Why vegans are simply better people

[qayak]

We can maybe feel empathetic if they are treated poorly. I doubt many of us feel much empathy for them while we are eating them.

I have thrown a hundred pounds of life crawfish in a boiling pot before. I felt no empathy for them. I was waiting for the feast that awaited. I've had to eat fairly gross things while doing survival training in the army years ago (yuck I won't elaborate). I felt no empathy for what i ate. I was friggin hungry and required calories.

Here's an interesting thought experiment/ question for the vegans. Would you find any moral dilemmas if forced into a survival situation? Or would you refuse to eat animals at the risk of starvation?

I agree. Not wanting to see an animals suffer unnecessarily can simply mean you want food animals treated properly and killed quickly.

My wife is pretty much vegetarian. She states it is an ethical thing, she doesn't like the way factory farms treat animals but she flat out admits that in a situation of her or a cow, the cow can turn around and kiss its ass good-bye.

She recognizes that she has the luxury of lofty morals because she has ready access to food.

Like I used to tell my kids when they said my cooking sucked: "No, its great! You just aren't hungry enough yet."

 

[citizenzen]

My wife is pretty much vegetarian. She states it is an ethical thing, she doesn't like the way factory farms treat animals but she flat out admits that in a situation of her or a cow, the cow can turn around and kiss its ass good-bye.

I think most people in most situations — self preservation being the incredibly strong force that it is — could fill the blank with nearly anything ...

in a situation of me or a [blank], the [blank] can turn around and kiss its ass good-bye.

 

[qayak]

Nevermind the fallacious appeal to nature, the argument cuts both ways: adult lions kill infant lions all the time, why should an adult human feel sympathy for killing an infant human? Humans have an incredible capacity to be cruel to one another, why should they have to break their instinctual drive to kill one another for self-protection, self interest, and tribalism? If lions have no sympathy when they kill other lions in cold blood, why should a man feel sympathy when he kills another man?

Animals kill each other all the time. Its hard to take moral inspiration from them as a model of human behavior without reducing all humans -- rational or non-rational -- to the status of animals.

We feel sympathy/empathy because that is the way nature made us. It is neither, right nor wrong, it is just the way it is.

So, where a lion doesn't care how it treats the animal it is about to eat, we do, and we are the only animal that tries to mitigate the suffering of the animals it eats.

Male lions kill the cubs of other male lions because it brings the lionesses into estrus and allow him to mate with them. It assures that his energy is only going to raise his own offspring. Once again, no morality attached to it. It is what it is.

 

[ConspiRaider]

Suppose I steal your identity, take massive loans out in your name, trash your credit, and empty your bank accounts. You may object, which is perfectly reasonable to do, but what exactly do you expect to come of it? Property rights are subjective. Obviously, taking your money doesn't offend my moral sensibilities. What are you going to do about it? Have me arrested, coerce me into returning the money, force me to adhere to a moral standard I clearly do not hold in the first place? Or are you going to sit down, shut up, and just accept it as a brute fact that something happened to you that you don't like?

So this is why people keep emailing me:

"Hey Raidey, saw your pictola on FB, wow! Is that natural red hair?"

Ah-HAH!

 

[Dessi]

Humans that don't act like humans; that kill their kids or succumb to their animal urges, get treated like animals.

These "animal urges" wouldn't include the instinctual drive to eat other animals, being tribalistic, would they?

 

[Skeptical Greg]

These "animal urges" wouldn't include the instinctual drive to eat other animals, being tribalistic, would they?

Of course they would.. ( not sure what the ' tribalistic ' has to do with it )
Since we are animals, all of our actions are the result of " animal urges " .

Most of us have the capacity to choose which urges to follow, for whatever reason.
A capacity most other animals ( none that I know of ) do not have.

 

[Furcifer]

My post made no such presumption, nor did it contain a fallacy. Just nitpicking, I digress.

If it didn't contain a fallacy I probably wouldn't have responded

Your response to locigfail, and claiming he was engaging in an appeal to nature in itself is fallacious. It's not a "formal fallacy", just your regular old mistake in reasoning "fallacy". But I to digress...

Anyhow, I don't see where logicfail was appealing to nature. Possibly begging the question, but not an appeal to nature.

These "animal urges" wouldn't include the instinctual drive to eat other animals, being tribalistic, would they?

Not typically, no. Even plants will strain to seek out nourishment (heck, some eat animals).

 

[bit_pattern]

Geez, you wouldn't want to engage in a bit of light hearted socialising in a thread like this. Is serious business!

 

[Belz...]

Suppose I steal your identity, take massive loans out in your name, trash your credit, and empty your bank accounts. You may object, which is perfectly reasonable to do, but what exactly do you expect to come of it? Property rights are subjective. Obviously, taking your money doesn't offend my moral sensibilities. What are you going to do about it? Have me arrested, coerce me into returning the money, force me to adhere to a moral standard I clearly do not hold in the first place? Or are you going to sit down, shut up, and just accept it as a brute fact that something happened to you that you don't like?

Dessi, stealing is illegal. A fundamental difference with eating meat.

I don't force people to adhere to my morals. I would like them to, but I don't expect them to. I will do something about them breaking the law, however.

