@Loni:
@Thead: Okay, greenhouse gases aren't the only measure of goodness with regards to human food. And, this thread is not supposed to be about that.
for the final time, back on topic. Veganism: is it right, and does it do any actual good?
edited 7th Feb '11 10:43:38 PM by drunkscriblerian
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~Again, I've never seen much of a point regarding health, and I'm not touching animal rights/ environment because I am rather poorly informed on the subject, particularly the former. Unfortunately, the vegans I know tend to preach and strawman like there's no tomorrow.
Warm hugs and morally questionable advice given here. Prosey Bitchfest{Not helping —Madrugada}
@snowfox: Yes...unfortunately, so do most of the meat-eaters we hear from.
edited 8th Feb '11 5:45:09 AM by Madrugada
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~{Off-topic content deleted — Madrugada}
edited 8th Feb '11 5:51:18 AM by Madrugada
[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.{Off-topic content deleted — Madrugada}
edited 8th Feb '11 5:51:27 AM by Madrugada
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~I think that a normal diet is better than a vegan one. I read a blog
about a former health vegan. She says that she was initially attracted to veganism because she had anorexic tendencies.
I also gravitated toward veganism because it’s not a balanced diet and I was not a balanced person. As an anorexic young girl, the foods that I ate were usually foods low in fat, low in calories and high in carbohydrates. Clinical studies have been done since the ’40s demonstrating that a high carbohydrate diet overstimulates the glands, causing depression, violence, apathy, hyper-sensitivity, hypoglycemia, hypothyroidism, etc. Going from being an anorexic young woman to an extreme raw food vegan was very easy.
edited 7th Feb '11 10:56:33 PM by Grain
Anime geemu wo shinasai!{Off-topic content deleted — Madrugada}
I would guess that most vegans are in it for the animal rights.
edited 8th Feb '11 5:51:42 AM by Madrugada
[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.Animal rights. Let's go back to my question that nobody answered except Churchill Salmon.
Is it moral to support an institution of suffering if you can reasonably live without its products? This isn't a question of philosophical rights or the value of non-human life, just suffering.
edited 7th Feb '11 11:04:00 PM by Grain
Anime geemu wo shinasai!![]()
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Just because that was what attracted one person, doesn't mean the lifestyle in itself is flawed.
Perhaps moderation is the answer. A mainly vegetarian diet with occasional meat. After all, until recent times, people wouldn't have eaten meat at every meal like we do now.
edited 7th Feb '11 11:00:15 PM by LoniJay
Be not afraid...@Tzetze: for the most part, I say fuck animal rights...at least where they impede human rights. Let's worry about the dignity of our own species before we go saving the others.
Note...If anyone's offended, you didn't get the point.
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~That's called flexitarianism
.
edited 7th Feb '11 11:03:23 PM by Grain
Anime geemu wo shinasai!@ Tze Tze: Did I word that badly? I can talk about health. One of the reasons I made this thread was to learn about the other two by watching other people debate. Until I feel I know enough about the subject, I won't risk looking like an idiot.
^ Flexitarianism sounds reasonable. If only people could learn to listen to other ideas.
Warm hugs and morally questionable advice given here. Prosey Bitchfest{Off-topic content deleted — Madrugada}
edited 8th Feb '11 5:52:28 AM by Madrugada
That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - SilaswI ADBOC (agree denotationally but object connotationally)
to the bolded statements. It is a fact that the production animal system causes significant suffering to animals, some of which can be compared to torture, but since suffering is not a goal but just a significant byproduct of the system these statements can muddle the discussion. A more fair description might be "an institution which causes a lot of suffering".
If we're talking about suffering itself, it's important to know if we discount suffering based on the subject's ability to feel it (that is, equal suffering to less "intelligent" animal is less bad) or not. If the discount rate is high enough, it is completely right to eat factory farmed meat if not doing so would cause minor inconvenience such as having to eat slightly less tasty food at a restaurant which doesn't have many vegetarian/vegan alternatives. If the discount rate is low enough it becomes obvious that (excluding the potential "protecting animals from nature" aspect of an ideal animal product chain) one should only cause suffering to animals in situations where one would do the same or comparable to humans, for example sending hundreds of (not guilty) people to a Chinese prison so one can enjoy a hamburger every week.
