Har Har I'm Gonna Talk About How Much I Love Meat That'll Teach These Vegetarians!

you should grow some tolerance, john !

*it bothers me zero.

Nickalicious rules.

bevo eats baton twirlers.

http://www.ps.uga.edu/images/uga/ugavi.jpg

you mean like this thread ---> MEAT!!! -- started by yours truly?

seriously -- there's a difference between explaining why engages in a certain behavior (which you do in yer posts re vegetarianism, John) and sloganeering spam about the same behavior (i.e., the "support a meat-free world" guy).

as fer me, i have no real ethical reason for or against meat-eating -- i eat meat because it tastes nice, and tend not to think of it otherwise. which means that i could theoretically be persuaded to vegetarianism, though if i do go that way it would probably be more for culinary reasons than ethical ones. and as it is, i do avoid some kinds of meat -- like pork -- but for health reasons (and a phobia, because i once saw a tv documentary of some guy who ate bad pork and they ended up pulling a really long worm outta his intestine because of his eating the rancid pork!)

Ryan upthread is OTM, you actually make me want to tease you like yr my little sister or something. My gawd.

well, i hate them. who gave them the right not to eat dead animals? bastards!

"i think that some of their thoughts on the subject are a little utopian..."

yeah, heh-heh, reminds me of those crazy-ass people who wanted to give (snicker) women the right to vote...or the bleeding hearts who wanted to abolish slavery...when are people ever going to learn that it's impossible to change the way things are?

"...i.e., society at large isn't gonna give up eating burgers and ribs;"

no, society at large (codetalk for obese persons?) won't...only people who are tired of getting bypass surgery, like dick cheney. 'I'LL GIVE UP MY BABY BACK RIBS WHEN YOU PRY THEM FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS!' (slogan of n.m.a., the national meateaters' association lobbying group)

anyhow, vegetarianism/veganism was a passing fad. each year there are fewer and fewer of them. heck, you can't even find tofu or soymilk in health food stores anymore.

Not really.

aaarghh....nicole, please tell me what exactly in my post made me out to have a 'judgemental and ignorant attitude'... ('ignorant attitude', what does that even mean?)

also, maybe you find my posts obnoxious, fine, but this is at least the third time that you have personally insulted me/made some nasty comment directed specifically to me, when i have never, ever attacked you or anyone else personally in this forum. what is the deal?

for the record, i've met veg people in real life who were very lovely and also some who were total assholes. same with meateaters. making ad hominem attacks/judgements has nothing to do with the issue at hand...

Which is exactly what you did. Re-read your original post.

Dan, it's not just howling extremists who find parallels between the three isms you cite.

Every week, however, his heart in his mouth, he watched The Animal Kingdom. Graceful animals like gazelles and antelopes spent their days in abject terror while lions and panthers lived out their lives in listless imbecility punctuated by explosive bursts of cruelty. They slaughtered weaker animals, dismembered and devoured the sick and the old before falling back into a brutish sleep where the only activity was that of the parasites feeding on them from within. Some of these parasites were hosts to smaller parasites, which in turn were a breeding ground fir viruses. Snakes moved among the trees, their fangs bared, ready to strike at bird or mammal, only to be ripped apart by hawks. The pompous, half-witted voice of Claude Darget, filled with awe and unjustifiable admiration, narrated these atrocities. Michel trembled with indignation. But as he watched, the unshakable conviction grew that nature, taken as a whole, was a repulsive cesspit. All in all, nature deserved to be wiped out in a holocaust--and man's mission on earth was probably to do just that.

Ha Nick finds the hidden connecting thread between PETA and the people who post "meat is delicious" threads!

No, it's just immature.

it's not just howling extremists who find parallels between the three isms you cite.

OMG. Suddenly I'm 16 again, listening to Consolidated and thinking righteous thoughts. Meat is a tool for patriarchal domination!

Ok, sure. Maybe it is. But more than most other things? If racism and sexism is your angle, meat is pretty light in that shit.

Note also that The Jungle was a piece of racist garbage and therefore completely dismissable in my view.

=it had no effect whatsoever? (!)

I fully admit that this is a prejudiced opinion.

I think Tad's point is that for people who have experienced racism, the notion that their suffering at the hands of racists is somehow comparable to the plight of food animals would be insulting, and that they would kick the asses of the vegetarian who began a conversation with that point. I think his larger point is "human suffering is more important than animal suffering."

http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/images/beef_feedlot.jpg

(Also: is the suffering of individuals in more primitive societies therefore less profound than that of individuals in more developed societies? It seems to follow from your post.)

1. Are you sure your suffering is the same as everyone else's? Have you experienced pain through someone else's body? If two people get hairline fractures while playing a sport and one stops playing while the other one continues, can we still be certain they're experiencing the pain the same way?

2. How often do you get hung from meathooks? Next time you go out, oyu should pick a non-vampire bar.

Also, your pique was raised because someone posted a pro-meat comment on an anti-meat thread, correct? I seem to recall a couple months back when Sterling posted a thread asking for tips on how to cook steak, you posted a comment like "don't cook it all". How is that any different or less obnoxious?

Phrase this question in the negative ("how are sure your suffering isn't the same as every other creature's?") and you have the animal rights position in a nutshell. You can't be sure, because you haven't walked a mile in their shoes, so compassion dictates that you assume their suffering is at least as severe as yours.

