I am very scared of the vegan movement, they will try to take our right away to have companion animals.

[Tailo]

I don't think that a person's intelligence level has anything to do with their choice of eating meat.

A British study showed that intelligent people are significantly more likely to stop eating meat (or at least red meat). In the words of the study's authors: "Higher scores for IQ in childhood are associated with an increased likelihood of being a vegetarian as an adult."

IQ in childhood and vegetarianism in adulthood: 1970 British cohort study

web.archive.org

The whole "grass-fed" thing is a propaganda label designed to make people feel better -- "grass-fed" animals are still murdered (in the slaughter industry), so it doesn't matter if they were treated "nicely" before being killed, because the act of killing a being is itself immoral.

How they were treated before being killed hardly matters for evaluating the acts of killing them or selling them to be killed. It does matter a lot for the animals while they live though. I prefer seeing slower growing cattle on a meadow over cattle that only leaves the stable on its way to the slaughterhouse.

One has to be careful with the term "grass-fed" though. It doesn't imply that the cattle has been allowed to move freely on meadows. Grass can also be cut by human machinery and transported into a stable which cows never leave. That seems to be quite common in some regions actually. I know it's how they do it where my brother lives.

 

[Tailo]

What about all the animals that are killed in order to grow and produce plants used in the vegan diet? During crop production and harvest rabbits, squirrels, mice, pheasants, quail, doves, and snakes amounting to Millions of animals die every year to provide products used in vegan diets. So the vegan position is inconsistent.
While meat eaters are the cause of animal deaths on one hand the vegans are the cause of animal deaths on the other hand. Nobody is without blame. The fact remains that to live you must kill.

Yes, and vegans aim to reduce the suffering and killing as much as feasible. Much less animals are killed for a vegan lifestyle than with the average nutrition in Western countries, which includes a lot of meat.

Do you think that it doesn't matter how much and whom we kill, humans excluded?

 

[knotinterested]

What I'm saying is that no matter which side of the fence you stand on you can not throw rocks at the other side. On both sides animal deaths occur in order to produce the food we eat.
Intelligence has no bearing at all. Both side have individuals with great intelligence.
I do believe how a person is raised has the most influence on the actions they will do throughout their life.
A person's moral values are a non issue since all of us are different in that way. Most if not all of us here on this forum view sex with animals as being alright, but to most of the world what we do is immoral.
Since all of us are guilty in some aspect then we have no need to justify what we do to the other side.
Should there ever come a time when plant based meats that are 99% the same in taste and texture as the real meat it is meant to replace becomes available then there would be a real circumstance for the argument presented by the strict vegetarians that want to call themselves vegans. At that point and time the choice to continue to eat real meat would be on a downswing because even today many are against the cruelty that occurs to animals in the agriculture industry.
However, until such a time the long winded arguments from both sides are themselves unjustified. Even to say that the argument slowly wins over a few so it serves in that way is not completely true because many world renowned vegetarians have renounced vegetarianism and returned to eating meat. Because of their actions and their fame there have been many that followed along and now eat meat once again.
There is one fact that stands out to me above all the rest and that is that we can all look at one another and find fault in some form or fashion. What we should be doing is looking past the faults we find and learning to live and work together. In the long run I do believe this would cause more change then finding faults and prying them open and pointing fingers.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

My experience of drinking cashew milk that was on sale two for one has taught me something very important about cashew milk. I quite frankly like cashew milk a lot better than I like cows' milk. I can almost believe that cashews scream when you milk them.

I have heard some good news coming out of Mosa Meat. They are moving forward with some important partnership deals! They are talking about having a product ready for the market by 2021.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

Awesome! I enjoy cashew milk as well. Here's hoping to a better future, though action is more effective than hope.

Far too much of the best foods we have got use animal products at some point, and most people do not really think very much about it. Pizza is a staple in American cuisine. It is an example of a food where most people do not really think about the stuff it is made out of. It has a sort of mystique about it such that it may as well be made by pizza elves using magic fairy dust gathered from the misty fields of Niflheim.

The first pizza restaurant chain that does adopt ingredients made with cultured meat and dairy products should be made the go-to restaurant for vegans and anybody else that cares about animals. Pizza is the most social of all foods. If one person refuses to go to one due to failure to adopt cruelty-free foods, it's going to drive the whole mob they are attached to into embracing the venue that adopts it early and proudly.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

Pieology has vegan meats and cheese. There is no extra charge for the vegan cheese, and only $1 for the vegan meat. Blaze Pizza also has these. I think Domino's and Pizza Hut in some countries like the UK, Australia, and Israel have it, too. I've never had an issue making pizzas with plant-based ingredients from the store.

Good call by them. I think that the lab-grown animal products are going to make a really huge difference, though. It is very hard to get really beautifully stretchy mozzarella unless you have actual casein. Yes, I know: casomorphins. I am glad to get high in the name of good mozzarella. It has a consistency that is very hard to substitute. I think that, once Perfect Day has gotten into the cheese-making industry, that is going to be one of the first venues where we see their products.

 

[knotinterested]

Right, no side is perfect. But, one side causes tremendously more harm than the other side, and that harm is worth reducing. On the vegan side, crops deaths happen by accident. On the meat-eating side, vastly more crop deaths occur to crow crops to feed to the animals people eat, and THEN billions of those animals are killed per year globally. The difference is huge. It wouldn't really make sense to think, "I won't go vegan because some crop deaths will still occur, even if it's only a fraction of what they would be. If I can't completely eliminate them, I won't try, and I might as well still support killing of large animals, as well."

Why do you bother to pick apart everything I say as here. You agree then go on to try to turn it back into an argument. Trying to point a finger - trying to throw another rock.

Correct, it's education, more than intelligence. But, education also has to be paired with concern about the consequences. If a person doesn't care enough about the animals, the excessive land and resource use, and the possible long-term effects of their health, then all the education in the world won't change their mind.

Again agreement then you go on as if you must have the last word.

Sort of, but it seems most vegans were raised by meat-eating parents in societies with peers that did the same. In almost every case it's going against the status quo and how they were raised. People do have different moral values from each other, so it's good to have discussions to figure out whose are most correct.

For example, sex with animals. The majority of the population views sex with animals as a bad thing--namely because besides it being gross to them and a "crime against nature", they claim that it is harmful to the animal and also rape since the animal can't consent as defined by law.

However, they are inconsistent with the latter part, because at the same time they have no problem with eating animals, which is harmful to them, and animals don't consent to being killed, either. So, they use causing harm and lack of consent as a justification to create laws against bestiality, yet they throw this out the window when it comes to killing and eating them.

AND AGAIN

That doesn't necessarily follow if we apply it to other things. We could use that line of thinking to justify anything. For example, "Since crop deaths occur when you vegans eat plants, and your computer has plastic which might have animal byproducts in it, you can't criticize me for kidnapping children and dumping their bodies in the river. Your side isn't perfect, so you have no right to throw stones at me."

AND AGAIN

But see, this is where people want the world to cater to them before they decide to change themselves, and it doesn't work that way. People want everything to be easy, but that's not how life is.

AND AGAIN

I think speaking up against cruelty to animals which we can avoid is justified. Sure, some vegetarians have returned to eating meat, as have vegans. But then, what were their motives to begin with? Did they actually care about the animals, or was it purely for health or other reasons? The majority of those I see who return to the other side often only tried it because of curiosity, wanting to be part of a trend, or for temporary health reasons. That has no bearing on whether killing animals is justified.

AND AGAIN

Yes, we can, but I'm not trying to find fault in others. The main reason I joined in on this thread was to correct some misconceptions about veganism which were posted. I also wanted to explain why people are vegan, in detail. But, people decided to take it personally and lash out at me, putting words in my mouth that I didn't say or believe. I don't like finding faults in people and pointing fingers. That's exactly what I've tried to avoid. But, when people attack me personally and call me a hypocrite, it's hard to not get entangled in that game.

AND AGAIN

My goal throughout these conversations was to clear up misconceptions about veganism and explain the negatives associated with buying animal products. I wanted to engage in discussion about this so people can analyze both sides instead of only hearing what the other side assumes about veganism. Pretending a problem doesn't exist won't make it go away.

AND AGAIN


*****************************

Fine You Can Have The Last Words On This - I'm Tired Of Wasting My Time Here.

 

[Zoo50]

You are a liar - You do use animal products - you are typing on a keyboard that has plastic keys and animal products were used to make those keys. Therefore even though it is a small part you still contribute to the horrid animal slaughter / factory farm industry.

You keep ignoring what I said -- that no one can be 100% perfect, and the kind of veganism you're talking about is so extreme that if people tried to follow the veganism you're talking about, no one would be vegan. You're completely ignoring everything I and @SkawdtDawg said.

While there might be some residual animal things in products that can't be avoided, actively going out of your way to eat meat is wrong.

It baffles me that you DO NOT contribute to animal charities. If you really loved animals, you would financially support organzations that are trying to help animals. This is more proof that you only rattle your mouth.

I already said that not eating meat does more to help animals than donating to charities.

Wrong again - The coyote would only return to kill again.

All you care about is killing animals -- that really shows where your moral values are.

All you do is keep presenting the same argument which you seem to think everyone is bound to agree with even though every person has different moral values but you fail to see it or accept it. In all this you insult everyone that disagrees with you. Therefore you suck.

FeralLovin' did not provide any good arguments for his meat-eating, and his response was to laugh and be insulting. The only reason you're not criticizing him is because you agree with him. Also, saying I suck is ad hominem.

That was in a preceding post. If humans are not superior then give me 3 examples of animals being equal to humans and DO NOT answer with morally, right to life, or desire to live as your examples.

