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I became vegetarian many years ago for precisely this reason. Ordinarily I don't get preachy about it, and tell people that it's just an individual choice of mi
by nkoren 13y ago
I became vegetarian many years ago for precisely this reason. Ordinarily I don't get preachy about it, and tell people that it's just an individual choice of mine. But in truth, the concept of eating meat really does bother me, and I think it bothers a lot of other people.
Other carnivorous animals are rarely aware of the fact that they are using other sentient beings for food (although sometimes they do demonstrate an awareness of this), but we can't help but be aware of it. We justify it with a values system which says that it is morally permissible to eat creatures that aren't as smart or are otherwise just different from us. But that's a tenuous sort of morality, and I honestly think that it gnaws at us more than we usually admit.
Think about how aliens are typically portrayed in science fiction films. They've crossed unimaginable light-years to come to earth, and are immensely smarter than us. But nine times out of ten, once they get here, they've got nothing better to do than kill and more often than not eat us. Same goes for superior machine consciousness: in our mythologies, it almost always wants to kill and/or consume us. Why?
I think it's a reflection of our own insecurities: if there's any species out there that's truly smarter than us, we'd better hope that it doesn't share our value system -- because if it does, then it will see us as entirely legitimate to farm and eat.
So I choose to do unto other species as I'd like other species to do unto me. But of course that's just my personal choice.
- wavefunction 13y agoHopefully the aliens will forgive us if we seem barbaric ;) Part of my experience is a recent trip to India to see some historic sites. While there, it was just easier to eat at vegetarian restaurants, and it was remarkable how much healthier I felt. It will certainly involve some work because I grew up in the West and we simply don't have this sort of culture ingrained, but all great things take some work. I guess what I found out is that we have a choice: we don't have to eat meat and we can still maintain and even improve our health. That was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak...
- coolj 13y ago> But that's a tenuous sort of morality... If you use anything made with/from animal labor or products, you are practicing the same form of morality, you've just changed what's acceptable from "murdering" to "enslaving", "robbing", etc. It is also no more tenuous than arbitrarily drawing the line at bugs or bacteria. Thousands of innocent insects had to die to bring us a banana (--death from pesticides, from mechanical crushing during harvest, from geting squashed on the windscreen of the delivery trucks).
- eltondegeneres 13y agoA lot of ethicists draw the line at either sentience (not sapience) or the ability to suffer, usually defined as the presence of a central nervous system. Bacteria fails to pass these tests.
- coolj 13y agoSure, those are traits we use to distinguish different rights among sentient (but not sapient) animals--but it's all rather arbitrary. How do we define "suffering"? Is it the same emotional experiences we call "fear" and "sadness", i.e., the ability to have the concept "I am afraid/sad"? That means the animal needs to at least have a primitive form of understanding and introspection to qualify (e.g., great apes, chimps, bonobos). If we go to the other extreme, we must admit we don't have a reliable method for communicating with animals (famous "dog whisperers" aside). We can only infer "suffering" is taking place when the animal reacts negatively to a negative external stimulus. But bacteria respond negatively to a negative external stimulus as well. Sure, there's mind-bogglingly more complexity in a mammalian brain than a bacterium, but if we reduce "suffering" to the observation of a negative reaction to a negative external stimulus, we must say even single cell organisms are "suffering." Hard to strike the right balance.
- bromagosa 13y agoAgree, and so do plants when they "feel" [1] and respond [2] to external damage. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(physiology) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(physiology) [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inducible_plant_defenses_against_herbivory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inducible_plant_defenses_agains...
- robin_reala 13y agoThere was an interesting article in Slate a while back about the ethics of eating oysters as a vegan: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2010/04/consider_the_oyster.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2010/04/consider_the...
- 13y ago
- LatvjuAvs 13y agoI eat other animals because I can kill them without harming myself and they are tasty and provide me with more satisfaction than vegetarian diet, and for me, it is way more healthy. Ritual of hunt, prey and predator. I consider everything having conciseness and sentient in its own way.