Ohhhhhh, snap! No you di'int!
Ohhhhhh, snap! No you di'int!
one very good reason not to be vegetarian then yuk!!Originally Posted by Delta40
Last edited by cacian; 06-30-2012 at 07:03 AM.
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
Every time someone doesn't smoke a cigarette, they say yes to Hitler. I have said no to Hitler 20 times today, how about you? Lucky Strike, because if you are not smoking our cigarettes every day, you're a Nazi. And no one likes Nazis.
Hitler had a dog too, I guess I'm in double trouble
I hope death is joyful, and I hope I'll never return -Frida Khalo
If I seem insensitive to what you are going through, understand it's the way I am- Mr. Spock
Personally, I think that the unique and supreme delight lies in the certainty of doing 'evil'–and men and women know from birth that all pleasure lies in evil. - Baudelaire
Well, Hitler was a man.
*says no more*
~
"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
@Mutatis
cannibals - humans who eat human flesh
non vegetarians - humans who eat animal flesh
humans - feel pain, show love and other emotions
animals - feel pain, show love and a lot of other emotions
and also humans are mammals, a subdivision in classification of animals
@YesNo
Were you under the impression that states in India were strictly vegetarian? :O
@OrphanPip
Wow, an awesome point that you made there. Now at least I have an answer to those arguments. Thanks.
P.S. - typing on a cell is a real pain.
People laugh at me 'coz they think I'm a fool...I smile because I made someone laugh
Nikhar Agrawal
I think a more accurate definition of 'cannibal' is 'the one who eats its own kind'.
Eating animals does not make humans ''cannibals' but 'carnivores', which I am neither proud nor ashamed to be.
~
"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
what about lighting a match does that count too?
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
So do non-smokers and teetotalers.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Exactly. That's a big part of the definition, eating one's own kind. At least to me. I don't get how eating cow or pig or chicken in any way comes close to cannabilism, because it just doesn't. That's why we have the word "cannibal" and the word "carnivore," each of which has different meanings.. Still, I consider myself an omnivore; I still eat plenty of non-meat things.
How would I counter the argument that vegetarians are hypocrites?
I'd say this "no more than you or anyone else. We're all hypocrites -- you, me, that guy over there buying shoes, the kid on the play ground. . . all of us. So cheers to the brotherhood of hypocrisy! Now get the hell outa here!"
“Oh crap”
-- Hellboy
Actually, I'm pretty ignorant about India. I did have that impression.
The only people from India that I can recall reading were Eknath Easwaran (who made a translation of the Bhagavad Gita that one can usually find in bookstores here) and Deepak Chopra who is also popular here. I didn't even know where Kerala was until I heard that Easwaran was from there and looked it up on a map. Indian food is excellent. At least, what I have had in the US.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
I don't think vegetarians are necessarily hypocrites, but it is the case that all the good arguments for not eating meat also apply to other animal products. So self-righteous vegetarians do seem hypocritical to me. Not because of the plants they eat, but because they fund a system that systematically exploits and causes pain to sentient beings.
Dairy cows are impregnated each year, so that they give a large amount of milk. They don't just give the milk anyway, even if you feed them hormones, they need to be impregnated every year or year and a half. Many people aren't even aware of that, I was quite surprised when I found this out myself. And when the cows give birth, the calves are usually taken away, put in confinement (where they develop behavioral problems due to lack of space and social environment), and eventually they end up slaughtered for veal. The industries are interconnected, dairy supports veal, and vice-versa.
The milk cows are overbred, they give absurd amounts of milk. Even on the nice organic farms, 30% of the milk cows suffer from mastitis sometime in their life (chronic udder inflammation from all the milking). A dairy cow's natural life expectancy is 20 years, however, in milk production they end up exhausted after 4-5 years already. And then they're slaughtered like normal meat cows. They're transported in trucks, not a pleasant experience for the already exhausted cows. Sometimes these transports are half a dozen hours or longer. And then comes the slaughterhouse. As with meat cows, if even 1% of the killing bolt shots go wrong (some figures suggest it's much higher than that), a significant number of cows have their throats slit while conscious. Why risk it that this happens if there is a tasty, healthy alternative?
As for eggs: An "ancient" chicken produced 5-10 eggs before chickens had been bred towards maximum efficiency. Today's breeds lay up to 300 or more eggs. If it didn't hurt the animals, I wouldn't see anything wrong with it just because it's "unnatural", but the problem is that it does hurt the animals. They need a large amount of calcium for egg shells, and even though they get supplements, they can't get enough for their bones. This leads to chronic pains, deformed bones and fractures. Of course this is worst in factory farm conditions where it becomes horrible beyond imagining, but also on "nice" farms, the amount of eggs laid are not good for animal well-being.
Virtually each egg laying hen has, on average (since half the chicks are male), a male brother that was ground up or gassed right after hatching. Because male chicks are of no use in the egg industry, and they're not of the meat breed so they'd gain weight too slowly for industry standards. Hundreds of millions of male chicks are killed after hatching because they are of no use to us. Buying eggs supports this insanity.
