Animal Rights?

[Nick_i_am]

'I don't see eating animals is for pleasure.'

 

You flat out just said that you don't see eating animals as being about pleasure, I said it's a factor, you said other things are too, I asked what the hell that's got to do with your original point, you throw an internet hissy fit. Nice work champ.

[Azarkon]

Can't think of a good argument so you resort to insults. Typical.

 

I did not say eating meat is not pleasurable. I said that our species evolved as an omnivore, and eating meat helped that evolution. Pleasurable or not, it is how our species came to be. Read what is there, and not what you want to be there.

 

While I agree that our species evolved as an omnivore, Sand, that argument applies to alot of things. We also evolved by killing people of other tribes, by keeping slaves, and by subjugating women. Those practices eventually lessened or faded away altogether as society developed the means and moral principles to reject them. Why would the same not apply to eating meat? There must be a better reason, no?

[Sand]

'I don't see eating animals is for pleasure.'

 

You flat out just said that you don't see eating animals as being about pleasure, I said it's a factor, you said other things are too, I asked what the hell that's got to do with your original point, you throw an internet hissy fit. Nice work champ.

 

The reason why eating meat is pleasurable is because we are omnivores, we aren't omnivores because eating meat is pleasurable.

[Nick_i_am]

That's totally offtopic.

[Sand]

Is that really the best you can do?

 

HA!

 

 

 

[Gorth]

*starts wondering if anybody has more of value to add to the subject...*

 

[Cantousent]

The fact is that virtually anything we do can be considered extreme. We drive cars that pollute the environment. We heat our houses to a comfortable heat level in the winter and cool them in the summer. We argue these topics on a message board using computers that waste electricity. How many people, vegetarian or not, who eat exactly the number of calories they need to live? At some point, any number of human activities are harmful not only to animals but to humanity itself.

 

You bring up the incongruity within the mores of human society? What are you going to tell me next? The Earth revolves around the sun? Light travels faster than sound? Come on, Azarkon, save the speech from the ivory tower for someone younger. I know exactly what goes on in meat packing facilities. Haven't you ever seen the Simpsons? hahaha Seriously, though, I've hunted. I've fished. I've fished far too often. I don't tend to hunt or fish because, frankly, I don't enjoy killing animals. I do, however, enjoy venison. Lobster is great stuff also. Why don't you bring up the shocking news that there is incongruity between my distaste at killing bambi but my pleasure in eating her. (I can just imagine the lewd remarks now!) I don't have any personal animosity for you, but you're a doofus. Challenge indeed!

 

So your response to everything is just to accept it for what it is, conceding to human error? I could accept such an argument for practical reasons in real life, but in an ideological discussion, as these discussions always tend to be, it seems a bit unproductive to say, "okay, killing animals is bad but I'm fine with eating them - so what?" It's like saying, in the political thread, "okay, McCain is a warmonger and I'm anti-war but I'm fine with electing him - so what?" or "yeah racism - so what?" There'd be nothing to left to argue, expose, or discuss, then.

 

At the most basic level, this thread is a discussion of policy. Ideologically, I might have any number of views. In reality, however, the discussion started with a news clip describing a culling in Asia.

 

In bringing up the other topics, such as racism, you are hopelessly adrift. We're discussing one policy. That's been my consistent view all along. Namely, that the country in question has the right to cull animals. That's their choice, not ours. By deciding that you want to equate various comments to anything from militant animal rights activists to racism, you make a rather incoherent argument. It smacks of desperation.

 

There are two main points I have advocated from the very beginning. We should not classify anything other than humans as human and that people have the right to protect their communities against rabid animals.

 

Equating my views, which virtually always center on actual policy in these discussion, with racism isn't only unfair, it's ineffective. Try something better next time.

[Azarkon]

I don't see how that has anything to do with what I just said. I made an observation of the ideological inconsistency inherent to the "morally correct" view of animal rights in the US. You said that I'm pointing out the obvious, and that the incongruity of mores in human society does not at all make for useful discussion because "anything we do can be considered extreme." You don't think that's a cop out? I'm not equating your views with racism. I'm saying that your argument can be made for any number of issues, in which case we'd have nothing to discuss.