2. How often do you get hung from meathooks? Next time you go out, oyu should pick a non-vampire bar

Don't knock it 'til you try it ;)

Mr. Diamond, point taken.

You can't be sure, because you haven't walked a mile in their shoes, so compassion dictates that you assume their suffering is at least as severe as yours.

My compassion dictates that I worry about the plight of people over the plight of animals. If I am driving down a road and I see a person and their dog lying in a ditch and I can only help one of them, I will always help the person. I would be happier with animal rights activists as a group if I believed that they would do the same for me.

Except that the metaphor is more like you and your dog are standing by the side of the road, and the vegetarian smiles and waves at you, but the carnivore shoots your dog, barbeques it, and chomps down, offering you a bite.

The carnivorous animal-rights activist might shoot and eat you instead of your dog, or maybe both of you, I'm not sure.

Obviously the animal-rights activist would try to save you and your dog. Hypothetical situations where only you or your dog must live and the non-speciesist animal-rights activist must decide who to save and who to spare and thus must resort to a coin toss don't seem terribly realistic or helpful.

okay...for what it's worth, i wasn't 'equating eating meat with racism and sexism' in my post. i was trying to make a point about social change; about how people in the past have thought that changing the social order in different ways amounted to being utopian pipedreams that would never see the light of day...but, as history bears out, things do in fact change. think of how just a decade or so ago, most (non-asian, at least) people in america had never even heard of soymilk...half a century ago, it was positively exotic to be a vegetarian...y'know, things change!!

for this i get called an 'asshat'? bahhh!

that being said, as different folks have pointed out above, one can draw legitimate parallels between the three phenomena...in each case, one is casting a blind eye towards the suffering of others. the suffering is ignored, or seen as not meeting some spurious criteria for legitimacy. 'such and such ethnic group is not really human anyway, so who cares?' 'women are lesser than men, so who cares?' 'they're just dumb animals, so who cares?'

It doesn't mean it shouldn't or can't be made, but that's why I'm very wary of the comparison and why so many people find it innately absurd.

Personally, I agree that reducing human suffering is a greater cause than reducing animal suffering. However, who/what do I hurt by NOT eating meat? Nobody as far as I can tell. In my own mind at least I am preventing the death of some animals or at least not engaging in their murder. By encorporating this basic rule into my daily life, I can easily make the world a better place (according to my standards). True, I don't save any human lives, but are we all obligated to save the world on every level?

I am not much of an activist, but I do understand the need for activists to specialize. We can't all just fight dictators in foreign countries. We need people fighting for the environment, for gay rights, for equal opportunity, for animal rights...

I find it really hard to believe that most big chain restaurants provide vegetarian entrees because of 'nice, polite' vegetarians. If I tell the manager at Ruby Tuesday's that I am upset they no longer carry the garden pasta, he's not going to give a rat's ass.

no, no one is questioning the validity of classifying organisms as human or non-human...the issue here concerns some people's apparent belief that humans have some sort of monopoly on feeling pain/suffering/having emotions. anyone who has spent any amount of time around dogs, cats, cows, pigs, etc. knows that 'non-humans' most definitely exhibit emotions...and respond to kind treatment with obvious pleasure and respond to cruel treatment not unlike humans do (with crying, whimpering, howling, etc.). the question then becomes, just as one would aspire to avoid causing suffering to one's fellow human beings, shouldn't those creatures similarly be treated with consideration so that they do not have to suffer?

No, that's not the point.

Sometimes, people fall into the trap of arguing on their opponents' wrong-headed terms. So faced with a racist belief of "these people are inferior" the nice people respond with their own belief of "no, these people are equal, as are all people". That's fine, it's true and handy and everything. That argument's won.

But by arguing on these terms, the suggestion is raised that the only reason why sexism/racism/holocaust are bad things is that they are inflicted on equally valuable beings.

So one might wonder what the correct ethical position would be if, hypothetically, Jews or women could be proven to be lesser humans. If the concensus is that Jews are a wee bit inferior, would that justify killing them? What if they were demonstrably very much inferior? At what point is it reasonable to start killing Jews?

I say at no point. But most people, by eating meat, show that there would come a point. It would come when Jews were so different from the rest of us that we couldn't fuck them and make babies. That's when they stop being human officially, and that's when they're fair game. And I just don't get that.

i know hypocrisy/bigotry/bullshit regrettably can be found within me, but few, if any, are entirely without it...

Why should humanity go out of its way to protect other animals from suffering? What's the biological advantage? (Note very carefully that I am not saying that mankind should go out of its way to inflict suffering on other animals, except maybe ugly yippy rat dogs.)

Smee, I don't offer this quote from Coetzee's The Lives of Animals as an argument. I offer it as a description of a feeling, which might explain in some way that "depth of emotion and energy". Perhaps people like this are deluded and sentimental and mad, I don't know. But this is how they often feel (sorry for yet more holocaust reference):

"I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money.
It is as if I were to visit friends, and to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living room, and they were to say, ‘Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it? Polish-Jewish skin it’s made of, we find that’s best, the skins of young Polish-Jewish virgins.’ And then I go to the bathroom and the soap-wrapper says, ‘Treblinka – 100% human stearate.’ Am I dreaming, I say to myself? What kind of house is this?"