Why shouldn't I answer with the idea that animals have a right to live? (That's a pretty important point). So that's one point. Animals also have sentience / consciousness just like humans, and they have emotions like humans. Their interests are not less important than a human's. Also, your claim that humans are superior was in the same post as the post about veganism definitions.

EVERY person will do what they can to improve their own life and their own health. You just want to say everyone is wrong when it goes against what you feel. You DO NOT consider what others have done and the reasons they do the things they do. You only see black and white, and that is not logically sound and it shows a severe lack of reasoning ability.

And all you want to do is attack me for pointing out obvious issues with people's reasoning. 1knottygirl was being selfish, and I already explained why. Also, people should not improve their health at the expense of another being's life. Your belief, that a person can inflict as much harm as they want to improve their health, lacks reasoning.

Again you just want to say everyone is wrong when it goes against what you feel. You DO NOT consider what others have done and the reasons they do the things they do. You only see black and white, and that is not logically sound and it shows a severe lack of reasoning ability.

Now you're just repeating yourself.

Apparently you are unable to understand even the simplest of statements and then on top of that you still interject your own idea which is also said as an insult.

And you apparently still lack empathy for other animals, because if you had empathy, you would understand why killing them is cruel.

Another statement completely out of context which demonstrates your narrowmindedness. If you weren't so narrow minded then you would be able to understand what was being said and respond properly.

I already explained why I'm not narrow-minded. Your response is just a personal attack, not an argument. You still have not justified your speciesist beliefs (i.e. your flawed belief that humans are superior to other animals).

LOL So you think someone was arguing about you?

It sure seems that way.

If that is what you believe but you should not be surprised when you meet someone like me that does not believe as you do that I would be like a brick wall also.

So you are apparently OK with killing, torture, animal cruelty, etc -- all of which occur in the factory farm industry.

So then that would mean that you don't actually care how they are treated in their lives. You don't care that they get to live twice as long. That fact alone make you a hypocrite.

You don't even understand what I said. And I never said I "didn't care" about how they are treated. What I said is that doing good things for an animal, and then betraying them and killing them (i.e. a bad thing), is wrong. If a person did nice things for a human and then killed the human, that would be wrong -- similarly, doing nice things for an animal and then killing the animal is wrong.

Livestock are bred and born to serve primary as food. When they are slaughtered and cut into various pieces of meat and sold in supermarkets then later cooked and consumed by those who want to do so then they have fulfilled their purpose. You may not like it but that is how it is in the world we live in today.

Again, when you said "serve primary as food" (with emphasis on the word serve), you are talking in a speciesist manner -- that is, what benefits humans, and not other animals. And you are continuing to talk about livestock in callous terms, with no empathy for them or their lives, by saying they "fulfill their purpose". ("Fulfill their purpose" is basically just exploitation). A cow's "purpose" ought to be to live out his/her life free from human interference.

Says you - I'm really getting tired of your continued expression as if it is fact. Name one place on earth where it is illegal.

What the law says doesn't necessarily mean it is right. In this case, the law is wrong -- animals are being deprived of their lives unnecessarily.

HOW Explain this to me since you state it like it is a fact.

It is a fact that agriculture involving animals demands more resources than agriculture involving only plants.

And SkawdtDawg Don't jump in here and answer this as you have been doing every time I ask Zoo50 something. If you want to say something here then first allow him to answer.

@SkawdtDawg can say whatever he wants, and doesn't have to be restricted by whatever you want.

So your response is basically just you personally attacking me and being defensive, without really providing any justifications for what you believe.

 

[knotinterested]

I was showing what parts I agree with and pointing out why I don't agree with other parts, rather than being adversarial on everything you write. I am actually trying to find common ground, but I think a lot of your conclusions aren't logical and I feel they needed addressing for this reason. I am not "pointing a finger" or "throwing rocks" at you. I'm simply trying to convince people that supporting animal products isn't a good thing, giving the reasons why, and countering the justifications people give. I'm not attacking any individuals or making judgments about their character. If you don't want to be part of this debate anymore, then that's fine. If I'm a small part of the long process that convinces someone to stop participating in unnecessary animal deaths, then it's worth my time.

I was showing what parts I agree with and why I don't agree with other parts............................ This is total BS. In the very first of my statements for example;
What I'm saying is that no matter which side of the fence you stand on you can not throw rocks at the other side. On both sides animal deaths occur in order to produce the food we eat.
Then you replied;
Right, no side is perfect. OK, you agree with this part, but then you proceed to point fingers or throw rocks by expanding your reply when the point was not to throw rocks in the first place. But, one side causes tremendously more harm than the other side, and that harm is worth reducing. On the vegan side, crops deaths happen by accident. On the meat-eating side, vastly more crop deaths occur to crow crops to feed to the animals people eat, and THEN billions of those animals are killed per year globally. The difference is huge. It wouldn't really make sense to think, "I won't go vegan because some crop deaths will still occur, even if it's only a fraction of what they would be. If I can't completely eliminate them, I won't try, and I might as well still support killing of large animals, as well."

Your response is not logical and as you just replied that you think my conclusions aren't logical, the example speaks loads for how your process works. The debating strategy that you use is called fictionalization where you try to disassemble each sentence of the point made by your opponent. Your use of the process was to first agree then to misdirect so as to inject your side of the argument and in so doing you often say things that were not said or implying by your opponent. I believe this technique is called strawmaning.

The statement I made that you then picked apart and did exactly the things I said we shouldn't be doing was in total a point about both sides of the argument. Until your side is perfect you have no right to throw rocks at the other side, and if you do then by definition you are a hypocrite. If the definition fits then that is what you are no matter how you may argue the all or nothing argument. If you are a vegan then you must meet the definition. If you attend college and 120 credit hours are required for your degree and you have 99% of the credit hours they do not give you the degree just because you are close. I require that people that tell me they are something be exactly what they claim.

With you and most others that make this vegan argument we find that you do not meet the definition. When we show that just by the production of food used in the vegan diet that millions of animals are also killed then you focus on that statement becomes who's diet causes the most death. You don't see or don't want to admit that you share the same guilt that you throw at non vegans as if you are without fault.

You use tools in your argument like morality, the animal having a right to life, etc. When people don't agree you call them speciesist, immoral, and say they are hypocrites when they say they love animals. But no you are not insulting anyone by any of this you are just trying to make your point. Well that is all BS.

You may as well become a bible thumper while you're at it and then you can be better than everyone else too.

This entire argument is one that can never be settled. Therefore I feel it is a waste of time to keep on posting points that are only ignored by the other side. Nothing has been said that would have any influence over my eating habits and your asking someone to give up so much is ludicrous.

As for you and Zoo50 you can keep up your argument and attitude with others and I don't really care what you may think about me for leaving the thread.

I think that is reason enough for me to quit wasting my time on this thread and besides I have more important things in my life right now that need my attention.

May you both have the very best life has to offer.

 

[knotinterested]

You keep ignoring what I said -- that no one can be 100% perfect, and the kind of veganism you're talking about is so extreme that if people tried to follow the veganism you're talking about, no one would be vegan. You're completely ignoring everything I and @SkawdtDawg said.

While there might be some residual animal things in products that can't be avoided, actively going out of your way to eat meat is wrong.



I already said that not eating meat does more to help animals than donating to charities.



All you care about is killing animals -- that really shows where your moral values are.



FeralLovin' did not provide any good arguments for his meat-eating, and his response was to laugh and be insulting. The only reason you're not criticizing him is because you agree with him. Also, saying I suck is ad hominem.



Why shouldn't I answer with the idea that animals have a right to live? (That's a pretty important point). So that's one point. Animals also have sentience / consciousness just like humans, and they have emotions like humans. Their interests are not less important than a human's. Also, your claim that humans are superior was in the same post as the post about veganism definitions.



And all you want to do is attack me for pointing out obvious issues with people's reasoning. 1knottygirl was being selfish, and I already explained why. Also, people should not improve their health at the expense of another being's life. Your belief, that a person can inflict as much harm as they want to improve their health, lacks reasoning.



Now you're just repeating yourself.



And you apparently still lack empathy for other animals, because if you had empathy, you would understand why killing them is cruel.



I already explained why I'm not narrow-minded. Your response is just a personal attack, not an argument. You still have not justified your speciesist beliefs (i.e. your flawed belief that humans are superior to other animals).



It sure seems that way.



So you are apparently OK with killing, torture, animal cruelty, etc -- all of which occur in the factory farm industry.



You don't even understand what I said. And I never said I "didn't care" about how they are treated. What I said is that doing good things for an animal, and then betraying them and killing them (i.e. a bad thing), is wrong. If a person did nice things for a human and then killed the human, that would be wrong -- similarly, doing nice things for an animal and then killing the animal is wrong.



Again, when you said "serve primary as food" (with emphasis on the word serve), you are talking in a speciesist manner -- that is, what benefits humans, and not other animals. And you are continuing to talk about livestock in callous terms, with no empathy for them or their lives, by saying they "fulfill their purpose". ("Fulfill their purpose" is basically just exploitation). A cow's "purpose" ought to be to live out his/her life free from human interference.



What the law says doesn't necessarily mean it is right. In this case, the law is wrong -- animals are being deprived of their lives unnecessarily.



It is a fact that agriculture involving animals demands more resources than agriculture involving only plants.



@SkawdtDawg can say whatever he wants, and doesn't have to be restricted by whatever you want.

So your response is basically just you personally attacking me and being defensive, without really providing any justifications for what you believe.

I'll answer just the way you do - by sidestepping it.

I already answered all of this and see no reason to repeat my answers.

BTW This thread is now all yours and Skawdtdawg

May the best in life be reserved for both of you....................