 

[The Big Dog]

And now you are throwing out logic terms with no explanation... in Latin.

Progress ?

Tsukasa? The explanation is, as if it is not obvious enough, that your earlier post had two major logical fallacies in it.

I quoted the sentences, and now I've given you a hint.

Your task, should you want to accept it, is to do a little introspection and determine what those fallacies are. You don't have to, of course, staring into the mirror is hard. I won't think any less of you.

 

[Dessi]

Oh, absolutely. If it's a moral code, then I expect them to expect me to follow it, too. That's why I disagree with them, though, because I have a different moral code. Mind you, I don't expect them to follow mine.

Suppose I steal your identity, take massive loans out in your name, trash your credit, and empty your bank accounts. You may object, which is perfectly reasonable to do, but what exactly do you expect to come of it? Property rights are subjective. Obviously, taking your money doesn't offend my moral sensibilities. What are you going to do about it? Have me arrested, coerce me into returning the money, force me to adhere to a moral standard I clearly do not hold in the first place? Or are you going to sit down, shut up, and just accept it as a brute fact that something happened to you that you don't like?

Dessi, stealing is illegal. A fundamental difference with eating meat.

I don't force people to adhere to my morals. I would like them to, but I don't expect them to. I will do something about them breaking the law, however.

Its hard to disconnect laws from morals. In the US, many, many civil rights activists went to jail engaging in non-violent disobediance to challenge laws on racial segregation in the US, because they defied laws that legally separated whites and non-whites, and action justified very strongly by a moral incentive. Presently, many people protest the IRS every year on the basis that taxation is theft, many are jailed for refusing to pay their income taxes for the same reasons, not quite as successfully.

Usually people perceive a strong concordance between what is legally right and morally right (laws that protect you against rape, murder, theft, as well as white collar crimes like bribing judges, insider trading), other times there's a disconnect (slavery). Laws codify standards of ethical behavior which everyone must comply, its hard to separate the two, particularly in the area of property rights, civil rights, criminal law. Laws are regularly challenged, enforced, or created in response to some ethical principle or another, we do it all the time.

When enforce a law, you are enforcing standards of ethical behavior that everyone may not agree with, not least of which is the standard that people ought to obey laws in the first place.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Your example, that Belz responded to:

Suppose I steal your identity, take massive loans out in your name, trash your credit, and empty your bank accounts. You may object, which is perfectly reasonable to do, but what exactly do you expect to come of it? Property rights are subjective. Obviously, taking your money doesn't offend my moral sensibilities. What are you going to do about it? Have me arrested, coerce me into returning the money, force me to adhere to a moral standard I clearly do not hold in the first place? Or are you going to sit down, shut up, and just accept it as a brute fact that something happened to you that you don't like?

...hardly fell within the category of unjust law, that you went to great length to ( unnecessarily ) explain..

You really come off as " preachy ", or as if you are adressing a grade school class..

 

[Belz...]

Its hard to disconnect laws from morals.

No, actually it's very easy. Take North Korea. Please.

The two are not the same and your example was one of a clearly illegal action. Incidently, it's also one that goes against the morals of most people, so it's a double whammy.

Eating meat is not illegal, and for many people (dare I say most) it is not immoral. In my humble opinion, it becomes immoral only when someone decides to feel sympathy for his plate of food, focus on the exceptions where animals were poorly treated and generalizes them, equates humans and animals in some way, ignores the fact that we have to get our proteins somewhere, and gives a pass to other animals who kill each other in amazingly cruel ways.

And also, your example had nothing to do with what I said. You weren't trying to get a rise out of me, were you ?

 

[Dessi]

Your example, that Belz responded to:
...hardly fell within the category of unjust law, that you went to great length to ( unnecessarily ) explain..

I made no implications of what is or is not an unjust law. Belz made a comment that he does not force people to conform to his private morality... but if he expects people to obey the law and respect his property rights, he does.

I would not call him a hypocrite for conceding that, occasionally, he does force his morals on others, he may not have realized that the literal meaning of "not forcing my morals on others" has implications far far outside what he eats. He may understand that he does, in fact, force his morality on others, and that it can be quite rational to do so.

You really come off as " preachy ", or as if you are adressing a grade school class..

Point taken. I'm a writer at heart, wordy pretentiousness is in my blood, but so is editing the crap out of my posts so I don't come across as needlessly preachy too

 

[Belz...]

I made no implications of what is or is not an unjust law. Belz made a comment that he does not force people to conform to his private morality... but if he expects people to obey the law and respect his property rights, he does.

I would not call him a hypocrite for conceding that, occasionally, he does force his morals on others, he may not have realized that the literal meaning of "not forcing my morals on others" has implications far far outside what he eats. He may understand that he does, in fact, force his morality on others, and that it can be quite rational to do so.

That's very generous of you. Only, I DON'T force my morals on others. I enforce laws, not morals.

For instance, there are no morals that tell me to pay my taxes. But there are good reasons to and therefore we have laws for that and I agree with them. Not every law is about morals.

 

[Furcifer]

Not every law is about morals.

