The Irony of Being Vegetarian For "Moral" Reasons and Dogs

[David Sklansky]

"I see your point, but my point is that there is no right and wrong outside of a human construction unless there is a God (as I believe Sklansky has already argued here several times),"

Sorry, Not Ready. Can't even get credit where credit is due.

[David Sklansky]

"If an animal wants to have all rights due to humans, then it must abide by all normal human laws. I don't relish trying to prosecute lions for antelope murder, nor do I think it is feasible to try and force a wolf to be a vegan. If you are so gung ho on animal rights, then shouldn't all lions be stopped?"

Seems like a good argument. But what about if an animal simply doesn't want to be tortured unless there is much to be gained from it? Most animals DO abide by that law. And a few humans don't. Is a pet poodle's life worth more than an incurably mentally ill person who would hurt people for fun if he was let out of the hospital? You would sure get into a lot more trouble if you murdered him.

[Cooker]

I didn't say you where the one that originally argued it, and you do agree with it. By I will say here that the statement should be changed to " ... as many on this forum have argued including Not Ready and Sklansky..."

[Cooker]

I agree that animals should not be tortured for no gain, because that is a waste of man power and typically a sign of mental defect that should be punished and closely monitored. However, where do you draw the line as what gain justifies torture of animals and what gain does not? I would say any appreciable gain to humanity is acceptable since animals are a different species and we are not bound to treat them as anything other than a resource. The specific case of torturing a poodle to save a violently mentally ill person is clearly a poor use of resources since the mentally ill person's continued existence could harm humanity. In this situation you clearly wouldn't torture or even painlessly kill the dog to save the human.

By the way I also think we go too far to aid the mentally ill. I think the law is totally backwards here. The purpose of prison is to punish and reform. If you cannot be reformed then you are defective and should certainly be terminated or used in some way where you can still be useful to mankind (medical testing perhaps). What about the mentally ill that don't commit crimes? This is a bit of touchy feely area, but since I am bound to carry this line of thought to the bitter end since I have started down the dark path, here goes. If they are capable of menial yet useful work then they should be allowed to do that, if not termination (if the manpower to keep them alive outweighs even the benefit of medical testing on them) or medical testing would probably be most appropriate.

Also, I doubt a poodle doesn't want to be tortured. Certainly a poodle doesn't like torture while it happens, but I doubt a poodle has such a complex thought as want.

I apologize for the rambling of these posts, but I am quite busy right now, and don't have the time to say things concisely nor do I have much time to fully think about these things beyond what I find amusing.

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By the way I also think we go too far to aid the mentally ill. I think the law is totally backwards here. The purpose of prison is to punish and reform. If you cannot be reformed then you are defective and should certainly be terminated or used in some way where you can still be useful to mankind (medical testing perhaps).

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You sound like you have tendencies toward mental illness yourself.

Even if you're just seeking attention you need a certain kind of depravity to post comments like this.

[Cooker]

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By the way I also think we go too far to aid the mentally ill. I think the law is totally backwards here. The purpose of prison is to punish and reform. If you cannot be reformed then you are defective and should certainly be terminated or used in some way where you can still be useful to mankind (medical testing perhaps).

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You sound like you have tendencies toward mental illness yourself.

Even if you're just seeking attention you need a certain kind of depravity to post comments like this.

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Perhaps you are right, but I am in the class that can perform at least menial work (theoretical physics counts as at least menial I hope) and obey the law, so I don't expect to have any trouble.

I am certainly not seeking attention, I could spend my time better if that was my goal.

Hi. I am vegan for moral reasons and would like to respond to your post. I welcome this argument but if this descends into name-calling or any garbage like that then I'm just going to stop. I am aware that there will be some points I haven’t covered, I will respond to them if asked politely. Believe me, this post is long enough without trying to cover EVERY base related to this in it. But here's the view from the other side.

“Humans evolved the ability to model the thoughts of other animals, because this helped us catch, kill, and eat them (and also to some extent avoid predators, but there is no doubt we indeed evolved in order to trap animals). This same ability now causes some of us to empathize so much with animals that they refuse to eat them.”