 

[Zoo50]

What about all the animals that are killed in order to grow and produce plants used in the vegan diet? During crop production and harvest rabbits, squirrels, mice, pheasants, quail, doves, and snakes amounting to Millions of animals die every year to provide products used in vegan diets. So the vegan position is inconsistent.
While meat eaters are the cause of animal deaths on one hand the vegans are the cause of animal deaths on the other hand. Nobody is without blame. The fact remains that to live you must kill.

This statement is idiotic. Any animals they may be killed in the processes in plant agriculture are accidental. The animals that are killed in factory farms (slaughterhouses) are deliberate. Eating meat supports those deliberate killings, therefore people should stop eating meat.

You are once again playing the "hypocrite card" and refusing to acknowledge the moral degeneracy of your own actions. No one can be 100% perfect as you keep wanting people to be, but they can make choices that are better than others.

Why can't you just admit that meat-eating is wrong? All you do is claim that vegans are hypocrites, while failing to acknowledge that what vegans do is far more moral than what meat-eaters do.

It does matter a lot for the animals while they live though.

True, an animal that lives well before being killed is better than one that doesn't live well before being killed, but the whole "being killed" thing is still massively unethical.

What I'm saying is that no matter which side of the fence you stand on you can not throw rocks at the other side. On both sides animal deaths occur in order to produce the food we eat.

But what your forgetting is that one side (the side that support killing animals and eating their meat) is far more unethical than the other side (the vegan/vegetarian side). The whole process in which animals are killed is cruel and torturous, and the people who buy meat support that process.

Even to say that the argument slowly wins over a few so it serves in that way is not completely true because many world renowned vegetarians have renounced vegetarianism and returned to eating meat.

And those people are wrong. They should go back to not eating meat. Also, many people became vegan and continue to be vegan.

Until your side is perfect you have no right to throw rocks at the other side, and if you do then by definition you are a hypocrite.

Your requirement that a person must be 100% perfect (and therefore "not a hypocrite") is bullshit, yet you keep repeating it over and over again. The vegan side is far more ethical than the meat-eating side, therefore they have a right to criticize the terrible things that happen to produce meat.

I require that people that tell me they are something be exactly what they claim.

A person that does not use animal products is a vegan, regardless of how much animal residue is in odd places. As @SkawdtDawg said earlier, if everyone stopped using animal products (such as meat), then animal residue wouldn't appear in odd places in the first place. As SkawdtDawg said, you are stating the "all or nothing" argument again, which is nonsense. No one adheres to your extreme version of veganism (in which even a single atom of animal in ANY product disqualifies someone from being a vegan) -- that is bullshit.

When we show that just by the production of food used in the vegan diet that millions of animals are also killed then you focus on that statement becomes who's diet causes the most death.

And you are totally ignoring what SkawdtDawg said -- he said that billions more animals are killed for slaughter (in comparison to being vegan), therefore being vegan is more moral than eating meat. In other words, the total number of animals killed for meat-eaters is vastly more than it is for vegans.

Well that is all BS.

You simply cannot seem to comprehend that you are speciesist, even though multiple people say you are.

Nothing has been said that would have any influence over my eating habits and your asking someone to give up so much is ludicrous.

That is because you stubbornly refuse to abandon your flawed beliefs -- namely, the belief that animals can be murdered just to satisfy someone's taste buds for a few seconds. That is a ludicrous thing -- to deprive a being of his/her life just for asinine reasons. It is clear that your diet is extremely immoral -- it requires far more resources than vegans, it is cruel and torturous to animals, it is bad for one's health, and it results in the deaths of billions of animals.

 

[ZTHorse]

*peeks in

*Still fighting

*nope

 

[Tailo]

I wish we could get away from the who said what and this side vs that side discussion, because it is not very productive. I understand where it comes from though. If someone's position is misrepresented, it's only natural to try to clarify it. It is also natural to identify with one's own position and people who share it, and not so much with the ones who argue against it, but this creates a trench that becomes harder and harder to bridge.

From a different perspective, we are on one side, the human side. Humans have created wonderful things and continue to do so, and at the same time humans are also responsible for very much suffering and death in the animal world. Some humans are responsible for few deaths, some are responsible for more deaths, some try to reduce their impact as much as possible, some a little, many choose not to change anything and some seek a lifestyle that causes more deaths. On the other side are livestock animals and wild animals living on fields or in ecosystems that are destroyed to be turned into farmland.

These animals don't care so much about vegan vs. meat-eating discussions, but they care about harm that is done to them. There are different ways to reduce that harm that can lead to the same improvement for animals. For example, if every meat-eater would reduce their meat-consumption by one third, the harm done to animals would be reduced just as much as when one third of meat-eaters would become vegan. Of course it would be even better if both effects occurred! By becoming entrenched in a meat-eater vs. vegan debate we miss out on the huge potential for improvement that lies in small changes by a big number of people.

We should not neglect that potential, if we care about animals. I say that meat-eaters can improve the situation for animals, too! If you don't want to give up meat, consider eating fewer, but allow yourself more quality on the other hand in both your own and animals' interests.

...

Now I've been digging a trench between humans and non-human animals to illustrate a point. Yet I hope that one day we will see all of us on the same side. Attached is a photo of earth taken in 1990 by the voyager 1 space craft. Can't find earth? It's the tiny bluish speck on the brown band on the right. That's the only site where both humans and non-human animals exist. It's our common side.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

Words of raw opprobrium do not really change the minds of principled people. It works great on common punks that do not even know how it feels to have convictions about anything besides smoking weed, but principled people are going to obstruct you just on account. Do mind your audience because whom you are talking to makes a huge difference in regard to what is and what is not going to work.

When someone has established principles and beliefs, you work with those established principles and beliefs, and you hold that person accountable to those established principles and beliefs. For instance, @Tailo called me out successfully on my stated utilitarian views, that there was something in my views stated in here that was not adding up to a strong utilitarian viewpoint. Ultimately, I had to do two things. For one thing, I had to acknowledge that care-based ethics, which are driven by natural inclination toward those close to us, really has a stronger influence on me than abstract ethics. For another, I had to acknowledge that if I do appeal to systems of abstract ethics that I have acknowledged any esteem for at all, a vegetarian philosophy actually does add up to it more simply than a relatively strained construction that attempts to: old Occam's razor says, in essence, that you should stick with the simplest construction if you do not actually need a more complex one that demands greater imagination. When you run into principled people, the only thing that changes their minds about the particulars is their own principles.

That said, Carol Gilligan's theories in regard to the ethics of care also suggest that a working-class mom (or dad) trying to feed several offspring ought to be treated in the same way as a lioness that is trying to provide for her cubs. She is doing what she naturally ought to, as a maternal figure in the existence of those creatures that depend upon her. Her relationship with those creatures and her affection for them actually is morally significant, and it has to be weighed against more abstract value systems. She is not inherently a sinner just because her instinct to care matters more to her and weighs more heavily upon her mind than anything else.

Carol Gilligan would say, if you want to get the lioness to care about abstract ethics, you are, to a certain extent, obligated to make sure that this does not interfere with her ability to provide for her cubs to her own satisfaction with the ease that she is accustomed to. To a certain extent, figuring that out is your own gosh darn problem if it matters that much to you.

Maybe you could get the lioness to support an act of legislation demanding a subsidy for safe vitamin-infused meat substitutes and for subsidies given to animal-derived meat to be gradually phased out based on a twenty-year long transition that gives conventional farmers time to rethink their business models.

When you come at her too harshly for how she provides for her cubs, though, then her natural inclination is going to be to tell you that you can get our own cubs and then provide for them however you choose, but her mother raised her on free range non-BsT impala, which suits her own cubs just fine; thank you for weighing in. If you obviously do not have any intention of taking fully into account her rightful interest in fulfilling her own natural responsibilities, then you are creating a stonewall.

This is why I keep on bringing up the point of how maybe vegans ought to consider writing in to grocery chains and asking them to consider making it easier to find and shop for viable meat substitutes that contain the same balance of nutrition as ordinary meat, so ordinary working moms will find it easier to make decisions that not only are more aesthetically pleasing to them but which also clearly serve them and their families to their own satisfaction.

Carol Gilligan's theory states that it is morally valid that decisions we make for the sake of the survival of both ourselves and our loved ones are not weak or immoral or selfish, but they are a service and duty that we owe to ourselves and our loved ones. Ultimately, that has to be considered in the balance, and we are not evil-doers as a consequence of that.

A working single mother with several children would be, on a certain level, morally wrong if she were not making choices that she could be almost absolutely certain would make both herself and her offspring strong and healthy enough to thrive in a harsh world. You might be able to make her smile by showing her that cattle are really a lot happier if they are permitted to live to their natural life expectancy, but you are putting her in a moral dilemma that is not really fair if that could ever interfere with her primary responsibility as a mother.

If you want the vegan meat substitutes to catch on, then you need to start writing to grocery chains about making it easier for hard-working families, who might not have time to think about abstract ideals, to find viable meat substitutes for their families, so it will be easier for them to make decisions that help them not only eat well but also sleep well. You ought to be committed to writing a letter every day.

 

[ArticWolf]

Tons of dissension in this thread.

It would have surprised me if the statements I had made earlier had not been challenged, but to attempt to make a person look foolish, illogical, immoral, or irrational is a poor strategy.

Zoo50, and Skawdtdawg are perfect examples. And Skawdtdawg you don't fractionalize? That is the primary form of all of your comments. You say that you don't attack others in your answers and then state that others attack you. The way I read it you are the one that attacks. You and Zoo50 have verbally assaulted everyone that has said they were meat eaters and put them on the defensive. Though low keyed but still being the aggressor. Skawdtdawg I can see where you would imagine that others attack you but it's not an attack when their comments are made in counterpoints and defense.

