Are "meat workers" counter-revolutionary

[Fawkes]

This question is directed toward those that view animals as being equal to and deserving of the same rights as those allocated to humans; to those that view the "liberation" of animals as an integral part of a socialist revolution. Given that slaughterhouse workers, butchers, grocery store employees, farmers, truck drivers, etc. facilitate the killing and consumption of animals, do you see them as counterrevolutionary and reactionary? (Even though this seems like a flamebait, I'm actually interested in how people justify this)

I mean, if the liberation of "oppressed" animals is viewed as being a congenital aspect of revolution, how are farmers and slaughterhouse workers any different from cops and prison guards? Most on the left are quick to dismiss the latter two aforementioned professions as reactionary and counterrevolutionary, so how do you view workers in the food industry?

I mean, some animal liberationists even go so far as to equate the plight of farmed animals to things like this:
http://www.jewishjournal.com/images/photos/COM_peta_060305.jpg

So, is that farmhand that's feeding the bulls some grain occupying the same position as the SS guard at Auschwitz? And if not, then why?

I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but it seems the logical conclusion (from this horribly illogical ideology) is that the truck driver transporting chickens to a slaughterhouse is no different from the train operator transporting Jews to a concentration camp.

So, should all of the millions that work in the food industry get Nuremburgered (see what I did thar)? If not, throws a bit of a wrench in the works of your beliefs now doesn't it?

[Quail]

I don't actually think that animals are equal to humans, but I have nothing better to do so I'll give you my opinions.


This question is directed toward those that view animals as being equal to and deserving of the same rights as those allocated to humans; to those that view the "liberation" of animals as an integral part of a socialist revolution. Given that slaughterhouse workers, butchers, grocery store employees, farmers, truck drivers, etc. facilitate the killing and consumption of animals, do you see them as counterrevolutionary and reactionary? (Even though this seems like a flamebait, I'm actually interested in how people justify this)

I mean, if the liberation of "oppressed" animals is viewed as being a congenital aspect of revolution, how are farmers and slaughterhouse workers any different from cops and prison guards? Most on the left are quick to dismiss the latter two aforementioned professions as reactionary and counterrevolutionary, so how do you view workers in the food industry?
I don't see workers that are involved in the production of meat as reactionary (even though I disagree with eating meat because of the unnecessary suffering it causes and because the way it is produced is highly unsustainable) because a lot of those workers are poorly paid manual workers who are just making a living. Besides, by working in the meat industry, you're hardly working for the state and supporting its power.


I mean, some animal liberationists even go so far as to equate the plight of farmed animals to things like this:
http://www.jewishjournal.com/images/photos/COM_peta_060305.jpg

So, is that farmhand that's feeding the bulls some grain occupying the same position as the SS guard at Auschwitz? And if not, then why?

I think this sort of propaganda is pretty offensive to the people who were affected by the holocaust. I don't think that animals should suffer unnecessarily, but the way that capitalism works means that meat is produced in a cheap, cruel and environmentally damaging way, and there is very little we can do to change that within the framework of capitalism. I wouldn't want everyone to stop eating meat. It's a personal choice. However, it would be better for the animals and for the environment if the animals weren't factory farmed.


I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but it seems the logical conclusion (from this horribly illogical ideology) is that the truck driver transporting chickens to a slaughterhouse is no different from the train operator transporting Jews to a concentration camp.

So, should all of the millions that work in the food industry get Nuremburgered (see what I did thar)? If not, throws a bit of a wrench in the works of your beliefs now doesn't it?
See above.

I'm probably not the best person to respond to this. Have fun with the shitstorm that this thread is inevitably going to cause :thumbup1:

[Fawkes]

but I have nothing better to do




Haha, why do you think I made this thread in the first place


Besides, by working in the meat industry, you're hardly working for the state and supporting its power.
Of course not, but if animals are seen as being equal to humans, which I know some people on this site believe, then workers in the meat industry are instrumental in the continued subjugation of animals just like cops are in the subjugation of the working class.


I wouldn't want everyone to stop eating meat. It's a personal choice. However, it would be better for the animals and for the environment if the animals weren't factory farmed.

You're largely right, but for the sake of me not going off on an off-topic tangent, I'll leave it at that I guess.


I'm probably not the best person to respond to this.
Nevertheless appreciated :)


Have fun with the shitstorm that this thread is inevitably going to cause
Oh I will :D

[hatzel]

I can state for a fact that the H-word is pretty much totally taboo in animal liberation circles. There are a few who go in for all those Holocaust analogies, whilst the other 99% of people in the movement just...

http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/54/facepalm134.jpg

HOWEVER...go on an animal liberation march, and there's a strong chance they'll start screaming 'shame on you!' and 'blood on your hands!' at any butcher's or leather shop. From personal experience. Presumably these people would tell you that the butcher is reactionary, as he has blood on his hands, but once again, there are many more moderate types in the movement. And those moderates really hate it when a load of veganarchist black bloc types show up and start ruining the whole march with their totally unrelated anarchist slogans and insults aimed at anybody who doesn't subscribe to their viewpoint. Isolates the townsfolk, apparently. I've known for people in animal liberation marches to actually apologise to people on the street after veganarchists start calling everybody fascists and looking for a bit of a ruck, saying 'I promise we're not all like that'. In summary...there's a definitely schism in the animal liberation movement, but those who consider themselves more concerned with animal rights and antispe are a lot less likely to subscribe to the whole meat workers = reactionary idea than those who call themselves veganarchists. The former concentrate more on the systems in place, and changing them, and don't really go in so much for victimising those who participate in the aforementioned systems...

[red cat]

I don't actually think that animals are equal to humans, but I have nothing better to do so I'll give you my opinions.


I don't see workers that are involved in the production of meat as reactionary (even though I disagree with eating meat because of the unnecessary suffering it causes and because the way it is produced is highly unsustainable) because a lot of those workers are poorly paid manual workers who are just making a living. Besides, by working in the meat industry, you're hardly working for the state and supporting its power.


I think this sort of propaganda is pretty offensive to the people who were affected by the holocaust. I don't think that animals should suffer unnecessarily, but the way that capitalism works means that meat is produced in a cheap, cruel and environmentally damaging way, and there is very little we can do to change that within the framework of capitalism. I wouldn't want everyone to stop eating meat. It's a personal choice. However, it would be better for the animals and for the environment if the animals weren't factory farmed.


See above.

I'm probably not the best person to respond to this. Have fun with the shitstorm that this thread is inevitably going to cause :thumbup1:

I respect vegetarianism as an ideology. But equating animals with human beings is not logical. I personally think that we should be free to kill animals for food, defense of self and property, and for scientific advancements.

Most of the animal rights movements I have seen so far actively help the bourgeoisie, as capitalists pretend to spend a lot behind welfare of animals for slaughter, and at the same time these workers are socially criminalized, so that there union activities are frowned upon and as a result their wages go down. Also, local companies can be attacked by animal rights activists to stop local production. When a market is thus cleared, an MNC enters with its much costlier products and all of these activists then become astonishingly silent. All this leads me to believe that the major animal rights movements are nothing but a social tool of the bourgeoisie to attack the working class.

To avoid confusion, I should mention that I support the conservation of nature and I am opposed to construction, mining, timbering etc in forests until they are not done solely for social welfare.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

The meat worker is hardly in the position of the SS Guard - in the context of capitalism, they're more like Kapos. This is especially so given that they are disproportionately people of colour, undocumented migrants, etc., and that the working conditions in slaughter-houses (and the meat industry in general) are, even by the standards of industrial work, extremely dangerous, with a high risk of serious injury, infection, poisoning, or death.

Further, the whole, "Holocaust! The obscene, unparallelled, brtual moment of modernity!" narrative is incredibly naive and ahistorical. To demonize the the conductors of the deathcamp trains as monsters is to deny the disturbing banality of mass-slaughter perpetuated by mass society that is ongoing. Nous Sommes Tous Les Juifs Et Les Allemands.

So are the truckers moving animals, raised in factory-cages, pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, etc. any better than the not-particularly-exceptional conductors of death-trains? No, I don't think they are, but, by the same token, that is because of their complicity in capital-in-general as much as because of their specific task: Every clerk, bus driver, bureaucrat, prison guard, etc. is guilty insofar as they are not in revolt against the existent (as are we). The question is not one of establishing who is guilty, but who stands in the way of destroying the existent.

Whether or not one is a (counter-/)revolutionary is less a question of position within capital, but where and when one does (or does not) enter into conflict with it. The exceptional role of the police is that they're consistently in the way (along with recouperationist union bosses, reactionary vigilantes, rapists, etc.) - I'm not interested in passing in moral judgment on them, only in their destruction-as-police. Unlike, say slaughterhouse workers (who would likely prefer to not be working in slaughterhouses), the difference is that more police need bricks to the face to prevent them from being police.

As to the question of animals, I think it is worth drawing a distinction between relationships between people and animals that are mediated by capital, and those that are not. there is a significant difference between existing systems of factory farming, mass slaughter, etc., and subsistence hunting, herding, and small-scale animal agriculture.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Also, I think it's worth noting that, contrary to deeply ingrained ideology humans are animals.

Sometimes we should kill certain animals (human or non-human) - sometimes we shouldn't.

[Veg_Athei_Socialist]

If anyone here hasn't already read this there is an interesting book called Making A Killing: The Political Economy Of Animal Rights by Bob Torres talking about capitalism and its effect on animal exploitation.

[Quail]

I respect vegetarianism as an ideology. But equating animals with human beings is not logical. I personally think that we should be free to kill animals for food, defense of self and property, and for scientific advancements.

Most of the animal rights movements I have seen so far actively help the bourgeoisie, as capitalists pretend to spend a lot behind welfare of animals for slaughter, and at the same time these workers are socially criminalized, so that there union activities are frowned upon and as a result their wages go down. Also, local companies can be attacked by animal rights activists to stop local production. When a market is thus cleared, an MNC enters with its much costlier products and all of these activists then become astonishingly silent. All this leads me to believe that the major animal rights movements are nothing but a social tool of the bourgeoisie to attack the working class.

To avoid confusion, I should mention that I support the conservation of nature and I am opposed to construction, mining, timbering etc in forests until they are not done solely for social welfare.

I think you may have misread my post:

I don't actually think that animals are equal to humans
I also don't have a problem with necessary animal testing (i.e. for worthwhile stuff, not cosmetics), or with the idea of eating meat when there is no real alternative. If I had no alternative to meat, I would eat it, but veggie food is easily accessible and cheap.

[red cat]

I think you may have misread my post:

I also don't have a problem with necessary animal testing (i.e. for worthwhile stuff, not cosmetics), or with the idea of eating meat when there is no real alternative. If I had no alternative to meat, I would eat it, but veggie food is easily accessible and cheap.

Sorry, I wanted to quote the OP. :)

[9]

What a ridiculous question.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I've worked in the "meat industry" for a pretty long time. The ways that humans procure meat often results in tremendous waste/ineffeciency (through overfishing, waste expenditure vis-a-vis the beef industry, etc.) but to compare meat industry workers to Holocaust henchmen or to even say that they're "counter-revolutionary" as a result of their job is patently absurd. I'm a lot more interested in liberating myself and my fellow homo sapiens then I am about liberating pigs and cows.

[Fawkes]

I'm gonna respond to the other posts when I have more time, which I don't now, but I just wanted to quickly address this:


What a ridiculous question.

Did you actually read any of the post or are you just responding to the thread title?

[9]

Did you actually read any of the post or are you just responding to the thread title?
nope, was just responding to the thread title ;)
sorry about that, i came home during my lunch break for about five minutes, so was in a bit of a rush...

[Rafiq]

I think they are taking the book "animal farm" seriously, thinking it wasnt about the russiN revolution:laugh:

[scarletghoul]

It's not even about 'equality'; whatever you think of animals, the mass slaughter of them is not propping up the capitalist order.. Meat workers are neither subjectively nor objectively counter-revolutionary.