 

The policy issue has always been pretty straightforward. Some people agree, and some people think that it's animal cruelty. To argue for one or the other requires taking apart the ideological foundations of the policy. That's what interests me when it comes to animal rights, because ultimately, animal rights as it exists in the modern world is essentially an ideological movement.

[Cantousent]

Okay, then I'll change gears. I tend to avoid the hypothetical because I tend to be more interested in policy. Of course, I'll concede that policy, at some point, will be decided on a combination of practical issues combined with ideological conviction.

 

As far as my statement goes, I don't believe it's a cop out. I'm merely arguing that where we currently stand is a reasonable place in my opinion. This is because, on the one hand, ideology urges us to travel further towards an extreme but that the destination is out of our reach. At the very least, it is out of our reach at this time. We cannot, at this time, pursue your extreme ideology because it's impractical. Economically and culturally, there's not chance we'll take the extreme view.

 

You didn't say we should do away with animal cruelty. You said that the only reasons we eat meat is because it is culturally ingrained in us. That's not quite the same thing, at this time, as saying that judging other humans by the color of their skin is bad. At some point, it was not feasible to enact policies to combat racism. At some point, the bulk of political power arrayed itself and policy changed. However, you're the person to argue the extreme view. You pointed out the incongruity of human opinion. I merely pointed out that this incongruity is going to be in place throughout human existance. Since this is the case, I have confined myself to practical policy issues. That's pretty much my take at all times. I'm not always for the status quo, but I'm certainly not going align against it every time I sense inconsistencies in human culture. Maybe you have that kind of stamina. I don't. I want to pick wise battles that are meaningful to me. When I go after the status quo with blood in my eye, I want it to be for something more meaningful to me.

 

So, call it a cop out all you want. Frankly, I've been pretty consistent when compared to the gent who came into this discussion arguing:

 

"For me, the very notion that you can make a leap from attitude towards animals to attitude towards weak/retarded people is a bit of a stretch. In order to consider one's treatment of animals in the context of the humane, one must, foremost, establish an anthropomorphic understanding of animals, without which any appeal to human ethics or human feelings is utterly meaningless. A person or people's treatment of animals is therefore not at all reflective of that person or people's basic humanity if, for that person or people, such a connection is never made. To mistake this missing link as an indication that something is wrong in the membrane ignores the social, cultural, and personal constructs inherent in the debate."

 

Perhaps you're playing devils advocate in your various views, but don't forget your client. He pays well, but you don't want to visit him to pick up the wages.

[Azarkon]

I think there's two issues at stake here, which I might have conflated. The first is, as you say, the matter of practical policy. With regards to this issue, we are in agreement - in fact, I came into this thread to argue specifically that culling animals to protect human beings should not be construed as "cruelty against animals," particularly given the setting, and that moral outrage/judgment was therefore unjustified. I stayed, however, to challenge a more basic assumption, which is that eating animals is not morally equivalent to killing them for pleasure. This particular argument is fundamentally ideological, almost by definition: is eating animals morally the same as killing them for pleasure?

 

I consider this an interesting premise, if established, because it weakens a particular breed of "animal rights" (namely, the stance that it's okay to harm animals for food because it's "necessary," but not okay to harm animals for, say, the pleasure of the hunt, because that's "unnecessary"). However, I'm divided as to what I think is the right answer, in this case. Unlike the policy issue, I'm still working this one out, which is why it might seem I'm flitting between opposite poles. Truth is, I want to understand both sides of the argument, and I currently do not - or at least, am not convinced - that I do. In particular, my gut feeling is that there is a moral difference between eating animals and killing them for sport, but logically, that difference does not seem to hold (at least not in the sense of necessary vs. unnecessary). Hence the cultural conditioning hypothesis.