(I hate when this subject comes up, but since it might come up anyway, some words about honey: Most vegans don't eat honey, and "officially", honey is considered "not vegan". But there's no vegan Bible for vegans to follow. Some vegans do eat honey. It depends on the exact reasons for veganism. If you think it likely enough that bees aren't sentient, then eating honey would be unproblematic, like eating oysters. Or if you think they aren't harmed the way honey is produced, then that might be okay too. Not all vegans consider it wrong to "steal" animal products. That seems like an irrational position to me, if a chicken doesn't miss her eggs when I take them away, I wouldn't have a problem with "stealing" them. Having said that, from the limited amount of things I've read about honey production, it does seem that bees are "hurt" (I put this in quotation marks because bees might not be sentient, and if they aren't, I'd argue that they can't be "hurt" in the same way a sentient being can be hurt) by it, and even though I highly doubt they're sentient, I couldn't assign a lower than 1% probability to this. So personally I give bees the benefit of the doubt, also because I really don't miss anything by not eating honey, but I think it's ridiculous how much attention and ridicule the issue brings for veganism and I'm happy if people stop eating other animal products without bothering about stuff like honey. This is really a side-issue.)
From an anti-speciesist perspective, I'd argue that non vegan practices are not ethically defensible (with the exception of important medical testing and research, where much more suffering is prevented than generated). That's why I do think that overly self-righteous vegetarians are a bit hypocritical. [For an explanation and arguments against speciesism, see this essay by Peter Singer: http://www.animal-rights-library.com...m/singer02.htm
Basically, speciesism is giving a being less ethical consideration solely because it belongs to the "wrong" species.]
But for some veganism may seem like too big of a step (even though it really is easier than one might think), and then it's not the end of the world to e.g. eat animal products on the weekends, being a part-time vegan. Vegetarianism can also be a valuable step into the right direction, even though I'm a bit concerned about it creating an image of "dairy and eggs being a different matter", which they really aren't. Giving up eggs, chicken and farmed fish might actually prevent much more animal suffering than going ovo-lacto vegetarian, see: http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/suffering-per-kg.html
and
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...eggs-not-meat/
To stop harming animals through the things one buys is one way help make the world a better place, but imo it's not the most important aspect. In that, my opinion differs from the opinion of a lot of vegans who consider veganism the "moral baseline". I think that's nonsense. I don't care about personal purity, instead I care about efficiency, about the consequences of actions. Donating to efficient animal charities like Vegan Outreach or The Humane Leagure can prevent several years of factory farm suffering per dollar donated. A non vegan who donates regularly probably does more good for animals than a vegan who doesn't. Even though doing both would be even better, of course.
And finally, regarding plants: First of all, I find it irritating how lots of people suddenly think they're experts on biology and philosophy of mind when it comes to plants. I keep hearing people say that they know plants are sentient, and when I ask them about philosophy of mind or simple stuff about evolution and biology, they have no clue. Why can't they just leave it to the actual experts instead of making absurd claims with a conviction that resembles religious faith? [/rant]
I've spent a lot of time researching philosophy of mind and animal nociception responses because I was curious whether fish, shrimps or insects can suffer (yes; likely yes; probably no but maybe). Plants are very, very, very unlikely to be sentient. Yes, I know they can "communicate" with each other, and I know they can show some interesting responses to chemicals, but seriously, it needs more than that for consciousness.
I think a lot of people worrying about plants don't even bother whether plants are sentient, they seem to think that killing is killing, whether it's killing sentient life or just vegetable-life. My ethical view is so much centered on avoiding suffering that I have a hard time even imagining that point of view. It irritates me that someone can seriously think putting animal suffering and killing (which can and should be viewed by everyone online in videos like "Earthlings") on the same level with destroying plants. Meat eaters like to joke "do you hear the carrots screaming", but would they say that while watching a documentary on factory farms? I'd bet that this would be too macabre even for those types of meat eaters who make jokes about vegetarians all the time.
Actually, I personally don't even mind killing animals if it were done painlessly. It's really the suffering I find wrong.
But enough of that, let's suppose for the sake of the argument that plants are in fact conscious. What would that mean? As OrphanPip already pointed out, it wouldn't make vegetarians or vegans hypocrites. Since an animal eats a lot of plants in its life and since the process is rather inefficient, a vegan "kills" much less plants than a meat eater. It takes 7-16 pounds of soy or crops to get one pound of beef, for instance!
Since this post is already way too long, one more thing to add: Some might say vegans are hypocrites because animal farming kills rodents and other small animals, and that these small creatures suffer from it. Well yeah, this does happen for sure. But since veganism is a more efficient way of food production, this tends to happen less than it happens for other diets. (There are some exceptions here but they're rare enough to be worth ignoring.) Besides, perfection is unattainable, it makes most sense to avoid what's practically avoidable and spend the rest of one's efforts on activism, instead of going into the woods alone living as a Jain. Some parts of my laptop were probably produced by child labor, and since humans are animals too, that definitely wouldn't be vegan. But sometimes I do stuff with my laptop that helps animals (including human animals) and I couldn't do that if I lived like an eremite without technology. My mantra, as a vegan, is that I prefer pragmatism to personal purity.
Last edited by Dodo25; 06-30-2012 at 09:41 PM.
Please consider *cost-effectiveness* when donating to charities in order to do the most good: http://givewell.org/
I had an entomology prof. once who, despite being an expert on biological pesticides, was fairly indignant about the fact that no ethical advisory board oversaw experiments on insects. He thought it was wrong that bugs were treated differently than mice.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Are insects sentient?
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