dalmuti, not everyone agrees with that definition of politeness, and some of us are, quite frankly, offended that we must defend our natural actions on a moral platform over and over again.
Secondly, you can stop playing your violin. No one is going to feel sorry for you. When you ask a loaded question like “What goes through your mind when you eat meat” you are just going to have to accept people not being particularly happy about it. That you continue, on page four, to act stunned about it is stunning to me.
Thirdly, though I have not brought myself to read all four pages of this debate, I have glanced through all of your posts looking for one fucking hyperlink to somewhere besides a site about voluntary human extinction. I have found a few quotes you have offered with proper citations, but certainly not enough to provide support for all the “Well, what do you think about this?” you have offered us. Maybe we should start a brand new thread to discuss the ethics of humans interacting with other animals as a start before we try and delve into the madness of ideological farming and pseudo-pragmatism.
Fourthly, namecalling is not allowed outside of the pit, and I highly doubt anyone here has really attacked you but rather has had issues with what you have said. This is, you might note, a necessary consequence of debate over interesting, compelling, or controversial subjects. Furthermore, you are not the only person in the world to have presented a case against animal husbandry. Many of us omnivores have been subjected to “the other side” (as you might call it, though why we must take sides on the issue is still a mystery to me) more than a few times already.
Fifthly, I will respond to your OP, since apparently your debating is running in cycles of you bringing up points, dropping them, and bringing them up again, maybe I can catch you on a tangent not far from your original post.
What goes through your mind as you’re eating meat, and/or other animal products? There is nothing inherently unique about this situation on which I could distinguish my thoughts, unless the thoughts were about how good the food itself tasted (a thought not limited to the meat experience as I am sure you can imagine).
[H]ow do you justify the fact that a living, breathing animal was killed for the sole reason of satisfying your hunger, which could obviously be satisfied by a plant-based diet? Honestly, I don’t justify it at all, much like I don’t justify breathing, washing my hands, cleaning my toilet, or any of the other behavior (including salad consumption) I engage in which destroys life. Before you think I am equating bacteria with cattle, please see that I have done no such thing. When I feel it necessary to stratify my opinions on life I find that I usually take a stand that says that the more intuitively obvious it is that a creature experiences pain and rudimentary emotions the more careful we should be in its treatment, if only to avoid deliberate torture.
As with all creatures on this great planet, I find it useful to appreciate my own species above others if for no other reason then I can relate to them better. This is also a useful tool for statification of ethics.
Finally, and this may or may not surprise you, I don’t find that any creature, including humans, has any inherent right to live except by popular decree. We very obviously decree this to ourselves because we are the ones who can decree anything. The notion that we can decree such things does in no way imply that everything in our sphere of influence must be handled in some ethical fashion. Eating meat, for me, has absolutely nothing to do with ethics whatsoever. I consider the proposition to be completely amoral. There are, for me, moral considerations in the treatment of animals; I am simply saying that eating them alone isn’t one of them.
In your mind, are animals simply detached from your basic day-to-day ethics and morals? Do you feel guilty? Do you feel as if there are no other alternatives? Again, detatched isn’t exactly the right word. There are ethical and moral concerns regarding animal life for me. Eating them, however, is not one of these. How we kill them: ok. How we treat them as they live: sure. Raising them for the sole purpose of killing them? No problem for me. I have never felt guilt over salivating at the smell of beef. I am actually getting hungry just thinking about it (Pavlov, anyone? ;)).
Finally, I would like to mention that I feel an undertone of conspiracy in your posts. For instance, in your most recent one, “The fact is, however, it’s difficult to expect these meat factories, who are so ‘in’ with so many politicians to abide by these rules.” There may be, in fact, a vast conspiracy in the meat industry that pays off politicians so that legislation regarding their industry is thwarted. Then again, it might just be that, like every other industry in America and the free world (and some not-so-free ones, too) they are trying to avoid legislation, regulation, and so on because abiding by those decrees usually involves losing profits. I assure you that the meat industry is not the only one which has motivations for lobbying politicians, and though I suspect you know this, the tone with which you present the case seems to hold a special place for the meat industry itself.