning, it does not seem to apply to any of the animals we're discussing. But regardless, it has always seemed weird to me that our society applies such radically different moral standards to the treatment of livestock versus the treatment of pets, and how that even varies from creature to creature. Leather is fine, but fur is "murder" and killing cats/dogs is actually a crime. I think that they take the argument the wrong direction, but at least the fully vegan no-animal-products-in-my-life folks are being consistent.
    - sky-kedge0749 4y ago
      Sentience as in "the capacity to experience feelings and sensations": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience. I don't want to be too philosophical, just consider that both chickens and cats will complain if you poke them with a stick. I'm allowing for something like cricket powder. I think we agree about pets. Many people treat pets like people but when it comes down to it, they're not, and people won't treat them that way when it counts. Most people won't starve their family to pay for medical care for a pet. The pretense bothers me and feels hypocritical to an animal that trusts its owner so much. I'm vegetarian in a one-animal-at-a-time sense. I sometimes think of it in terms of killing squirrels, since I see a lot of squirrels every day. For every burger you eat, imagine you have to go out and stomp a squirrel to death. I don't particularly care about squirrels but doing that would be pretty gross and traumatic, so if it's all the same I'll just eat some beans. The benefit to the environment is similarly incremental.
      - codefreeordie 4y ago
        Sometimes I think that those who want humanity to be forced to return to subsistence farming should get their way. They'd learn so much about what life actually is. But I don't actually want to live in that world, because I know enough to hope it never returns.

Could it be someone else's business if you, say, killed a dog or cat every day, or are saying that you should be able to do literally anything you like to any animal in the privacy of your home?

codefreeordie 4y ago

Whose dog or cat is it?

sky-kedge0749 4y ago
You raise an interesting point -- which you may not have intended, I don't want to put words in your mouth -- that once you treat sentient animals as disposable property, it becomes difficult to draw ethical lines. Surely a chicken and a cat have approximately the same moral worth, and in the U.S. you can buy whole cooked chickens at the store for $5. Buying a chicken and throwing away the meat is just as pointless as killing a cat, and a factory chicken's life is torture from beginning to end. So any difference between the chicken and the cat is sentimental at best.
- codefreeordie 4y ago
  [citation needed] on "sentient". Insofar as that word actually has a concrete, specific meaning, it does not seem to apply to any of the animals we're discussing. But regardless, it has always seemed weird to me that our society applies such radically different moral standards to the treatment of livestock versus the treatment of pets, and how that even varies from creature to creature. Leather is fine, but fur is "murder" and killing cats/dogs is actually a crime. I think that they take the argument the wrong direction, but at least the fully vegan no-animal-products-in-my-life folks are being consistent.
  - sky-kedge0749 4y ago
    Sentience as in "the capacity to experience feelings and sensations": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience. I don't want to be too philosophical, just consider that both chickens and cats will complain if you poke them with a stick. I'm allowing for something like cricket powder. I think we agree about pets. Many people treat pets like people but when it comes down to it, they're not, and people won't treat them that way when it counts. Most people won't starve their family to pay for medical care for a pet. The pretense bothers me and feels hypocritical to an animal that trusts its owner so much. I'm vegetarian in a one-animal-at-a-time sense. I sometimes think of it in terms of killing squirrels, since I see a lot of squirrels every day. For every burger you eat, imagine you have to go out and stomp a squirrel to death. I don't particularly care about squirrels but doing that would be pretty gross and traumatic, so if it's all the same I'll just eat some beans. The benefit to the environment is similarly incremental.
    - codefreeordie 4y ago
      Sometimes I think that those who want humanity to be forced to return to subsistence farming should get their way. They'd learn so much about what life actually is. But I don't actually want to live in that world, because I know enough to hope it never returns.