In fact you two have in effect hijacked this thread into a vegan vs. meat eaters argument when it was suppose to be about the vegan movement taking the right to companion animal ownership away. I have been very disappointed that the topic of this thread was never truly discussed since the points of that argument may have taught all of us something.

I myself have no interests in engaging in the vegan vs meat eaters conversation. I don't try to tell other people how to live their lives and I don't press my beliefs on others. I definitely do not wish to be offended and attacked by either Zoo50 or Skawdtdawg should you disagree with anything I might state as both of you have done to Knotinterested.

Even when such notable members as Knotinterested decides to stop wasting her time in this thread and politely withdraws both Skawdtdawg and Zoo50 demonstrate how they don't attack others by attacking her as soon as she has left. That by the way is considered as backstabbing. Anyone that truly was not on the attack would have replied in a polite and courteous manner much like Knotinterested did at the end of her comments to each of you. There is a right way to disengage and both of you might learn from her example.

Good day gentlemen.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

I wish we could get away from the who said what and this side vs that side discussion, because it is not very productive. I understand where it comes from though. If someone's position is misrepresented, it's only natural to try to clarify it. It is also natural to identify with one's own position and people who share it, and not so much with the ones who argue against it, but this creates a trench that becomes harder and harder to bridge.

From a different perspective, we are on one side, the human side. Humans have created wonderful things and continue to do so, and at the same time humans are also responsible for very much suffering and death in the animal world. Some humans are responsible for few deaths, some are responsible for more deaths, some try to reduce their impact as much as possible, some a little, many choose not to change anything and some seek a lifestyle that causes more deaths. On the other side are livestock animals and wild animals living on fields or in ecosystems that are destroyed to be turned into farmland.

These animals don't care so much about vegan vs. meat-eating discussions, but they care about harm that is done to them. There are different ways to reduce that harm that can lead to the same improvement for animals. For example, if every meat-eater would reduce their meat-consumption by one third, the harm done to animals would be reduced just as much as when one third of meat-eaters would become vegan. Of course it would be even better if both effects occurred! By becoming entrenched in a meat-eater vs. vegan debate we miss out on the huge potential for improvement that lies in small changes by a big number of people.

We should not neglect that potential, if we care about animals. I say that meat-eaters can improve the situation for animals, too! If you don't want to give up meat, consider eating fewer, but allow yourself more quality on the other hand in both your own and animals' interests.

...

Now I've been digging a trench between humans and non-human animals to illustrate a point. Yet I hope that one day we will see all of us on the same side. Attached is a photo of earth taken in 1990 by the voyager 1 space craft. Can't find earth? It's the tiny bluish speck on the brown band on the right. That's the only site where both humans and non-human animals exist. It's our common side.

I spotted the Earth in that photo pretty easily. I think I see my house!

The solution to Fermi's Paradox is, to me, really a simple one, though: why should we believe that "intelligent life" is the only significant and extraordinary thing that the universe is capable of producing or which should be produced? Why couldn't there possibly be billions of planets not all that far from us that have an abundance of beautiful natural wildlife on them? Making tools is a neat trick, but it's just a trick, and the idea that doing so is inherently the natural destiny of all evolution is ultimately a self-serving one. It would be like a dolphin saying that humans are less evolved than dolphins for not having evolved echolocation "yet" as if ultimately this were the foreordained destiny of evolution. There was an abundance of life on Earth for billions of years before humans came along, and if we never had, then it would have kept on spinning just as prettily until the stars had burned out.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

I think in the end, people are going to tend to see an opposing viewpoint as an attack, no matter how nicely it's put.

Many people just get an intrinsic pugilistic thrill out of going through block, jab, hook, dodge, and as long as you continue satisfying that desire by keeping the game going, you only encourage them. When you figure out a means of making those sorts of people feel incredibly bored, they eventually toddle off to find someone else to bother, which opens the conversation for more interested parties.

I try to not come at anyone harshly, but unfortunately, the information itself is pretty harsh and there really isn't any way of sugar-coating it.

You are asking a lot more than you might realize you are by expecting them to care all that much about a member of another species that they do not know and that they do not have any relationship with. They will not admit it to your face or even on a forum like this one, but the bottom-line is that those are truly alien minds that they have no substantial reason to care about.

However, the average person is not going to admit to that because it sounds heartless and ugly. That is because it actually is heartless and ugly, and unlike most people, I am not going to sugar-coat that fact.

How do you talk to people about animals in a manner that gives them a belief that they ought to care whether they live or die?

If you cannot change people's minds about killing and eating animals, then how are you going to change their minds about treating us zoos like we must be inherently soulless, heartless, and virtually incapable of experiencing misery to any extent that they ought to care about? The skills you learn during conversations like these could affect whether I live or die.

Well, I am about to link you to a really GREAT article about dehumanization. It's worth reading. It explains how we trick our minds into seeing other living things, including humans, as objects rather than as people.

https://www.raggeduniversity.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Dehumanization-An-Integrative-Review.pdf

I want you to open that, and I want you to scroll down to the chart that is on page 257. Just perceive and try to understand that chart before you read this post further.

The way that you talk about living things, including humans, has a HUGE affect on how much empathy they are going to show.

By the way, people are capable of perceiving "human nature" without perceiving "human uniqueness." For a sort of fantastical concept of "human nature without human uniqueness," I would refer you to the Incredible Hulk, which had a childlike nature, coarse behaviors, and total lack of self-restraint but actually did have emotional responsiveness, apparent emotional depth, the capacity for love, and other values that fell along apparently a different dimension of how we perceive someone as a person.

Well, the opposite of the Incredible Hulk would be a "refined villain" character like Hannibal Lecter. He was superhumanly mature, refined, restrained, and even possessed of a sort of personal code. He was presented as not only civilized but as the very pinnacle of civility. However, he was absolutely cold-hearted, and instead of seeming to be deeply emotionally involved with anyone he encountered, they were just curiosities to him that he felt no more sentimentality toward than a wooden sculpture he had just made.

To get people to believe that an animal deserves a chance in their hearts, you have to figure out how to talk about them in a way that illustrates both of these qualities but especially human nature. When you succeed at drawing attention to those types of qualities in an animal, then I guarantee that you will always come closer to changing how they behave.

For instance, human uniqueness:

Refinement: "The housing for these animals is incredibly dirty. Cattle are at heart very clean animals that even engage in social grooming. Forcing them to live in squalid housing conditions is really absolutely contrary to their nature."

Civility: "Any time you take away a member of a herd, you disrupt its social dynamics, and this leaves those that remain suffering from role confusion and really an intense and terrible sense of loneliness."

Moral sensibility: "The capacity for understanding murder has even been seen in birds. Crows are known to seek out revenge when a crow that is related to them has been murdered."

That was a true fact: https://www.livescience.com/23090-crows-grudges-brains.html

Logic and reason: "Cattle know to trust humans in regard to veterinary procedures, but evidence shows that they understand and are aware of what is going on when they are loaded up on a truck to be taken to the slaughterhouse. They know what happens at a slaughterhouse. They are not stupid."

Maturity: "The reason why cows cry out when they are separated from their calves is that they feel responsible for their offspring, so they naturally worry when they cannot see or smell their offspring, just like you would."

Human nature:

Individuality/non-fungibility: "I really started to change my mind about chickens when I spent some time around them, and I realized that each really had its own personality and its own role."

Emotional responsiveness: "I once threw a stub of a cigar on the ground, and a rooster pecked it up because he thought it was food. That bird did not just show pain, but I still have scars on my back from when he attacked me with his spurs. He was mad. I can verify that chickens are capable of anger."

Interpersonal warmth: "Even among pigs, they can form actual friendships with each other."

Cognitive openness: "I have really found pigs to be highly inquisitive animals."

Depth: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jul/07/cows-best-friends

The way that you talk actually does affect how people perceive these qualities. It is actually alarmingly easy for people to go into denial about these qualities of character, even in humans.

Even more alarmingly, we can deny ourselves these qualities of character. We can come to believe that we are not really all that unique. We can come to believe that we are rude and crass by nature. We can develop an entrenched belief that we are not really all that mature or even child-like and incapable taking care of ourselves. Every level on which we can attribute humanity to others is also a level on which we can fail to acknowledge our own humanity. This is actually incredibly dangerous. It can also lead to us engaging in seriously bad behaviors. If we come to believe that we are heartless, then we can often do heartless things.

That sounds like a great ideal. But stores don't listen to just a few vegans. They'll listen to a lot of them, though. But first there has to be a lot of us. I suppose we could artificially inflate the numbers to make it seem there are more of us than there are, but I'm not really for doing shady stuff like that. As of right now, meat substitutes are popping up in the meat sections, in view of the average person. If the prices were lower than meat, then they'd probably outsell meat. But for the prices to be lower, more people have to buy them, so it's a catch22.

Prices are starting to come down, I think. Back only 10 years ago, I saw fairly bad tofu-based meat substitutes, and they were priced so outrageously that I outright laughed. I am seeing prices now that are a little bit closer to the conventional product, now that economies of scale have started to set in.

 

[ArticWolf]

I agree, and I've tried to steer clear of personal attacks, rather sticking to pointing out flaws in the argument itself, and being as respectful as possible. Being respectful doesn't mean agreeing with someone else, however.



Actually, I was accused of fictionalizing. Show me where I have fictionalized so I can see what you mean. I have responded to others' points with the meanings that I have understood them to have. Also show me where I have ever attacked or verbally assaulted anyone. If you are going to accuse me of doing something, I deserve to see the evidence.



This thread was already on the topic of veganism vs meat-eating well before I joined it, and both sides have had every bit as much of a part in it and then continued to perpetuate it. The topic of the thread has been discussed, and the consensus was no, vegans are not trying to take people's pets away.