Humans evolved the ability to map the stars, that doesn’t mean we evolved for space travel. We evolved the ability to create art, that doesn’t mean we evolved solely to paint. We simply evolved, and applied the intelligence gained through that evolution to do lots of stuff. Just because we can do it, doesn’t mean we evolved solely to do it.

"Nature is a place of kill or be killed, so to have objections to killing things is absurd. How in the world can it be immoral to do what we are designed through evolution to do? A lioness isn't immoral when it tears a living antelope to pieces."

Implied by this statement is that since humans live in "society" and not "nature", this makes it free for us to condemn murderers of other humans because we are striving for more than just nature. My question is, is New Orleans a "society" now? What is required for a "society" to exist? Are those concepts (Government? Infrastructure?) present there? I would contend that they aren't, but we still condemn the looting, rioting, rape, and murder happening in NO right now. We are seeing people in this situation react as animals act - doing what they feel they need to survive, consequences be damned.

(Note: I am NOT parlaying the racist notion that the predominately black population of NO that is taking part in what is happening down there now are a lower form of life. I am saying that when taken out of the societal comforts we have now, we react as all animals do. I would say the same thing if the people you see on the news doing the looting were white, Asian, blue, or Trekkies. Also, I realize that most everyone here doesn’t see how murder and rape are necessary for survival. I know I don’t, but Buffalo hasn’t been destroyed by anything other than the absence of industry recently, so I don’t know how I would react. I’m sure many people that say that they wouldn’t dream of doing those things also think that if they were in Germany during WWII, they would have done everything they could to prevent the Holocaust that they saw happening, but we all know that only a very small percentage of Germans did. Aside over.)

Anyway, I agree that you cannot judge animals based on the ethics of humanity, but those ethics have so many holes that we see every day (Is war moral? Is looting because you're hungry immoral? What about if you're taking a shopping cart full of designer shoes?), what is so wrong with taking ethics and extending them to the treatment of animals?

Vegans that are vegan for moral reasons aren't saying that at some point they and humans didn't eat meat out of necessity. Our contention is that given the state of the world now and knowing what we as humans have grown to know that we shouldn't lock animals in cramped battery cages where they are forced to live in filth just to be slaughtered painfully. Treating life that feels pain and the will to live this way should be unconscionable (right word?) in a moral society. Using hormonal treatment on female animals to produce dairy and eggs, slaughtering dozens of mink so ONE person can wear a coat, injecting laboratory animals with makeup and shampoo, these things are all unnecessary given the affluence and technological advancement of our society.

You said “’should people that torture animals be punished?’ And I say yes, but not because torturing animals is immoral, but because they are engaging in a behavior that is a gross waste of resourses” Gross waste of resources: Remember that it takes (from varying reports, including the USDA) 3 or more pounds of resources (water, grain, etc.) to make one pound of meat in a factory farm. Think of the hungry and thirsty people everywhere in the world. Because I cannot right now put my finger on a concrete number/source, I will simply say that many animal tests are inconclusive, another waste of resources. Also, we know animals feel pain and stress (especially mammals, which the vast majority of animal tests are performed on), so even if we get a result how are we sure that that result hasn’t been tainted in some way by the state of the animal tested upon? Also, if these animals are so close to us that we feel their results transfer to humans, how can we be morally sound in testing on them?

“Lysine and tryptophan (two amino acids we must have to live but cannot produce) are poorly represented in plants.” You said “poorly”, not “aren’t”, so they are possible to get, especially at this point in our evolution where we can analyze on a molecular level the composition of everything. Also, I have consulted with three doctors about my vegan diet (my pediatrician when I went vegan at 17, my adult doctor the next year, and another doctor when I moved) and they expressed concern about many a nutrient, but never mentioned these two. I’m not blowing this off off, but I’m not dead yet after three years, and some vegans I have met have been so for 10 or more years and they’re doing just fine (in fact, probably better than me). If one day I have blood work or whatever and it’s said “Yo, you need more lysine brah,” I will figure out what I need to do then.

Finally, on the morality of killing plants: Plants do not possess a survival instinct and they do not have a nervous system designed to respond to stimuli (read: pain). They grow in one spot and are perfectly content, unlike, say, chickens. They don’t do the same basic things humans and other animals do (you all have seen animals [and not just mammals,] breathe, sleep, use eyes to see things) therefore it is not immoral to consume them.

