I think personally owning a pet dog and realizing they aren't biological machines simply responding to stimuli has helped me with that realization.
I think the parent comment to yours is more about avoiding meat because of compassion to the intellect/consciousness. Rather than avoiding meat in order to eliminate any suffering that may occur during "production" of it.
I'm curious because I'm pretty good at convincing myself that the meat I buy comes from animals that haven't suffered. And if it can actually be guaranteed (moose killed by hunter) I'm all-in on meat. But if I somehow "woke up" and realized that I didn't want to eat other living things because of compassion (or whatever) to their minds? I'm not sure that I could go back from that.
I am asking myself if it is better for the animal to live a decent life even if it is to be killed and ate at the end or not to live at all.
If I want the animal to have a good life, why do I/should I get to (or even want to) decide when and why that life should end? It seems very contradictory to me and necessitates a need for the taking of the thing I’m apparently attaching value to.
Also I know I don’t physically kill these animals on a stop watch, but I vote for their death with my wallet. I don’t see a significant difference. Actually, I think it’s somewhat worse than it I carried it out myself. That’s why I generally try to only eat seafood that I selectively harvest while diving. I can guarantee the final moments were as brief as humanly possible and the rest of its life were as nature intended.
So, I really struggle with this one part where I decide the animal has worth and should therefor have a good existence. However, I’m also deciding it should only have that until I decide I want to deep fry its muscles or something. So it must be that I’m deciding to be a benevolent killer or something, which is certainly better than a ruthless one, but leaves me a uncomfortable nonetheless. I need to justify my own need or desire to continue killing, or at least profiting from the killing.
That’s the part I can’t do so far. Do I actually need to eat them? No, so far I really don’t. My health is still good after quite a while and the initial cravings have subsided. Do I want to eat them? No, not anymore, although I do miss it from a culinary perspective. Does that justify killing them? Well, would it justify killing someone’s dog if I thought dogs were delicious? Or any dog? No, never - the notion is absurd.
Well. I suppose some people eat dogs. This has a significant cultural element to it.
Nonetheless I really can’t bring myself to convince myself that I have any good reason to eat animals. Though admittedly I make an exception for fish and shellfish. I feel strange about that. I mean, when I get in the water those fish are arguably smarter than I am. One thing I justify the action by is that at least in the water they have a natural chance and environmental advantage. It isn’t a relationship of control and systematic murder from birth to death.
In time I suspect I’ll stop eating fish too. I don’t know.
The more I think about it the more it becomes an existential matter to be honest.
> would it justify killing someone’s dog if I thought dogs were delicious?
That's a bit silly. Regardless of the ethics of eating meat, there are a whole bunch of other reasons why you wouldn't kill someone's pet. Just like you don't dive into people's fish tanks for your seafood :)
My main objection is to the manner of which animals have to be raised and harvested in the most efficient manner to satisfy the ever increasing demand for meat in the world while still being bottom of the barrel in price. Has there been any evidence this can be sustained without wholesale suffering?
If you can ensure all the meat you purchase comes from the opposite of such conditions then all the more power to you. The meat I do eat I also try to purchase from better farm conditions, but I don't think that's always possible.
Death is a form of suffering. Whether the creature you kill knows it lives only to die for you, whether it can see and understand some aspect of its cage or not, you took it before its time. It is all the same wrong in the end.
Now, eating an animal that died of natural or uncontrollable causes, or using for-real excess milk or eggs? Sure, fine. But those are not at all sustainable activities at a population level. We have to do things to animals that cause real harm to ever get enough of those products to sell them, even if we treat the animals way better overall. (And it's still better to push for better treatment than to do and feel nothing!)
My own mental backflip: I do still eat meat, because I'm a selfish and horrible person. I accept my complicity in the evil. But I also know my own choices will not meaningfully change demand patterns, so I allow myself the pleasure of the flavours I grew up eating, and try not to dwell on it too much. Even the Buddha was said to eat meat if it was what was served -- but of course, would request not to be served it!
Regardless, I know full veganism is the only actually ethically justifiable choice, and I believe and hope it will one day be the only realistic or acceptable choice for all of us. I will advocate for it (I hope) strongly whenever I can. No being deserves any part of what we do to them for food, and most people have pretty awful reasons to continue to eat meat; often literally at the level of, "animals can't suffer!", or, "humans are a higher being!", which is a mind-blowingly horrific thing to understand people will assert even after being given the evidence. I find the dismissive attitude appalling and try to get friends to at least see it in its real light.