Okay, great. You don't have to. I'm not pressing my beliefs on anyone. I'm simply stating my point of view and why it is such that it is. When others counter, I show why I disagree with those points, but it seems people can't handle someone disagreeing with them.



I didn't attack Knotinterested. She attacked me and then left, so I defended myself. The courteous response at the end might be interpreted as passive-aggressive. She attacked me and then ended with a nicety which was out of character in the context. Her example has been to personally attack me and then accuse me of doing such. I encourage anyone to go back to my first post (#159 on page #6) and read through all my posts again, and also read through her responses to me and judge for themselves.

"Actually, I was accused of fictionalizing" That is incorrect. If you go back to the post you are calling out you will see if you read the entire sentence rather than the word which is clearly a case of auto correct. But the sentence was "The debating strategy that you use is called fictionalization where you try to disassemble each sentence of the point made by your opponent." the way she defined it here if you had read the entire sentence you should have known the word was not fictionalization but rather fractionalization. I hate auto-correct because of things like that. But you misunderstood but still should have caught it due to the meaning being right there with the word. If you now say that you don't fractionalize as a debating technique then, well I'm not going there. You did the same to my post too.
I did read the entire thread before I posted. Personally I think that you are so passionate about your cause that you misinterpret the meaning of what is posted. An example would be as I just posted about fractionalization and with the meaning right after fictionalization you have to admit that it didn't click in your mind. It's a good example of where your passion is in overdrive. I don't see how you can think you are so innocent in this thread when you have actually attacked so many unless it is because of your passion. It must be passion that causes when each of them have called you out you then start pointing fingers at them saying things like you said in your last part of fractionalizing my post.
You said "I didn't attack Knotinterested. She attacked me and then left, so I defended myself." When she had actually just pointed out the reasons that it was fruitless to bring up points in this argument. She thoroughly explained how you react and I agree from everything I have read.
One of her points that you totally sidestepped was that you are not what the dictionary defines as a vegan, and she was correct. You call it an all or nothing argument but you are incorrect and she is correct. She pointed out how vegans have guilt too and followed it up not by attacking but rather by saying that no side should be throwing stones. You sort of agreed but then you started all over again pointing fingers and throwing stones about who was more at guilt, who causes more harm. You totaled missed or just flat out ignored the point. She was trying to backdown and say that there is fault on both side so nobody should be throwing stones, but did you allow that or even agree? No you instead reignited the fire. Her point about charitable donations was met with your statement about not seeing how it was related and called it a bonus. Here I will put it in plain English for you. Put your money where your mouth is! I feel the same way here too. If you were truly interested in the well being of animals then you would be doing more than trying to convert a bunch of meat eaters. Now I'm not going to argue anymore about it. Just lean better how to at least accept points being made in a discussion because you have done this throughout the thread.
Lastly you should realize that when someone gives you reasons that they are no longer going to participate in the discussion and tell you so, the wish you well that it is not out of context as you said. This is a normal action.

In context or not, Good Day.

 

[crankybastard]

No.. actually vegans are the same people that want to have all the weird rights that normal people dont care to have. Although vegans dont want you eating a animal i dont think they mind you fukin a animal...

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

By the way, Nick Haslam is really one of my go-tos for this sort of thing.

Nick Haslam

Professor of Psychology, University of Melbourne - Cited by 38,152 - Social psychology - clinical psychology

scholar.google.com

He has done impressive work on exactly what we are talking about here, which is the fact that humans are easily able to convince themselves that animals that are consumed as meat really do not have minds, EVEN if they would not actually harm any other animal, even a troublesome one, on purpose. It's some pretty weird stuff, but I can guarantee that studying how the mind does this could provide clues as to how to jam the gears.

SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals

Subscription and open access journals from SAGE Publishing, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com

You can still read that one for free if you can access Sage through your local university library or any other institution that you can use for accessing Sage. If you are currently in college, your college might actually have a subscription you could use through the library website.

 

[BlueBeard]

Yi yi yi... I came back to a thread I marked "unwatch." My position is unchanged.

I'm going to say only this much more, because it's all been said already, really. Ad nauseam. We will never agree, never, because we come from different initial, a prior assumptions. There is no common ground, save this:

Vegan or not, those who wish we'd stop harming/hurting animals have truly laudable motives. I strongly admire them for that, though not all vegans are motivated to get other people to also be vegan. Most of us get it. We love the nobility of your intentions. We take a knee to them in respect.

That's because neither of us wants to see animals suffer needlessly. Not when they're hunted. Not even as part of the meatpacking industry. All of us fight against that -- to a certain degree. You don't want them raised for meat at all. That's where we part ways. There is no further common ground and won't be.

And that's because we (us meat-eaters) love and embrace our role as predators and carnivores. And we do not believe in a thing called "speciesism" nor give it any sort of validity. Take away that and... what else is there to obligate us against eating other creatures?

Speciesism has no weight with us as an argument. None at all. I might -- no slight intended -- even get a t-shirt proudly naming myself as a "speciest" by now. I will make it perfectly clear that I *do* consider human begins to be the superior animal on this planet. We just rule!

Again, no joke, not intending to be hurtful, but the arguments in here, at times, have actually made me drool for grilled animal flesh: pork and chicken and beef and bison and deer and rabbits and squirrels. Eating them is part of my heritage and my upbringing.

To me -- and those on "this side" of the argument -- eating animals is natural, healthy... primal. It fulfills a natural, healthy, and primal hunger in us. I love that I know how to field dress them cleanly, hide them, bone them, grind them. When I see cattle in the pasture, I see two things (some zoophiles see three). I see beautiful animals with gorgeous eyes. OMG! The beauty of freshly groomed cows waiting for judging at the county fair? Magnificent specimens! And in the field, peaceful creatures indulging themselves, grazing grasses of the prairie here.

Without a second thought, I can switch minds, can also see butter, cream, milk and cheese or smoked ribs, sizzling steaks and thick hamburgers on buns with onions and pickles and lettuce. A little salt and BAM! That flavor ... salivation, drooling, growling stomach.

I have no qualms whatsoever (and neither do my stock farmer friends or hunting buddies) about having a trained dog at my side in the hunting reserve next to its field, whom I dearly love and whose main joy in life is to hunt with me -- trying to find the pheasant or covey of quail or rabbit in hiding. Or simply watching him/her sitting next to me, hoping for leftovers as I grill farm-raised animals with a beer in one hand, long turner or fork in the other, enveloped in that marvelously fragrant, unctuous odor, hickory smoke or just... searing fat, hissing on the coals.

Period. That's it.

We (meat eaters) understand and nod to those who don't. And -- again, no offense intended -- it also sort of makes us smile and say, "Cool. More meat for me."

Why? Why don't I share your conclusion, then, that I should give up killing animals for food?

I have a kind of need, I guess, never to lose that connection to my human ancestry. I know how to take an animal and turn it into meat. I love that connectedness to primal humans. The first time I felt the bright white fur of a whitetail in my hands with windchills at 40 below, how the blood rushed out and soaked my gloves, and tearing them off, how sinking my hands beneath her steaming entrails into her still liquid blood, warmed them. How I wanted to smear it on my cheeks and howl like a wolf at the rising moon!!! I remembered to thank her for *her* role on earth. She was prey, to be taken for food. I remember how she transformed from a gorgeous, living creature, who, to my surprise, still leaked milk from her teats -- into food.

I wanted to pass that onto my son. I was eager to do it, and I did. He hunts with me to this day.

Being on a farm as a kid, being a hunter yet today -- they keep that primal human part of me fresh. And I'm proud of it. I celebrate it.

My daughter, on the other hand -- you're going to like this -- is a vegan. And she renounces both hunting and eating animals purposely raised en masse for food. (Hard to believe she's *my* daughter? ) I had taken her hunting as a child. She LOVED the pre-season scouting. But lying next to me on a creek bank, iron sights of my muzzleloader dead set on a deer walking a trail straight for us, into an ambush -- an easy, certain kill -- she laid her little hand over my thumb and trigger finger, whispering, "No, daddy. Please don't shoot it." I uncocked the trigger, laid the gun aside, and whispered back, "Okay, honey." And we watched it walk right by us, never knowing we were lying there in the grass, and my daughter has spared its life.

Probably walked over to the other section where some guy shot it with his bow. Oh well. I still got one later that season.

Point is, I had no desire to make *her* do something she didn't want to do. I didn't stick it in her face.

And I don't *want* to do that to you. While you're watching, no, I won't shoot it. But I also don't want you to think that when you're *not* there, I won't. I'm going to take a deer. And tonight, I'm going to eat meat. Again. And tomorrow, the same.

I love the tase of meat. And selfish as you've made that sound, I enjoy and embrace both my role as a conservationist *taking* life for my consumption as being a way to exercise good stewardship of life, AND of butchering meat raised for human consumption. *Humanely* and in good management of a protein resource.

You don't. That's where we part ways. That's... I have no objection to that. I was raised as a farm kid. Maybe you were, too? Maybe the things that bind me to my role as a predator are the very *same* things you've seen, but they put you off. You saw instead an obligation to avoid killing animals if you didn't *have to*.

I don't share that same objection to taking life. But I'm "past" being bewildered by it. I relish it. You don't. And I totally accept your desire not to cause any harm to animals, including harm involved in using them as food.

-- Until someone gets so motivated by their own set of assumptions leading them to be anti-meat that they seek to obligate us others to them, too, trying to take our carnivorous role on this planet away from the rest of us.

If that's too big a preemptive construct, then... well... it'll come down to a fight. You wouldn't want to go to the wall with it, would you. I mean, it's our side that has the guns and gas pits. If any vegan thinks of defending an animal's life by killing a human aggressor, um... we're going to win.