Of course, it's not quite that simple, as mankind has a unique self-awareness which makes this equilibrium both difficult to achieve and absolutely vital at the same time. So we, unlike animals, need to make efforts to get the right balance - AND IF THIS CAN BE DONE INCORPORATING THE EATING OF MEAT, then it is entirely self-justifying.

No other species worry about the "suffering" they cause to their prey. I've never tried to argue we go about the raising and slaughtering of livestock in the ideal way - far from it - but such a omnnivorous utopia is a realistic ideal, both in terms of nature's grand plan and in terms of the good it does to humankind and, if handled correctly, the natural world.

The fact that we have the gift of compassion has nothing whatsoever to do with an obligation not to kill other animals. This argument is simply wrong.

good god, do people base all of their decisions in life on the basis of the "biological advantage" to be gained?...i'm not sure exactly what the "biological advantage" would be, but i do know that scientists have done tests to show that establishing/reinforcing a more compassionate attitude in one's mind is of measureable benefit in terms of decreasing stress levels. but if you really need scientists to measure such things and inform you of the biological advantage it gives to you & the other members of your species, then, i just dunno what to say. trying to justify/quantify human emotional responses in scientific terms strikes me as being somewhat bizarre...i mean, screw all the 'shoulds' and biological rationales & so forth. it's a matter of acting from one's heart. if you see a baby drowning, you try to rescue the baby without a moment's hesitation. if you hear a dog whining in obvious pain, you try to comfort it and see what you can do to help it. that's all pretty much automatic, isn't it?

i don't get it. what is the gift of compassion for, then? why place limits on it, when part of the very nature of compassion is that of reaching out & transcending boundaries, & establishing/acknowledging connectedness?

A collective panacea to make the species feel good after having killed off so many of its own over the years in a fit of pique.

Scientists have proven the same thing about believing in God, which inChristian terms means dominion over the animals, and hamburgers. It doesn't matter wht you believe, as long as you're comfortable with it.

That's compassion right there.

"Compassion: the humane quality of understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it".

If the don't-eat-meat argument is centred on compassion, then morally it founders straight away as it's certainly possible to slaughter animals with negligible suffering on their part.

I *know* this isn't how the meat industry works. For my own part, I have chosen to turn a blind eye to this. I understand and sympathise with people whose morals won't let them do so. But the argument that eating meat is fundamentally wrong just keeps falling down ON ITS OWN TERMS.

yeah, that's why i said in my post, screw looking for a biological rationale and all that...using a scientific reductionistic approach to dissect compassion doesn't get one very satisfactory results.

"It seems unethical to me to allow the desire to protect animal life to take precedence over saving human life"...
'That's compassion right there.'

yes, compassion for humans. but what about the animals?

i must just be thick, but i don't understand how slaughtering animals squares with this definition you cited:
("Compassion: the humane quality of understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it".)

how is it compassionate to the animals, who may very well be interested in living out their lives without being slaughtered?...no matter how you go about it, killing is inevitably a rather nasty business. i mean, we are talking 'slaughtering' here, not euthanizing, correct?

vegetarians who are like that for intellectual reasons have identified a concrete and practical way of personally registering their opposition to an entire system of agribusiness every minute of every day, not many other forms of protest are quite so intense, i'm in awe frankly of their fortitude and discipline, no way could i do that. the only equivs i can think of would be refusing to drive or use cars.

yes, compassion for humans. but what about the animals?

So your compassion is better than my compassion?

The acid test for this is comically simple. Your dog or your sister. Choose only one.

I'm about to do that! Yay Chicago! I'm a terrible driver anyway.

The best way to kill a pig is to slit its throat and hang it by its feet until the blood drains out. Relatively painless. Since you asked.

sure you could. i am almost completely lacking in fortitude and discipline, & i do it. buying, storing, preparing, cooking meat takes all kinds of fortitude & discipline. not eating animals/animal products is like not starting a war; it doesn't take much effort...quite the opposite, you just don't f*cking do it.

i'm simply trying to point out things from the animals' perspective...which is what compassion entails, being able to imagine things from others' perspective. you're referencing o. nate's post, dealing with laboratory testing on animals, which is a whole other ballgame that i don't care to get into right now...so i fail to see how the choose-between-your dog/your sister hypothetical situation relates to killing animals for food.

Oh, please. Let's not go labelling anyone as crazy. It's not a useful argument. Sure, some of them are nutty. But some are truly concerned about what they put in their bodies, and have found a diet that works for them. They have changed their relationship with food in a profound way. Most people need to do that, whether they go vegan or not. Food is dangerous nowadays.

It's not a whole other ballgame, though! That's totally on topic!

i think that the issues involved are substantially different enough that a different thread would be in order...

Dallas I'm saying that the concept of 'perspective' is anthropomorphic. A sentence like "A cow doesn't want to die" is absolutely freighted with anthropocentricity, as you put it - though it raises all sorts of interesting questions such as "What is bad about dying?" (from a human perspective).

I think assuming that it's arrogant anthropocentrism is arrogant anthropocentrism.

Boy, we really are going in circles.

Someone said upthread (or maybe on the other thread) that animals just want to get on with thier lives. Now, how do you know that?

And is dying really the worst thing that can happen to an animal? Happens all the time, you know. It's not about dying, it's about killing... I know, I know. But to assume that we're taking animals full and productive lives away by eating them is just silliness.

That said, I still like seafood.

i can't really agree w/that. when my cat stands next to her empty food dish and meows, i can reasonably infer her perspective-- she is hungry-- from her perspective.

