Childhood indoctrination

[Forbinator]

I'm still waiting Forbinator to define what he means by ethical. I guess not only The Germans are coming is at fault here.

I thought I'd already made my position pretty clear from previous posts. But I'll try to summarise: Ethical is a subjective quality, but there are some aspects of ethics that (practically speaking) are objective and accepted axiomatically. I listed four things earlier:

1. Murdering humans for pleasure
2. Stealing from humans for pleasure
3. Harming or physically violating humans for pleasure
4. Senseless animal cruelty

If you think any of those four things are not ethically wrong, then I probably have to concede any moral argument with you, as there would be no ethical reference point to base any argument on, and ethics is a relativistic topic.

If we combine the above four "ethical wrongs" with some facts, we can logically determine that our exploitation of animals cannot be justified:

5. The animals that we exploit have a survival instinct, and therefore an interest in living, as evident from their "fight or flight" responses, production of catecholamines and corticosteroids in response to stress (particularly when predators are visible), and ability to feel pain and suffering as evident from their central nervous system and pain receptors. Since the nervous system of birds, fish and mammals is effectively the same as ours, the burden of proof is with you to show that it has a different function from ours given that the anatomy is virtually the same. It's a bit like trying to claim that an animal uses his/her ears for something besides hearing; the burden of proof would be with you, and in the meantime we assume their ears are used to hear.

6. Animal farming necessarily involves cruelty, although it wouldn't be considered "senseless" as it serves the purpose of producing food and clothing. But the cruelty is still unnecessary, since we can use plant-based resources for the same outcome, and with much less land use (which, among other arguments, offsets the environmental arguments against veganism).

Given what was stated in (5), we must apply (1), and by extension, (3), to other species including birds, fish and mammals, and almost certainly to crustaceans as they have pain receptors but as part of a different nervous system. The key is that while other species are different from us, they are the same as us in the ways that pertain to wanting to live.

Given what was stated in (6), and if we accept that the distinction between "senseless" and "unnecessary" cruelty is negligible, and irrelevant to the outcome for the victim, we must apply (4) to all cases of cruelty, including those which inevitably occur as part of the farming and slaughter process. http://www.earthlings.com shows the different types of cruelty that occur, and explains why they are not "one-off" events, but are intrinsic to production.

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I think that "the morality of food" as important as some may find it - is more often a fairly shallow exploration of "serious 1st world problems". That's right, I'm actively and strongly suggesting that the experience of anyone who has ever agonized over whether they should have the foie gras or the tofu salad -and which is the more moral decision- is being a self absorbed cunt. I can solve all dietary conundrums of this sort with one fell swoop - by giving all of their liver and curdled beans to someone who actually has a pressing food related issue - namely those who have neither (and often so that we can have either).

But if we actually use our land efficiently to produce plant-based food, which is fed directly to humans, we can solve the human hunger crisis that you base your argument on. I agree that wasting food is unjustifiable in today's world (regardless of the food), but there is no bigger waste of food going on right now than cattle grazing. Whether it's grain or grass or soy or corn, the land used to produce the food that gets filtered through the animals could be used to produce food that humans eat directly, and much more of it. This is where food wastage is really occurring.