After all folks in the past went through to get you that vote (and not just in this country) and make sure you keep it I feel its disrespectful at the least in not voting. Its your duty as a citizen. I suppose I don’t REALLY think its ‘immoral’…but I certainly don’t admire folks who treat their franchise like that. Even if you don’t like any of the candidates and there is no one who appeals to you to vote for (I’ve been in this situation a lot lately), you should at least go to the voting booth and then simply not vote. But at least make the effort.
Everyone has a threshold…and it even varies within each individual. I actually know people who have killed others and some who have stolen, yet they are still friends. Friendship is not as cut and dried as you make it out to be. Some folks have remained my friends despite doing things I find distasteful…while other friends I had are no longer my friends even though they might not do anything I find distasteful.
Certainly. I can see how someone who was my friend and discovered I drink or smoke, or enjoy anal sex, or watch Lost on TV, or myriad other things, could decide that this is too offensive to them and break off a relationship with me. However, I’ve never met anyone who has broken off a relationship with me simply because I do any of those things…including eat meat. I’d say you’d have to be pretty much a fanatic about your chosen issue to take things to that extreme…fanatical and very manipulative, holding your friendship in reserve unless other conform to what YOU think is right and best.
Polerius, come on. Miller is saying that, depending on the “immoral act” you’d decide to be friends or not. He’s not saying you’d ALWAYS decide to keep them as friends. For our hypothetical vegetarian here, maybe killing multiple human beings is on the same level as eating a steak, maybe not.
I went back and read his post and I don’t see a point where he says he has a threshold, like you mentioned you did, beyond which he would not be friends with someone.
I was just trying to see if he does have a threshold that trumps how much he enjoys his friends.
If I may ask, what were the circumstances in which they killed?
It depends on the circumstances, right?
If someone killed in self defense, it is different than if the liked going to the park and killing little old ladies for fun.
Could you still be friends with the latter?
This is not about finding something distasteful, but immoral.
At the end of the day, why do we consider something immoral? Because, in one way or another, it hurts a human or an animal. And we choose to avoid these things.
What point is there for you to avoid these things if you happily socialize with people who commit them? How much value do you put on other peoples’ suffering if you are OK with your friends committing these acts?
As I emphasized earlier, I was specifically responding to your statement that “It seems that people do a subconscious calculus…” I see no evidence that people do indeed perform some sort of “subconscious calculus.” It is conceivable, but that doesn’t mean that they seem to behave in that manner, nor does it suggest any evidence to that effect.
IMO time: Most humans don’t have hard set thresholds that trumps friendship automatically, expect at the very extreme’s. For instance most folks won’t remain your friend if you kill a beloved member of their family. However, things like eating meat for vegetarians, eating pork for Muslims and Jews, drinking alchohol or caffeen, having sex in certain ways or with certain people or with the opposite sex…these variables in the threshold game. I know some folks who are extremely intolerant of homosexuals for instance and if they found out a friend was a homosexual they would break off the friendship. I’m sure there are vegans who would break off a friendship with a meat eater (or even a lesser vegetarian who eats dairy products perhaps). There are probably religious folks out there who would do the same over simply religion, or for eating pork or drinking alchohol or whatever. But by and large these people are fanatics about their ‘cause’.
If all you want to do is find out where someone’s threshold is, I’d say that unless you happen to find a fantic on this board you won’t get a cut and dried answer. It will depend on circumstance whether or not a good friends behavior goes beyond the pale and forces a break. Most of us judge such circumstances on a case by case basis and give it the thought it deserves before simply breaking with a friend…instead of casting our ‘morals’ or whatever into concrete and using a one size fits all approach to such problems.
I won’t give the details but in one case my friend was a soldier and killed in war. In another case it was in a gang fight and I was there. As for the stealing thing I had a friend that was a shoplifter in his youth, and another one who looted several houses during a riot before I knew him.
Of course it depends on circumstance, like everything else. I judge things on a case by case basis. I think this answers your ‘killing in self defense’ vs ‘killing little old ladies’ thing…if not I can try again in another post. Certainly I have a threshold as everyone else does, but its at the extreme end of the scale (killing a member of my extended family probably wouldn’t endear you to me reguardless of how close we were, for example).
I was using distasteful and immoral interchangably there. I actually have had friends who thought what I did was ‘immoral’ based on their own codes (mostly religiously based)…yet they remained and remain my friends. Hell, a lot of my extended family (and several of my friends) thinks I’m ‘immoral’ because I don’t go to church regularly, never go to confession and I believe in that Evolution non-sense…yet they are still my family. Some of them think its distasteful in the extreme that I married a ‘white girl’, and that I don’t speak Spanish anymore and don’t have much of an accent (i.e. that I ‘act white’). My sister thinks I’m ‘immoral’ because of how much money I make a year, because I eat meat and drink coffee and because I go to a ‘Western Doctor’ who perscribes things like sleeping pills to me…the ULTIMATE evil! Yet she is still my sister and hasn’t disowned me. I have an Amish friend (and his wife) who think my entire lifestyle is immoral.
I’m not sure, unless you define ‘hurt’ towards humans in a broader way than simply physical pain. As to choosing to avoid those things we find immoral, certainly…but choosing for ourselves to avoid them is different than choosing FOR others.