Once the discount rate for suffering "less felt" is established, the question becomes simply: how can one minimise the amount of suffering caused? Here we need calculations of marginal utility on each course of action but with a reasonable discount rate it seems that at least a flexitarian diet would be an easy way to lessen one's negative impact. But even then the marginal utility will severely fall once a certain point is reached and if one subscribes to a view that the right thing is that which makes the world a better place it is obvious that a certain amount of "support" is optimal as one will find easier ways of reducing the total suffering in the world. From a more deontological perspective an argument can be constructed that not "supporting" at all is better and this dedication might also cause good PR but is quite impossible in reality and making a cause look weird by taking it to its logical consequences often has negative PR effects causing ultimately more harm than good. At this point the situation is such that arguing about finer details would almost certainly consume time and resources which should be better spent in reducing suffering elsewhere.
Teal Deer: I argue that a certain level of "support" is good because the value of "reasonably" fluctuates in different situations and causes, even or especially if one wants to take away all suffering in the world.
(disclaimer: poster eats somewhat flexitarian and is not completely aware of his own discount rate)
edited 8th Feb '11 6:48:15 AM by ChurchillSalmon
I'm a vegetarian, with several vegetarian friends, the odd vegan friend, and obviously a lot of meat-eating friends. Predictably, the vegetarians get a lot of shit from the vegans, because we are only partly subscribing to their philosophy, which is much more exasperating than someone who rejects it completely.
My stance is that veganism is morally right, and in an ideal world everyone would be vegan, but that it is extremely impractical. I'm not a super-moral person, nor an especially nice one, and I don't apply absolute moral standards to the rest of my life, so I don't apply them to veganism either. My exact moral problems with meat consumption are a) the damage that the meat industry does to the environment, and b) the 'is it moral to support an institution of suffering' thing. In my opinion no, it isn't, so I try not to as far as is practical, but like most people I am selfish enough to say 'if I was vegan, most of my favourite foods would be off-limits; I would never be able to eat out with my family; I wouldn't be able to get a Starbucks; I wouldn't be able to wear fabrics like wool or silk; I would have to control my diet far more strictly than I do now. For these reasons, I am not going to become a vegan.' In all honesty, I just think that veganism is not common enough for society to make allowances for it, which is why I think it would be so difficult to go vegan. Vegetarianism is on the rise, and I'm not sure but I believe veganism is as well, so maybe in the future it will be, especially when we have screwed up the environment enough for it to become necessary.
I have a lot of respect for vegans, because they are doing something that I consider morally good at the expense of practicality, which I am not a nice enough person to do myself.
Also, people who say that it's transportation of meat, not production of meat, that impacts the environment, and that we would be better off helping starving children in the developing world than animals, look at food pyramids. Adding an extra level to our food chain (plants-animals-humans, instead of just plants-humans) is an incredibly inefficient way to eat, causes many environmental problems because of this inefficiency, and if stopped could significantly reduce starvation in the world.
Thank you for allowing me to soapbox. I'm careful not to get preachy about vegetarianism in person, so on the internet I can get a bit too talkative about it.
edited 8th Feb '11 10:33:43 AM by cityofmist
Scepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence DarrowI'm sure I didn't see anything that answered this:
So to the Vegans or speakers for the Vegans:
For those 'meat eaters' who keep their own animals or eat local produce, where are they morally?
As I saw an argument mentioning domestication for greater quality of life for the animals, so if a person keeps some, they are well looked after (equal or better than free range * and have a full life and painless 'humane' death where is it morally?
edited 8th Feb '11 12:01:25 PM by IanExMachina
By the powers invested in me by tabloid-reading imbeciles, I pronounce you guilty of paedophilia!I'm very happy to see people finally respond to the institution question.
