PLD:
I truly don’t understand your viewpoint. It seems you recognize that Vegetarianism is a largely symbolic gesture.
You know, people can eat what they want. And their reasons are their own. And if they are happy that way, who the hell cares?
Disliking evangelical vegetarians is no reason to dislike vegetarianism. Especially with such vitriol.
Scylla, pretty much everything we do is a symbolic gesture. We all end up dead in the end, don’t we?
My choice to become vegetarian is non-symbolic to the extent that it satisfies my personal ethical constraints. The same can be said of anyone’s decision to do anything.
Fair enough.
Looks like we’re beating the dead horse. I’d prefer to eat it 
I really don’t see why Scylla has gone out of his way to insult people who choose to eat vegetables.It seems like you have an unreasoning prejudice against plant-eaters, which makes no sense because a vegetarian diet is a rational choice. Vegetarians have lower rates of cancer, less chance of dying of heart disease, and are generally healthier than carnivores. In addition, fresh vegetables are cheaper than meat, so eschewing meat is as easy on the wallet as it is on the arteries. Moreover, because large-scale ranching has marked deleterious effects on the environment, one could argue that vegetarians are helping to protect the environment by not eating animals.
Moreover, both ** Scylla** and Milossarian ought to know that there is a distinct difference between vegans and vegetarians. It doesn’t help your argument if you ignore the niceties of nomenclature.
I will agree that the New Age/crystal wearing/will-believe anything-that-some-guru-tells-them-crowd is annoying, but while New Agers do intersect with the vegan/vegetarian crowd, they are by no means synonymous. It is entirely possible to be a vegetarian on a purely rational basis.
I’m not a vegetarian because I lift weights and soy protein just doesn’t cut it when it comes to getting bigger, but just because I don’t share their choices does not give me the right to denigrate vegetarians.
goboy:
Yeah, but here it is, page 3 and you’re the first to mention it.
I would agree that those are rational reasons.
Hey dennison - want to snap out of your personal insults and self-congratulatory reverie long enough to explain how “unnecessary suffering” is prevented by a person not eating meat?
Suffering of one living organism is replaced by the suffering of another. Or many others. If vegetarianism is being done out of a sense of morality, it is not inappropriate in a discussion of same to note that a person is making a value judgement about particular living organisms and particular ways that they die, while being rather blase about other living organisms’ suffering and death - or even the same animals, dying in different, maybe worse, ways as a result of their choices.
To some outside observers, this tends to make the hand-wringing over certain subclasses rather puzzling. Given that we are part of a natural system that we can’t extricate ourselves from, even if our sense of superiority is pldennison-sized.
(Of course, the acts of one vegetarian don’t amount to a fruit fly fart to the cosmos. But for about the tenth time, if it makes an individual person feel better, THAT’S GREAT!)
But all of this has been pointed out repeatedly. Stop trying to focus on how much smarter you are than me, and pay attention.
You’ll tear a rotator cuff patting yourself on the back that much. Prick.
Milo, you haven’t said a single respectful thing or asked a single respectful question in this thread, and now you want to be treated with respect? Fuck you. Act like you deserve it, and you’ll get it, you putz.
If you’re honestly unable to see how reducing the demand for meat reduces the number of animals subjected to horrific factory-farm rearing and slaughterhouse method, you are an even bigger moron than you previously indicated. I’m not going to educate you in Market Forces 101.
Oh, and to put my money where my mouth is . . .
Milo’s first post in the thread, consisting of vicious stereotyping (“the blatant illogic of vegetarianism,” as if everyone who is vegetarian becomes so for the same reason), ad hominem (“self-loathing and delusion”) and mockery:
Milo’s second post, consisting of nothing but mockery, and being wholly irrelevant, since vegetarians like me who assign validity to Singer’s maxim about significant difference recognize that the difference between flora and fauna is significant:
Milo’s third post, the one to which I responded, which consists of nothing but gainsaying (“I bet I know why people really become vegetarians!”), further ad hominem, ignorance of the difference between vegetarians and vegans (how would a Catholic like it if you called him a Mormon?) and further mockery:
Like I said, I’ll play tough but fair, and give like I get. Those are the kind of posts you want to make, those are the kinds of posts I’m going to give you back. You want to play differently, say so. But I’m not going to refrain from calling you a moron when you say something moronic.
PL:
**
I was talking about vegetarianism, as practiced in a certain way, generally.
You were talking about me.
**
… and then you got personally insulting again.
Yep. Some livestock-keeping practices are not good. Many others (including a few with which I am personally familiar) are just fine.
And as for the cow’s demise in a slaughterhouse, it is quick and efficient, in the most typical case.