Sorry this was long.

[Cooker]

I will not name call (and I will handle those who call me names graciously). You are entitled to your opinion as I am entitled to mine.

One point I was trying to make is that our intelligence evolved primarily to help us catch animals. I feel that there can be little debate on this point. All other benefits are probably secondary. Now, it is this same ability that causes some of us to not want to eat animals. I simply find this ironic.

I think you are wrong about NO. Many people there are behaving just as they should. The likely future penalty for stealing food is likely less than the immediate consequence of not eating. In that area, the likely probability of unlawful acts being punished has gone down due to disorder and therefore the rate of these acts should increase if in reality it is mutual agreement and fear of punishment that establishes morality instead of some universal premise of right and wrong. They are not acting in a consequences be damned manner, but responding to the decreased probability that they will be caught and punished. This strengthens my argument that animals should not be extended protections under the law, because they are incapable of acting accordingly since they don't understand consequences at all (although this is not the sole basis of this position).

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Our contention is that given the state of the world now and knowing what we as humans have grown to know that we shouldn't lock animals in cramped battery cages where they are forced to live in filth just to be slaughtered painfully. Treating life that feels pain and the will to live this way should be unconscionable (right word?) in a moral society. Using hormonal treatment on female animals to produce dairy and eggs, slaughtering dozens of mink so ONE person can wear a coat, injecting laboratory animals with makeup and shampoo, these things are all unnecessary given the affluence and technological advancement of our society.


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If you feel this way then I will probably not convince you otherwise. I don't feel that there is anything wrong with what you suggest is unconscionable treatment of animals. I will tell you specifically why it is right: people like to eat meat, people like mink coats, people like to drink milk, and people like to eat eggs. If there was a much better way to get these things then a company would come along and do it and run the other companies out of business unless they adopt this method. Please, tell me what is wrong with this. What should prevent us from doing this? Just because something is similar to me doesn't mean that I ahve to care one bit about how it feels. I can empathise with a creature and still not treat it as I would like to be treated. I think acting on interhuman empathy is probably useful for humans, I doubt acting on empathy with other species is.

Do you know if a plant likes to be grown in a hothouse out of season? Do you know for sure that plants don't have anything that is similar to pain? Do you know if plants like being grown hydroponically? Do you know if plants like to be grown larger with fertalizer? Or do you not care simply because their expression of pain and stress is different enough to suit you? What if I don't think something feels what is close enough to human pain unless it cries tears as a human would? How close or far away from the human reaction does something have to be before you care? Do you eat clams or oysters?

[Zygote]

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By the way I also think we go too far to aid the mentally ill. I think the law is totally backwards here. The purpose of prison is to punish and reform. If you cannot be reformed then you are defective and should certainly be terminated or used in some way where you can still be useful to mankind (medical testing perhaps).

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You sound like you have tendencies toward mental illness yourself.

Even if you're just seeking attention you need a certain kind of depravity to post comments like this.

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Why? What he's saying makes perfect sense.

"One point I was trying to make is that our intelligence evolved primarily to help us catch animals. I feel that there can be little debate on this point. All other benefits are probably secondary. Now, it is this same ability that causes some of us to not want to eat animals. I simply find this ironic."

I feel this is kind of a chicken or egg point, for example, did intelligence come first or the desire to eat animals? Did intelligence begin when humans first built shelters, or when we first trapped animals? Why did carnivorous animals develop speed and cunning to catch their prey instead of intelligence? Also, who's to say that intelligence isn't continually evolving to the point that soon we will all believe as a few do now, that it is unnecessary to eat animals? (I'm not claiming to be on the next level of human intelligence, I'm simply saying that we'll never know "why" we are more intelligent than our animal brethren.)