In fact, the slaughter of a certain kind of pig can aid the revolution...

[Jazzratt]

I was once told by a particularly strident vegan type that being a butcher should be considered on par with a war crime.

Aside nutters like that though this is largely irrelevant to most vegetarians for whom their dietry decision is a purely personal one.

[Ele'ill]

This question is directed toward those that view animals as being equal to and deserving of the same rights as those allocated to humans; to those that view the "liberation" of animals as an integral part of a socialist revolution. Given that slaughterhouse workers, butchers, grocery store employees, farmers, truck drivers, etc. facilitate the killing and consumption of animals, do you see them as counterrevolutionary and reactionary? (Even though this seems like a flamebait, I'm actually interested in how people justify this)

I mean, if the liberation of "oppressed" animals is viewed as being a congenital aspect of revolution, how are farmers and slaughterhouse workers any different from cops and prison guards? Most on the left are quick to dismiss the latter two aforementioned professions as reactionary and counterrevolutionary, so how do you view workers in the food industry?

I mean, some animal liberationists even go so far as to equate the plight of farmed animals to things like this:
http://www.jewishjournal.com/images/photos/COM_peta_060305.jpg

So, is that farmhand that's feeding the bulls some grain occupying the same position as the SS guard at Auschwitz? And if not, then why?

I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but it seems the logical conclusion (from this horribly illogical ideology) is that the truck driver transporting chickens to a slaughterhouse is no different from the train operator transporting Jews to a concentration camp.

So, should all of the millions that work in the food industry get Nuremburgered (see what I did thar)? If not, throws a bit of a wrench in the works of your beliefs now doesn't it?

The systems in place that allow for mass factory farming and other negative aspects of industry, a military to be used as it is and the police force required to protect what it does is the probem. People take jobs because the jobs are there or there's an attraction to it such free college or a family tradition which I think would apply for some food industry facilities, butchers, cops and military and the fact that a lot of people are naive to how the world operates around them and their own place within it.

We're not out to round up each cop or soldier we're out to change the system that allows their occupation's undesirable purpose.

Edit- We also wouldn't go on a seek and destroy mission to hang every cop, prison guard and soldier. Although I think those careers are much different than what's offered within the food industry to begin with and thus isn't a very good example.

[Niccolò Rossi]

the mass slaughter of them is not propping up the capitalist order..

This is arguable. I would highly recommend 'Beasts of Burden: Capitalism, Animals, Communism' from Antagonism (http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/beast.htm). It gives a fascinating account of the domestication and mass slaughter of animals as it relates to the rise of civilisation and class society up to and including modern capitalism. I really enjoyed it, despite eating more animals each day than probably anyone on this forum...

Nic.

[Pretty Flaco]

I need to eat meat to have a sufficient diet.

And why would the workers be counter-revolutionary? Many of them probably work in that field because it's the only job they were able to get. I doubt working in a slaughterhouse is very enjoyable.

[Devrim]

And why would the workers be counter-revolutionary? Many of them probably work in that field because it's the only job they were able to get. I doubt working in a slaughterhouse is very enjoyable.

I worked on the line in a chicken factory for a while. It was particularly unpleasant. Probably the worst thing about it was the smell. The killing chickens itself was pretty unpleasant too though. I got out of it as soon as I could find another job.

DEvrim

[NewSocialist]

Here is the animal rights guru/reactionary philosopher, Peter Singer, explaining his worlview (which is some strange Darwinian/utilitarian hybrid) to Richard Dawkins - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYYNY2oKVWU

Dawkins is totally convinced by Singer, of course.

The justifications Singer uses to defend his views on animal rights are as unconvincing as his belief that working-class people in First World capitalist countries have the "moral responsibility" to donate part of their paychecks to private charity organizations in the Third World --challenging the root cause of poverty (capitalism) is pointless to Singer, since he believes there is no alternative - http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/ethics_and_the_left/

[Tavarisch_Mike]

http://www.jewishjournal.com/images/photos/COM_peta_060305.jpg



This kind of shit is not just offending but also repulsive and disrespecting.

[Ele'ill]

There needs to be a clearer approach to these threads. What's being suggested here is that animal rights proponents all follow the extremes or broken ideas and this puts people on the forum in a position in regards to a general audience where it appears that if they refute the broken and extreme ideas of animal rights that they then have no argument at all. What's being done in this thread is the same thing that's done in environmental threads. Someone says 'environmentalists, defend the primitivist position' and here we have 'animal rights/food industry 'reform' proponents- defend the holocaust analogy or your beliefs are proven incorrect.'

[Q]

I disagree with the premise that humans and other animals are equal. Humans are obviously not the same as other animals. Why? For the simple fact that they are not us. We can't converse on any sentient level with a rabbit for example. We can influence its behaviour though and with dogs we can teach commands, etc. In any case, animals are domesticated to fit our needs.

Does this mean we shouldn't treat animals with respect, even if their sole purpose for existing is to feed us? Well, most animals (nearly all of the livestock anyway) have emotions, feelings and can be aware of their fate, we should make their lives as good as possible.

Now on to the main question: Are meat workers reactionary? My simple answer is no.

My somewhat longer answer is that as communists we fight for human liberation, an end to class society and for fully rounded development of all. The operative word here is "human". Meat workers have no objective role against the communist cause. In fact, I'm sure they would very much welcome such development of society.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

'Beasts of Burden: Capitalism, Animals, Communism' (http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/beast.htm)

Totally decent on some points, as I recall, though it's been a while since I read it.


I disagree with the premise that humans and other animals are equal. Humans are obviously not the same as other animals.

This is equally true if you remove from it the distinction between species, and apply it to individuals: People are not equal to other people - they are distinct, and recognizing this is key to moving away from legalistic notions of equality (which can only exist vis-a-vis an equalizer such as the state), toward egalitarianism. Humans are obviously not the same as other humans (and, thus, the possibility of unique relationships of love, camaraderie,and co-operation).


Why? For the simple fact that they are not us. We can't converse on any sentient level with a rabbit for example. We can influence its behaviour though and with dogs we can teach commands, etc. In any case, animals are domesticated to fit our needs.

Similarly, there are many people with whom I cannot converse - a common oral language is a prerequisite for this, though, clearly, not for many types of communication. It might be argued that people are capable of learning a common language, but the generalization of this idea is absurd: not only will there always be relationships between people in which conversation will be impossible and unnecessary, but it's not even true. From autism to dementia or even sheer lack of inclination, there will always be other human beings with whom communication will remain on what you seem to dismiss as an animal level.


Does this mean we shouldn't treat animals with respect, even if their sole purpose for existing is to feed us? Well, most animals (nearly all of the livestock anyway) have emotions, feelings and can be aware of their fate, we should make their lives as good as possible.

The premise that an animal can "exist" to feed us is horrifying (and reflects a horrifying connotation to the notion of existing). An animal might be caged, forcefed, and butchered to feed us, but its purpose for existing is in-and-of-itself.


Now on to the main question: Are meat workers reactionary? My simple answer is no.

In case this isn't clear, I would agree that, if a simple answer to this question were in any way necessary, that would be the correct one. At the same time, in a world of dealing with specificities, I'm sure I could find a reactionary meat worker (but, really,this is beside the point, no?).


My somewhat longer answer is that as communists we fight for human liberation, an end to class society and for fully rounded development of all. [. . .] Meat workers have no objective role against the communist cause. In fact, I'm sure they would very much welcome such development of society.

Here, however, is another simple answer (verbosity is a poor way of measuring these things), with which I'm inclined to disagree: Meat workers-as-meat workers do play an objective role against communism, insofar as the system of mass-industrial agriculture (including mass-industrial animal agriculture) is not separable from actually-existing capitalism, and its reproduction. I'm sure this seems like splitting hairs, but if we're going to try for "longer answer[s]", I think it's worth it. Workers-in-general have to realize themselves against their existence as workers (thus, strikes, sabotage, insurrection). It strikes (ha) me that the likelyhood of slaughterhouse workers returning to the slaughterhouses after a revolt is likely the condition of their defeat rather than their emancipation. That is, they are likely to be communists because, well, who the fuck desires to work in a slaughterhouse?


The operative word here is "human".I think that's unfortunately narrow, since the scope of capitalism is far more broad. Capitalism organizes life at the level of the biosphere: it is as much white-tailed deer, canola fields, terminator seeds, and the re-organization of space into the metropolis as it is its more readily apparent manifestations. If communism means sprawling suburbs and poisoned oceans - if it means the whole of capitalism except for its narrowest of definitions - it means nothing at all.

[devoration1]

Labeling meat cutters, meat processors, retail clerks, etc 'counter-revolutionary' is in the same category of the old New Left and certain present day Maoists and Third Worldists labeling all Western/American/white workers "bourgeois", "reactionary", "counter-revolutionary" or 'Not Really Workers'.

Meat cutters have a long history of being a very active and militant section of the international working class.

I worked in a meat room for a year, and have family who worked as journeymen meat cutters as their career (and would have followed in this tradition if the position wasn't being phased out)- do you hold auto workers responsible for the people who die in car accidents/collisions? Or workers in armaments industries responsible for war?

[Misanthrope]

Proletariats > animals, bottom line. The stance you have taken is simply anti-worker.

[Ele'ill]

Proletariats > animals, bottom line. The stance you have taken is simply anti-worker.

Who are you addressing?

[Niccolò Rossi]

Totally decent on some points, as I recall, though it's been a while since I read it.

I found it after it was posted here on revleft a short while ago. Infact, wasn't it you who posted it?

I had disagreements with a couple of points and found other parts dubious but a great read overall.


The premise that an animal can "exist" to feed us is horrifying (and reflects a horrifying connotation to the notion of existing). An animal might be caged, forcefed, and butchered to feed us, but its purpose for existing is in-and-of-itself.

The 'intrinsic value' of nature in general or this or that animal in particular is spirtual hippy gobbledygook. 'Purpose' does not exist in any context outside of the minds of humans. It can only be defined by us. If you want to argue whether the purpose of providing sustinance to humans is a meaningful 'existance' that's your own business.


It strikes (ha) me that the likelyhood of slaughterhouse workers returning to the slaughterhouses after a revolt is likely the condition of their defeat rather than their emancipation. That is, they are likely to be communists because, well, who the fuck desires to work in a slaughterhouse?

It's not about 'desire', it's about necessity. After the revolution, so long as people still wish to continue eating meat, then the slaughter of animals will be a necessary social function. I mean, who desires cleaning septic tanks?

Nic.

[FreeFocus]

They aren't counterrevolutionary. It is a degrading and desensitizing line of work, and the factory farming/butchering industries are one of the areas where workers' rights and animal rights intersect. Workers in these industries are paid little and work under disgusting conditions. They also slit the throats of living things for 8 hours, which requires desensitization. And obviously the animals are bred for consumption and capitalist superprofits, there's no benefit at all in this equation for the animals.

That being said, as a staunch opponent of factory farming, to hell with any comparisons between the Holocaust and factory farming or meat eating. It's just pathetic and offensive. Same thing when comparisons are made with slavery. It is important to treat animals better and create a more humane society, because when people want to dehumanize other people, they compare them to animals. If that comparison wasn't there because animals were respected, you could never attempt to justify racist dehumanization.

[Joe Payne]

I'm a meat clerk in a grocery store and I have a couple buddies who are meat cutters. We're down with the proletarian social revolution, are active labor militants, etc.

We're also vegetarians. Not only that, I remember at a time where the majority of the meat department were vegetarians. I applaud ALF/ELF actions. In fact my experience with animal and earth liberation types has never taken such a horrendously anti-humyn/anti-working-class position. Hell, a bunch of animal liberations activists and Earth environmentalists ate meat too.

I've never heard of veganarchists or any ridiculously extreme position. The holocaust thing, yeah, but not the attack on industry workers.