It may sound blunt or arrogant, but facts are facts. I don't really have an apology for it. If I did, I wouldn't really mean it. I am not ashamed of being a meat-eating creature. I'm PROUD of it. And I'm also letting you know I'm not trying to convince you to be a meat eater, let alone clap for me that I am. It's totally your choice not to do that.

And right now, my wife is coming home. So I must go put the chicken in the skillet. Just enough oil to get it crunchy on the outside without drying the meat too much.

We're having salad with it, if you want to share a meal with us. Lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes... You can skip the shredded cheddar and the blue cheese, and we understand you'll pass completely on the chicken. Instead of ice cream for dessert, we have fruit? You are welcome to it.

And even further -- if you can't stomach watching *us* eat chicken in front of you, then... come *after* supper. We'll have popcorn and wine with you as we watch Netflix movies.

There's room on the planet for both of our opinions, because, again, I have nothing against any vegan or certain vegans who are vegan because they want no personal connection to the death of animals. But the OP feared you guys were going to impose your values on us, and that that might cross the lines over to owning animals. While it doesn't seem too far a stretch for me, I really don't share his fears that you're going to take it *that* far, take our companion animals from us. But I do get antsy when I hear someone's going to try to obligate me to their vegan, "don't eat animals," values, which I don't share and never will because there is way too limited common ground for any argument. It's a matter of personal preference only. No argument possible here.

Peace out.

 

[Zoo50]

You are asking a lot more than you might realize you are by expecting them to care all that much about a member of another species that they do not know and that they do not have any relationship with. They will not admit it to your face or even on a forum like this one, but the bottom-line is that those are truly alien minds that they have no substantial reason to care about.

This is speciesist thinking. Humans are animals, and humans (and all other animals) are all on the same planet. Stop looking at the differences between humans and other animals, and look at the similarities.

Well, I am about to link you to a really GREAT article about dehumanization. It's worth reading. It explains how we trick our minds into seeing other living things, including humans, as objects rather than as people.

I think that article partially explains why people such as Knotinterested are OK with treating other beings as mere objects -- the dehumanization (and speciesism).

We can come to believe that we are not really all that unique.

Correct, humans are not unique / special.

One of her points that you totally sidestepped was that you are not what the dictionary defines as a vegan, and she was correct. You call it an all or nothing argument but you are incorrect and she is correct.

Actually, knotinterested was presenting an all-or-nothing argument: she was saying that if someone isn't 100% perfect, they're a hypocrite (that's nonsense).

She pointed out how vegans have guilt too

But what me and @SkawdtDawg have been saying is that meat-eaters are far more guilty than vegans, because meat-eating is inherently unethical. Perhaps you overlooked the following that SkawdtDawg said:

"We choose to eliminate all the unnecessary harm that we can, while your side does not. You cause more harm by choice."

She was trying to backdown and say that there is fault on both sides

You talk about this as if vegans and meat-eaters both are equally at fault, which is nonsense. Meat-eaters are far more at fault than vegans because they choose to go out of their way to do things that support harming animals (namely, meat-eating). Their choices (meat-eating) are also bad for health and the enviornment.

You don't want them raised for meat at all.

Animals should never be slaughtered in the first place, because they have a right to live (just as humans have a right to live).

And that's because we (us meat-eaters) love and embrace our role as predators and carnivores.

This is bullshit. Humans don't have any "role" -- the "role" you speak of is just a construction (excuse) to keep doing immoral things.

And we do not believe in a thing called "speciesism" nor give it any sort of validity.

You're wrong -- speciesism is a real thing (just like racism, sexism, etc.) -- it is discrimination based on species membership. And, based on comments on this thread, you, knotinterested, HyperWoof and others are definitely speciesists -- and that's not good.

Speciesism has no weight with us as an argument. None at all. I might -- no slight intended -- even get a t-shirt proudly naming myself as a "speciest" by now. I will make it perfectly clear that I *do* consider human begins to be the superior animal on this planet. We just rule!

This is such nonsense! Humans are not superior to other animal species. The fact that you think that is arrogant and wrong. Humans are not a special species, and they are (morally) in the same group as other animals.

Again, no joke, not intending to be hurtful, but the arguments in here, at times, have actually made me drool for grilled animal flesh: pork and chicken and beef and bison and deer and rabbits and squirrels. Eating them is part of my heritage and my upbringing.

You clearly have no love or respect for living beings, because if you did, you wouldn't eat animal flesh. And don't use "heritage and upbringing" as an excuse to keep eating meat -- that is bullshit. I grew up eating meat, and I made a choice to stop eating it (once I learned about speciesism and the terrible things that happen to animals). People aren't "locked" into doing something just because they grew up with it.

To me -- and those on "this side" of the argument -- eating animals is natural, healthy... primal. It fulfills a natural, healthy, and primal hunger in us.

The whole "natural" argument is a fallacy. Just because something occurs in nature doesn't necessarily mean humans should do it. Also, you've ignored what @SkawdtDawg and I have said many times, which is that a vegan diet is far healthier than a meat-eating diet. So your statement that meat-eating is "healthy" is completely wrong.

Also, the thing you're saying about meat-eating being "primal" is irrational nonsense.

I love that I know how to field dress them cleanly, hide them, bone them, grind them.

You are a callous, heartless person. You are basically saying you're OK with killing living beings and treating them like mere objects.

Without a second thought, I can switch minds, can also see butter, cream, milk and cheese or smoked ribs, sizzling steaks and thick hamburgers on buns with onions and pickles and lettuce. A little salt and BAM! That flavor ... salivation, drooling, growling stomach.

This means you are a hypocrite, and you are morally inconsistent. If you were morally consistent, and if you gave cows the same moral consideration that you give humans, you wouldn't eat animals.

I have no qualms whatsoever (and neither do my stock farmer friends or hunting buddies) about having a trained dog at my side in the hunting reserve next to its field, whom I dearly love and whose main joy in life is to hunt with me -- trying to find the pheasant or covey of quail or rabbit in hiding. Or simply watching him/her sitting next to me, hoping for leftovers as I grill farm-raised animals with a beer in one hand, long turner or fork in the other, enveloped in that marvelously fragrant, unctuous odor, hickory smoke or just... searing fat, hissing on the coals.

You really ought to think about why you are so callous, heartless, and cold-blooded -- you ought to think about why you don't have empathy for other living beings, and why their interests are not important to you (AND why you have the asinine view that human interests are more important than non-human interests).

Stop treating non-human animals as exploitable objects!

it also sort of makes us smile and say, "Cool. More meat for me."

It also shows that you're an ignorant person who is incapable of understanding why killing a living being is immoral.

The first time I felt the bright white fur of a whitetail in my hands with windchills at 40 below, how the blood rushed out and soaked my gloves, and tearing them off, how sinking my hands beneath her steaming entrails into her still liquid blood, warmed them.

Again, you are callous, heartless, and cold-blooded. In addition, I also think you are a sadist, because you are getting pleasure from another being's pain/suffering, which is unethical. An animal's right to live is MORE important than your sadistic desire to kill an animal.

I remembered to thank her for *her* role on earth. She was prey, to be taken for food.

That deer was not "prey" -- the deer was callously (and for no good reason) killed by you. As @SkawdtDawg said earlier in the thread, the deer's thoughts (if said deer was a ghost) would be "F**k you" (for killing her). Also, the deer you killed did not have a "role" (in terms of being hunted) -- that is nonsense.

Being on a farm as a kid, being a hunter yet today -- they keep that primal human part of me fresh. And I'm proud of it. I celebrate it.

You are a callous, heartless person. Hunting (killing a living being) is not something that should be "celebrated" -- it should be condemned, because it is inherently unethical. It is also disturbing that you're basically proud to be a sadist.

I love the taste of meat.

A living being's right to live is more important than your trivial desire to "taste" something. The way you talk is very morally shallow.

I enjoy and embrace both my role as a conservationist *taking* life for my consumption as being a way to exercise good stewardship of life, AND of butchering meat raised for human consumption. *Humanely* and in good management of a protein resource.

Your using conservation as an excuse to kill another living being is appalling. If someone does something good and then steals from a store, the fact that they stole from a store is still unethical, regardless of whatever good things they also did. Also, animals (such as cows) are not ours to butcher (by "ours", I mean us humans). Also, there is no such thing as "humanely" produced meat -- it is impossible for meat to be "humane", because the act of killing a living being is itself inhumane.

Also, the "protein source" argument is bullshit. There's plenty of non-meat protein sources that one can eat.

I don't share that same objection to taking life. But I'm "past" being bewildered by it. I relish it. You don't.

And the fact that you relish killing a living being makes you an arrogant, callous, heartless, cold-blooded, sadistic person.

Until someone gets so motivated by their own set of assumptions leading them to be anti-meat that they seek to obligate us others to them, too, trying to take our carnivorous role on this planet away from the rest of us.

As I said before, there is is no "role" -- humans don't have any "role" as you claim.

If I did, I wouldn't really mean it. I am not ashamed of being a meat-eating creature. I'm PROUD of it.

You should not be "proud" of eating meat; you should stop eating meat, because it is bad for your health, bad for animals, and bad for the environment. It is terrible that you are "proud" of doing something so immoral.

So I must go put the chicken in the skillet. Just enough oil to get it crunchy on the outside without drying the meat too much.

I think you're just saying this to piss off vegans. You're callously talking about animals as though they are just objects, which is bullshit. It is so shameful that a being's life is reduced down to how "crunchy" it is -- imagine if people talked about humans that way.

Generally speaking, everything you (BlueBeard) have said indicates to me that you don't have empathy for other living beings. It's good that you tolerate your other family members who are vegan, but everything else you believe is nonsense.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

Yi yi yi... I came back to a thread I marked "unwatch." My position is unchanged.