'A sentence like "A cow doesn't want to die" is absolutely freighted with anthropocentricity...'

when cattle are on the whatchamacallit that leads them into the area where they are stunned and slaughtered, they smell the blood of other cattle and hear the anguished cries of those that have been improperly stunned...& they freeze up/freak out. wanting to survive is the most basic instinct of an organism; of course a cow doesn't want to die.

i just don't understand what gives humans the right to take the animals' lives away...animals have lives of their own; they like to graze, play, nuzzle, enjoy the sunshine, etc....i don't see where the silliness is; i think it's beautiful, and i wouldn't want to approach some animal who's minding his own business and end their lives...

you, as i understand it, would be willing to kill them. this may be insanity on my part, but i believe compassion involves wanting others to live a long and happy life. & not killing them.

- fear of the suffering involved in the process of dying, and that suffering itself.
- fear of/regret for the loss of future opportunities
- empathy for those who will regret or suffer because of one's death.

My argument is that the second and third of these don't apply to animals, and the first can (and should) be minimised if animals are going to be killed.

"Enjoying being alive" is great and I agree that animals enjoy it too. But it's the knowledge of a non-immediate past and future that makes death terrible as the alternative to being alive. I hope my girlfriend's rabbit lives a long and happy life, but I hope that mostly because my girlfriend would be sad if it died, not because it would. Nothing regrets being dead.

(Obv. if you believe in ghosts/reincarnation/the afterlife etc. this doesn't apply. I don't though.)

What gives any omnivorous animal the right to take away another animal's life?

compassion is all about squishiness, though. & i think it can, in fact, be a knee-jerk impulse-- for example, seeing a child drowning, almost without thinking, you jump in the water to save him...
i don't think i'm projecting qualities onto animals, rather just making observations.

'What gives any omnivorous animal the right to take away another animal's life?'

when the omnivorous animals eat other animals, they are responding to an instinctual drive. human beings possess reasoning faculties which presumably might give them pause before taking away the life of an animal. yes, the concept of 'rights' is anthropomorphic, but if humans devised such a concept, why should they not extend those rights outside their species?

I don't think that anyone's arguing that animals shouldn't have ANY rights. As of right now, in the US (and probably many other countries), animals do in fact have legal rights. There are laws on the books against cruelty to animals, abandoning animals, not feeding animals, etc. - and these laws are enforced. The only real issue of debate here is whether the rights of animals should be equal to the rights of humans.

like, so they can vote & drive cars & stuff?

not equal rights, per se, but maybe the right not to be tortured...maybe even the right not to be murdered. the laws on the books are not sufficient, and are not enforced enough. if they were, you wouldn't find the deplorable conditions that are so prevalent in factory farming. some would consider the treatment of lab animals to be torture, but that's probably best saved for a different thread.

(i guess you could argue some extensive programme of reparations, whereby farmers continue to protect and care for all domesticated species in perpetua, w/o ever eating any of them, or stopping them breeding, or whatever...)

i think when yertle is saying "compassion", the correct word is probably "empathy" (the feeling before the thinking arrives): anyway, wherever you draw the line, the fact that empathy and compassion are different words i think arugably allows what yertle's disagreeing with to NOT be on-the-face-of-it contradictory: for example, it's not compassionate especially to let chickens run free in the woods if you believe foxes live there

(in the name of compassion, we don't currently intervene on behalf of all the eaten in the wild, and i'm not sure how we would calibrate our explorations of animal-like feeling to choose between them)

(is it showing a lack of empathy for natural predators to stop them eating whatever they want to eat?)

the ethical issues of keeping *ppl* alive when their bodies are trying to kill them and they can no longer communicate clearly, or there's a question whether they "know their own minds", are already a bit nightmarish: one major problem with the "compassion" argument — that we decide to behave towards (selected) other species as if they share our perceptions and values (bcz how do we know they don't) — is that it opens up vast avenues of choices to be made based on no satisfactory information (cf nellie's thread abt whether or not to have her cat put down => the dilemma arises out of love, not indifference or hostility, and an awareness that ANY choice also necessarily engages our own desires, and our awareness that we sometimes put them first...)

*agribusiness has already reneged on this contract, since the protected lifestyle is plainly no improvement on life in the wild, and in many cases horrible worse

Did anybody read that New York Times Magazine cover article last November? The last time a thread like this came up I linked to it, but unfortunately it appears it's now moved from publically available into the pay-per-view archive. I think Sarah was the only one who responded to it and I meant to take up the discussion with her on that thread, but by the time I rejoined the thread there were like 100 replies (much like these two most recent ones).

Anyway, it's a well written article, from the point of view of someone who was struggling with his own feelings on the subject. And he ultimately comes to the conclusion that he is comfortable eating animals raised under humane conditions, and that in fact such farming improves the quality of life of the animals.... Or actually, what mark s just said (his post just went up as I was composing this). Basically, for better or worse, these animals have become domesticated, and to remove them from the farming system would surely result in a worse quality of life.

You are in essence saying that the very thing which sets human beings apart from animals is what should make human beings realize that they are no different from animals.

yes, the concept of 'rights' is anthropomorphic, but if humans devised such a concept, why should they not extend those rights outside their species?

