11 ms·
Would it be progressive to stop eating animals?
by alephu5 5y ago
Would it be progressive to stop eating animals?
- nefitty 5y agoWhat? Yes. Killing sentient beings is objectively wrong.
- macinjosh 5y agoThe food chain is immoral. Got it.
- uDontKnowMe 5y agoThe food chain is an abstraction that describes the natural world, not a moral agent any more than the water cycle is. Wild animals predate in the wild, yes, but they aren't moral agents. Humans are able to reason about our own actions and more importantly we can live and indeed thrive on a plant-based diet. So since there are ways to get our food other than killing other thinking, feeling, suffering individuals, we aren't forced to do so. We just choose to inflict incomprehensible amounts of suffering on animals not out of necessity but because we like the taste of cow milk slightly more than we like the taste of oat milk, or we love the way their flesh tastes, and would rather eat it than cook a plant-based meal. We inflict billions of lifetimes of misery and torture on creatures with their own desires and will to live, who feel suffering and pain just as much as we do, in service of an utterly unnecessary and trivial benefit, that while we could live incredibly well, even healthier and with less impact on the environment on a plant-based diet, we like the taste of their flesh and excretions too much to choose oat milk and tofu at the grocery store. Yes it is wrong! Future generations will look back at our time as with disbelief that we behave like this.
- c22 5y agoYou're just moving your consumption farther from your leaf of the tree of life--which is totally fine, even most meat-eaters will balk at cannibalism. But what makes you so certain plants are unfeeling and can't experience pain? I observe plants attempting to avoid and heal from damage, so I assume they do have some analogue experiences around feelings of suffering.
- nefitty 5y agoWhether plants feel pain or not doesn't impact our responsibility to reduce the suffering of animals we can naturally better empathize with. Plants lack pain receptors and the nervous systems to process pain signals. Whatever their "experience", it's safe to assume it is so alien to us as to be incomprehensible. In that case, it's very unlikely any of the concepts we use to describe our lived experiences (ie suffering) would apply to a plant whatsoever. The correlate is trying to imagine what photosynthesizing feels like. I can viscerally imagine what a bird feels when its beak is cauterized.
- c22 5y agoI agree that a plant's lived experience is likely somewhat alien to our own, but why do we have a "responsibility" to reduce suffering only for living things closer to us? And where do you draw the line? Is it okay to squash bugs I don't like? Would it be a ridiculous waste of our time to develop farming and harvesting techniques that reduce the suffering of plants? If we deploy such solutions for animals does that make eating meat better? If not having meat available causes humans to suffer is that worse? It all just seems so arbitrary. Personally I eat all sorts of things and try to source what I consume from the most conscientious suppliers I can find, but I'm not convinced going full vegan would make me a better person.
- nefitty 5y agoIt's not at all arbitrary. My starting position is that I want to be free of pain/suffering and I want to be able to pursue my desires and preferences. I take those as inherently good. I apply those internal truths to other living beings. Plants, bacteria, etc don't feel pain, although they might have preferences for food, etc. Those beings, then, are not especially relevant to our ethical obligations viz a viz the experience of suffering. A fish feels pain and exhibits distinct preferences. Therefore, we are obligated to respect its life by virtue of the inherent good of painlessness and autonomy. It is immoral to kill any living creature that fits that framework. Finally, this does not mean that our moral obligations are cemented here. We may eventually learn that other living things have properties that require us to expand the scope of our ethical duties.
- pphysch 5y agoBut killing non-"sentient" beings is not. IMO it's a vacuous and ridiculous distinction that only distracts us from living sustainably within our environments.
- nefitty 5y agoI'm not sure what your criticism is. There is no way to describe a sentient being without those two words. A sentient? I think it is naive to believe anyone can live a perfectly moral life. The difficulty of the project doesn't mean we should delude ourselves about our choices and actions. I commend anyone who acts. Even reducing meat consumption to only six days a week, or what have you, is praiseworthy. I give myself, and others, no quarter when it comes to ethical living. I don't hesitate to admit that I fall woefully short of sainthood.
- pphysch 5y agoMy criticism is that saying one branch of the tree of life deserves freedom from harm, and the rest don't deserve the same rights, is totally ridiculous.