After having kept jellyfish as pets (Atlantic bay nettles), I wouldn’t really consider them to be vegetarian nor vegan. While similar to plants, seemed to have a greater sense of environmental awareness than my plants. Mine could sense light, have “off days”, and interact with their environment. It’s probably true that there’s not much going on there due to the small amount of nerves that control everything, but even when mine would accidentally get caught on tank cleaning tools or get bumped around they’d react in a protective way and to me it’s just similar enough to animalistic behavior that I’d not feel comfortable consuming them if I were vegan.
Plants feel a lot, they just can’t express their feelings in a way you can perceive. For example, they feel the difference between a human touching them and wind blowing.
So is this theory of veganism to not cause pain to an animal? If so what about ethically sourced meat. Like bullet to the head/decapitation. Most of those creatures feel nothing, they just end.
Or is it to not eat anything that comes from the an organism from the Animalia kingdom because harming animals is immoral?
After proofreading, these sound more aggressive/argumentative than i had intended but they get the point across.
they cause very little suffering. the systemic factory farming of animals and the deforestation in the process of meat production causes unimaginable collective suffering.
you don’t care about veganism because you are willfully ignorant.
cannibalism too exists in “nature”. I don’t see any of you meat justifiers treading that line of thought to its coherent end.
a lion or an eagle eats anything. Most (if not all) carcass eating humans make arbitrary choices: Dogs or cats shan’t be eaten. Pigs or this or that is a sin. Eating humans are monstrous.
I thought it had less to do with suffering and exploitation (animals do this to each other, no way to stop that nor should we) but more to do with climate change. Cattle farms are causing massive climate change for instance.
Humans are moral agents, though. Just because something happens in nature, that doesn’t make it okay. There are lots of examples of rape among wild animals, but that doesn’t make it okay for humans to do it.
A lot of vegans are concerned about climate change, too, but it’s really tangential to the philosophy. Veganism came out of the animal rights movement, so it’s really concerned with exploitation and suffering. If there were no environmental issues with animal products, vegans would still be vegans.
I mean, sometimes its ethical. Its kind of unnecessary (and therefore immoral) at the scale of modern meat farms. But on a more individual level with like subsistence hunting/livestock, i dont feel like there are any ethical problems. Like if you need food or you will die, animals lives are worth less than humans lives…
The need to hunt for food to prevent dying yourself is not really a problem in today’s society unless you are indigenous and living outside of our society. So there is no real argument there.
I mean, yeah. Im also being pedantic with unqualified absolutes.
The fact remains sometimes it absolutely is ethical to kill stuff, even if they don’t want to die.
My general ethical foundation is based on my conscience saying “that would be bad” or “seems ok”. I fully admit that this is potentially a personal flaw, but I don’t feel bad about eating meat. I have a vague sense of guilt for the treatment of meaty animals, but honestly, it isn’t enough to offset the convenience of a burger.
Tldr sometimes its ethically okay to kill stuff, and I’m too lazy to do anything about benefitting from the majority of times when it isn’t ethical.
I respect the self-reflection in this comment. Sadly, I also feel a small need to ask you to think about ethics and morality slightly deeper. Imagine if your predecessors made similar comments about [insert moral failing of history]. How would you think about that?
I think most of us try to be good people, but it’s really hard to do the right thing if you never think about what is right and why (and yes, sometimes that includes not being lazy).
There is an assumption here that i don’t think of right and wrong. Which isn’t true, as evidenced by this entire comment chain. My morality is based off of my conscience, and it has a final say in how i act. But I still think and explore ethically difficult situations to determine what is right, wrong, or grayish.
I just didnt describe my entire ethical schema, because, as i said i am lazy. Lazy and self-aware enough to know that there is not much i can or will do to improve the morality of meat consumption. And honestly, that specific problem is pretty low on my list of ethical dilemmas. But it’s fun to talk about.
Rereading the chain I see misread the original comments, my bad.
Lazy and self-aware enough to know that there is not much i can or will do to improve the morality of meat consumption.
You can stop eating meat? That seems to be a fix that puts you squarely into better moral territory. Unless you think the killing, torturous treatment and rape is moral. It’s your choice whether you want to do something, but it I object to the word can here.
In general, just having conscience as a guiding ethical compass leaves you open to many logical inconsistencies. Would you agree?
15 minutes of pleasure from eating doesn’t justify forcing an animal into existence to a life of suffering and premature death, especially when there are so many great alternatives - without even considering the the secondary effects of animal agriculture, including climate damage, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and the likelihood of bringing forward the next pandemic.
