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> I guess our cultures are simply too different, but it genuinely seems like people saw all animals as "things" until, like, the 1950s or something like that.
by adriand 1y ago
> I guess our cultures are simply too different, but it genuinely seems like people saw all animals as "things" until, like, the 1950s or something like that.
There’s a weird disconnect where people ignore or are wilfully ignorant of cruelty to animals in industrial food production but are sensitive to it in virtually every other context. I saw a woman the other day who was tending to an injured pigeon and had called animal welfare people to come tend to it. Meanwhile, millions of chickens live in appalling conditions and die horrible deaths en masse.
I am genuinely unsure where this disconnect comes from. I was the same for most of my life but a few years ago, I started thinking about the animals I was eating and then I couldn’t eat them any more.
I don’t begrudge people their compassion. A few nights ago I went outside to put some stuff on the barbecue and my wife was in the backyard, concerned for the fate of a female cardinal that had flown into our sunroom window. It was stunned and couldn’t fly. Its mate was worriedly flitting through nearby bushes. “That’s so sad,” my wife said. “Yes,” I agreed, and then I put her skewers of meat on the barbecue.
- petesergeant 1y ago> I am genuinely unsure where this disconnect comes from Much easier to sympathise with a live animal that looks like an animal than with a brown rectangle covered in sauce. Also much easier to sympathise with the plight of one entity rather than millions: a GoFundMe for a relatable charity case rather than helping the billions of people worldwide who need it
- keiferski 1y agoIt is mostly just proximity and framing. A hurt wild animal is alive and right in front of you. Meat from the grocery store is a prepackaged product that isn’t mentally associated with the bloody process behind the scenes required to get it there. The commercial aspect is pretty dependent on this distancing. Case-in-point: I once stayed in a small town in Morocco for a few weeks. There wasn’t a grocery store nearby, just a market, and if you wanted chicken, they killed it in front of you. Needless to say, being directly confronted with the process…I didn’t eat meat the entire time.
- cylemons 1y agoAlso a matter of purpose, killing animals for food is more acceptable than killing them for sport or entertainment
- yurishimo 1y agoExactly this. Meat is a huge source of nutrition. Even though in our modern western society, we might not "need" to eat meat, but it's a hearty, plentiful, accessible protein and fat that stores well and can be easily moved and replicated quickly. It's simply much more practical still to keep eating meat in much of the world. I'm not going to go into the arguments about our biology either, but I think it's safe to say that our bodies are also very finely tuned to eat and process organic (from organisms) meat and use it as fuel. Sure, you can feed your cat a vegan diet or whatever and replace all of the vitamins, but there is no denying that the more "natural" way would be to just eat the meat and be done with it. Many of the arguments for veganism come alongside ideas for better animal welfare, but the two are not mutually exclusive. The only reason we don't eat grandma after she dies is because it's culturally unacceptable. We can apply more respect and reverence to meat production without stopping entirely or pretending that the benefits of eating meat don't exist.
- throwway120385 1y agoEating Grandma is actually a really good way to get parasites and prion diseases, so there's more to it than just cultural acceptability. The reason we don't risk parasites from farmed meat is because it's dewormed and treated and inspected and cleaned.
- stickfigure 1y agoIf the little bird was tasty it might have gone on the bbq too. We humans are capable of empathizing with different creatures differently. Some people have their empathy dial set up so high that they anthropomorphize plants. Some have it set so low they're psychopaths. Most functional people are in the middle. Personally, keeping chickens has almost completely put me off empathy with them. Roosters are assholes. Into the pot with you.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- AxEy 1y ago> "Personally, keeping chickens has almost completely put me off empathy with them. Roosters are assholes. Into the pot with you." What a relief that we don't generally take this policy toward asshole humans. At any rate, it's one thing to eat one asshole chicken and another to systematically farm asshole chicken to be killed.
- jajko 1y agoWhat do you mean, in many places around the world we kill people society or state considers assholes, including US. Then we can discuss where is the cutoff line for enough assholishness to go for a slaughter and where something less severe, but practice is here and not going anywhere.
- AxEy 1y ago> " in many places around the world we kill people society or state considers assholes, including US." Not really the same as systematically bringing into existence a species with behaviors you find objectionable, keeping them in your proximity so you can experience said behaviors, and then slaughtering them with the excuse that they are all assholes is it? > "Then we can discuss where is the cutoff line for enough assholishness to go for a slaughter" When you say that roosters cross this line do you mean with respect to their behavior towards you? I'm guessing this can't be that bad since you're much more powerful than they? Or do you mean towards other chickens? If so, and if it's really that bad, then surely the best thing is to just not bring them into existence in the first place (not systematically breeding them with the intent of slaughtering them)?