[Mannimarco]

Meat workers are not counter-revolutionary.

Meat is delicious.

[Aeval]

I always wonder where these people are who apparently think stuff like this - everyone seems to know of someone who does but I haven't met anyone who actually thinks like that. Even my most hardcore vegan, animal right-sy friends wouldn't call "meat workers" (what a horrible term!) reactionary - yeah, they'd probably call vivisectionist reactionary but not people who work in slaughterhouses or who sell meat or something.

The use of the word "Holocaust" I always find pretty distasteful and cringe-worthy. I guess I understand why people use that analogy, it's quite a simple one that people will understand, the word is very emotive and it grabs people's attentions, but I do wish people wouldn't use it. I don't, however, think anyone (at least, I hope noone) genuinely thinks that how animals are treated is comparable to the Holocaust, they clearly aren't, it's just a rather lazy metaphor.

In my home town there were three options for young people looking for jobs, either you worked at Tesco, you worked for a debt collecting agency telling single mums that you were cutting off their phonelines, or you worked at the chicken factory killing or packaging chickens. These are all shit, low waged jobs that noone in their right mind would choose to do if they actually had the choice. The kid who got a job killing chickens is no more reactionary than I was for working at Tesco and certainly far less so than the ones who made money ruining other people's Christmases at the debt collecting agency (and getting a hefty commission for how many people they managed to fuck over). Anyone who says they are is a dumbarse, though as I said before, I've never actually encountered any of these mysterious people, despite being a vegan, and despite having hung around with a lot of hardcore animal rights activists...I really wish I knew where these people hang out though, I guess it must be with those other mythical vegans who apparently have screaming fits at people for eating hamburgers and those straightedgers who run around chucking people's pints on the floor...

[Sean]

This seems to be a lot less interesting than I had hoped, largely because its been nearly all one sided "no it isn't" despite being addressed (as I took it from the original post) to vegans and animal rights activists on the hard left to maybe explain where they fit specism into revolution and class warfare. The nazi-butcher comparison normally comes from headcases with neither sense nor reason and hardly account for all animal rights proponents, so we're not really going to get a debate going if we're just going to post 50 replies to that one point. We can rhyme a hundred reasons why meat workers are not counter-revolutionary, I would just like to hear ones that are for the sake of actually learning from a thread on the subject for once.

[Ele'ill]

This seems to be a lot less interesting than I had hoped, largely because its been nearly all one sided "no it isn't" despite being addressed (as I took it from the original post) to vegans and animal rights activists on the hard left to maybe explain where they fit specism into revolution and class warfare. The nazi-butcher comparison normally comes from headcases with neither sense nor reason and hardly account for all animal rights proponents, so we're not really going to get a debate going if we're just going to post 50 replies to that one point. We can rhyme a hundred reasons why meat workers are not counter-revolutionary, I would just like to hear ones that are for the sake of actually learning from a thread on the subject for once.

What people seem to not be seeing is that the original post wasn't an attempt to discredit and lay to rest a broken and fringe ideology it was an attempt to merge legitimate environmentalism and animal rights issues with it so that it can all be attacked as one belief.

[Ele'ill]

Meat is delicious.

Having a yacht, large house, three cars, five tv's is as well for a lot of people but we wouldn't allow exploitation and the destruction of the natural world to obtain it.

[Aeval]

I think the interesting thing with this thread is the fact that anyone genuinely thought people would say anything other than "no, don't be daft, of course it's not reactionary". Mari3L is right, this is a (rather poor) attempt to merge the two issues - there are like half a dozen people in the whole world who think that way, they a normally dismissed along with the people who think Hitler is still living on the moon, but ok, I see Sean's point, so I'll give it a try: :)


This question is directed toward those that view animals as being equal to and deserving of the same rights as those allocated to humans; to those that view the "liberation" of animals as an integral part of a socialist revolution.

Ok, first I don't see animals as being equal to and deserving of the same rights as those allocated to humans - thing is, I think you're going to have a really tough time finding anyone who does, apart from the complete ranting headcases that Sean was talking about :lol: Humans and animals are different, obviously they have different rights. I do, however, think that both animals and humans have the right not to be kept in a confined space, treated like shit, not given access to light and space before being killed when it's not necessary (and by necessary I mean, most people won't die if they can't eat meat. I say most because I think it a tad unfair to try to force Inuits etc to start farming lentils :lol:). Also I see animal liberation as integral not because they're cute and have souls or something, but rather because of the environmental damage farming them causes, it's not good for us either, and I'd want a revolution to lead to happy and healthy people.


Given that slaughterhouse workers, butchers, grocery store employees, farmers, truck drivers, etc. facilitate the killing and consumption of animals, do you see them as counterrevolutionary and reactionary? (Even though this seems like a flamebait, I'm actually interested in how people justify this)

No, I don't, I'll explain why...


I mean, if the liberation of "oppressed" animals is viewed as being a congenital aspect of revolution, how are farmers and slaughterhouse workers any different from cops and prison guards? Most on the left are quick to dismiss the latter two aforementioned professions as reactionary and counterrevolutionary, so how do you view workers in the food industry?

People working in the food industry aren't there to keep the status quo, they aren't working for the state, they don't have an agenda, they aren't going to come out and beat us if we start rising up. Put simply, this is why they are different to cops. If people decided to rise up tomorrow, kick out the government and form a anarchist utopia I wouldn't be worried about my local butcher bashing my head in with a truncheon. The police are there to violently stop change, if people tomorrow woke up and decided to stop eating meat the meat industry would simply start making something else. They're doing it because there's a demand for it, if that demand went away they'd make other food, whereas when I demand that the police go away they tend to chuck me in the back of their van, you see the difference? :)


I mean, some animal liberationists even go so far as to equate the plight of farmed animals to things like this:
http://www.jewishjournal.com/images/photos/COM_peta_060305.jpg

And as I said before, people who use that comparison are generally trying to elicit a strong emotional response, I've never met anyone who genuinely thinks the two are comparable.


So, is that farmhand that's feeding the bulls some grain occupying the same position as the SS guard at Auschwitz? And if not, then why?

I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but it seems the logical conclusion (from this horribly illogical ideology) is that the truck driver transporting chickens to a slaughterhouse is no different from the train operator transporting Jews to a concentration camp.

No, that's not the logical conclusion, because they are killing for very different reasons. Farmers aren't keeping and killing animals out of some form of paranoid hatred, nor is the government blaming all our problems on animals to create some sense of cross class unity and to distract us away from the fact that it is them who is causing these problems. People farm animals to feed people, I may think that's not necessary but ultimately killing a life form for food is in no way comparable to killing one as a some sort of insane scapegoat.


So, should all of the millions that work in the food industry get Nuremburgered (see what I did thar)? If not, throws a bit of a wrench in the works of your beliefs now doesn't it?

No, it doesn't, for the reasons I said. Nice pun by the way :)

[Mannimarco]

Having a yacht, large house, three cars, five tv's is as well for a lot of people but we wouldn't allow exploitation and the destruction of the natural world to obtain it.

I was joking.

Anyway, I actually support an end to animal "oppression" not because I give a shit about the animals, but because of efficiency. You could probably feed like 10 people with the amount of grain required by enough cow meat to feed one person. Meat is inefficient distribution of food. A luxury, like many things.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

however, think anyone (at least, I hope noone) genuinely thinks that how animals are treated is comparable to the Holocaust, they clearly aren't,Actually, it is pretty comparable, in a technical sense. The actual means are very similar, though, as indicated by the raw numbers, the slaughter of animals has reached a degree of technical proficiency that far surpasses the holocaust. Certainly, you could argue that the two are ethically or morally impossible to compare (duh), but the mechanics of their practice aren't particularly different.

The problem, I think, is the sensationalization of the holocaust. The latter is not some extreme aberration from business-as-usual: the model of the camp has, in essence, been generalized throughout prison society.

In that sense, the problem with the comparison is not that it is inaccurate - only that it is absolutely meaningless. Of course industrialized slaughter is like industrialized slaughter! One could point in any direction, and likely find a comparison that is far less trite.

This reflects the limits of animal-liberation politics that fail to become liberation politics more generally: Rather than point to the meat industry as just a particular instance of the general operation of this society, they point back to a horrific incident from The Past. In this way, it is made implicit that animals some how have it worse than the rest of us. The truth, of course, is that the enslavement of animals is not unique (or, not any "more unique" than any other specificity) - the holocaust shares this same symbolic relationship with society-in-general.

[Luisrah]

Meat workers counter-revolutionary?

This is the most absurd thing I have heard a leftist say. (not at you OP)

What are we supposed to be? An aberration of nature, that cares more about other species than our own?

It's almost a crime to be talking about this as an important matter when we have to take care of our own. Plenty of animals die in horrible conditions in nature. Heck, the other day I saw at Discovery Channel an elephant being eaten alive by lions. Why don't you go save him? That's an atrocity!

Seriously, we are animals too, and to live, we must eat. Don't tell me vegetables are enough when the whole world says that meat is also important. For some reason, when monkeys where evolving to humans, they started to eat meat, and some even say it helped in the process.
It is just natural that we kill animals to feed ourselves. If we're going to feel sorry for the feelings of a cow, we might aswell be for the feelings of a fetus that is about to suffer an abortion.

Animals sleep, eat, reproduce, and die. That's it, there's no more. There's nothing worth preserving over someone's subnutrition or hunger.

Animals aren't human, they aren't conscious. It is ridiculous to talk about ''animal liberation''. Seriously, liberation!?

I'm not saying nature isn't worth preserving. Animals should die with the least possible pain, and should have a good life whenever possible, but many people take it too far, and treating an animal better than a human is a crime.

[Ele'ill]

Meat workers counter-revolutionary?

This is the most absurd thing I have heard a leftist say. (not at you OP)




Where have you heard a leftist say this?

[Amphictyonis]

A solute to the baby seal clubber-

3V5w5qYrLRc

[Unclebananahead]

I'm a pretty dedicated vegan myself, and regard the meat-industrial complex as an ugly, abhorrent indicator of just how much further humanity has to progress in order to be truly civilized, but I certainly don't regard the proletarians employed in the industry as counter-revolutionaries for their involvement as wage workers. The policy makers and stockholders have much more of the blame.

[9]

A solute to the baby seal clubber-

So what is your point? Where is your argument? Or do you not have an argument, and your intention in posting this video is simply to elicit an emotional reaction in order to vilify people who have to resort to doing miserable, fucked up jobs in order to make a living?

[Aeval]

This is the most absurd thing I have heard a leftist say. (not at you OP)

Who has actually said that?


What are we supposed to be? An aberration of nature, that cares more about other species than our own?

What has actually suggested this?


Plenty of animals die in horrible conditions in nature. Heck, the other day I saw at Discovery Channel an elephant being eaten alive by lions. Why don't you go save him? That's an atrocity!

Lions don't have a choice, they can't live off anything other than meat. I've also never seen one farm an elephant...


Seriously, we are animals too, and to live, we must eat. Don't tell me vegetables are enough when the whole world says that meat is also important.

The whole world eh? Except all those millions of people around the world who don't eat meat, either because they choose not to, because their religion demands it or simply because they cannot afford the luxury of meat.


For some reason, when monkeys where evolving to humans, they started to eat meat, and some even say it helped in the process.

We didn't evolve from monkeys :lol:


It is just natural that we kill animals to feed ourselves. If we're going to feel sorry for the feelings of a cow, we might aswell be for the feelings of a fetus that is about to suffer an abortion.

Do we eat foetuses now? No, so that is a bad comparison.


Animals sleep, eat, reproduce, and die. That's it, there's no more. There's nothing worth preserving over someone's subnutrition or hunger.

Quite, so if there's nothing else to eat then is more than acceptable to eat meat, hell, I'd be happy to eat you if that was the only thing going. But again, who has said that people should starve just to save the fluffy bunnies?