I'm going to say only this much more, because it's all been said already, really. Ad nauseam. We will never agree, never, because we come from different initial, a prior assumptions. There is no common ground, save this:

Vegan or not, those who wish we'd stop harming/hurting animals have truly laudable motives. I strongly admire them for that, though not all vegans are motivated to get other people to also be vegan. Most of us get it. We love the nobility of your intentions. We take a knee to them in respect.

That's because neither of us wants to see animals suffer needlessly. Not when they're hunted. Not even as part of the meatpacking industry. All of us fight against that -- to a certain degree. You don't want them raised for meat at all. That's where we part ways. There is no further common ground and won't be.

And that's because we (us meat-eaters) love and embrace our role as predators and carnivores. And we do not believe in a thing called "speciesism" nor give it any sort of validity. Take away that and... what else is there to obligate us against eating other creatures?

Speciesism has no weight with us as an argument. None at all. I might -- no slight intended -- even get a t-shirt proudly naming myself as a "speciest" by now. I will make it perfectly clear that I *do* consider human begins to be the superior animal on this planet. We just rule!

Again, no joke, not intending to be hurtful, but the arguments in here, at times, have actually made me drool for grilled animal flesh: pork and chicken and beef and bison and deer and rabbits and squirrels. Eating them is part of my heritage and my upbringing.

To me -- and those on "this side" of the argument -- eating animals is natural, healthy... primal. It fulfills a natural, healthy, and primal hunger in us. I love that I know how to field dress them cleanly, hide them, bone them, grind them. When I see cattle in the pasture, I see two things (some zoophiles see three). I see beautiful animals with gorgeous eyes. OMG! The beauty of freshly groomed cows waiting for judging at the county fair? Magnificent specimens! And in the field, peaceful creatures indulging themselves, grazing grasses of the prairie here.

Without a second thought, I can switch minds, can also see butter, cream, milk and cheese or smoked ribs, sizzling steaks and thick hamburgers on buns with onions and pickles and lettuce. A little salt and BAM! That flavor ... salivation, drooling, growling stomach.

I have no qualms whatsoever (and neither do my stock farmer friends or hunting buddies) about having a trained dog at my side in the hunting reserve next to its field, whom I dearly love and whose main joy in life is to hunt with me -- trying to find the pheasant or covey of quail or rabbit in hiding. Or simply watching him/her sitting next to me, hoping for leftovers as I grill farm-raised animals with a beer in one hand, long turner or fork in the other, enveloped in that marvelously fragrant, unctuous odor, hickory smoke or just... searing fat, hissing on the coals.

Period. That's it.

We (meat eaters) understand and nod to those who don't. And -- again, no offense intended -- it also sort of makes us smile and say, "Cool. More meat for me."

Why? Why don't I share your conclusion, then, that I should give up killing animals for food?

I have a kind of need, I guess, never to lose that connection to my human ancestry. I know how to take an animal and turn it into meat. I love that connectedness to primal humans. The first time I felt the bright white fur of a whitetail in my hands with windchills at 40 below, how the blood rushed out and soaked my gloves, and tearing them off, how sinking my hands beneath her steaming entrails into her still liquid blood, warmed them. How I wanted to smear it on my cheeks and howl like a wolf at the rising moon!!! I remembered to thank her for *her* role on earth. She was prey, to be taken for food. I remember how she transformed from a gorgeous, living creature, who, to my surprise, still leaked milk from her teats -- into food.

I wanted to pass that onto my son. I was eager to do it, and I did. He hunts with me to this day.

Being on a farm as a kid, being a hunter yet today -- they keep that primal human part of me fresh. And I'm proud of it. I celebrate it.

My daughter, on the other hand -- you're going to like this -- is a vegan. And she renounces both hunting and eating animals purposely raised en masse for food. (Hard to believe she's *my* daughter? ) I had taken her hunting as a child. She LOVED the pre-season scouting. But lying next to me on a creek bank, iron sights of my muzzleloader dead set on a deer walking a trail straight for us, into an ambush -- an easy, certain kill -- she laid her little hand over my thumb and trigger finger, whispering, "No, daddy. Please don't shoot it." I uncocked the trigger, laid the gun aside, and whispered back, "Okay, honey." And we watched it walk right by us, never knowing we were lying there in the grass, and my daughter has spared its life.

Probably walked over to the other section where some guy shot it with his bow. Oh well. I still got one later that season.

Point is, I had no desire to make *her* do something she didn't want to do. I didn't stick it in her face.

And I don't *want* to do that to you. While you're watching, no, I won't shoot it. But I also don't want you to think that when you're *not* there, I won't. I'm going to take a deer. And tonight, I'm going to eat meat. Again. And tomorrow, the same.

I love the tase of meat. And selfish as you've made that sound, I enjoy and embrace both my role as a conservationist *taking* life for my consumption as being a way to exercise good stewardship of life, AND of butchering meat raised for human consumption. *Humanely* and in good management of a protein resource.

You don't. That's where we part ways. That's... I have no objection to that. I was raised as a farm kid. Maybe you were, too? Maybe the things that bind me to my role as a predator are the very *same* things you've seen, but they put you off. You saw instead an obligation to avoid killing animals if you didn't *have to*.

I don't share that same objection to taking life. But I'm "past" being bewildered by it. I relish it. You don't. And I totally accept your desire not to cause any harm to animals, including harm involved in using them as food.

-- Until someone gets so motivated by their own set of assumptions leading them to be anti-meat that they seek to obligate us others to them, too, trying to take our carnivorous role on this planet away from the rest of us.

If that's too big a preemptive construct, then... well... it'll come down to a fight. You wouldn't want to go to the wall with it, would you. I mean, it's our side that has the guns and gas pits. If any vegan thinks of defending an animal's life by killing a human aggressor, um... we're going to win.

It may sound blunt or arrogant, but facts are facts. I don't really have an apology for it. If I did, I wouldn't really mean it. I am not ashamed of being a meat-eating creature. I'm PROUD of it. And I'm also letting you know I'm not trying to convince you to be a meat eater, let alone clap for me that I am. It's totally your choice not to do that.

And right now, my wife is coming home. So I must go put the chicken in the skillet. Just enough oil to get it crunchy on the outside without drying the meat too much.

We're having salad with it, if you want to share a meal with us. Lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes... You can skip the shredded cheddar and the blue cheese, and we understand you'll pass completely on the chicken. Instead of ice cream for dessert, we have fruit? You are welcome to it.

And even further -- if you can't stomach watching *us* eat chicken in front of you, then... come *after* supper. We'll have popcorn and wine with you as we watch Netflix movies.

There's room on the planet for both of our opinions, because, again, I have nothing against any vegan or certain vegans who are vegan because they want no personal connection to the death of animals. But the OP feared you guys were going to impose your values on us, and that that might cross the lines over to owning animals. While it doesn't seem too far a stretch for me, I really don't share his fears that you're going to take it *that* far, take our companion animals from us. But I do get antsy when I hear someone's going to try to obligate me to their vegan, "don't eat animals," values, which I don't share and never will because there is way too limited common ground for any argument. It's a matter of personal preference only. No argument possible here.

Peace out.

I have mostly just been taking a greater interest, gradually, in plant-derived foods. They are more diverse than anybody told me they were when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I was convinced that the world was composed almost entirely of meat, potatoes, iceberg lettuce, and my favorite, spaghetti. I have become more sophisticated as I have gotten older.

As you say, I honestly wish that Nick had made that article he wrote about meat-eating available for free because if it is commensurate with his usual quality of work, I am certain that it would be very interesting. For some reason, thinking about the taste of meat makes it harder for your mind to process the emotions of the animal that it comes from. You cannot really help it. It is a fascinating phenomenon.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

I think that article partially explains why people such as Knotinterested are OK with treating other beings as mere objects -- the dehumanization (and speciesism).

It is very interesting, actually.

There are actually two different dimensions of it, though.

The "human uniqueness" dimension seems to determine whether or not we would be disgusted by something. Therefore, the crude and the barbaric individual, especially perhaps a savage, is an individual that we see as revolting, unsanitary, and worthy of being avoided unless we happen to know them particularly well or are related to them. Even if we are, we do not tend to want it to be public knowledge. We do not necessarily hate such an individual, and we may even feel sorry for such an individual. We would need to have a very good reason to actually like that individual, though, such as blood relation or having known that individual for a very long time.

The "human nature" dimension, though, determines whether it makes a difference to us what happens to a creature at all. If we regard a creature with absolute indifference, then it may as well be a robot or a bean sprout for all that we care if they suffer. Evidence of pain makes no more difference than the sounds that vegetables make when they cook. To call it "sadism" would be inaccurate: a sadist actually does care if their victim feels pain but just happens to like it. Indifference is really more sinister.