- schneehertz 1y agoMencius, a thinker from over 300 BC, once said: "A gentleman, in his attitude towards animals, having seen them alive, cannot bear to see them die; having heard their cries, cannot bear to eat their flesh. Therefore, a gentleman keeps his distance from the kitchen." The background of this statement is as follows: King Xuan of Qi once saw a man leading an ox to be slaughtered. Moved by the ox's sorrowful appearance, he was deeply distressed and ordered the butcher to spare the ox. However, the butcher informed him that the ox was intended for sacrificial rites. It must be noted that in ancient times, the two most important affairs of the state were sacrifices and warfare. Sparing the ox would have violated the moral principles of the time. In desperation, King Xuan came up with the idea: "Why not replace this ox with a sheep?" Later, the more he reflected on it, the more absurd he found his own decision. He then sought advice from Mencius, who uttered this statement in response. Mencius believed that what distinguishes humans from beasts is humanity, meaning that humans treat all things with kindness, but human goodness is limited. Therefore, a gentleman practices kindness by helping those in front of him, unable to extend it to all.
- lazide 1y agoAnd then King Xuan declared war on a neighboring kingdom of course, leading to hundreds of thousands of humans dying? The core nature of humanity is absurdity.
- kridsdale1 1y agoAll moral frameworks get suspended in time of war.
- ahofmann 1y agoTo make it worse: it's not millions of chickens, that live in appaling conditions and die horrible deaths. We kill around 50 billion chickens every year. That is 137 million chickens every day. Chickens that are used for eating are alive for around 28 to 42 days. That are 3.8 to 5.7 billion chicken on any day. The numbers might be slightly off, because chicken raised for eggs are alive longer (around a year).
- SapporoChris 1y agoThis is why I support whaling. One whale can feed many people, one chicken not so many. All whales harvested are free range.
- sethammons 1y agoOne whale takes much more time and energy than the equivalent food that comes from chicken. Much, much, much more efficient to eat chicken. Whales would entirely disappear if harvested at the same similar rates calories consumed.
- SapporoChris 1y agoIf it takes a little more effort to reduce suffering for animals then I'm okay with that. However, I do not support unsustainable hunting. Please have some charity and don't imply such.
- saagarjha 1y agoWhat is your solution to the problem posed above then?
- gora_mohanty 1y agoI wholly support this logic, and want it extended to humans: Soylent Green will be the next food craze
- shawn_w 1y ago
- a-french-anon 1y ago"Cruelty" is a rhetoric word because its meaning is caught between the classical "deliberate causing of pain" and the new "neglect, indifference towards another's pain" and of course, that discrepancy is fully exploited. What livestock beasts suffer is purely for practical reasons. >I am genuinely unsure where this disconnect comes from 1. Empathy is a base emotional response triggered by nearby animals, not a rational/moral one. 2. Empathy is also an evolutionary tool that "happened" in (some) humans to help survive situations that require some sort of cooperation, like harsh winters. Anthropomorphization is an associated bug, not a feature. 2b. Being disconnected from nature and reality is the #1 cause for such disorder; you don't see any kind of vegetarianism in rural people. 3. People with a brain realize that eating meat is important. 4. People with a bigger brain also realize that that eating other animals is the prerogative of power: humans have simply won the animal kingdom's oldest game and are enjoying its spoils. Things wouldn't (and shouldn't) be different if positions were reversed.
- frotaur 1y agoSince you are french according to your handle, I will direct you to this video, which I liked very much : https://youtu.be/VlWvnhSiuck?si=dvgQQS1Y4oa3A1yO https://youtu.be/VlWvnhSiuck?si=dvgQQS1Y4oa3A1yO . In essence, I don't disagree with points 1 and 2. But the conclusions that you draw from these could be used to justify things which, hopefully, you would find morally objectionable. It is not because empathy is not a rational response that we should not try to use rationality to shape our decisions. There are pretty of other feelings/behaviours that we choose to consider bad and worthy of punishment, regardless of the fact they are useful evolutionary tool. Unfortunately this comment is much too short to make the full argument, but the video I linked does a great job. I was wholly convinced by it, and though I'm not vegetarian, I do try to source my meat from places with more humane conditions.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 1y ago> 2b. Being disconnected from nature and reality is the #1 cause for such disorder; you don't see any kind of vegetarianism in rural people. This is just untrue, hundreds of millions of rural South Asians are vegetarian. > 3. People with a brain realize that eating meat is important. Everyone has a brain. Both vegetarian and omnivore groups have their share of geniuses and fools. Meat was important as a calorie source but it has many drawbacks in modern society totally unrelated to animal ethics; cancer risk, inefficient land use, methane production, etc. > 4. People with a bigger brain also realize that that eating other animals is the prerogative of power: humans have simply won the animal kingdom's oldest game and are enjoying its spoils. Things wouldn't (and shouldn't) be different if positions were reversed. This sounds like manifest destiny rhetoric and deserves just as much consideration.