Personally, if I was hungry, had a cow, a gun, some knives, and a nice big grill, I wouldn't have any problem at all playing the butcher. So I don't mind that someone else is doing it for me.
(try thinking about this on a completely empty stomach btw)
Quote:Original post by Chris Reynolds Personally, if I was hungry, had a cow, a gun, some knives, and a nice big grill, I wouldn't have any problem at all playing the butcher. So I don't mind that someone else is doing it for me.
See, one can argue the morality of that, but at least it's rational.
Well no matter what you eat, you're taking it's life away before you eat it, so why value the life of plants less than that of animals? ">related viewing
Quote:Original post by jackolantern1 someone else is killing my food for me, so that does not directly bother me.
Yikes.
What is wrong with that?
What's wrong with not caring about something because it is done on behalf of you, rather than directly by you? Quite a bit.
Don't get me wrong, it is not morality that makes me not want to kill anything. I just prefer not to. I don't give a crap about the chicken and cows that I eat, I just don't want to do it myself. Makes pretty good sense to me. I think most people who eat meat could not slaughter the animals themselves, and just about all of them would prefer not to.
I believe that learning how not to kill one another would be a more prudent priority than protecting poultry. Why would we expect to be able to treat other species well when we can't even treat ourselves with any respect? It's like people who complain that video games don't handle sexuality well enough... as if the rest of the planet had reached consensus on the subject.
Talking about morality is a convenient way to distract people from the fact that you have priorities that don't make any goddamn sense. PETA is the poster boy for this with their disregard for human life and all vegetarians get to suffer for it by extension.
Does not eating meat somehow prevent the slaughter of animals even when no sane person could ever possibly expect the majority of the population to stop doing it? No. Not in the slightest. It's absurdly futile.
Meanwhile, we have seen very promising gains in our ability to not kill other human beings (despite what the fear-mongering media may tell you) so that seems like a much better place to invest effort since it's already proven that effort can make a difference.
When that effort succeeds, and we learn to respect human life, then maybe we can start seriously thinking about not eating animals.
Chris, the answer is that humans are capable of rationalizing anything their group does. It feels normal to you to eat the flesh of dead animals just like it felt normal to the Aztecs to sacrifice people, for the Māoris to consume their enemies bodies, for the Nazis to make leather jackets out of Jews, and so on.
Is it right? I'd say that it's definitely not fucking right. But are you bad a person for it? I don't think so, just acculturated, and maybe not that introspective.
Were there Germans who thought maybe the whole race thing was wrong? Yeah, sure, but they are rare. It takes a different sort of person to look at part of their culturally enforced worldview and despite the biases and despite the probable backlash, say: "wait a minute, this is insane. I'm not going to do this. I'm going to choose to live my life the best way I can, and I don't care if it's inconvenient or I catch flak for it."
The difficult part is actually getting to the point, despite your culture, to be able to identify the insane things in it. The easy bit is deciding to live morally as a result of your realization.
I'd be happy if you were one of those people. I think the world would be better with more of those people. But, do I blame you for (maybe) not being one? No, that's just part for the course.