It is as Wilhelm Stekel put it:

"There is no love without hate; and there is no hate without love. The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference; the opposite of feeling can only be the absence of feeling. Disinclination, which is coloured by feeling, often only serves the purpose of concealing and protecting oneself against an inclination. Love and hate must go hand in hand; and the people we love most we hate also, because hate is grounded in the nature of love."​

 

[ArticWolf]

Skawdtdawg,
I will try to keep my reply short and to the point.
I have reexamined the thread and reviewed the posts between you and knotinterested. In my search for places where you say that she had attacked you I was unable to confirm your claims. The closest thing that I could come up with was where I'm sure you considered it an attack of being called a hypocrite. However, her quote of the definition as provided by Merriam-Webster, and stating that you were not within the confines of the definition, and stating that your claim by definition would make you a hypocrite, was in my opinion a point rather than an attack. I understood it to mean that because of your limited use of animal products that you don't have a right to criticize others. It may not have been the best way to make the point but she respected you by offing you an alternative, and asking you why not just call yourself a strict vegetarian. If it had been an attack I don't think she would have been this respectful.
The all or nothing argument has no bearing due to the fact that is you are not within the confines of the definition. I agree it is petty when you are making all the effort you are to be a vegan, but technically her analysis is correct.
On another note, you asked what was wrong with fractionalization. When someone in a debate makes a 6 to 8 sentence point, they are combining sentences to illustrate their point because to say the point bluntly would give it less merit. When you fractionalize and reply to each sentence you are in effect disassembling the pieces of a puzzle and ignoring the entire picture which causes confusion among those trying to follow along . Your reply to each will be formed by multiple sentences and this often opens other doors which are not pertinent to the discussion. This in turn requires the first person to reply to all of your fractionalization in an effort to reassemble their point. At this point the discussion has stalled and because of all the open doors you created by fractionalizing the point of the discussion usually begins to decompose. Fractionalization is not considered as a professional or ethical way to debate.
Just so you know you are not the only one that has fractionalized in this thread. The best way to debate is to address each point in it's entirety. This keeps the discussion moving and makes the entire conversation on topic and understandable.
As you can see this thread is off topic. You had said before that when you joined in the vegan vs meat eaters topic was already being discussed and it was. I don't know why this is but in every forum I come across where the topic is something to do with vegans the conversation always becomes sidetracked into the vegan vs meat eaters arena. I think the original topic such as the one of this thread would have been a much more interesting topic for discussion.

Good Day.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

@SkawdtDawg

One correct criticism about vegans is that they have historically been very all-or-nothing. This drives people to just self-identify as "not that," and the people, resentful of being told how to live, will just make a point, out of spite, of putting meat or dairy of one kind or another into everything in their existence.

People change how they eat when you teach them that non-meat options are not really bland, and when you put enough really good, tasty stuff onto their menu that does not require the slaughter of an ungulate, you ultimately jam the gears in the machine that allows them to strip the human-like nature from how they perceive the ungulates they eat.

A lot of diverse and fun menu options is really very powerful.

I know you might not like thinking that way because, as a vegan that is motivated mostly based on conscience, maybe you think that the reasons that people become vegans ought to be out of compassion for animals.

Find a university computer near you, though, log onto Sage, and look up Haslam's articles on meat-eating. Conscience follows behavior, rather than preceding it, and then entrenches and reinforces it.

 

[BlueBeard]

Maybe we will eventually. I think it's good to have discussions about opposing views as long as it's kept civil.

... I think so, too. I've made an effort to be respectful, and as you can probably see, not everyone has reciprocated. I appreciate you being respectful, too. Like I've said before, I have no problem with people disagreeing with me (and they shouldn't flip out and say I'm throwing stones and pointing fingers), but I do have a problem when they start attacking me rather than the argument.

Yes, sir. We're on the same page. Opposite sides, but same page.

Here's how I look at it, followed by my preference for handling the difference:

Your position is based on reverence for life. I totally respect that. But I believe I also have reverence for life -- it's just that the way we express our reverence arises from our different "religions." (There are so many more).

And like discussions about differences in religion, this topic will always draw out hostilities from the most passionate adherents of one or another among us. History has repeatedly taught us this. It easily gets "rough," because it is that passionate a subject. Push comes to shove, even I will fight*. So... no shoving, people!

As in all discussions of difference, the way to talk about it while keeping it mutually enlightening is simply to admit the points we don't understand, can't comprehend the logic of or just flat out don't share the other's point of view -- while remaining conscious of the fact that intelligent and morally good people just like us, whom we greatly admire, hold opinions that can differ that much from our own. And it's okay.

Tell you what, I'm going to go one step further to close the gap. If you're coming to my house for supper, we'll all eat vegetables that night. Spaghetti, maybe, with mushroom and onion marinara, garlic toast. I'll make sure nothing on my table offends my guest (Just make sure to keep your nose out of my freezer).



-----
*Only examples I can think where the argument takes a lethal turn:
1. A news account I just now tried to find about a duo of animal activists who put out Alpo blended with glass shards in a hunting area, intending to protect wild animals from being hunted by domesticated, "fake" animals, hunting dogs, they believed had no right to exist. One state over from mine. Didn't find it. 1970s, pre internet.

2. Similarly, an occasion I believe to be true but also didn't find in a quick search, 1980s. Anti-hunters entered a woods and shot at hunters in a tree stand. (Dudes like those need to know if they shoot at me, I'm going to be shooting back. Better make sure they kill me with their first shot, because I'm well practiced with my guns.)

 

[BlueBeard]

Generally speaking, everything you (BlueBeard) have said indicates to me that you don't have empathy for other living beings. It's good that you tolerate your other family members who are vegan, but everything else you believe is nonsense.

*sigh*

I'm not just "wrong" but a cold-hearted murderer? Okay. Let's run with that.

The way you're raging is kind of scary, dude. Couple that with your opinion that animals have a right to life equal to a human being's, I'm somewhat concerned what you might actually do to stop the cold-blooded "murder" of a chicken, cow or deer. Not shoving, just making sure I'm hearing you right.

 

[BlueBeard]

I have mostly just been taking a greater interest, gradually, in plant-derived foods. They are more diverse than anybody told me they were when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I was convinced that the world was composed almost entirely of meat, potatoes, iceberg lettuce, and my favorite, spaghetti. I have become more sophisticated as I have gotten older.

As you say, I honestly wish that Nick had made that article he wrote about meat-eating available for free because if it is commensurate with his usual quality of work, I am certain that it would be very interesting. For some reason, thinking about the taste of meat makes it harder for your mind to process the emotions of the animal that it comes from. You cannot really help it. It is a fascinating phenomenon.

I am diabetic and gluten intolerant. Spaghetti at my house is for the guests (I substitute spaghetti squash, careful of the amount I eat). But bread, starchy vegetables like potatoes, etc., even too much onion, are problematic for me.

Meat, on the other hand, gives me no such problems. I follow a strict, balanced diet laid out for me by my nutritionist. I eat two eggs for breakfast, 2 oz. of chicken (sometimes pork) in my special curry at lunch, and 5 oz. of chicken, pork or venison at supper. Rarely eat beef. LOVE the taste of beef, but the cost/serving as a source of dietary protein is just too much for me and my stingy wallet.

Now, also consider that the "choice" not to eat meat mostly lies with those from relatively wealthy cultures. *I* could afford to do that, being American -- go out of my way to find meat substitutes, if I *weren't* a cold-hearted, callous, hypocritical, speciest, murderer (I'm getting kind of a kick out of being labeled with such sweeping, dismissive terms Zoo50 labeled me with...lol). But what about all the cultures trying to supplement their basically nutrition-less diet of rice (which I *can't* eat much of) with little fish and frogs and insects? A dog when they can get their hands on one.

Just asking if anyone might limit the ethical obligation to avoid eating animals to the wealthy of the world, or make it a species-wide obligation?

I do recognize that you, SigmatoZeta, are not firmly entrenched on any side of the argument. I see you as sane and listening, just curious about the merits of all thoughts that have been contributed to the discussion and capable of pondering them without malice. Nice to have folks like that in any conversation.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

I am diabetic and gluten intolerant. Spaghetti at my house is for the guests (I substitute spaghetti squash, careful of the amount I eat). But bread, starchy vegetables like potatoes, etc., even too much onion, are problematic for me.

Meat, on the other hand, gives me no such problems. I follow a strict, balanced diet laid out for me by my nutritionist. I eat two eggs for breakfast, 2 oz. of chicken (sometimes pork) in my special curry at lunch, and 5 oz. of chicken, pork or venison at supper. Rarely eat beef. LOVE the taste of beef, but the cost/serving as a source of dietary protein is just too much for me and my stingy wallet.

Now, also consider that the "choice" not to eat meat mostly lies with those from relatively wealthy cultures. *I* could afford to do that, being American -- go out of my way to find meat substitutes, if I *weren't* a cold-hearted, callous, hypocritical, speciest, murderer (I'm getting kind of a kick out of being labeled with such sweeping, dismissive terms Zoo50 labeled me with...lol). But what about all the cultures trying to supplement their basically nutrition-less diet of rice (which I *can't* eat much of) with little fish and frogs and insects? A dog when they can get their hands on one.

Just asking if anyone might limit the ethical obligation to avoid eating animals to the wealthy of the world, or make it a species-wide obligation?

I do recognize that you, SigmatoZeta, are not firmly entrenched on any side of the argument. I see you as sane and listening, just curious about the merits of all thoughts that have been contributed to the discussion and capable of pondering them without malice. Nice to have folks like that in any conversation.

I am firmly entrenched in a set of underlying principles that I care deeply about and which could swing me either way on particular details. I am no fence-sitter.

I think that plant based proteins are underrated, and many of them can be derived based on minimal processing. As a matter of fact, their lack of either availability or visibility at mainstream grocers is not, in my opinion, your fault, but it is the fault of grocery chains that do not fully appreciate the significance of making more of them more visible and mire clearly understood for what they are. They are both filling and inexpensive. As a matter of fact, I think that you actually would buy them if you saw a reasonably visible display near animal products that you were familiar with. Mere association would work its magic on you in the fullness of time. You could not help it, and that is really okay. Marketing affects all of us.

In my opinion, the ethical burden falls upon everyone in the supply chain, and while the consumer is a part of the supply chain, every hand that the product passes through also bears responsibility. I genuinely believe that you would care more if your alternatives were better presented to you.

Your hunting constitutes an archaic tradition, but I think that that ethnocide, which is the unnatural destruction of a culture with its beliefs and traditions, is ultimately evil in its own right. Cultures like that surrounding hunting ought to be allowed to die out peacefully in their own time. Eventually they should, but upending a culture with a sense of heartlessness is not something that I will be driven by any force to agree with. This culture's days are numbered, though, and that is something that I see as fitting.