Faithnomore Wrote:Well, what I meant was that the immediate goal is the death of the animal, but one of the overall goals of life should be to decrease suffering. What you say about the quality of the meat is interesting as I hadn't heard that before. At this point it becomes a question of is that extra quality worth the suffering of the animal. You don't have to answer that as I'm pretty sure I know what you think.
Why should decreasing suffering be a goal of life in general? I think decreasing the suffering of being I care about is a worthy goal. Random goats and people in China and fish? Really don't care if they suffer or don't.
It applies to salmon... which I have been slaughtering for the last 36 hours. We pick them out of net, gill them, put them in a ice-saltwater brined tote, pull line to the next one, repeat until box is full or tide goal is over.
The extra quality is very much worth the extra suffering. We would lose money for our quality if they didn't pay us extra for our fish at the end of the season (we bleed out fish... there is a lot of weight in blood lost over the season). One day, a poor mother will buy alaskan salmon, and it will be one of our fish, and their family will love it... and then they'll buy our salmon again


If I told you what the other people's fish goes through... you wouldn't even want to see it... let alone eat it.
Quote:Now this I can understand. I appreciate pain because it puts the painless times into context. Your explanation, however, says nothing about the pain of others which is what the discussion is about. Not all beings are as masochistic as you come across.
The pain of others does not concern me if it does not affect me

Quote:So, since you believe in determinism, do you see it as a cosmic force guiding things or do you believe that our brain structure predetermines our behavior?
Brain structure. I'm anything but superstitious.
Quote:We do react in the present and can't change the past, but if we sit idly by, we are determined to repeat the mistakes of the past.
We aren't determined to do so... that said: we might well do so.
Please give me a home where cloud buffalo roam
Where the dear and the strangers can play
Where sometimes is heard a discouraging word
But the skies are not stormy all day