I first want to say that I'm not claiming to be perfect. If you (not you Cooker, but a generic reader) want to find hypocrisy in what I'm doing and the point behind it, you probably will. Just in driving today...the tires on my car probably have pig fat in them, I probably killed a few bugs, the noise I created might have frightened the prey an animal was stalking, meaning that indirectly I caused an animal to go hungry. My response to this: I'm not expecting a law against eating meat and wearing fur anytime in my lifetime. Moral vegans are trying to spread the word and create a groundswell for future generations since in our generation animals will probably continue to be killed. In addition, we do what we can to limit the animal suffering and environmental impact of our every day lives. Why? Here's why:

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I don't feel that there is anything wrong with what you suggest is unconscionable treatment of animals. I will tell you specifically why it is right: people like to eat meat, people like mink coats, people like to drink milk, and people like to eat eggs. If there was a much better way to get these things then a company would come along and do it and run the other companies out of business unless they adopt this method. Please, tell me what is wrong with this. What should prevent us from doing this? Just because something is similar to me doesn't mean that I ahve to care one bit about how it feels. I can empathise with a creature and still not treat it as I would like to be treated. I think acting on interhuman empathy is probably useful for humans, I doubt acting on empathy with other species is.


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Like you said at the beginning of this paragraph, if this is how you feel, I doubt I can convince you otherwise. So I'm not going to try to. You've seen my case and rejected it. I've seen yours and rejected it. I have friends who have said the same thing to me. My family has. I'm not going to turn on people I care about and move out to the middle of Nowhere, Alaska so that I can live as I see fit. Instead I minimize where I can and discuss the way I feel with my fellow man so that maybe more people will understand.

Incidentally, if I was to ever go Unabomber and live off the land, I would eat meat as I would be doing so in harmony with nature instead of the unnatural ways in which meat is produced and consumed now. Going to Wendy's and unwrapping a junior bacon cheeseburger isn't using our evolved intelligence to trap and consume a wild animal. We don't know what the environmental impact of factory farming will be. Like I said in my post, if we humans have so much interhuman empathy, why don't we all change to plant-based diets which use fewer resources (saving the planet for the future), pollute less (http://www.wixt.com/news/local/story...5-76570F83DFBB), and would allow us to feed the hungry?

It's not on you to feed everyone, I know. I'm just providing an alternative and a solution.

As for the NO stuff...I think we actually agree, I just probably have a dimmer view of human nature. When consequences are removed, we do as we please...except that interhuman empathy seems to go away (reffering to murders and rapists, NOT people searching for whatever food/clothing/shelter they can). Animals are just below the intelligence line though to develop consequences on their own...although we all know that you can train animals, so they are capable of understanding consequences. However, training your dog positively ("Sit - here's a treat") is different than the wasteful torture in circuses ("Jump through this hoop - or get whipped).

On whether a plant "likes" things...you're asking if it feels pain. Lets look at it this way - if we find out plants CAN feel pain, then I will go back to eating animals (sparingly, when I can find actual free-range meat, or maybe I'd hunt) because then I would know for certain it to be impossible to eat without inflicting pain. But right now we can't find a "brain" in a plant that would be capable of processing signals from "nerves" that we also can't find. Even in their smallest forms animals show the instinct to survive and avoid strife. A spider in a puddle struggles to get out. I also eat mostly home-grown and organic produce from my local co-op. Yes I do eat plants that have been sprayed with fertilizer and pesticides occasionally. (For example, if i buy hummus) I try to limit it - again, I'm not perfect.

Directly answering your question about clams and oysters: this came up on another board I read (not a poker board) that clams are pretty much just animals "by default". I was inclined to agree, and considered buying some non-dairy clam chowder (I've seen it) to welcome myself back to the fold. However I was in Naples, Florida last week. Hurricane Katrina hit Miami, skidded to the south, missing Naples, but stirring up the Gulf something nasty as it grew into the storm we all know and love. The waves were tearing at the beach. I noticed that it was ripping baby clams out of the sand, and instantly, they would react and burrow back into the sand. They couldn't get deep enough to avoid the waves, but I saw that even in its lowest possible form, animal life shows the desire to continue life.

Also cooker and anyone else that shares your opinions, I don't think you're scum or some sort of horrible person for not caring what happens to animals. Like I said, I have friends and family who feel the same way. I think it's unfortunate, and sad sometimes, but it's not going to do any good to be mean-spirited.