Are we vegetarians hypocrites?

[Darcy88]

Not me, I'd suicide (why isn't "suicide" a verb?). I decided a long time ago that that's my exit strategy if I ever found myself in a seriously horrible situation eg. stranded in the frozen woods surrounded by my family's corpses faced with the prospect of eating them, chained up in some monster's rape dungeon, &c.



I could eat dog, no problem. Actually, when I see a dog that's in particularly good shape or who looks nice and plump, I sometimes think "that would be good eating if we were ever lost in the mountains or something." My friend Steve has a delicious looking dog. His name is even "Porky."



Lookit him, he's shaped like a ham. His eyes always look like he knows I'm thinking of eating him, though.

Here here! Hahahaha. All you say here is both funny and true. Common sense. I also would sooner die than become a cannibal. I'm a pretty crazy survivalist at times...but even I posit boundaries and eating a person is definitely one of them. I would way way way rather die than do that. This seems like basic reason to me.

[Nikhar]

I just posted this on Quora which I think might also be relevant to this thread. --

I'll add my two bits here. As a lot of the other guys who have answered here, I grew up in a vegetarian house so initially in a way I was forced to be a vegetarian. But I'm 20 now and I still do not eat meat and it is my choice.

Most of my reasons have already been covered in other posts here.

Also, I just can't imagine, let alone actually do it, the thought of eating an animal that once lived, breathed, had emotions, felt pain and was also capable of showing love. As an example, I have seen many people saying that cows are so dumb. I wonder how many of these people have had a chance to observe one in close proximity. The love one cow shows for her calf is immense. I have seen so many instances where a cow grows very anxious if she thinks there is a danger to her child. They protect their child much like a human mother would. There are these two particular incidences that come to my mind.

There were these two guys on a scooter and the person on the backseat was holding a young calf on his legs. They were riding pretty slowly and the reason I guess was the cow who followed the scooter religiously (presumable the calf's mother). She was sprinting as fast as a cow could, not willing to let her child out of sight for a moment.

My mother told me about this other incident as she had seen it from her own eyes through the window. We have this kind of backyard (I say kind of because it isnt exactly a backyard and it doesn't belong to us but I do not know it's English term ) at our house. A cow had just given birth to her child over there. The calf was covered in blood. The cow actually licked the blood off her child. When I later on saw the cow and calf, remembering the story did not gross me out but instead filled me with that emotion that makes you giddy with warmth and happiness, something that you feel when you see love in its purest form.

Also, it might interest some of you to visit the following website and watch the video.

MeatVideo.com

Her's the answer on Quora.

[YesNo]

I agree with you about cows. We have more in common emotionally with other species than we realize.

Recently, I finished reading Larry Young and Brian Alexander's The Chemistry Between Us. They described how the more or less monogamous prairie vole was used to identify the chemicals that form a basis for love in both our species. These chemicals don't determine love, but they make it possible, like an eye makes it possible to see.

[ennison]

I'm omnivorous. I eat when I'm hungry and drink when I'm dry. When I lose my teeth I may have to live on brochan tana lom but now I can rip and tear and chew like any beast.

[Nikhar]

Today while discussing vegetarianism with a friend, I got the weirdest (and something that just feels outright stupid) counter argument. I'll just quote the communication as is. Pardon the grammar since these are snippets from a facebook conversation.

me:

again... my argument of eating plants has never been that they feel less pain... it's that it's inevitable...plants being the only organisms that can manufacture their own food... for any organisms survival it has to sit atop plants in the food chain... not the case with animals... you can live an equally, if not better, healthy life by not killing animals. I would be totally fine with people eating animals if it came to their survival. Right now the argument to eat animals more seems like we eat them because we can

her:

but the basic point which I want to raise is why we at all need to survive ...if we are some much into caring attitude then either we should kill ourself and let plants and other living forms survive or else we should find some new entity which is not living being for our food..but again the question is why do we need to survive..why is it at all important ?

Now this argument just seems absolutely ridiculous to me. But I didn't have any other response to it. However stupid it was, I was stumped by it. The only response I could think of was

there's a difference between being practical and being stupid

What would have been your response in this case?

[YesNo]

We are here so we survive until we are no longer able or willing to survive. I suppose eating plants would be better for our survival and the quality of life.

I assume that our being here is good and that the universe is good. But those are just assumptions.

[Ecurb]

P1: "Vegetarians" refers to humans who eat no meat.
P2: All humans are hypocrites.
Conclusion: All vegetarians are hypocrites.

[Paulclem]

We are here so we survive until we are no longer able or willing to survive. I suppose eating plants would be better for our survival and the quality of life.

I assume that our being here is good and that the universe is good. But those are just assumptions.

I don't see the choice of being a veggie as a survival choice - it's just a choice that is available where it wasn't before. That's my personal situation.

It may be that the bigger picture - the choice of meat rather than crops could be cited as a survival choice due to the dedication of land to livestock rather than plants. Politically the richer nations can make that choice, but this may be at the expense of world food stocks and reduced food production leading to starvation in certain countries. Of course this is a very simple view - the market structure of trade means it would be no simple thing to distribute food.

[YesNo]

I don't consider vegetarianism as reducible to a survival choice either. I was trying to make sense out of the survival idea that someone arguing with Nikhar made.

[Sancho]

I agree, Nikhar. She made a silly argument. I doubt we could collectively, as a species, decide not to survive. Individually, of course, people do it all the time, (suicide) but it doesn't have much effect on the overall ecosphere. This is a circular argument, but we survive because we are survivors. We are who we are because we evolved to this point largely out of an intense survival instinct. Other species no longer exist because they were not as good at it as we were.

To your earlier post, I agree again. Cows are good mamas. And I'm here to tell Ya that a mama cow will lick more than blood off of her calf. My neighbor has 20 or 30 Black Angus and I like to watch them. So I noticed one day that one of the little cows was brown not black. I took a closer look and determined that the little cow was actually black, but he just looked brown because he was covered in poop. For some strange reason the other cows liked to back up and poop on him. Go figure. Anyway, mama cow was dutifully licking the poop off of little cow, making him black again. True story, I sh*t you not.

[Paulclem]

I don't consider vegetarianism as reducible to a survival choice either. I was trying to make sense out of the survival idea that someone arguing with Nikhar made.

Apologies Yesno. I should have looked back.

I agree that survival should come first before the choice.