I'm not saying nature isn't worth preserving. Animals should die with the least possible pain, and should have a good life whenever possible, but many people take it too far, and treating an animal better than a human is a crime.

Who's said that animals should be treated better than humans?

So your post consisted of four things noone has actually said, two bad comparisons and two things which are factually inaccurate. Well done.

[Amphictyonis]

So what is your point? Where is your argument? Or do you not have an argument, and your intention in posting this video is simply to elicit an emotional reaction in order to vilify people who have to resort to doing miserable, fucked up jobs in order to make a living?

I think it's actually illegal in Canada now. The people in those videos are hunting for sport (which is legal for some reason?). Quite a different matter. I wouldn't walk up to a baby seal and club it to death for fun. Would you?

[9]

The people in those videos are hunting for sport (which is legal for some reason?). Quite a different matter.

so then why have you posted it in a thread about whether people employed in the "meat industry" are "counterrevolutionary"...? :confused:

[Ele'ill]

is simply to elicit an emotional reaction

And what was the emotional reaction you had? 'This is fucking horrible' - because it is.

Edit- also about clubbing seals Ux5AN5lRlpw

[TC]

I need to eat meat to have a sufficient diet.

This is just factually incorrect - a well balanced vegan diet including vegan sources of protein - of which there is a vast variety - and vegan sources of b12 (supplements or fortified foods) - has everything you or anyone else needs to have a sufficient diet. There just isn't anything in animal flesh that you need and can't make on your own that didn't come from a plant in the first place so its impossible to need meat.

What you perhaps mean, is that you think you need meat to be happy. If you seriously tried to go without it, for an extended period of time to adjust, say, two or three months - you'd also likely find that you don't.

[Forward Union]

This is just factually incorrect - a well balanced vegan diet including vegan sources of protein - of which there is a vast variety - and vegan sources of b12 (supplements or fortified foods) - has everything you or anyone else needs to have a sufficient diet. There just isn't anything in animal flesh that you need and can't make on your own that didn't come from a plant in the first place so its impossible to need meat.

What you perhaps mean, is that you think you need meat to be happy. If you seriously tried to go without it, for an extended period of time to adjust, say, two or three months - you'd also likely find that you don't.

Same is true of Alcohol, Jewlry, Makeup/skin/hair products and Chocolate. But we all indulge in them.

So the issues being outlined here are absolutely irrelivent. The fact is that nothing obligates me to spare animals, or provide them with "rights" and I gain from consuming them, I enjoy the taste. And that's the only moral justification I find myself needing to muster. I don't have to eat meat of course, and as it happens I don't eat much meat, and prefer fish.

[Revy]

If animals were on a similar level to humans, I would expect nothing but militancy to counter the injustice. So I understand why many animal rights vegans feel so militantly about animals.

However, animals are obviously not the same level, comparing them to human beings in mental and intellectual faculties is just absurd. There are some animals who are closest to humans in this way, but most people already disapprove of eating Great Apes and dolphins.

The cruel conditions of factory farming should be eliminated. Meat-eating doesn't have to be synonymous with the animals living in cramped, caged, abusive conditions.

[Amphictyonis]

so then why have you posted it in a thread about whether people employed in the "meat industry" are "counterrevolutionary"...? :confused:

I wouldn't say the men who clubbed baby seals were counterrevolutionary- I wouldn't marry a man who was a baby seal clubber but I'd marry a butcher. I eat meat.

One point is workers who create or don't refuse such work place conditions are in fact rather idiotic. Counterrevolutionary no but assholes yes. I'm not saying a person working in a slaughter house is a reactionary asshole but if he is torturing the cows as has happened then yes.

atoUonz-Rzo

At the end of the day shit flows downhill, meaning, it's the capitalist who is pushing for maximized production in as little time as possible (huge profits_). It's the capitalist who's responsible for inhumane slaughter house conditions. Engineers have come up with humane ways to slaughter cows. If a company isn't doing it in a humane way it's probably because of the profit motive but this doesn't completley absolve the asshole worker who would stick a cattle prod in a cows anus.

http://www.grandin.com/welfare/animals.are.not.things.html

If your boss told you to torture a cow would you do it? Not every "worker" is a saint just because he/she is a worker. If a person abuses animals worker or not then I say they're an asshole. I don't think working at a slaughter house makes you an asshole.

[Crimson Commissar]

All this argument about how we don't need meat is completely irrelevant. Meat tastes good. People enjoy to eat meat. Therefore, whether we are in a socialist society or not, we should be able to eat meat. There are many things we don't need in this world, but if we only had what we absolutely needed then our lives would be pretty damn boring. Socialism shouldn't just be about equality, it should be about making everyone's lives as best as they possibly can be. If you'd prefer not to eat meat, fine. But you can't go around dictating what everyone else can eat aswell.

[Niccolò Rossi]

This is just factually incorrect - a well balanced vegan diet including vegan sources of protein - of which there is a vast variety - and vegan sources of b12 (supplements or fortified foods) - has everything you or anyone else needs to have a sufficient diet. There just isn't anything in animal flesh that you need and can't make on your own that didn't come from a plant in the first place so its impossible to need meat.

What you perhaps mean, is that you think you need meat to be happy. If you seriously tried to go without it, for an extended period of time to adjust, say, two or three months - you'd also likely find that you don't.

I've said this over and over again on this forum lately. It is possible to have a sufficiently adequate diet without consuming animal products. However, for the overwhelming majority of people it is not optimal.

Also, I think this opinion is a reflection of the lifestyles of the people that hold it. If you have a sedentary lifestyle (you're a law student not a labourer last time I heard), it is much easier to subsist on a vegan diet. However for those of us who do have physically demanding jobs it simply isn't a realistic option. To take it to the extreme, consider those who participate in physically strenous competive sport. This is most evident in strength sports such as olympic weightlifting or powerlifting (I've never met a vegan who could squat 1000lbs), a diet consistent of large amounts of animal products is a must.

Now if you choose to go without meat, I'm not going to try and convince you to stop. But this argument that people who eat an omnivorous diet are some how lazy or gluttonous is really annoying.

Nic.

[NGNM85]

What people seem to not be seeing is that the original post wasn't an attempt to discredit and lay to rest a broken and fringe ideology it was an attempt to merge legitimate environmentalism and animal rights issues with it so that it can all be attacked as one belief.

But I don't think there's any debate with legitimate environmentalism or concern for animals.

I don't think anyone disagrees we need to reduce our impact on the biosphere by cutting waste, recycling, adopting renewable or 'clean' energies, reducing fossil fuels, and protecting rivers and oceans and forests. I don't think anyone here disagrees that we should be doing those things.

Likewise, I think you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone in favor of injecting animals with antibiotics and hormones that make them and us sick, or against animal abuse, or against allowing these animals to live in more comfortable and cleaner envirronments, or anybody who is against protecting endangered species.

On the legitimate issues, I don't think there is any major disagreement. We might disagree on the specifics of how to do these things, but there's essentially no disagreement that we should be doing it. The only points of contention, really, are the crazy ideas perpetuated by people like John Zerzan, or Derrick Jensen, or Peter Singer. Admittedly, it's like shooting fish in a barrel, but that's the way it is.

[9]

And what was the emotional reaction you had? 'This is fucking horrible' - because it is.
I'm not too sure what is the point of asking me a question if you're just going to answer it for yourself. but actually, if I seemed annoyed in my response, its because I find really irritating the sort of snobs that turn up their noses at people who have to do things for a living that offend some middle class sensibilities, particularly when most people don't have the option of picking and choosing what kind of work they do.

[Aeval]

Also, I think this opinion is a reflection of the lifestyles of the people that hold it. If you have a sedentary lifestyle (you're a law student not a labourer last time I heard), it is much easier to subsist on a vegan diet. However for those of us who do have physically demanding jobs it simply isn't a realistic option.

A tad unfair, just because they are a law student doesn't imply they sit around on their arse all day, but anyway, it tends to be poorer people, living in more rural areas who do the bulk of the physically demanding jobs, they also tend to be the people who eat less meat, simply because meat is expensive. I'd love it if you could provide some evidence which says that someone working on a farm or doing some other physically demanding job couldn't get enough from plant based foods, that'd shoot my argument out of the water. Of course, it would go against my personal experience of staying on farms, and indeed working on them, where everyone is sticking to vegan or veggie diet and at the same time building things, lugging things about etc, but maybe we're all just superhuman or something :)


To take it to the extreme, consider those who participate in physically strenous competive sport. This is most evident in strength sports such as olympic weightlifting or powerlifting (I've never met a vegan who could squat 1000lbs), a diet consistent of large amounts of animal products is a must.

Not so;

Mike Mahler - MMA and Kettelbell trainer
Mac Danzig - former MMA champion
Bryan Danielson - four time world champion wrestler
Robert Cheeke - bodybuilder
Brendan Brazier - former professional Ironman triathlete

all vegan, and all have a lot of strength and endurance.

Now if you choose to eat meat I'm not going to try and convince you to stop. But this argument that people who eat a vegan diet are all scrawny, weak little things and that they can't do strenuous exercise is really annoying :lol:

[Ele'ill]

However for those of us who do have physically demanding jobs it simply isn't a realistic option.

This is simply false.


To take it to the extreme, consider those who participate in physically strenous competive sport. This is most evident in strength sports such as olympic weightlifting or powerlifting (I've never met a vegan who could squat 1000lbs), a diet consistent of large amounts of animal products is a must.

I know of several vegan powerlifters and bodybuilders although I believe that a discussion on diet for professional competition is a tangent unrelated to the most intensive and physically demanding occpations that give employment to a large majority of workers.

The average person isn't going to be required to run a sub-4 minute mile or squat 1000lbs.

[Ele'ill]

if I seemed annoyed in my response, its because I find really irritating the sort of snobs that turn up their noses at people who have to do things for a living that offend some middle class sensibilities,

It isn't a 'middle class sensibility' to not want to have living creatures brutalized. The fact that archaic industries exist and employ people isn't an excuse not to criticize the living fuck out of the industry's purpose and the conduct within it.



particularly when most people don't have the option of picking and choosing what kind of work they do.http://www.scribd.com/doc/22261353/Economics-of-Canada%E2%80%99s-Commercial-Seal-Hunt

http://www.gan.ca/media/factsheets/the+seal+hunt/economics+of+the+seal+hunt.en.html

http://www.ifaw.org/ifaw_european_union/join_campaigns/save_baby_seals_end_the_seal_hunt/government_subsidized_cruelty/shortcut_of_the_seal_hunt_canadian_tax_dollars_at_ work.php

[Niccolò Rossi]

it tends to be poorer people, living in more rural areas who do the bulk of the physically demanding jobs, they also tend to be the people who eat less meat, simply because meat is expensive.

No doubt, especially I would think outside of the 'First World'. However, reality does not correspond to the conditions for optimal nutrition, do they? I think this much is fairly obvious.

So what's the purpose of this point. That people can 'get by' on less and therefore should?

I mean this is part of a bigger problem I'm having with this discussion. If you are going to argue a point, it needs to have some context, some relevance and you need to have an interest in the outcome. If this discussion is simply on the hypothetical ability to subsist on a vegan diet, what's the point of continuing? The obvious answer is that it's not merely hypothetical and that your motivation is encouraging people to go vegetarian/vegan. Am I right on this?


I'd love it if you could provide some evidence which says that someone working on a farm or doing some other physically demanding job couldn't get enough from plant based foods, that'd shoot my argument out of the water. Of course, it would go against my personal experience of staying on farms, and indeed working on them, where everyone is sticking to vegan or veggie diet and at the same time building things, lugging things about etc, but maybe we're all just superhuman or something :)My claim is not that is impossible for people engaged in manual work or strenous sport to get by (survive, subsist, whatever) on a vegan or vegetarian diet. What I am saying is that a diet consisting of foods dervived from animals and plants is preferable given it is easier to obtain an optimal diet.


