Childhood indoctrination

[Eric9001]

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?

Using the behaviour of wild animals as an ethical reference point is not logical as an ideology, since it would also allow us to rape and steal. When discussing ethics, we have to decide if we're operating as part of a civilised society with rules, or if we're operating as wild animals. People who justify carnism (http://www.carnism.org/index.php/2012-05-09-15-00-33) flip-flop between the two whenever it's convenient to justify the position they already hold.

I answer this the next sentence down. It is a rhetorical question used to set up my next point... which is about morality, something humans have that stops rape/stealing

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.

Plants certainly do play a role in ecology, but the difference is that they do not have the capacity to be individual victims, as they are not sentient. The logical obligation of our civilisation's structure is not to behave in a way that involves innocent victims. But yes, we have to acknowledge that all food consumption is harmful to some extent, but we need to do it with as little harm as possible. Committing direct acts of violence in order to eat each day, when this is clearly not necessary to obtain the level of nutrients needed, is not consistent with any model of harm minimisation.

I know. I note that point of view and argue against it when I say:

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.