^That question depends on the individual. I myself believe that if the animals live pleasurable lives and your slaughter is painless, the only problem is the sadness of the animals' peers, which is a debatable topic. Obviously, a lot of vegans will say that murder is always wrong, disagreeing with me. I'm ignoring environmental implications because I'm largely ignorant about that.
Edit: another problem is that you are permanently ending the animal's happiness only for an ephemeral meal. That sounds unfair.
edited 8th Feb '11 12:38:52 PM by Grain
Anime geemu wo shinasai!Again, not a vegan myself, but in my opinion quality of life is only a part of the issue, of which the other, also quite large part is that these animals are being raised to be slaughtered. I mean, I do care about stuff like free range, but only because it's a second best to not having them raised for meat in the first place. Most of the people I know who are vegetarian or vegan feel the same way: keeping them humanely for meat is better than nothing, but still morally wrong.
Edit: ![]()
to answer your other questions, my personal views, which I know a lot of other people share, are that where the animals come from or whether you're raising them yourself doesn't matter to the specific issue of animal welfare. Obviously the distance issue comes into environmentalism, but that's a separate question.
edited 8th Feb '11 12:32:40 PM by cityofmist
Scepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence Darrow![]()
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If we ignore the deontological case of "killing animals and eating them is wrong period" we get a case of practicality:
Are the animals genuinely "happy" for whatever values of happy are used; the damage caused by externalities, such as the inherent inefficiency in eating meat as opposed to plants and whether feed can be grown in places where human-consumption plants aren't viable; how much time and money it takes to do this yourself and could it be used better to minimize suffering elsewhere (also what you care about: if you first and foremost want to feel good this is a possible way to accomplish it or you could consider it a hobby to keep your mental health up and yourself capable of doing good at all).
In this case once the factors above are known we know the answer: if the animals are happy enough and you care enough about eating meat that it's worth the investment and externalities then it is right. If no special moral factors apply to doing something yourself this would mean that sufficiently suffering-free meat grown by someone else is also right (and probably more efficient which means you both have more ability to do good somewhere else).
I would personally argue that animals in the best production practices currently existing are happier than animals in nature are overall (obviously not the same species, just comparing suffering/happiness ratios of X sq. miles of best case farmland to X sq. miles to nature) and thus in fact eating meat produced this way is a weak moral imperative (but currently much better uses for that money exist, i.e. stronger imperatives) based on animal welfare. Whether or not it is economically, socially and ecologically so beneficial can be debated.
—
As for whether raising animals for meat being wrong or right compared to nature, I'll let Havelock Vetinari answer that:
"I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to its day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."
Raising animals for humane slaughter is outright saintly compared to the sh stuff nature does to them. Raising them for humane not-slaughter is obviously even better but would require a ridiculously utopian world.
edited 8th Feb '11 12:40:31 PM by ChurchillSalmon
What nature does is necessary. When an otter eats a salmon, it's because a) it lacks the cognitive ability to consider the morality of such an act, what with being an otter and all, and b) if it did, it would probably come up with 'well, if I don't eat fish I'll die'. If I thought eating meat was necessary for my survival, I wouldn't give it a second thought. It's just the sheer fact of how incredibly easy it is for me to get by without it that really tips the balance for me - it's not worth inflicting suffering on animals for the ridiculously small amount it will add to the quality of my life.
Scepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence Darrow
What nature does is necessary but having that nature there isn't. If we have a place where otters eat salmon and another where happy domesticated animals graze the latter has significantly less suffering even if the animals are killed afterwards. I would consider the latter case morally preferable on the condition that the externalities on the environment etc. aren't significant and thus if killing and eating the animals is what it takes for the latter scenario to happen (humans wouldn't create a paradise for animals just because) then it is clearly worth it if one considers animal welfare.
Would you support eating meat in this scenario?

I'm not sure if this helps with the methane or not, but I heard that we're supposed to be feeding them grass, not corn.
Warm hugs and morally questionable advice given here. Prosey Bitchfest