Mike Mahler - MMA and Kettelbell trainer
Mac Danzig - former MMA champion
Bryan Danielson - four time world champion wrestler
Robert Cheeke - bodybuilder
Brendan Brazier - former professional Ironman triathleteWell I think the fact you could only list five (I'm not asking you to list more, either way the point is valid) is pretty telling.

Nic.

[Niccolò Rossi]

The average person isn't going to be required to run a sub-4 minute mile or squat 1000lbs.

I never said otherwise.

Nic.

[bricolage]

Well I think the fact you could only list five (I'm not asking you to list more, either way the point is valid) is pretty telling.
Well surely that is just related to the general ratio of vegans to non vegans. Most people have probably never even met five vegans.

[Devrim]

A tad unfair, just because they are a law student doesn't imply they sit around on their arse all day, but anyway, it tends to be poorer people, living in more rural areas who do the bulk of the physically demanding jobs, they also tend to be the people who eat less meat, simply because meat is expensive. I'd love it if you could provide some evidence which says that someone working on a farm or doing some other physically demanding job couldn't get enough from plant based foods, that'd shoot my argument out of the water. Of course, it would go against my personal experience of staying on farms, and indeed working on them, where everyone is sticking to vegan or veggie diet and at the same time building things, lugging things about etc, but maybe we're all just superhuman or something :)


Well surely that is just related to the general ratio of vegans to non vegans. Most people have probably never even met five vegans.

I remember taking a friend from England to a village in Kurdistan years and years ago. Three people went, myself, the English woman and a woman from that village.

It was a small place with about 15 houses. The woman from the village hadn't been there for about 12 years, and they killed a sheep for her. These were people who probably ate meat about three or four times a year. Out English friend was a vegetarian, and we decided to explain t the villages that she had a medical condition that meant she couldn't eat meat, rather than try to explain the whole idea of vegetarianism, which we thought might of come across as a little rude.

Devrim

[Niccolò Rossi]

Well surely that is just related to the general ratio of vegans to non vegans. Most people have probably never even met five vegans.

Yes, this is definitely a contributing factor but it's hardly the prime reason I believe.

Nic.

[Ele'ill]

Yes, this is definitely a contributing factor but it's hardly the prime reason I believe.

Nic.

There's a lot of misinformation put out by supplement and nutrition companies. There's a lot of standing behind this misinformation on fitness websites and in magazines. They don't want the current marketplace flipped upside down.

[Milk Sheikh]

Only insensitive people try to justify meat-eating by saying they love the taste and that's all that matters. In other words, slaughtering animals is okay because the taste is good, so who cares about ethical obligations. Sheesh!

[Niccolò Rossi]

There's a lot of misinformation put out by supplement and nutrition companies. There's a lot of standing behind this misinformation on fitness websites and in magazines. They don't want the current marketplace flipped upside down.

Now THIS is something I can agree with!

I would go as far as saing the 'health' industry is making us sick!

Nic.

[Niccolò Rossi]

Ironically, it is people on a vegan/vegetarian diet who are actually more so in need of various sports supplements than those who consume a diet containing animal products. For example, protein supplementation (from either dairy - whey, caesin - or vegetable - soy, rice - based sources) is more immediately necessary for vegans/vegetarians.

Likewise, creatine supplementation is of less concern when consuming meat (1kg of red meat contains about 5g - a commonly considered maintence dose - of creatine).

Similarly for other individual amino-acids (remembering that quinoa is the only place you will find the full spectrum of essential amino acids outside of animal products).

Likewise with vitamins such as iron, zinc, B12.

Not to forget essential fatty-acids such as Omega-3.

...

Nic.

[NGNM85]

(remembering that quinoa is the only place you will find the full spectrum of essential amino acids outside of animal products).

Not quite, they share that distinction with Soybeans, which also offer all the essential amino acids.

[Devrim]

Only insensitive people try to justify meat-eating by saying they love the taste and that's all that matters.

I never try to justify eating meat. Why would you have to?

Devrim

[Milk Sheikh]

I never try to justify eating meat. Why would you have to?

Devrim

Because it is barbaric.:(

[Crimson Commissar]

Only insensitive people try to justify meat-eating by saying they love the taste and that's all that matters. In other words, slaughtering animals is okay because the taste is good, so who cares about ethical obligations. Sheesh!
I honestly couldn't give any less of a fuck about what some animal thinks about being slaughtered. They're too dumb to understand this world. We might aswell put them to good use and eat them. Yes, it does taste good, and that's the only reason we need to justify why we eat them.

[Forward Union]

I'm not saying a person working in a slaughter house is a reactionary asshole but if he is torturing the cows as has happened then yes.


What the hell are you talking about. I'm quite sure the kind of person who tortures animals is not the nicest in the world, but why does that mean they will oppose workers control of the means of production? (thus making them reactionary)

You can't simply use the word reactionary. Imagine how Butchers who ended up joining the Bolsheviks in Russia used to treat the animals, were they Reactionary to?

[Ele'ill]

Ironically, it is people on a vegan/vegetarian diet who are actually more so in need of various sports supplements than those who consume a diet containing animal products.

This isn't accurate. Vegans can live an active life style without supplements.



For example, protein supplementation (from either dairy - whey, caesin - or vegetable - soy, rice - based sources) is more immediately necessary for vegans/vegetarians.

This isn't accurate. Vegans can obtain a healthy nutritional profile from foods without the assistance of supplements.




Likewise, creatine supplementation is of less concern when consuming meat (1kg of red meat contains about 5g - a commonly considered maintence dose - of creatine).

Creatine is a micronutrient- not a macronutrient.


Similarly for other individual amino-acids (remembering that quinoa is the only place you will find the full spectrum of essential amino acids outside of animal products).

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:d9DZiMAlpaYJ:www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.htm+vegan+amino+acids+without+supplements&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us


Likewise with vitamins such as iron

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/iron.htm



zinc

http://www.theveganrd.com/2009/05/getting-enough-zinc-on-vegan-diets.html



B12.

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/b12.htm



Not to forget essential fatty-acids such as Omega-3.

http://www.womentowomen.com/healthynutrition/veganepadha.aspx

[Ele'ill]

I'm not suggesting that you were arguing otherwise and I certainly agree that vegans or any diet (long distance running, diabetic, powerlifting etc..) can benefit from responsible supplementation.

[Devrim]

Because it is barbaric.:(

Fine that is your opinion. I have mine. I don't really feel a need to try and justify my dietary choices though.

Devrim

[Milk Sheikh]

Fine that is your opinion. I have mine. I don't really feel a need to try and justify my dietary choices though.

Devrim

It's about ethics, not personal preferences. If it's possible to survive without killing animals, then why kill them at all? Hiding behind 'dietary choices' doesn't cut it. It's not about choices and preferences; it's about sensitivity.

[Milk Sheikh]

What the hell are you talking about. I'm quite sure the kind of person who tortures animals is not the nicest in the world, but why does that mean they will oppose workers control of the means of production? (thus making them reactionary)


Do you honestly believe that such people are capable of clear, rational thinking? Their minds are probably in the gutter, so revolutionary politics would have as much appeal for them as Mozart would have for a hog. Their behavior will make them reactionary, no matter what.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

it's possible to survive without killing animals

It's possible to survive without electricity, roads, buildings, machines, books, etc., etc., etc. How many animals died via the loss of habitat created when your house was built? How about the road to it? How about when the electric plant was built and wired to the place where you use the computer? How about the factory where the computer was built?

Why should we limit ourselves to just the most basic necessities? In that case move out of your house because its construction destroyed habitat and displaced animals. Stop riding in cars, buses, trains and planes. Stop drinking treated water. Stop wearing shoes. Stop using shampoos, soaps and medicines.

We don't need shoes to walk. We don't need computers to communicate. We don't need cars to get around. We don't need houses to live. We want these things because they improve our lives. They make life easier and more enjoyable and give us more time to pursue other things.

Again I ask, why we should limit ourselves to only what we need?

Every human advance is predicated on our interference with nature. What you're really arguing for is an anti-human regression to some sort of idyllic barbarism that has never and will never exist.

By harvesting an animal we give it value. Without that it has no purpose.

[Ele'ill]

By harvesting an animal we give it value. Without that it has no purpose.So who's going to harvest us to give us a purpose?

[Devrim]

I'm not saying a person working in a slaughter house is a reactionary asshole but if he is torturing the cows as has happened then yes.

I think that torturing animals is pretty disturbed. When I worked in the chicken factory I never saw anybody doing it. That said the place was horrible enough without a need to do it.

If I had seen something like that happening, I would have told whoever was doing it to cut it out. It is not very nice.

The difference between myself and some people on this thread though is that actually I would be more concerned about what made the person doing it that disturbed than the animal that he was torturing.

Devrim

[Devrim]

It's about ethics, not personal preferences. If it's possible to survive without killing animals, then why kill them at all? Hiding behind 'dietary choices' doesn't cut it. It's not about choices and preferences; it's about sensitivity.

Why not if somebody is going to eat them?

Devrim

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

So who's going to harvest us to give us a purpose?

That's a key difference between us and animals. It's unfortunate that you don't recognize it.

[Vanguard1917]

The difference between myself and some people on this thread though is that actually I would be more concerned about what made the person doing it that disturbed than the animal that he was torturing.

I agree that someone who gains pleasure from, say, jabbing a dog in the face with a fork is probably not 100% in the head. It is more true, however, that societies which have elevated the status of animals have often had a far more diminished view of human beings than societies where animals were granted very little protection.

Nazi Germany is a good example. It banned vivisection (along with other so-called crimes against animals) and at the same time promoted 'scientific' testing on humans.

A diminished view of humanity usually goes hand in hand with adulation of nature. Today's misantrophes in the environmental movement epitomise this phenomenon.

[Ele'ill]

That's a key difference between us and animals. It's unfortunate that you don't recognize it.


I think what's unfortunate is your two sentence reply.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

By harvesting an animal we give it value. Without that it has no purpose.


I honestly couldn't give any less of a fuck about what some animal thinks about being slaughtered. They're too dumb to understand this world. We might aswell put them to good use and eat them. Yes, it does taste good, and that's the only reason we need to justify why we eat them.

Both of you are clearly too dumb to understand this world.
I might as well put you to good use and make a jacket from your hides.
Aside from this, you clearly have no purpose.

Seriously, I'm not even a vegan, and this disgusts me.
Living beings are not use-values.

You have the ethics of eugenicists.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Eugenics involves humans. The fact that you would compare that with harvesting animals for meat, fur, medical testing, etc., is what's actually disgusting.

I won't keep making the same arguments with the "animal rights" moralists here. Especially when the case has already been made so many times.



Fur fashion gets reduced to the bloodied corpse, the manacles, the cries of pain. Looking at a beautiful coat, they see not the artful object but the slain animal. ‘Fur looks better on its original owners’, says PETA, with the implication that on the animal fur is alive while on us it is merely dead stuff.


This is exactly the opposite of the truth. Just as a butterfly is never aware of the beautiful patterns on its wings, so a mink will wear its soft coat until death without ever appreciating it. For the mink, fur is just something that it carries around in the battle to survive, like claws or teeth.


By being made into a fur coat, that mink’s pelt is raised into something higher, just as a tree made into a violin is raised, or a cow made into a sumptuous steak is raised. A raw material becomes part of the human world; fur isn’t just on the back of an animal scratching around for food, but is instead worked on and admired as art. Indeed, it is only really by becoming a coat that a mink’s life can be said to have had any purpose at all.

[Ele'ill]

I won't keep making the same arguments

What arguments?


I seriously hope you're trolling which I'm guessing you are given your poor taste in avatar and user title and horrific quote postings. Give it a rest.


You're approaching your living environment in the same exact manner that capitalists approach a human demographic. :rolleyes:

[Crimson Commissar]

Both of you are clearly too dumb to understand this world.
I might as well put you to good use and make a jacket from your hides.
Aside from this, you clearly have no purpose.