I think most folks fall roughly into choosing whether its a big enough deal to break off a friendship with someone who does something we find immoral on a case by case basis depending on the extent what they do causes us distress. If eating the flesh of animals is something that causes you distress and you find it immoral, you could choose simply not to eat with your friends who partake…or if it causes you too much mental anguish picturing them in your imagination chowing down on a juicy steak, if you have nightmare pictures of the poor cow or chicken being munched upon in grusome fashion every time you see them, then perhaps you will break things off after all for your own good and your own sanity (though I would question how sane you are ). But expecting some hard fast rule, some cast in concrete line that once crossed immediately destroys a friendship…no, I think thats only for either extremes or for fanatics.
Polerius, this statement is what I’m referring to. This is a question that must be answered, and it could go either way, depending on the person and how firmly they believe that meat is murder, etc.
(I have no actual idea what Miller’s particular stance is, and I don’t think it’s necessarily relevant.)
Why are you asking me? You’re the one who wants to test his friends for moral purity, so you’re the one who needs to ask himself that question. Do you feel that eating meat is a sufficiently immoral act to trump whatever pleasure you feel from the company of your friends? It’s not something anyone else can answer for you. It depends entirely on the strength of your feelings about your friends, and the moral weight you place on proper diet. The answer is going to be different for every friend, and for every moral issue on which you want to judge them.
I think your problem here is treating all immoral acts as being the same. Just because someone doesn’t believe in killing animals for food doesn’t mean they neccesarily have to treat it the same as they would regard killing human beings. There can be a hierarchy of evil here. Not everything is black and white.
If you go with the “all or nothing” approach (conform 100% to my standard of morality or I won’t associate with you) then you either struck the jackpot when it comes to selecting friends or you don’t have any friends at all. In fact, I don’t think I want my friends to be carbon copies of myself. My life would be very boring if I didn’t have anyone to argue with.
Jesus hung out with sinners all the time. Are you better than Jesus?
Well, John Lennon was better than Jesus, and I’m better than John Lennon, so of course I’m better than Jesus.
But seriously:
Your problem is that you haven’t read the thread. Either that, or you like building strawmen.
Nowhere did I claim “all immoral acts as being the same”, or that people who don’t believe in killing animals for food “neccesarily have to treat it the same as they would regard killing human beings.”
Even if everything is not black and white, and even if its’ not considered as bad as killing humans, it’s possible for some vegetarians to feel that killing animals is sufficiently bad that they don’t want to associate with meat eaters.
For example, I don’t think that stealing is as bad as killing humans, but I consider it sufficiently bad that I would not be friends with a robber. On the other hand, I don’t have a problem being friends who break the speed limit or jaywalk, since these are insignificant issues.
So, yes, there is a gradation of the severity of immoral/unlawful acts, and it is possible to not want to associate with people who do something worse than a certain threshold.
This threshold can be lower “killing humans”, but that doesn’t mean you consider everything above the threshold as being morally equal to “killing humans”
and yet, I still managed to find many friends who were not “carbon copies” of me.
It’s not that difficult, there still are a lot of people out there who don’t routinely engage in immoral acts.
And, frankly, I find the whole “Oh, poor me, I won’t have any friends if I don’t associate with immoral people” to be very egotistical. If your selfishness is so large that you don’t care enough about the victims of, say, a thief to stop you from hanging out with him, I honestly wonder what it is that stops you from doing what he does, since you don’t put their suffering above your personal entertainment anyway.
I’m vegetarian, have been for twenty years, for ethical reasons, and have never excluded people from friendship based on that personal decision. My decision to not eat meat was based on seeing animals as beings worthy of decent treatment, and my own soft-hearted self not being able to kill one, so decided not to eat them. It’s a nice 21st century luxury to not have to; so many other options available.
That same soft-heartedness allows me to not get hard-headed about it, and understand that everyone has to find their own way with ethics in the raising/killing of animals. It was a clear choice for me, but, in the world we live in, it’s not the status quo. My friends, the majority of whom eat meat, know my feelings, and are wonderful about offering veg fare at gatherings. (I do live in a veg-friendly city,tho)
Not to get too mushy, but the same feeling of not-harm/compassion which is the guiding value in my vegetarianism is also the guiding value of my dealing with Homo sapiens… you know. Morality can be a fluid medium in which to traverse this world.
This is one of the strangest things that I’ve ever read. I’m confused as to how you can consider eating a cow or a pig to be amoral, but (I’m assuming) lamb, goat, chickens, turkeys, ducks, fish, clams, etc, are fair game. I can understand not eating cow and pig because you don’t like it. And I can understand not eating any animal because of morality, but I can’t understand your stance. Can you elaborate, or have I misunderstood what you meant?
FWIW - I’m veg, mostly because eating meat disgusts me - it looks WAAAAY too much like a dead animal (which, of course, it is), and that skeeves me out. Generally, I try not to think too much about what anyone eats, because chances are that could skeeve me out as well. However, to be perfectly honest, I always think a little less of people if they eat veal. Or fois grais, or anything else that involves subjecting the animal to really rotten living conditions just to make it more tasty. That seems really rotten to me. None of my current friends eat those things - or at least they don’t tell me about it. I suppose it would be a bit like finding out that someone was really mean to their dog or cat (or whatever) - it makes me think less of them.
I’m also assuming that people who do eat veal, fois grais, etc, don’t give a rats patootie what I think, so it’s really not a huge issue.
). But expecting some hard fast rule, some cast in concrete line that once crossed immediately destroys a friendship…no, I think thats only for either extremes or for fanatics.