In the US alone, it took over 200 years for all of the human beings who lived there to be recognized as having rights. Your argument is running perilously close to the point where someone can strawman you as saying, "Well, they let black people vote, might as well let the dogs and cats vote, too."

i'm not trying to goad anyone into anything; just expressing my viewpoint.

what do you mean by '[making] an effort to understand the carnivore's mindset?' are you referring to people who eat meat? or carnivorous animals, like lions? if you're talking about people, than i am making the effort, and then some. i've been carefully reading people's arguments and attempting to respond to the points they raise. what leads you to think that i am not putting forth the effort? the fact that i have not suddenly renounced my dietary habits based on someone's posts here? i don't think either side is going to be converted based on this debate...it's simply a conversation. '...what's the point of all this?' an exchange of ideas, i guess. i'm sorry if it's not dramatic enough for you.

aaarghh...that is not what i'm saying. why throughout this thread are people writing things like, 'oh, you're saying human beings are just the same as/no different from animals'? i'm saying that these reasoning faculties might make humans say, 'hey, these animals, even though they are DIFFERENT from us in many ways, may be worthy of enjoying some of the same rights/protections we grant to our fellow human beings'

"In the US alone, it took over 200 years for all of the human beings who lived there to be recognized as having rights. Your argument is running perilously close to the point where someone can strawman you as saying, 'Well, they let black people vote, might as well let the dogs and cats vote, too.'"

yeah, i guess someone could 'strawman' me in that fashion, but of course that's f*cking absurd and nowhere close to what i'm saying...

since it has already been mentioned that animals do enjoy some our our protections and rights (not all, of course), and since everyone here agrees that we should have the most humane slaughtering techniques possible, and since no one disputes that idea that domesticated animals should have a pleasant life, AND since everyone understands your own feelings about fuzzy animals, your "viewpoint-sharing" feels like pious guilt-tripping

Which, as has been pointed out by o. nate, is already true in modern society; see poaching laws, protection laws for endangered and threatened species, cruelty prevention laws, etc. We are arguing degrees here, not whether a system is in place or not.

yeah, i guess someone could 'strawman' me in that fashion, but of course that's f*cking absurd and nowhere close to what i'm saying...

The point of that comment is that you are arguing for interspecies equality when we haven't even figured out intraspecies equality yet. I would argue that it is impossible to get to the former without figuring out the latter first unless you're willing to abandon a big chunk of beings within your species for beings outside of your species (hence the "cats and dogs are more important than minority X" strawman).

Is this true, actually?

and those who turn a blind eye to factory farming will suffer for it. you think it's good to eat anti-biotics?

no, i'm sorry...i wasn't really challenging you. i should've used the pronoun 'one' instead of 'you'. just trying and failing to be humorous, i guess. i was trying to make a half-joke/half-serious point -- to not eat meat is a sort of laziness; one is omitting something from one's life. eating meat involves the effort of maintaining the meat habit. i don't view being veg(an) as particularly noble; it might just seem that way viewed against the background of our society (which i think does not particularly encourage respect for nature or for life in general), and in light of the way most of us have been conditioned since early childhood.

"since it has already been mentioned that animals do enjoy some our our protections and rights (not all, of course), and since everyone here agrees that we should have the most humane slaughtering techniques possible, and since no one disputes that idea that domesticated animals should have a pleasant life, AND since everyone understands your own feelings about fuzzy animals, your 'viewpoint-sharing' feels like pious guilt-tripping"

yeah, but then the meat crowd has their own brand of piousness-- claiming that by virtue of the fact that people eat meat, the animals domesticated for that purpose enjoy a better, safer life than they would in the wild.

what i'm saying again and again and again, not that anyone cares, is that i think no matter how humanely the animals are treated, there is something f*cked-up about killing them for food, when it's totally unnecessary, unhealthy, wasteful, and so on.

Incidentally, how do you feel about indigenous cultures which farm livestock/hunt wild animals? The Masai and their cattle, say, which they bleed for nourishing blood and slaughter for special occasions? Are they as wrong as us westerners are?

eating dead animals not unhealthy? so just what is it that's clogging up peoples' colons, arteries, & contributing to obesity? carrot sticks and tofu?

not wasteful? you're wasting the animal's life & wasting the grain & farmland used to grow the grain which could feed people much more economically if not diverted for the purpose of fattening up livestock.

not unnecessary? do vegetarians die from lack of meat consumption?

"Incidentally, how do you feel about indigenous cultures which farm livestock/hunt wild animals? The Masai and their cattle, say, which they bleed for nourishing blood and slaughter for special occasions? Are they as wrong as us westerners are?"

i feel squeamish about killing animals, no matter the person that's doing it; no matter their culture; no matter their justification. what makes say, the masai so special? people in the u.s. go to mcdonald's on 'special occasions'. some indigenous cultures have been known to practice clitorectomies, infanticide, cannibalism...i think all those things are wrong, regardless of who's doing it, how long they've been doing it, what part of the world they happen to live in...

That's why I hate when these debates break down into these either/or positions. The debate shouldn't be framed in to-eat/to-not-eat, rather energy should be expended toward envisioning a system that can provide for the least amount of animal suffering. Such a system requires that people reduce the amount of meat they consume, no question. But such a system will necessarily lead to some animals being slaughtered for meat. The fact that people like Dallas can't accept that point is frustrating. A central concept of economics is the "production possibililty frontier", i.e. a system that results in maximum efficiency. How can we raise enough meat, under proper humane conditions, to satisfy those who choose to consume it, while keeping the price affordable and providing a living for the farmers?

