RE: are vegetarians more ethical by not eating meat?
May 23, 2013 at 5:26 am
(This post was last modified: May 23, 2013 at 5:36 am by littleendian.)
(May 23, 2013 at 2:23 am)apophenia Wrote: (ETA: We also seem to be circling back to Rhythm's earlier point that if the suffering of cows is what is the relevant property, then you are against us causing them unneeded suffering, not against us killing them; the two are easily separable things.)Nobody exists in isolation, if you kill someone there's always "collateral" suffering, no matter how painless for the victim. We even intuitively acknowledge this when we are shocked about the death of people, no matter how painless and quick the death. And if you've deprived the cow of any kind of contact to other cows so that there would be no "collateral damage", then I think you can no longer talk about a "happy life" for the cow to start with, so there's suffering again. Cattle are quite social creatures, they live in herds and it would be lunacy to deny that they do this because they enjoy the company of their fellow cows, for all we know they have friends. Talking about "anthropomorphizing" animals here is only an illustration of our humano-centric world view caused by millenia of Christian dogma. Just because cattle don't show their emotions like humans do doesn't mean they don't have them. Take a calf away from her mother and the mom will cry for days. Emotions serve a very real biological purpose for any social animal and I deny the idea that these creatures have significantly less of an inner life than us humans. Granted, humans have better rational access to the things around them, but that can as easily have a dulling emotional effect as it can amplify emotions, that doesn't mean we're qualitatively more emotionally involved in the world.
"Men see clearly enough the barbarity of all ages — except their own!" — Ernest Crosby.