Seriously, I'm not even a vegan, and this disgusts me.
Living beings are not use-values.

You have the ethics of eugenicists.
How is an animal going to provide any benefit to this world? By walking around aimlessly and shitting on everything? All that matters anymore is humanity. We are the only ones who evolved to this point and we deserve to take advantage of it.

[Vanguard1917]

You're approaching your living environment in the same exact manner that capitalists approach a human demographic. :rolleyes:

He's simply pointing out an obvious truth: that humans and animals are two fundamentally different things.

And capitalists have had a variety of attitudes concerning nature and the animal kingdom. At their most progressive and revolutionary they tended to see nature as something to be utilised for human ends. At their most reactionary, however, they banned scientific testing on animals and encouraged performing barbaric experiments on Jews and Gypsies instead.

Give me the factory-farmers and vivisectionists any day.

[Ele'ill]

How is an animal going to provide any benefit to this world? By walking around aimlessly and shitting on everything? All that matters anymore is humanity. We are the only ones who evolved to this point and we deserve to take advantage of it.

Let's be realistic for a second- our survival doesn't involve abusing and brutalizing other living creatures for pleasure items such as fur coats and a juicy steak. :rolleyes:

[Ele'ill]

He's simply pointing out an obvious truth: that humans and animals are two fundamentally different things.

In what ways.




And capitalists have had a variety of attitudes concerning nature and the animal kingdom. At their most progressive and revolutionary they tended to see nature as something to be utilised for human ends. At their most reactionary, however, they banned scientific testing on animals and encouraged performing barbaric experiments on Jews and Gypsies instead.

Give me the factory-farmers and vivisectionists any day.[/QUOTE]

Are you familiar with the results of animal testing?

[Crimson Commissar]

Let's be realistic for a second- our survival doesn't involve abusing and brutalizing other living creatures for pleasure items such as fur coats and a juicy steak. :rolleyes:
Our aims should be to provide the best life possible for all human beings. Fur coats and steaks, as you said, give people happiness and pleasure. So why not allow people to have them? You can't dictate what people eat or wear like some kind of environmental fascist.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Last time: We shouldn't stop harvesting animals for their fur anymore than we should stop constructing houses, roads, trains, airports, planes, ships, schools, hospitals, electric lines, water lines, sewage plants, etc., etc., etc.; testing medicines and treatments on animals; harvesting plants and animals for food; or farming animals for the production of foodstuffs and other useful products.

Humans cannot survive without interfering with nature. It is the utilization of our natural surroundings that has allowed us to advance out of the darkness of savagery.

[Vanguard1917]

In what ways.

As in, in what ways are we fundamentally different from animals?

Since as a human being you're able to formulate your thoughts into a sentence, you can use that as a stepping stone to begin answering your own question.


Are you familiar with the results of animal testing?

Like antibiotics, vaccines and cancer treatments (to name just a few of the profound advances made possible with the help of animal testing)?

[bricolage]

I never realised anyone critical of animal testing was secretly plotting genocide, the things you learn ay?

[Ele'ill]

Our aims should be to provide the best life possible for all human beings.

We feel contentment in the same ways that a large portion of other animals do. Why at their expense? Why would we hold a double standard like that where humans should not suffer because it's barbarically painful for them but other animals should suffer in this way?

I've already debated the issue of sentience in every single one of these threads. Do I have to do this yet again :bored:



Fur coats and steaks, as you said, give people happiness and pleasure.A lot of things give people pleasure and happiness because their views of the world around them are skewed. Should we allow everything for the advancement of 'humanity'?



So why not allow people to have them?Because they have severe consequences for the biosphere and many of these pleasures involve inflicting pain and emotional distress- why should we allow this if we very well know what it's like to be on the receiving end?




You can't dictate what people eat or wear like some kind of environmental fascist.I had a conversation like this once in a class in college where a person lacking insight suggested that because I was politically involved and trying to shape a new world that I was a controlling monster because I wanted various aspects of the old world to be abolished forever.

[Ele'ill]

As in, in what ways are we fundamentally different from animals?

Since as a human being you're able to formulate your thoughts into a sentence, you can use that as a stepping stone to begin answering your own question.

Within the context of what we're discussing, please. This would be pain and emotional distress- why allow this for pleasure when we know what it's like to be on the receiving end?




Like antibiotics, vaccines and cancer treatments (to name just a few of the profound advances made possible with the help of animal testing)?

I was hoping for a more detailed response- involving links to what data was actually used by medical professionals. I am not opposed to animal testing in the way you might think.

[Crimson Commissar]

We feel contentment in the same ways that a large portion of other animals do. Why at their expense? Why would we hold a double standard like that where humans should not suffer because it's barbarically painful for them but other animals should suffer in this way?

I've already debated the issue of sentience in every single one of these threads. Do I have to do this yet again :bored:
You could call it barbaric to "slaughter" animals. But it is for the good of humanity. And the human race is all that matters on this world.



A lot of things give people pleasure and happiness because their views of the world around them are skewed. Should we allow everything for the advancement of 'humanity'?
YES, of course. If it is benefitial for humanity to use animals as resources, then there is no reason why we shouldn't do it.



Because they have severe consequences for the biosphere and many of these pleasures involve inflicting pain and emotional distress- why should we allow this if we very well know what it's like to be on the receiving end?
I doubt anyone here actually wants animals to suffer. But sometimes they do need to die so that humans can have better lives. It's a very small price to pay so that humanity can advance.


I had a conversation like this once in a class in college where a person lacking insight suggested that because I was politically involved and trying to shape a new world that I was a controlling monster because I wanted various aspects of the old world to be abolished forever.
Abolished forever, as in banned? Why should it be illegal to eat meat or wear fur clothing? That's ridiculous. Why should we give up our freedom so that a few insignificant animals can live?

[Ele'ill]

Last time: We shouldn't stop harvesting animals for their fur anymore than we should stop constructing houses, roads, trains, airports, planes, ships, schools, hospitals, electric lines, water lines, sewage plants, etc., etc., etc.; testing medicines and treatments on animals; harvesting plants and animals for food; or farming animals for the production of foodstuffs and other useful products.

You're lumping largely unrelated issues together to make them appear to all be interconnected and some how valid. This is not accurate at all.

We don't need meat- certainly not to the extent that it's consumed now. We don't need fur.

I can avoid meat and fur for the rest of my life but living without the other things you listed would be unrealistic for all purposes of this conversation.



Humans cannot survive without interfering with nature. It is the utilization of our natural surroundings that has allowed us to advance out of the darkness of savagery.

And it's time that we start to minimize our impact rather than plowing the planet as if we lived in the dark ages.

[FreeFocus]

So I'm currently reading Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights (http://www.amazon.com/Making-Killing-Political-Economy-Animal/dp/1904859674), which I've had for over a year but haven't had time to read. The author, Bob Torres, is a social anarchist who ties together capitalism, exploitation, and factory farming/other forms of animal abuse. As I find pertinent information, I'll post it in this thread. It is an interesting book whether you agree with it or not; I suspect those who disagree that animals shouldn't be abused and are entitled to rights will have some new insights.

I think this issue really shows the divide between leftists who seek to develop a more humane, gentler, and free world, from those "leftists" who just want bloody revolution, a swap of power or institutions, not a fundamentally different world with a different order. Animal abuse and exploitation won't go away with capitalism necessarily, just like racism and sexism won't. These things have been exacerbated and harnessed by capitalism, but have taken a life of their own, and can exist without capitalism.


I agree that someone who gains pleasure from, say, jabbing a dog in the face with a fork is probably not 100% in the head. It is more true, however, that societies which have elevated the status of animals have often had a far more diminished view of human beings than societies where animals were granted very little protection.

Nazi Germany is a good example. It banned vivisection (along with other so-called crimes against animals) and at the same time promoted 'scientific' testing on humans.

A diminished view of humanity usually goes hand in hand with adulation of nature. Today's misantrophes in the environmental movement epitomise this phenomenon.

"Probably not?" It's a cruel and sadistic act.

Name a few examples of these societies, please (and seriously, Nazi Germany? Despite their massive bombing campaigns that not only killed people, but animals too?). I know that there are countless societies, mainly indigenous societies, that respect human life and animal life. It isn't mutually exclusive and they aren't opposed to each other, so stop making a false dichotomy.

But oh, nevermind Vanguard, I forgot that indigenous peoples are just "backwards" and need "more capitalist development" to bring them into the light of wonderful, advanced, Western civilization. Stupid me.

[Ele'ill]

]I doubt anyone here actually wants animals to suffer. But sometimes they do need to die so that humans can have better lives. It's a very small price to pay so that humanity can advance.

How is the meat industry and fur industry advancing humanity? Pleasure?



Abolished forever, as in banned? Why should it be illegal to eat meat or wear fur clothing? That's ridiculous. Why should we give up our freedom so that a few insignificant animals can live?

I think you may have missed my point but close enough I guess-

How are they any more or less significant than humans? When we oppose actions against humans it's because we understand that it's painful and causes emotional distress and that the quality of life diminishes greatly. Why and how can we say it's ok for other creatures to suffer the same fate for our pleasure?

[Ele'ill]

that societies which have elevated the status of animals have often had a far more diminished view of human beings than societies where animals were granted very little protection.

This is not true at all. The opposite of what you're saying here is true.

[Niccolò Rossi]

It's about ethics

A Saddamist decrying the ethics of killing animals to eat? Certainly this is a troll?

Nic.

[Niccolò Rossi]

This isn't accurate. Vegans can live an active life style without supplements.

For fucks sake, please try and read what I wrote:

"Ironically, it is people on a vegan/vegetarian diet who are actually more so in need of various sports supplements than those who consume a diet containing animal products."

I never said they were necessary on a vegan diet. I never recommended vegans go out and start buying all this shit. I was just trying to point out that vegan diets are more likely to suffer from these deficiencies and hence are a population where these kinds of supplements would be more understandable to see consumed.


This isn't accurate. Vegans can obtain a healthy nutritional profile from foods without the assistance of supplements.

I never said otherwise.

However, where contraints on calories and macronutrients are introduced, this becomes much harder to do effectively, if at all.

For example, I don't imagine it is possible to construct an effective vegan keto diet.


Creatine is a micronutrient- not a macronutrient.

Indeed it is. Am I missing something?


http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:d9DZiMAlpaYJ:www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.htm+vegan+amino+acids+without+supplements&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

And again, yes, I'm well aware of the mixing and matching game vegans have the pleasure of playing to ensure they are getting a sufficient intake of all the EAAs. And again, when other dietry contraints are introduced, this becomes an impossibly difficult task, which is completely unessecary when consuming animal products.



http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/iron.htm

http://www.theveganrd.com/2009/05/getting-enough-zinc-on-vegan-diets.html

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/b12.htm

http://www.womentowomen.com/healthynutrition/veganepadha.aspx

Maybe your still not getting the point. I never said you can't get all these things in sufficient quantities. It simply makes life harder, especially when other dietry contraints are introduced. And hence, it makes more sense to see vagans supplementing these areas.

I think this is a really, really simple point I'm making. There shouldnt be anything contentious or controversial about it...

Nic.

[Niccolò Rossi]

You're approaching your living environment in the same exact manner that capitalists approach a human demographic. :rolleyes:He's simply pointing out an obvious truth: that humans and animals are two fundamentally different things.

And capitalists have had a variety of attitudes concerning nature and the animal kingdom. At their most progressive and revolutionary they tended to see nature as something to be utilised for human ends. At their most reactionary, however, they banned scientific testing on animals and encouraged performing barbaric experiments on Jews and Gypsies instead.

Give me the factory-farmers and vivisectionists any day.

Well I think it's essential to remember here that communism does not only mean a transformation in the relationship of man to man, but also of man to the natural world and hence to the animal kingdom.