I am a bit deflated trying to argue that meat-eating is necessary. So I'll take it back and stick with the other two. Very, very little is actually "necessary", but that doesn't make it wrong.

Get lost in the desert - find a dying rabbit - you eat the fucker, right? It's a stupid argument, but then so's the *absolutist* anti-carnivore approach. Everything in life is relative, everything is pragmatic. Arguing about some theoretical world almost negates the purpose of having the argument.

i'm not interpreting the content of your post as being accusatory. i'm just responding to the ideas you're presenting. sorry if my tone is coming across as overly defensive.

"Arguing about some theoretical world almost negates the purpose of having the argument."

what about the theoretical world that the meat-ists keep bringing up? the one where no one eats meat anymore, so all the cattle who have been abandoned by their kindly caretaker cattlemen get eaten by wolves?

again, i have nothing but admiration for those who willingly forgo demi-glace and stinky cheese on the basis of their principles about agribusiness. yertle says it's easy but trust me dallas, it would not be easy for me.

revolution comes in small steps: maybe agribusiness will be the way in

So will little pastrami farts.

(I am amazed that I was able to explain that in only one sentence.)

God help me.

But just the once.

However, I think he knew just what he was doing.

Eyeball Kicks, please, I'm keen to hear what's so far out about what I'm saying.

Not from anyone here, but I've been told this by many family members.

Your new statement:

"I think mankind can combine meat-eating with a responsible, mutually supportive and balanced relationship with the animal world."

I don't get this contribution. Do you realise that the whole argument concerns what "responsible" and "mutually supportive" mean? You seem to be claiming to have solved these problems all on your own, but you don't bother to show the working.

Anyway, why not "I think mankind can combine VEGETARIANISM with a responsible, mutually supportive and balanced relationship with the animal world"?

It makes as much sense. But it's equally daft.

My point: all of your posts are about as valuable as someone declaring "Meat is good" or "Meat is bad". Except they're lengthier. They all say: I think x, therefore x is true. This is how most people think, I know. Except when they're trying to convince others, they realise that the formula must be extended to, at least: I think x, AND HERE IS WHY, therefore x is true.

Your last post would seem worthwhile to me if it were reworded thus: "I think mankind can ONLY combine a responsible, mutually supportive and balanced relationship with the animal world, with meat-eating". That's why I asked about typos. But, if that's what you mean, you would still have to show where the 'ONLY' comes from.

So, I'm impressed by your crazy logic, because I've never seen the like before. But, I should admit now, I was more flabbergasted by the response to your message than by the message itself. But...rock on.

Not that it isn't human nature to bring past experiences to current experiences, but I would counsel not attributing negative things people in the past have done to people you are dealing with now until they actually, you know, DO them. (Not directed at you, DB, more an expression of my general philosophy of life that I spectacularly fail to live by.)

Humans aren't, biologically speaking, herbivores (are they?) so, from a pure survival standpoint nothing's surely wrong with eating *anything* as long as it provides suitable nutrition to the human diet and won't kill us to consume it.

And to be honest, that means that I cannot 100% argue that eating humans is Wrong. Sorry if that makes me sound weird. But I feel morally I should say this if I say I'll eat anything errr "edible".

I'm not sure I made sense, but anyway...

This is great. This is exactly to the point. But "what needs to be eaten will be eaten" is the same as "what needs to be done will be done". In short, you're arguing that the behaviour of humans, despite their "faculties of reasoning and emotion", automatically validates itself. Humans do what humans do, and everything is as it is.

I'm comfortable with the idea that there is no right and wrong. Of course, it means that rape and murder can't really be described as wrong - they're just oddities of our species' behaviour. That doesn't sound too good, but it's okay, it all works out, because imprisoning rapists and murderers, even though they've done nothing fundamentally wrong, is also not fundamentally wrong itself. It's just what we do. Society functions, as always.

The Oops/Buttch homosexual thread, where he said he knows people do bum sex but no-one could convince him it's natural, is what your attitude reminds me of.

Your reading of my post, the only being yours:

"I think mankind can ONLY combine a responsible, mutually supportive and balanced relationship with the animal world, with meat-eating"

...is entirely not what I was saying. Let me try again.

If mankind can create a mutually suuportive and balanced relationship with the natural world WHILE CONTINUING to eat meat, and I think it can (though it probably isn't right now), then I really can't see any moral justifcation for vegetarianism/veganism being the ONLY right approach.

I am not saying meat-eating is better. I am saying meat-eating isn't wrong.

But, again, that only seems to say anything if you explain how you came to decide that "I think it can (though it probably isn't right now)". That's the bit of the sentence where the argument should go, and you seem to keep missing it out.

Once more, if you reverse what you wrote, and produce this:

"If mankind CANNOT create a mutually suuportive and balanced relationship with the natural world WHILE CONTINUING to eat meat, and I think it CAN'T, then there would be moral justifcation for vegetarianism/veganism being the ONLY right approach.

then you have a statement that exactly negates your first one. Technically, that could be the end of thread, in two posts. Except some people, when discussing things, find it useful to expand on the "I think it can" or "I think it can't" parts. That's what people have been doing above, you see?

I mean you could do this with a lot of issues that arise from our techno-capitalist society. So what?