After having kept jellyfish as pets (Atlantic bay nettles), I wouldn’t really consider them to be vegetarian nor vegan. While similar to plants, seemed to have a greater sense of environmental awareness than my plants. Mine could sense light, have “off days”, and interact with their environment. It’s probably true that there’s not much going on there due to the small amount of nerves that control everything, but even when mine would accidentally get caught on tank cleaning tools or get bumped around they’d react in a protective way and to me it’s just similar enough to animalistic behavior that I’d not feel comfortable consuming them if I were vegan.
Plants feel a lot, they just can’t express their feelings in a way you can perceive. For example, they feel the difference between a human touching them and wind blowing.
So is this theory of veganism to not cause pain to an animal? If so what about ethically sourced meat. Like bullet to the head/decapitation. Most of those creatures feel nothing, they just end.
Or is it to not eat anything that comes from the an organism from the Animalia kingdom because harming animals is immoral?
After proofreading, these sound more aggressive/argumentative than i had intended but they get the point across.
Veganism means to reduce the suffering and exploitation of animals as much as practically possible.
There is nothing ethical about killing a living being that doesn’t want to die.
Tell that to lions and eagles. They cause as much suffering as possible. It’s just how nature works. It’s why I really don’t care about veganism.
they cause very little suffering. the systemic factory farming of animals and the deforestation in the process of meat production causes unimaginable collective suffering.
you don’t care about veganism because you are willfully ignorant.
cannibalism too exists in “nature”. I don’t see any of you meat justifiers treading that line of thought to its coherent end.
a lion or an eagle eats anything. Most (if not all) carcass eating humans make arbitrary choices: Dogs or cats shan’t be eaten. Pigs or this or that is a sin. Eating humans are monstrous.
I thought it had less to do with suffering and exploitation (animals do this to each other, no way to stop that nor should we) but more to do with climate change. Cattle farms are causing massive climate change for instance.
Humans are moral agents, though. Just because something happens in nature, that doesn’t make it okay. There are lots of examples of rape among wild animals, but that doesn’t make it okay for humans to do it.
A lot of vegans are concerned about climate change, too, but it’s really tangential to the philosophy. Veganism came out of the animal rights movement, so it’s really concerned with exploitation and suffering. If there were no environmental issues with animal products, vegans would still be vegans.
Morals are a social construct
Just because something is a social construct doesn’t mean it isn’t real or important.
I mean, sometimes its ethical. Its kind of unnecessary (and therefore immoral) at the scale of modern meat farms. But on a more individual level with like subsistence hunting/livestock, i dont feel like there are any ethical problems. Like if you need food or you will die, animals lives are worth less than humans lives…
The need to hunt for food to prevent dying yourself is not really a problem in today’s society unless you are indigenous and living outside of our society. So there is no real argument there.
I mean, yeah. Im also being pedantic with unqualified absolutes.
The fact remains sometimes it absolutely is ethical to kill stuff, even if they don’t want to die.
My general ethical foundation is based on my conscience saying “that would be bad” or “seems ok”. I fully admit that this is potentially a personal flaw, but I don’t feel bad about eating meat. I have a vague sense of guilt for the treatment of meaty animals, but honestly, it isn’t enough to offset the convenience of a burger.
Tldr sometimes its ethically okay to kill stuff, and I’m too lazy to do anything about benefitting from the majority of times when it isn’t ethical.
I respect the self-reflection in this comment. Sadly, I also feel a small need to ask you to think about ethics and morality slightly deeper. Imagine if your predecessors made similar comments about [insert moral failing of history]. How would you think about that?
I think most of us try to be good people, but it’s really hard to do the right thing if you never think about what is right and why (and yes, sometimes that includes not being lazy).
There is an assumption here that i don’t think of right and wrong. Which isn’t true, as evidenced by this entire comment chain. My morality is based off of my conscience, and it has a final say in how i act. But I still think and explore ethically difficult situations to determine what is right, wrong, or grayish.
I just didnt describe my entire ethical schema, because, as i said i am lazy. Lazy and self-aware enough to know that there is not much i can or will do to improve the morality of meat consumption. And honestly, that specific problem is pretty low on my list of ethical dilemmas. But it’s fun to talk about.
Rereading the chain I see misread the original comments, my bad.
You can stop eating meat? That seems to be a fix that puts you squarely into better moral territory. Unless you think the killing, torturous treatment and rape is moral. It’s your choice whether you want to do something, but it I object to the word can here.
In general, just having conscience as a guiding ethical compass leaves you open to many logical inconsistencies. Would you agree?
yeah but what if it tastes good
15 minutes of pleasure from eating doesn’t justify forcing an animal into existence to a life of suffering and premature death, especially when there are so many great alternatives - without even considering the the secondary effects of animal agriculture, including climate damage, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and the likelihood of bringing forward the next pandemic.