So I mean, a vision of communism complete with factory farms, hunting, vivisection and animal abuse as they stand today is a vision of communism that can't see it's transformative aspect in it's entirity and hence is a limited vision of communism.

Nic.

[Ele'ill]

For fucks sake, please try and read what I wrote:

"Ironically, it is people on a vegan/vegetarian diet who are actually more so in need of various sports supplements than those who consume a diet containing animal products."

And I disagreed with this and demonstrated why with the rest of my post.

Perhaps it's the 'sports supplements' that's causing the confusion? When I see 'sports supplements' I don't see a difference from 'dietary supplement' because they are the same thing. The links I provided showed where to get the various nutrients without supplements.

I think the supplement industry takes an anti vegan stance for profit reasons as I stated earlier. The supplement industry isn't even honest with it's non-vegan products while catering to it's faithful trend followers.


Perhaps what you're saying is that in a level of competition above what the average highly active worker would be- such as professional athletes- vegans and other non-mainstream diets can greatly benefit from supplements. I agree but want to make the distinction between professional athletes and the average or 'above average' hard worker.

[Ele'ill]

Also, where is Fawkes in Fawkes' thread?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

He's out fox hunting for sport. He read that Engels liked it and wanted to give it a try.


I think this issue really shows the divide between leftists who seek to develop a more humane, gentler, and free world, from those "leftists" who just want bloody revolution, a swap of power or institutions, not a fundamentally different world with a different order.

I think it shows the divide between folks who genuinely want to liberate themselves and all of humanity from exploitation, alienation, degradation and submission to scarcity from moralistic misanthropic leftists who want to make themselves feel superior to everyone else on the basis of their "wise" and "humane" consumption choices.

[Ele'ill]

I think it shows the divide between folks who genuinely want to liberate themselves and all of humanity from exploitation, alienation, degradation

While simultaneously engaging in these same actions against every creature on the planet.



and submission to scarcityIf it isn't neccessary to begin with then scarcity isn't even an issue.



from moralistic misanthropic leftists who want to make themselves feel superior to everyone else on the basis of their "wise" and "humane" consumption choices.This was never the issue and is a gigantic strawman.

[Vanguard1917]

Well I think it's essential to remember here that communism does not only mean a transformation in the relationship of man to man, but also of man to the natural world and hence to the animal kingdom.

Yes, but only if it makes life better for humans.

For example, i'm all for making factory farming cleaner, more hygienic, etc. because i think that this is likely to improve the quality of the produce -- but not for a single moment because i believe in any absurd irrational nonsense like rights for animals or their 'dignity'.

[ZeroNowhere]

Well I think it's essential to remember here that communism does not only mean a transformation in the relationship of man to man, but also of man to the natural world and hence to the animal kingdom.

So I mean, a vision of communism complete with factory farms, hunting, vivisection and animal abuse as they stand today is a vision of communism that can't see it's transformative aspect in it's entirity and hence is a limited vision of communism.
Man's alienation from nature refers to his alienation from his products and conditions of production. Man won't be alienated from these under communism more or less by definition, so the fact that the relationship between man and nature (the sensuous, external world, including our products, a rather broad concept of nature) is changed by communism isn't really relevant to this thread. I suppose it's true that we won't be alienated from either animals as means of production or means of consumption, but that doesn't have much to do with whether or not we choose to use factory farming, and more to do with social control of production.

[Ele'ill]

I miss the days of really long threads on these topics.

[Forward Union]

Do you honestly believe that such people are capable of clear, rational thinking? Their minds are probably in the gutter, so revolutionary politics would have as much appeal for them as Mozart would have for a hog. Their behavior will make them reactionary, no matter what.

I've killed animals for food before, with my hands. Am I a rectionary?

[FreeFocus]

I've killed animals for food before, with my hands. Am I a rectionary?

I know that wasn't directed to me but I will comment. It doesn't make you reactionary (even working in a butchery shop doesn't make someone reactionary. More desensitized to violence, maybe). Hunting for food makes a person less prone to violent tendencies and being desensitized, because it's a much more direct experience where you're providing for yourself and overcoming the animal. Hunting for food makes a person appreciate life more, at least in my experience and from what I know culturally. Hunting for sport, on the other hand, requires some of the same desensitization and lack of respect as factory farming.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I've killed animals for food before, with my hands. Am I a rectionary?

Hunting is a far cry from the industrial death machine of the meat-industry.

[NGNM85]

We feel contentment in the same ways that a large portion of other animals do. Why at their expense? Why would we hold a double standard like that where humans should not suffer because it's barbarically painful for them but other animals should suffer in this way?

First, you are establishing a standard that no other creature on earth complies with, or, is even capable of doing so.

Certain animals can experience some of the same types of suffering that humans can. There are a number of species with comparable nervous systems. However, humans can suffer in ways that are inaccessible to any other known lifeform. I have never seen a squirrel experience a spiritual crisis, I have never seen evidence that prairie dogs experience shame, etc. Second, just because the experience of a certain type of suffering is the same, does not mean it should carry equal moral weight. First, it is a matter of basic Darwinian imperative that every species instinctively puts itself before other species. Second, sentience is a morally significant criteria. Not simply because sentient beings are susceptible to unique degrees of suffering, but because every sentient being is a unique consciousness with the near-infinite possibilities that entails. Every sentient being is a ‘judge of the universe.’


I've already debated the issue of sentience in every single one of these threads. Do I have to do this yet again

It’s the elephant in the room. I have never heard anyone produce a satisfactory counterargument that nullifies this fact.


A lot of things give people pleasure and happiness because their views of the world around them are skewed. Should we allow everything for the advancement of 'humanity'?

Within reason.



Because they have severe consequences for the biosphere and many of these pleasures involve inflicting pain and emotional distress- why should we allow this if we very well know what it's like to be on the receiving end?

First, to recap, not all suffering has equal moral weight. Second, this is a utilitarian argument, like Bentham ‘can they suffer’, etc. By this reasoning, by using mass anesthesia (Which is actually required in animal experimentation, except when it interferes with the experiment.) we could actually substantially increase the harvesting of animals for food, clothing, science, etc., without causing any moral dilemma. Of course, that’s completely unacceptable to yourself and others who make this argument. This is when we suddenly, predictably, convert to deontology, and start making ‘sanctity of life’ arguments. It needs to be understood that these moral systems are mutually exclusive, one cannot subscribe to both, simultaneously.

[Ned Kelly]

Are meat workers counter revolutionary?
ANYONE who tries to make this claim, cannot possibly call themselves a leftist.
These meat workers are just trying to earn a crust like anyone else, and if anyone tries to make the claim that this makes the counter revolutionary, you're not wanted in the revolutionary ranks.

[Vanguard1917]

Hunting is a far cry from the industrial death machine of the meat-industry.

And it's this "industrial death machine of the meat-industry" which we have to thank for making good food available to the masses (at least in the developed world), as opposed to a small minority of the privileged. What those who oppose mass meat production, and prefer small-scaled methods, in effect demand is a return to greater food poverty.

When we tuck into the cornucopia of the good stuff on our dinner tables today, let's all give a thought, not to Jesus and his dad's good will, but to the human productive processes which made it all possible -- processes which we ought to subject to genuine human control, improve and expand as far as necessary.

http://www.newryandmourne.gov.uk/content-images/christmas_turkey.jpg

[bailey_187]

When we tuck into the cornucopia of the good stuff on our dinner tables today, let's all give a thought, not to Jesus and his dad's good will, but to the human productive processes which made it all possible -- processes which we ought to subject to genuine human control, improve and expand as far as necessary.


lol i like this, i might do it

[Amphictyonis]

So who's going to harvest us to give us a purpose?

Two options, either aliens are harvesting us or life has no purpose :)

[Ele'ill]

First, you are establishing a standard that no other creature on earth complies with, or, is even capable of doing so.

Do not for a second compare human animal industries or environmental impact with how 'other animals' survive. They are not comparable. As was already stated- many of the most barbaric elements of animal industry are for 'pleasure' and not for survival.







Certain animals can experience some of the same types of suffering that humans can. There are a number of species with comparable nervous systems. However, humans can suffer in ways that are inaccessible to any other known lifeform. I have never seen a squirrel experience a spiritual crisis, I have never seen evidence that prairie dogs experience shame, etc. Second, just because the experience of a certain type of suffering is the same, does not mean it should carry equal moral weight. First, it is a matter of basic Darwinian imperative that every species instinctively puts itself before other species. Second, sentience is a morally significant criteria. Not simply because sentient beings are susceptible to unique degrees of suffering, but because every sentient being is a unique consciousness with the near-infinite possibilities that entails. Every sentient being is a ‘judge of the universe.’We're not discussing spiritual crisis and we're not discussing shame. We're discussing physical pain and emotional distress. Animals feel both of these. My question still stands- Why would we inflict these for pleasure industries while condemning it within our own sphere of existence.




It’s the elephant in the room. I have never heard anyone produce a satisfactory counterargument that nullifies this fact.Elaborate if you feel the need. I feel I have debated the issue to a satisfactory level in previous threads for the purpose of this and those conversations.




Within reason.This is vague.





First, to recap, not all suffering has equal moral weight. Second, this is a utilitarian argument, like Bentham ‘can they suffer’, etc. By this reasoning, by using mass anesthesia (Which is actually required in animal experimentation, except when it interferes with the experiment.) we could actually substantially increase the harvesting of animals for food, clothing, science, etc., without causing any moral dilemma. Of course, that’s completely unacceptable to yourself and others who make this argument. This is when we suddenly, predictably, convert to deontology, and start making ‘sanctity of life’ arguments. It needs to be understood that these moral systems are mutually exclusive, one cannot subscribe to both, simultaneously.
If drugging is a solution to creatures feeling physical pain and emotional distress then surely you'd be an advocate of applying this logic within the sphere of our own existence. Nothing would have to change at all just eradicate the symptoms felt and exploitation can continue for individual or personal gain.

[NGNM85]

Do not for a second compare human animal industries or environmental impact with how 'other animals' survive. They are not comparable. As was already stated- many of the most barbaric elements of animal industry are for 'pleasure' and not for survival.

I could debate that, but this wasn’t really the direction I was going in. What I meant was you’re bemoaning the fact that humans don’t live up to these standards you’ve arbitrarily created, when no other creature on earth does this, or is even capable of doing this. The idea that the rest of nature (In fact the whole dichotomy of humanity or technology as something separate from nature.) exists in some kind of equilibrium is really a false conceit. At every given opportunity organisms will multiply and thrive, even to the point of devastating their own local ecosystem, and, ultimately, killing themselves. It just so happens that a lot of organisms don’t have that opportunity very often.

Also, while it is possible, but more difficult, for humans to subsist without eating animals, this is not simply amusement, it isn’t like bullfighting, or kicking puppies, there is a legitimate objective, and it serves a utilitarian purpose. This is an important distinction. I’m reminded from a line from an episode of Star Trek; “Doctor, the sperm whale on Earth devours millions of cuttlefish as it roams the oceans. It is not evil, it is feeding.”


We're not discussing spiritual crisis and we're not discussing shame. We're discussing physical pain and emotional distress. Animals feel both of these. My question still stands- Why would we inflict these for pleasure industries while condemning it within our own sphere of existence.

My whole point was, in brief, just because the pain may be equivalent, neurologically speaking, does not mean it should carry equal moral weight.


Elaborate if you feel the need. I feel I have debated the issue to a satisfactory level in previous threads for the purpose of this and those conversations.

I must have missed it.


This is vague.

Yes, however, I am fairly sure you know what I mean.


If drugging is a solution to creatures feeling physical pain and emotional distress then surely you'd be an advocate of applying this logic within the sphere of our own existence. Nothing would have to change at all just eradicate the symptoms felt and exploitation can continue for individual or personal gain.