"If mankind cannot create a mutually suportive and balanced relationship with the natural world while continuing to drive cars, and I think it can't, then there would be moral justifcation for horseback-riding being the only right approach."

My point is that a sentence like this doesn't represent an argument. Someone making this claim would need to elaborate on the reasons why they think it can't, or else they are saying nothing.

I wrote 'Tracer' when I should have written 'your' since that's who I was replying to (i.e. you, Tracer). But I must have been confused about who I was replying to. Sorry.

It's very simple. Is it morally justifiable to kill animals and eat them? Yes, it is. The ENTIRE FUCKING ANIMAL KINGDOM finds a successful way of self-propagation and then sticks with it, revising it along with changes to their environment. That's what we've done. Whether we NEED to eat meat - well, obviously we don't, as you prove. But that was never my argument.

Eyeball, you're so caught up in your semantics (bolstered, no doubt, by your unequivocable conviction that your opinion is the only valid opinion) that you're quite literally shutting your eyes to what I've been trying to say.

I'm no Nitsuh - I can't explain things as well, and maybe I don't have the intelligence to take my argument onto higher levels. But I don't think I need to, as on such basic levels I feel I have found all the justification I could need.

As an aside, I just have to say I really like this sentence :)

I'm not trying to trick you or drown out the sound of you with semantics. The point I've been trying to make has nothing to do with any unchangeable opinions I may hold about the issue at hand, i.e. the ethics of meat eating. In fact, I posted only one message, two and a half days ago, which ventured any opinion about that.

Since then, all my posts on this thread (barring one which was explicitly tagged "This is not offered as argument", and another enthusing about Trayce's effort) have expressed a kind of sadness that issues like this* simply cannot be usefully discussed in a place like this. That's what I've been talking about, that sadness. Apart from Kenan and Dallas flapping about (and the usual Dan Perry gurning), this thread devolved into a series of other people popping in for a minute and either laughing (quite properly), or making declarations that amounted to no more than, "I think X, therefore X is true". This applies to the contributors on both sides. My complaint is non-partisan. Nobody engages with anybody else, because they realise that nobody cares to be engaged. Like a lot of threads here, this one became a list of opinions, sometimes slightly tangling, but more often quite detached.

So I picked on your messages because they seemed to demonstrate this attitude (i.e. I'll have my opinion on the record, but I can't be arsed to explain how I came to it) more than most. I took out my sadness on your posts. If that seems unfair, I am sorry.

* By "issues like this" I do not only mean animal-rights. In fact, I'm not sure just now that I don't mean every subject covered by ILX.

</gurn>

And so you do not. There's something in the balance of meat, grain, veg, and wine that is really untouchable. Everything on my plate tonight was perfect, and in perfect balance with everything else. The sauce and the corncake, the cale cooked in what must have been a large amount of bacon, and at the center of it all, the meat. It was like sex. I know that sounds trite and entirely undescriptive, but I can't think of any other way to put it. It was a revelation, not of thought, but of the senses, which is better because it's the kind of revelation you can have over and over again. It took me to another place. It made me never want to eat anything else.

This is my prayer: please, God, never let me be reduced to ordering a quesadilla and bitching when it arrives with an errant piece of chicken in it. Please don't let me be that person. Let me not be uptight, or self-righteous, and never let me worry more than my share.

I love food in a large way, and if I were a vegetarian, I would not. I would be missing out. It would be like listening to music, but avoiding anything with any blues in it. It would be a damn shame.

I call bullshit! Though admittedly I've gotten that feeling more with asparagus than eggplant, but still, more than once with eggplant.

You must be close to starving.

Asparagus was the vegatable that came with the duck. Boy would you ever have been in heaven.

I'm not sure if I'd say fresh *white* bread, but fresh bread is killer. Driving past the Franz factory => knees to putty.

< /irritating foodie>

It doesn't have to. Digression: black humour is the existential metaphysical zenith of contemporary self aware people and how it cripples da Will to Powah? etc I rather work at these values than convince people they are rite.

Kenan: "You know that feeling you get with that first bite, where your arms kind of go limp and you melt a little, because the food is so good?" You don't get that with eggplant."

vivement star treck's food replicator

I've read a lot of stupid stuff on ILE, but this is fucking atrocious.

I've never reacted like that to food. I've never even come close.

Vegans are a peculiar breed, forfeiting all animal-related products such as eggs, milk, and even honey, in favor of more expensive, tasteless soy products. Their reasoning for doing so may be health-related, environment-related, or animal rights-related, but peculiar nonetheless. Perhaps not quite as peculiar as the elusive “fruitarians” who only eat fallen fruit, nuts, and seeds that do not kill the original bearer when removed. But, there are so many different varieties of vegetarians that it’s almost impossible to tell them apart without a long list of rules, and the only thing they have in common is that they all avoid meat.

However, meat, to many, is synonymous with “real food”. The centrality of meat to the human diet is proved by how many soy-based meat analogues there are out there, veggie burgers, and meatless ribs to name a few. Basically, eating meat symbolizes the civilization of human beings, when we separated ourselves from the natural world and gained power over it, we became civilized. Meaning, vegans are turning their back on years of progression from herbivores to carnivores. That’s why I considered entitling this article “Why vegans are regressing human nature”, or “why vegans are hindering progress”.

