(June 2, 2013 at 6:48 am)Forbinator Wrote: Does anyone here think that there are logical justifications for exploiting animals for food, clothing and entertainment?I'll answer this. Other than Christianity and belief in Santa Claus, I haven't broken out of anything else that would be worth mentioning.
It's how life functions. Organisms eating other organisms has been among the top methods for life to continue to exist for billions of years and at this day. The house cat when let outdoors will kill thousands of animals over its life. People seem to place unnecessary morals into the process of eating other organisms. They feel the pain of the animals. But what is pain? It's a response by the nervous system to say that something is bad. Other animals do not let pain stop them from killing each other, why do we? Well, that comes from our own humanistic nature which developed – creating an appreciation and understanding of other humans, feeling their pain. Morality.. We take that morality we have for other human beings and apply it to animals because we see humanistic qualities in some species and realize that many animals, biologically, are not too far off from ourselves. The most noble thing to do would to be not eat at all. But because we realize eating is a necessity for out living, and because we value our living more than anything else, we consume something, but what? So with morals, people decide that the further away from human that something that they are consuming is, the better. So naturally, we find people eating only plants.
I view the world realistically. I take this idea to be arrogant because I realize that Earth exists as a joined effort, and all life, even non-living material, plays an equal role on supporting it. Rather than view my eating as what's best for humanity I view it as what's best for the continuation of life planet Earth. We lower plants to such a low level because they are so different from us, but we should realize that plants are and have been so important in sustaining balanced life on Earth. So all that's do it then is which has a worse impact on it all, eating a part of a chicken or eating a bunch of plant material? To be honest, there's negatives to both, they both have a very similar, negative, insubstantial impact. Eating an endangered species would probably have a larger impact on the world, so I view this as one of the worst things to do. Eating a bald eagle would have bad impacts on my life socially, so I would not eat that. If I was truly unmoral I would probably view humans as the best thing to eat, since they have a large negative impact on Earth, comparably to others. But I am moral.
Well then you asked about clothing right? The most noble thing to do would be not wearing clothes. But this has a very substantial impact on a person's life. The same principles apply... But there is much more non-animal clothing products available to the public. Celebrities that wear fur coats do so to display wealth. I don't think that is a good choice because people do not like the fur coats, and the celebrities get poor opinions about them, affecting their lives.
Entertainment is something people do not usually see the use of animals as necessary for, which is why you'll see more people apposed to using animals for entertainment than you would see people apposed to eating animals.
Do I care that others choose to avoid meat? No. It can actually have a positive impact on their bodily health, so it may be a positive thing for them if they care about living longer by a few years. As I said, whatever people eat has very similar negative, and insignificant impact in the world. I just don't like it when people try to influence me into become vegan or vegetarian, as it is annoying.
Xenoblade Chronicles spoilers: "And so, what I... No, what we wish for is... A world with no gods!" - Shulk