RE: Any Vegetarians/Vegans here?
March 9, 2014 at 10:05 pm
(This post was last modified: March 9, 2014 at 10:07 pm by bennyboy.)
Okay, that's a very thoughtful post. I agree that many vegetarians overestimate the terms, in lives, of meat-eating (especially of beef) and milk production, as well as the number of lives lost in industrial farming (voles, birds, etc.)
Let's talk about how different lives are valued. In terms of the numbers of mortalities, the obvious solution is to have giant super-cows that can put out say 400kg of "mince" (I think you mean what we call ground beef), and an absolute elimination of fish, pigs, poultry, etc. However, many vegetarians are more comfortable with fish-eating than the eating of cows. And very many more are more comfortable killing bugs-- slapping mosquitos, or poisioning cockroaches, for example. But those are also lives. So are bacteria, but few vegetarians would recommend not washing so as to preserve them.
So obviously, it's not just the extinction of an organism that's involved. It's the value of the organism's life, in human terms, that we care about. Animals which exhibit nurturing instincts and other human-similar emotions are clearly valued more than those which do not exhibit them. This is the calculus that we are all revolving around in this thread-- how close to ME does an organism have to be for me to care about it? Family? Friends? Race? Species? Mammals? Warm-blooded animals that care for their young? Anything with a brain sufficiently advanced for it to suffer? Anything that avoids harm and seeks benefit?
It's obvious that the identification of sufficient similarity in other organism varies greatly among humans. Some see the world as themselves vs. 6 billion people who matter no more than bacteria. They'd literally eat a baby on a bun if they thought they could get away with it. On the other extreme, there are probably people so afraid to kill others that they have committed suicide to avoid impacting anything else.
For me, the things that define the value of human experience are not opposable thumbs, the ability to make fires, or the ability to work with Quantum Mechanics. It is in starting life with a loving bonded relationship with one's mother. It is about social interactions and altruism. It is about the joy of sensation, and the terror of damage to the self. And mammals and birds, while they have different physical forms than us, and much lower IQs (by our standards), are clearly similar in their capacity to feel and to care.
Let's talk about how different lives are valued. In terms of the numbers of mortalities, the obvious solution is to have giant super-cows that can put out say 400kg of "mince" (I think you mean what we call ground beef), and an absolute elimination of fish, pigs, poultry, etc. However, many vegetarians are more comfortable with fish-eating than the eating of cows. And very many more are more comfortable killing bugs-- slapping mosquitos, or poisioning cockroaches, for example. But those are also lives. So are bacteria, but few vegetarians would recommend not washing so as to preserve them.
So obviously, it's not just the extinction of an organism that's involved. It's the value of the organism's life, in human terms, that we care about. Animals which exhibit nurturing instincts and other human-similar emotions are clearly valued more than those which do not exhibit them. This is the calculus that we are all revolving around in this thread-- how close to ME does an organism have to be for me to care about it? Family? Friends? Race? Species? Mammals? Warm-blooded animals that care for their young? Anything with a brain sufficiently advanced for it to suffer? Anything that avoids harm and seeks benefit?
It's obvious that the identification of sufficient similarity in other organism varies greatly among humans. Some see the world as themselves vs. 6 billion people who matter no more than bacteria. They'd literally eat a baby on a bun if they thought they could get away with it. On the other extreme, there are probably people so afraid to kill others that they have committed suicide to avoid impacting anything else.
For me, the things that define the value of human experience are not opposable thumbs, the ability to make fires, or the ability to work with Quantum Mechanics. It is in starting life with a loving bonded relationship with one's mother. It is about social interactions and altruism. It is about the joy of sensation, and the terror of damage to the self. And mammals and birds, while they have different physical forms than us, and much lower IQs (by our standards), are clearly similar in their capacity to feel and to care.