 

Why is culinary pleasure different than other pleasures? Or is it more than that? I certainly accept your view that as a practical issue, stopping people from eating meat is impractical and out of reach, but that doesn't really answer the moral question. Here, I get the impression that your stance is that morality and practicality cannot be considered separately, which is ironic because that's what I originally came in arguing. Yet, I'm trying to do exactly that: divide morality from practicality, and argue about what should be, rather than what is practical to do. An interesting turn of events, but not unexpected. I am prone to arguing from two different angles - one practical, one philosophical, and the two are not always the same. Whether it makes sense for you to do the same (as in, whether you think morality and practicality can be debated separately), I'm not sure. Maybe we'll just leave it at that.

Edited March 12, 2008 by Azarkon

[Gorth]

In particular, my gut feeling is that there is a moral difference between eating animals and killing them for sport, but logically, that difference does not seem to hold (at least not in the sense of necessary vs. unnecessary). Hence the cultural conditioning hypothesis.

Ask yourself, why does a cat chase a ball of yarn?

 

Obvious answer is, it must be fun. Less obvious answer, it is honing it's hunting skills, which are necessary to catch prey. Silly humans come up with all kinds of ideas and names, trying to explain basic instincts which they don't recognise for what they are.

[Azarkon]

I've considered the sociobiology argument before. Would you say that the particular argument, here, is that it's evolutionarily prudent to eat meat, but since the agricultural revolution some tens of thousands of years ago, hunting instincts have become less useful and therefore more barbaric to our "gut reactions?" I accept that as a factor, though I obviously don't consider one's moral impetus to be the same as following one's instincts.

[Gorth]

It probably, at one time was prudent to eat meat. I assume that being an omnivore gave you a competitive edge (vs. pure herbivores and carnivors), enabling man to go where more specialised behaviour couldn't.

 

Just as the cat example, we don't always understand why we do things, only that doing them somehow satisfies a "need" that we not necessarily understand. Why do we hoard more things than we really need, why do we hunt animals, why do we compete in sports events etc.?

 

Entirely guesswork on my part: Because it satisfies some leftover instincts that in more primitive times gave us an edge. Such conditioning of the mind may take more than just a few millennia of cultural and social changes to "de-program", even though we probably are way more sentient and self aware than when such traits where developed.

 

Same thing goes for love. Why exactly does a man and a woman stay together? If you seriously consider, why would a man really chose to stay together with a woman after he "knocked her up"? A pregnant woman makes a poor hunter, a less efficient gatherer and is in an awkward position to defend herself against predators. The "sensible" thing would be to dump her and move on ASAP.

Again, just guesswork: Because it makes sense to have more than one guardian and provider for the offspring. So, men and women get equipped with this unexplicable thing that draws them together and makes them stay together for a while, rewarding them with "feeling good" in each others company. Now, if men and women were ment to stay together forever is an entirely different issue

 

What I am after is this undefinable "feeling good" thing, that people get when giving in to primal needs (which they may be aware of or not). It makes us eat meat, it makes us hunt animals for sport, it makes us do cruel things and sometimes just plain seemingly irrational things.

[Tigranes]

We pretty much had to eat meat to survive as much as we did. Just how much is something nobody can answer. I'm not going to quite as much into anthropology as Gorth, but I will say this:

 

One of the big reasons vegetarianism and animal rights appeared as popular movements in the second half of the 20th century, over other types of movements (i.e. plant rights, guh), was because these movements could be relied upon to trigger an emotional involvement within a large part of the populace. Why? Animals are more humanoid in their expression. They flinch when they are hit, they can have giant puppy eyes, they limp, they bleed, they moan and scream. And for people that have pets (animal pets, of course, are common), this is even more amplified. I'm not saying these movements have no basis in good logical argument: but I'm saying that the reason they have become as big and influential as they are now, and the reason we flinch in horror at 'senseless' killing of dogs or Japanese whaling but only a half-hearted, worried glance at the destruction of the rainforests, is all because the former we can 'see' more, there are images better suited to jerking our emotions.

[Walsingham]

This is getting totally off-topic.

 

My point originally: if you care about animals it is nonsense to prevent them being mercy killed when they are suffering intensely.

 

how they taste has nothing to do with it, I asssure you. These particular animals would taste revolting if anyone was insane enough to eat them.