Personally, once I catch wind that the tide toward veganism is beginning to turn, or that we somehow achieved affordable ethically lab-grown cheap muscle+fat tissue meats, I'll gladly turn that page. Or, once the horror again resurges strongly enough to overcome the value of shepherd's pie, thanksgiving ham, or a hamburger.
It's not much of an intellectual position, but it's all I've got. I ask that you at least be honest with yourself: the beings you eat have suffered for your pleasure.
I don't think this blanket statement is true. eg: people often live long past the point that they enjoy being alive.
> Now, eating an animal that died of natural or uncontrollable causes, or using for-real excess milk or eggs?
What's "natural" in your opinion? Do you mean old-age, disease, natural predators or something else? Humans are natural predators. Death from old age/disease is often caused by environmental factors or stress.
Calling any of this "evil" is an interesting choice. Maybe this is all just how the world works and we have yet to accept that as a species. I do think our role in the food chain needs to be sustainably defined and understood.
Next, I agree that "natural" could mean a lot of things. In this case, understanding that we're discussing moral involvement, I'm speaking about whether or not you have moral involvement in causing the death.
Paying for a burger from McDonald's is indirectly asking for the death of the cow. They wouldn't kill it if no one bought burgers, but we all know that people do buy burgers, so the blame is diffuse. We all share. But you, in eating it, still profit by the being's death, and it was ultimately a deed done for your benefit when you chose to pay them. Of course it is more direct if you pay a butcher to slaughter a cow, and far more direct if you wield the knife. Hit a deer with your car by mistake? Maybe that's like manslaughter levels of culpability.
As a sidebar, is a cow killed by a wolf a natural death? It happens 'in nature', and the wolf couldn't live without killing other things, so it is natural for a wolf to kill a cow. But... is the death a natural death? I do not feel it is. I cannot blame the wolf (as it does not know better and does not possess other actual options, like we do), but I do not think the cow exists for the wolf. To paraphrase Kant I think, each being is an end unto itself. The cow's most natural death is one of old age, i.e. what we would legally call 'natural causes'. Suppose that health care could have extended its life, well sure, but there's a limit of practicality.
Last, it would be possible to justify literally any act from the position of "maybe this is just how the world works and we have to accept it" -- so, again, sure. But slavery was 'just how the world worked' for a long time, and I feel I am better off, and I can think of a hell of a lot of other humans who are better off, for us eventually having not just accepted it. There are similarities.
Veganism is really the only choice that's morally consistent, intellectually honest, and doesn't rely on special permission. It is ultimately not really arguable that it is a terrible thing for us to do to breed them, to keep them, to manipulate them, to harvest their products, and to kill them, especially in the ways we do. One must rely on ideas like 'might is right', 'we are inherently special for reasons that must be taken on faith', or 'nothing really matters anyway, everything is relative', which are exactly the arguments that have been used to justify all past atrocities of our doing.
likewise :)
In terms of practicality, a wolf needs to eat too. Without wolves (or predators) we find over-population which leads to food scarcity which leads to suffering (queue yoda reference.)
I think there is a big difference between slavery (a dark human endeavor) and the natural order of the world. Humans didn't invent predators. At best, we conquered them and at worst, we became them while growing to become the second most dominant (and largely unchecked) biomass on the planet.
Given that plants have been shown to have feelings, I'm not sure where our idea that eating plants is morally superior to eating animals comes from. Some plants poison animals in order to fertilize their soil. Some people poison plants in order to have a somewhat pleasant looking front-yard. Many plants have developed obvious defenses against being eaten, much like animals. By eating fruit that has dropped to the ground, you are denying the plant its intent to reproduce.
I think that most humans are more capable of empathizing with other animals than with plants and that's the root of the sense of morality here. The hard truth is that no living thing wants to be eaten to death but every living thing needs to eat. The circle of life is a real thing, the carbon cycle relies on plants recycling decayed organic matter including animals.
I know what you mean, but on some level you and I are also "biological machines simply responding to stimuli". The difference is more in the complexity of said stimuli and responses in time and space :)