So, as your comments indicate, you are approaching this from the perspective that eating less beef is good because it stops the slaughter of cows. Ditto pork for pigs, chicken for chicken. OK. If stopping the killing of these particular animals in this particular way is a person’s goal.
If it is more of a philosophical, “doing my part to stop the death and suffering of living creatures,” it does not appear to make sense upon scrutiny. For many reasons that have been stated by a few people.
Your first cut-and-paste by me is mockery? Sorry if it makes you feel bad, but mockery it isn’t. (In fact, the esteemed Scylla’s OP contains statements that on their face are much more mocking.)
Cut-and-paste number 2? Again, makes an assertion about the topic of discussion at hand. You see this as a personal attack? No; what you’ve been doing is a personal attack, dennison.
Do plants feel agony, in a plant’s way? Of course they do. But vegetarians don’t give this a second thought. Why? Is the plant’s agony no less than a cow’s, just because it is not as high an order of organism, or because we can’t perceive the pain?
Sorry if you feel that’s “irrelevant” to the discussion at hand, PL. I don’t. [insert personally insulting statement denoting intellectual superiority here on your next cut and paste]
Nonsense, plants can’t feel pain because they lack a central nervous system. No brain, no pain. (Please, no obvious George W. jokes) Cows, on the other hand, do have a central nervous system and do feel pain.
Milo,when you can take a break from your pissing contest with PL, would you comment on the reasons for vegetarianism enumerated in my previous post? (vegetarians are healthier, vegetables are cheaper to buy, vegetarians don’t contribute to the pollution caused by industrial ranching)?
Oh my God, an advertising slogan! I can’t argue with that!!! You meat-eaters are all so fucking brilliant!
By the way, my last post was sarcastic. I don’t know if that came through.
And please no one make a series of stupid and unfunny jokes, like the ones resulting from my last angry sarcastic post in this thread.
Scylla; that line about the chicken head winking was truly funny.
However, regarding the Beef commercials. Rememeber when James Garner was the spokesman for them?
Then he had to have heart surgery?
Not good publicity eh?
Goboy:
Just for the record, while it’s certainly true that Vegetarianism is cheaper, and healthier than a typical omnivore’s diet (we eat too much meat,) I do believe that the optimum diet healthwise does contain some meat.
Milo et al:
[quote]
(In fact, the esteemed Scylla’s OP contains statements that on their face are much more mocking.)
[quote]
Esteemed?
I am but a lowly worm. A fool. I would hate to think that I was esteemed for my nasty little self-indulgent rant with its thin cloaking of humor.
My shotgun approach and blanket condemnation/refutation of all forms of vegetarianism, isn’t exactly the nicest thing I’ve ever done.
I will freely confess to an immature, gleeful, guilty pleasure in just letting 'er rip. (Plus the thing with This Year’s Girl is just turning me on. Nothing sexier than an angry hippy chick )
And frankly I’m surprised at myself and a little puzzled at myself for having defended the whole thing so vociferously.
All things considered, I think I’ve been treated a lot nicer than I merit, here.
Clearly though, I find fault with much of Vegan/Vegetarian rationale, and think there’s much better, more effective ways to be an ethical human.
Can we all say it was fun and be nice, or is it too late?
Remember when Jim Fixx helped to popularize running as an exercise activity?
Then he dropped dead at age 52 of a heart attack while running?
Not good publicity eh? :rolleyes:
Sometimes people die, or get horrible diseases, that have nothing to do with their lifestyle.
The closest I can come to being a vegetarian are eating animals that are vegetarians.
**
I thought I already had, goboy.
Not eating meat, for 10,000 different reasons, is fine. My comments questioning the practice were directed at a particular type of vegetarian.
Your points all make some sense to me.
Although:
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Don’t necessarily make the leap that growing more vegetables = less pollution. Where I live, runoff from farms – both the livestock and crop-growing varieties – is the second biggest threat to our water quality, next to general erosion and runoff.
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There are medical studies that indicate people are healthier on an all-vegetable diet than their meat-eating counterparts? I know eating a lot of red meat isn’t particularly good for a person, but what about fish- and chicken-eaters?
This [WebMD](My comments questioning the practice were directed at a particular type of vegetarian.) column, indeed, indicates:
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However, it is silent on whether avoiding red meat makes a difference. And it also says:
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And what is one to make of this?
**
While not a directly on-point discussion, the guy goes on to say, as I have been trying to, I guess unsuccessfully, that while there may be many good reasons for choosing to be a vegetarian, it’s when it is taken to a level of claims that aren’t true that it gets annoying.
That was some guy named Cecil
Does the term CRANK ring any bells