Nick Fiddes, an anthropologist that studies the varieties of vegetarianism, agrees that, “killing, cooking and eating other animals' flesh provides perhaps the ultimate authentification of human superiority over the rest of nature, with the spilling of blood a vibrant motif. It is not only the animal which we so utterly subjugate; consuming its flesh is a statement that we are the unquestioned masters of the world."

That quote may seem a little blackmetal, but you can’t deny its validity. In fact, vegans seem to be drawn to food items that taste like meat, like tofurky, or soy-jerky. Why do they try so hard to simulate meals that they want to avoid? It all seems very futile to me.

(Jon, that article quote is hilarious. Thank you for posting it)

The beatings for writing this line can't be extensive enough.

so THAT's what varg vikernes and dimmu borgir are singing about?!?

OMG!!!

What's her problem???

If I want something that tastes like meat, I will eat meat. I do not eat carob, I eat chocolate. I do not eat aspertame, I eat sugar. I do not eat margerine, I eat butter. Logic will not allow me to break this cycle because I am a robot. (amazing xpost)

Hot dogs, for example. They're almost more natural as soy based smoked flavored soft logs, than this odd hodgepodge of random meat parts processed and reprocessed and salted and smoked, etc. etc. The same amount of processing is occuring if not more in the meat version.

(I'm not a vegetarian but I LOVE VEGETABLES. I eat brocoli when I am hung over. Yes, I am weird)

a FLEXITARIAN you mean

Fresh spinach is also a good joy. A bit of salt and spices on them even better.

Usually they put it in their eyes.

do i come with a flexi-disc?

DB and Aja share a joke.

I see, as I am not a vegetarian.

I LOVE Chess. Too bad I have no one to play it with. :,(,

Unless you grow your own food, the cultivation, growing, processing, packaging and transporting of even the most touchy-feely of vegetarian/vegan goods entails a mastery of nature that would've been impressive to people from a hundred years ago, to say nothing of our hunter/gatherer ancestors.

I don't like to play by myself.

http://www.invisiblerecords.com/aotw/killingjoke/graphics/kjflexi.jpg

Hehe

I have the album with that song. Pual Ferguson isn't the drummer though. : (

Hehe

The Killing Joke album is over.

I don't want to become a vegetarian, ever!!

The problem with the whole vegetarian debate is that it's the holier-than-thou ones that apparently speak for all of them (sometimes that is true, but sometimes that image is projected by the non-vegetarians upon the vegetarians unfairly), and everyone makes it a black-and-white issue with what's allowed to be eaten and what isn't.

Look, I'll eat a Starburst candy if I want to. That has gelatin. That's just as bad as rennet or even flesh. it's just a matter of degrees to me, not a list of vegetarian commandments that I have to follow. As long as I don't go around condemning other people's diet choices (and I do not do that), then who cares what I eat or what you eat. We each make our choices.

I feel kind of bad for bitchily reviving this thread, but Kenan's smug "you vegetarians can't *possibly* get the same pleasure out of your fag food that i get out of my meat" argument really got under my skin today. I'm a vegetarian of seven years; I love to cook, I love food, wine and beer, I consider myself pretty handy in the kitchen, and after a simple but delicious stir fry with marinated tempeh tonight, I came upon this thread, which made me seethe.

Being vegetarian forces you (well, encourages you) to be more creative in finding balanced meals. I would not have discovered so much wonderful Indian, Mediterranean, Thai, Ethiopian, etc. food were it not for my vegetarianism. And I certainly would not have learned to cook at a fairly early age. My passion for food has a lot to do with my being vegetarian; what seemed once like constraints have opened a lot of doors.

I think this is very key! There's such a wide range of stuff you can swiftly learn to appreciate, even if you are not vegetarian like myself but have friends like the good DB who are. Mind you, when I extolled the Ethiopian veg dishes I had had to Nitsuh, he reacted (in mock outrage but still) with a note that apparently the meat is more essential/expected than you might think.

(Ironically, the whole "fag food" line is funny, because I don't know a single gay friend of mine who isn't a ravenous carnivore.. in fact, they are the ones who give me the most shit and lame arguments against me being a vegetarian if anybody ["psssh.. why are you such a picky eater? You know that's bad for you.".. oh, don't get me started] ... but I think that's just my weird circle of friends.)

(I'll also add the the 5% of the time that meat essences and smells have indeed made my mouth water, they have occurred mostly when I was in an Ethiopian restaurant, so Nitsuh has a point)

Hahaha

You only need to deny me twice more, DB, and then that cock will be crowing.

DB was OTM about holier-than-thou-ness, though: I won't eat a Starburst or cheese that I know has rennet in it, but if I don't know, I don't worry about it. No reason to stress out.

Er.

Let the crowing commence!

I'm a vegetarian, and most of what I cook doesn't involve fake meat at all--lots of pulse/grain combinations, lots of soy stuff, lots of dairy, etc. Tonight's spaghetti-and-veggieballs notwithstanding.

no shit. it amazes me how wound up people get about meat-eating. i currently eat fish but when i'm in veg/vegan mode i usually avoid mentioning it, because lots of folks seem to take it as a personal attack and launch into spiels about how meat is tasty, ethical, healthy, blah blah. I DON'T CARE. EAT WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT. unless requested i would never give anyone a lecture about the benefits of soy, so please extend the same courtesy to me.

C'mon bro get with the sweetest meat.

-- vaginatarian (cunni(at)ling.us)

I think it's one of the best posts ever to appear here. Thanks.

boy, someone was angry in 2003.