Is murder even about morality? Capital punishment is still carried out and probably started about the time the first murder happened. I think murder is illegal more because it's impractical to have people killing each other on a whim (possibly for food).

 

[RandFan]

Perhaps I'm missing something but, [opinion alert] I want to say that I completely agree that laws are the outgrowth of the moral zeitgeist. Given that legal philosophers and justice professors make that very claim I can't see anyway around that. (Harvard University's Justice With Michael Sandel). There was a time when slavery was legal and the South felt that the North was trying to push their morals onto them (the south). Segregation. Women's right to vote. Miscegenation laws. What was the basis behind the call for change? Wasn't it moral indignation?

Now, I don't think eating animals is the same as slavery, segregation, women's rights, etc. But let me own that word, "equate", let's use it but point out that I'm drawing a comparison and that comparison is this, there was a time when one group of people felt that slavery should be legal and another didn't. Same here. There are two groups. That's the only "equating" that I'm doing. I'm not trying to say that I (RandFan, meat eater) have the morals of a slave owner.

Since morality isn't objective, religiously or scientifically, who is to say that our views are absolute, or, that some day our morals will be seen by the majority as immoral (not that future popularity would make our current morals wrong)?

I think it fair to grant that vegans have an *ethic and there is nothing untoward behind trying to influence others to agree with their ethic. I think that is the very basis for Hegel's dialectic and free speech, right?

*One that, in the least, seeks to reduce suffering. At least, that's my opinion.

 

[Belz...]

I think it fair to grant that vegans have an ethic and there is nothing untoward behind trying to influence others to agree with their ethic. I think that is the very basis for the Hegel's dialectic and free speech, right?

Right. But if you try to convince me, expect an argument.

Also, if someone says "I disagree with you, and here's why I think you should change your diet", that's one thing. "You eat live a caveman" (I've been told this before), I take issue with. And the more extreme cases, also.

 

[RandFan]

Right. But if you try to convince me, expect an argument.

I'm with you. In the trenches.

Also, if someone says "I disagree with you, and here's why I think you should change your diet", that's one thing. "You eat live a caveman" (I've been told this before), I take issue with. And the more extreme cases, also.

That's fair, agreed, though I think you would have had a more compelling case if you had simply cited the OP, right? What a smug piece of crap that was. Yeah, with that we are on the same page.

 

[myowninvention]

Perhaps I'm missing something but, [opinion alert] I want to say that I completely agree that laws are the outgrowth of the moral zeitgeist. Given that legal philosophers and justice professors make that very claim I can't see anyway around that. (Harvard University's Justice With Michael Sandel). There was a time when slavery was legal and the South felt that the North was trying to push their morals onto them (the south). Segregation. Women's right to vote. Miscegenation laws. What was the basis behind the call for change? Wasn't it moral indignation?

Now, I don't think eating animals is the same as slavery, segregation, women's rights, etc. But let me own that word, "equate", let's use it but point out that I'm drawing a comparison and that comparison is this, there was a time when one group of people felt that slavery should be legal and another didn't. Same here. There are two groups. That's the only "equating" that I'm doing. I'm not trying to say that I (RandFan, meat eater) have the morals of a slave owner.

Since morality isn't objective, religiously or scientifically, who is to say that our views are absolute, or, that some day our morals will be seen by the majority as immoral (not that future popularity would make our current morals wrong)?

I think it fair to grant that vegans have an ethic and there is nothing untoward behind trying to influence others to agree with their ethic. I think that is the very basis for the Hegel's dialectic and free speech, right? One that, in the least, seeks to reduce suffering. At least, that's my opinion.

I think this is very apt, and shows why many vegans and animal rights activists compare our treatment of meat animals to slavery- there is a strong feeling of fighting an immoral legal system, and an indifferent society.
To a point, I agree with them- I find many of the practices in place since industrialization of the meat industry to be immoral (not to mention the negative effects of this system for people- eg. hormones in meat and milk, environmental issues, etc.) and I think that the humane treatment of animals in our care is something very much worth fighting for.

Unfortunately, what I find is that the rhetoric being used by many in the animal rights movement to be so far removed from reality, or at least the reality I live in, that I find it counterproductive- people who might otherwise be sympathetic are either disgusted or unmoved by the stances taken by organizations like PETA, that too many are inclined to throw out the whole argument and label all people fighting for animal welfare as nuts. The ideas espoused by PETA are too far removed from what they should IMO stand for- that is the "ethical treatment of animals"- and instead they have become a scape goat for people who don't want to take the time to look into changing their own habits. After all,I mean, if you're going to be labeled as evil for eating meat, you might as well eat the stuff that costs less, right?

You'll see a similar thing in many emotionally charged issues- look at feminism, for example, where the extremist views of some who called themselves feminists resulted in many who would otherwise be for the movement to refrain from associating themselves with the word, or the concept of feminism all together. (In my experience, as a respondent at a crisis center, I heard many woman say they did not want to complain about things like sexual harassment because they didn't want to be "one of those" women. I have met few woman who openly call themselves feminists, not because they disagree with the general idea that women have equal rights, but because they don't want to be part of a movement that holds so many with such extreme views.)