But don’t deny that what you are enjoying is killing animals. And if you feel the need to try and call it something else, maybe you have more of an issue with it than you are willing to admit? Why resist the accurate description that you enjoy killing? You do, no need to be ashamed of it or deny it or try to prettify it
I’m not ashamed. I enjoy killing animals!
**(Except perhaps for insects, and I assure you that for every one I killed, I ended up feeding a thousand others. Sigh. I sucked at gardening.) **
So that makes it OK does it? If I poison a slug so it dies a slow death of metaldehyde that’s OK? Or if I spray a grasshopper with chlorpyrifos so it’s voluntary nervous system shuts down but it’s brain is still working perfectly as it dies of exhaustion and dehydration over period of days that’s OK because I’m feeding more. You have a very interesting way of looking at the world. Do you apply this ’standard’ to other human beings? If not why? They are after all members of other nations. You seem to be implying that if I kill someone from the USA then that’s fine so long as I feed a thousand others, after all the USA is another nation too. You are a truly weird and frightening individual if you think that torturing an animal is fine so long as you feed some others. Where do you draw the line here? Is it OK to torture if I feed nine-hundred? One-hundred? Fifty? Ten? One? Or does it vary with species? What standards are you applying here?
But they do not have to turn the practice of killing the other living things into a ritualized amusement.
I don’t have any hunting rituals, any more than you have clothing rituals. Who in the developed world has a hunting ritual?
(I’m not going to get excited about cockroaches, we all draw lines and I have mine.)
And they conveniently end at exactly the point where you cease to enjoy it. What about rodents? Thousands of them are killed by poisons that cause their joints and internal organs to fill with blood. It’s hideously painful according to people who have suffered from anti-coagulant poisoning. If you ate only fresh vegetables and fruit then there wouldn’t be even one-millionth the number of mice killed. I assume you do this. Or is it OK to kill rodents slowly because you enjoy bread? Bread is only a ritual food, why do mice have to die for your ritual food. You don’t need it. Or do you consider bread to be a pressing need?
**I never wish for any higher life form to ever suffer physically or psychologically any more than the absolute minimum possible in order to serve only our most pressing needs. **
See above. Are you prepared to modify your behaviour and forego the activities you enjoy
**In other words, yes, we can raise catlle and pigs and chickens and turkeys to eat, but we must not torment them in life (and we DO) and we must make their deaths fast and as pain-free as we can. (which, by the way, makes their meat better anyway, so it is in our interest to do so.) **
Must? Why must? I agree with the principal, but why the imperative?
**Beyond this, I think there are no good reasons to cause the death and suffering of animals. I think it is our job, as the rulers of the planet, to protect the “other nations” that share it with us. It is an astonishing and marvelous place, this planet of ours, and shame on us for treating it so shabbily as we have up to now. We must do better. **
Again with the ‘must’. If you agree that there are no good reasons to cause death and suffering to animals then I assume you don’t eat bread, don’t drive a car, don’t wear make-up, wear only second-hand clothes and live in a single room high-rise apartment. Doing otherwise will invariably lead to the death and suffering of animals. Or is it OK to cause death and suffering if you get pleasure out of the end result? Using your computer right now is not a pressing need is it. Yet the mining practices required to get the glass and metal and the harvesting of the oil and coal needed to provide the electricity kills animals every day. Why is that OK, is it because you didn’t do it personally?
**On the one hand, we are supposedly “better” and “more important” than all the other animals on earth. That’s why it is supposedly ok for us to use animals for reseach, make them perform in circuses, and stare at them in zoos. Well, why is that? Because we’re smarter? Because we are able to rise above our base instincts and think ? Because we have something more on our minds than what’s for dinner? **
Who said any of that. I don’t think I’m better than any animal. I also know the animal doesn’t think it’s better than I am. I will do whatever is necessary to maximise my reproductive capacity and the animal will do the same. I draw the line at hurting other humans only. You apparently have a very vague line drawn that implies you can justify anything so long as you don’t do the killing first hand. I can justify using animals in experiments precisely because I am not better than they are. I have no duty to them, only to my people and myself. If they make me more successful then fine. If my instincts make it difficult to bear seeing an animal in pain then that is my call. I certainly don’t claim the right to force that on other people.
**Well, there ya go. If we’re better because we’re not tied to our instincts (which we are not…at least most of us. Snort), then we have to act accordingly, recognize the value of life on earth, and treat it with the honor it demands. We can’t just cheese out and say “hey man, I’m only a animul myself…hehehehe” **
WTF. You aren’t tied to your instincts. So you don’t live in an enclosed dwelling because that would require the killing of animals by habitat destruction. You sleep in a bed-roll under the open stars. You don’t live in a city because the congregation of humans has far greater environmental impacts than humans living in groups. You live 50 kilometre outside the city and sleep by the roadside and cycle to work very day. But you only ask enough money to survive on, because the instinct to acquire assets leads to the consumption of natural resources that leads to the death of animals. You refuse to have sex because a) it can contribute to disease transmission that could cause the death of other people and because the use of birth control leads to the destruction of animal habitats and b) because there is a chance you might reproduce and the extra mouth would require that animals be killed, and there is no good reason to cause the death and suffering of animals. The urge to reproduce is only an instinctive one. You never wear more clothes than is required for hygiene/health and the local laws and always the most cost-effective forms of clothing. Cosmetics of any kind are out. After all attempting to gain social position and sexual attractiveness are only instincts. They’re certainly not rational.
Do you really think all humans all over the world live in very similar societies because we all independently came up with the idea. Come off it, we’re social animals by instinct, we’re shelter building animals by instinct, we’re asset gatherers by instinct, we’re social climbers by instinct.
I always like to see someone take a moral stance with no sign of double standards, and with all the consequences of their stance carefully considered.
I think frank Herbert said it best: ‘You can always spot the moral choices. That’s where you abandon self-interest.’