That’s an interesting moral conundrum. Actually this would most likely require a complete understanding and theory of the brain, as well as extremely advanced cybernetics and nanotechnology. You’d need to radically alter people’s brains in a very sophisticated manner while retaining consciousness and optimal or near-optimal cognitive abilities. Frankly, if we had all of those things there would be a lot better things we could do, such a society wouldn’t even have any kind of market or trade as resources would be so vast and production so easy that no-one would consent to pay for anything, and nobody would have any interest in exploiting others in this way. Throwing all the logical problems out the window this sort of presents an interesting ethical conundrum. In some ways this reminds me of a story I heard about describing a society that has evolved past a Technological Singularity, and the protagonist has become a superintelligence. There is nothing he cannot know, he can simulate any experience he can comprehend, even experiences that are not physically possible, etc. Anyhow, eventually he’s done everything he wanted to do and he has no immediate needs of any kind so he finally reprograms his brain so that he develops an intense passion for making table legs, something he had never had any interest in, whatsoever. This scenario actually highlights a number of interesting and valuable ideas. Relative to your hypothetical, this brings up an interesting moral conundrum; is it exploitation if the victim does not suffer? In such a scenario laborers could literally break their backs while experiencing transcendental pleasure. My response is that this would be wrong because it is depriving others of their choice, their right to make their own decisions. Even if free will is an illusion, as I think it very likely is, I would still say that this can be classified as wrong on these grounds. I don’t see that this can be applied to non-sentient life as they don’t have the prerequisite hardware.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I don’t see that this can be applied to non-sentient life as they don’t have the prerequisite hardware.

Go hit a dictionary. Animals are sentient.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Go hit a dictionary. Animals are sentient.

Sentience is qualititive, not quantitive. The fewer potential synaptic connections a being has, the narrower it's range of experiences is.

I think NGNM85 possibly meant "sapient" rather than "sentient".

[Ele'ill]

What I meant was you’re bemoaning the fact that humans don’t live up to these standards you’ve arbitrarily created, when no other creature on earth does this, or is even capable of doing this.

No other species on the planet has horrifically painful and distressing industry solely for pleasure. You cannot compare a fur factory to a cheetah taking down a gazelle or a bear fishing for salmon. Meat is eaten by humans ('farmed' and produced from a disgusting pain inducing industry) to the point that it causes health problems. It is ultimately unnecessary in the manner it's being consumed.




At every given opportunity organisms will multiply and thrive, even to the point of devastating their own local ecosystem, and, ultimately, killing themselves. It just so happens that a lot of organisms don’t have that opportunity very often.

So you're either suggesting that we do this because we have the opportunity or we don't which is what I'm saying.



Also, while it is possible, but more difficult, for humans to subsist without eating animals, this is not simply amusement, it isn’t like bullfighting, or kicking puppies, there is a legitimate objective, and it serves a utilitarian purpose. This is an important distinction. I’m reminded from a line from an episode of Star Trek; “Doctor, the sperm whale on Earth devours millions of cuttlefish as it roams the oceans. It is not evil, it is feeding.”

The fallout from the meat industry is not worth 'happily eating a steak'. I would imagine the sperm whale is a carnivore. In the event that it wasn't strictly a carnivore and was able to cook up a vegan meal it would perhaps need to be shown why it would make sense to do this given its place in the world. Various undesirable 'sperm whale cultural tendencies' would need to be weeded out through education (as they are as unnecessary as capitalism itself)




My whole point was, in brief, just because the pain may be equivalent, neurologically speaking, does not mean it should carry equal moral weight.

Why not?



is it exploitation if the victim does not suffer? In such a scenario laborers could literally break their backs while experiencing transcendental pleasure. My response is that this would be wrong because it is depriving others of their choice, their right to make their own decisions. Even if free will is an illusion, as I think it very likely is, I would still say that this can be classified as wrong on these grounds. I don’t see that this can be applied to non-sentient life as they don’t have the prerequisite hardware.

Then it applies to every animal industry on the planet.

[NGNM85]

Go hit a dictionary. Animals are sentient.


I think NGNM85 possibly meant "sapient" rather than "sentient".

Radical AR types always do this. They get cute about definitions and dance around the issue. I use the word 'sentient' in the context I usually encounter it, science fiction literature, and scientific or philosophical texts on the subject of 'strong' AI. You know exactly what I mean, you are simply dodging the issue by getting all indignant about language. You know exactly what I mean when I use the word 'sentient', humans have it, other animals don't, and it matters.


Sentience is qualititive, not quantitive. The fewer potential synaptic connections a being has, the narrower it's range of experiences is.

You're preaching to the choir, here, man.

[Ele'ill]

humans have it, other animals don't, and it matters.

What matters is that these animals in question feel pain and emotional distress.

[NGNM85]

No other species on the planet has horrifically painful and distressing industry solely for pleasure. You cannot compare a fur factory to a cheetah taking down a gazelle or a bear fishing for salmon. Meat is eaten by humans ('farmed' and produced from a disgusting pain inducing industry) to the point that it causes health problems. It is ultimately unnecessary in the manner it's being consumed.

Something is being lost in translation. What I meant was you’re castigating the human race for not living in ‘equilibrium’ with other species when no other species actually does this, or is even capable of doing so.

A lot of this is extremely subjective. What is ‘necessary?’ In the immediate, hunter-gatherer sense, I don’t ‘need’ a computer, or books, etc. Do we ‘need’ art?

A lot of this is emotive language with no substance; ‘horrifically’, ‘disgusting’, etc.

Why is agriculture fundamentally different from carnivores stalking prey? (I’m not necessarily arguing otherwise.)

Most of the health problems you associate with meat eating are really problems with our economic system.


So you're either suggesting that we do this because we have the opportunity or we don't which is what I'm saying.

I’m saying, again, that you’re casting aspersions on humanity for living up to a standard which no other species has tried to achieve, or, is even capable of living up to.


The fallout from the meat industry is not worth 'happily eating a steak'.

Most of these negative consequences, again, are products of economics, rather than inherent features of agriculture.


I would imagine the sperm whale is a carnivore.

Yes.


In the event that it wasn't strictly a carnivore and was able to cook up a vegan meal it would perhaps need to be shown why it would make sense to do this given its place in the world. Various undesirable 'sperm whale cultural tendencies' would need to be weeded out through education..

There are perfectly rational reasons to reduce the consumption of meat. I have cut down considerably, myself, I only eat it once a day, and only a few times a week. My motivation stems from the desire to curb emissions that are contributing to global climate change. This is an incontrovertible fact, which I find infinitely more compelling than fuzzy-minded attempts to create new moral criteria. It is unfortunate that the sound arguments get drowned out by rhetoric and nonsense.


(as they are as unnecessary as capitalism itself)

Capitalism doesn’t exist.


[FONT=Verdana][COLOR=black]Why not?

Because the amount of pain is not the only relevant factor. Again, every sentient being is a unique consciousness, with the nearly infinite range of possibility that entails. Also, there are more practical, evolutionary reasons.


[COLOR=black][FONT=Verdana]Then it applies to every animal industry on the planet.

Again, I think you misunderstood me. The issue was. Is ‘exploitation’ wrong if the ‘victim’ does not suffer? (Or even, takes pleasure in it.) My answer was that although free will is most likely an illusion, for the most part, it is wrong to deprive conscious entities of their right to make their own choices. This necessitates a degree of cognition which other species' brains aren’t capable of.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

No meat workers are not "counter-revolutionary."

Anyone that says they are obviously is into the whole animal rights crap.

Seriously how hard is this for the deluded to understand? We are superior to animals in every possible way.They can have the same rights as people when they get up and ask for them!

[FreeFocus]

No meat workers are not "counter-revolutionary."

Anyone that says they are obviously is into the whole animal rights crap.

Seriously how hard is this for the deluded to understand? We are superior to animals in every possible way.They can have the same rights as people when they get up and ask for them!

This is so exceedingly arrogant and ignorant. "The whole animal rights crap," how much research have you done on it? Have you even read anything beyond PETA stuff? Do you understand the complex relationships behind factory farming, animal testing, etc? I have the distinct feeling that you haven't. Meat workers aren't counter-revolutionary, but dismissing the idea of animal rights because some people might posit that is silly.

I just find it so humorous that the people decrying animal rights as "bullshit" use the exact same logic and rhetoric as colonialists and White supremacists have historically used. Some people call this speciesism, which I'm growing to take more seriously as we have these types of discussions on RevLeft.

I've read some interesting stuff in Bob Torres' Making a Killing. Hopefully I'll have time tomorrow to post some of the content.

[NGNM85]

This is so exceedingly arrogant and ignorant. "The whole animal rights crap," how much research have you done on it? Have you even read anything beyond PETA stuff?

I think I'm fairly familiar, I've read Peter Singer, Derrick Jensen, John Zerzan, as well as PETA literature. They're all insane to varying degrees.


Do you understand the complex relationships behind factory farming, animal testing, etc?

Feel free to enlighten us on this 'complex relationship.'


I have the distinct feeling that you haven't. Meat workers aren't counter-revolutionary, but dismissing the idea of animal rights because some people might posit that is silly.

Well, there's the concept of animal rights, which has to do with what exactly are the ethical or moral ramifications of our relationships with animals, that might be valuable. I'm sympathetic to improving the conditions of agriculture, or establishing greater legal protections for animals with unusually sophisticated cognitive abilities, like the great apes, perhaps dolphins or elephants, etc. Also, there's this subculture, this movement, that claim to be the standard bearers of the cause of animal rights, most of which are completely out to lunch.


I just find it so humorous that the people decrying animal rights as "bullshit" use the exact same logic and rhetoric as colonialists and White supremacists have historically used. Some people call this speciesism, which I'm growing to take more seriously as we have these types of discussions on RevLeft.

You need to understand this is totally wrong. Comparisons to racism are completely baseless because these are fundamentally different things. Institutionalized racism did not end because people invented new systems of morality. Ethnic oppression is now seen as abhorrent because of the fact that other ethnic groups are human beings. The whole concept of 'speciesism' is a logical fallacy, this is a false comparison.


I've read some interesting stuff in Bob Torres' Making a Killing. Hopefully I'll have time tomorrow to post some of the content.

By all means...

[Vanguard1917]

Comparisons to racism are completely baseless because these are fundamentally different things.

Not only are they baseless, they're also disgusting, and those who make them should, frankly, be ashamed of themselves.

[TC]

Radical AR types always do this. They get cute about definitions and dance around the issue. I use the word 'sentient' in the context I usually encounter it, science fiction literature, and scientific or philosophical texts on the subject of 'strong' AI. You know exactly what I mean, you are simply dodging the issue by getting all indignant about language. You know exactly what I mean when I use the word 'sentient', humans have it, other animals don't, and it matters.



I don't want to wade into a thread like this that contains so much horrible confusion, horrible psudo-analysis, and horribly illogical emotional outbursts and dogma...

But I can't help but comment on how frankly stupid this concept is.

In philosophical literature, the serious philosophical literature that actually considers questions of human, animal, and hypothetical life and ethics, the term "sentient" always refers to the dictionary definition of the term sentient: the ability to feel or perceive. By this definition used by normal people and academics writing on just this question, most animals are sentient (though some without nervous systems [sponges] clearly are not and others without central nervous systems [oysters, jellyfish, starfish, mussels] probably are not). Now if you want to argue, as many have, that mere sentience is not an ethically relevant category, or that it is relevant but not as relevant as say, tastiness, that's fine - you can make a legitimate and effective argument for that as many philosophers have. But you can't just deprive people of the ability to use a frequent word in the normal coherent way in conversation because you are using it in a special incoherent way. This isn't a usage limited to just "radical AR types" - this is the usage of philosophers arguing against animal rights too like Michael Fox, Stanley Benn, Lawrence Becker, Russ Shafer-Landau, and most famously Peter Carruthers. Its the way the highly respected Nuffield Council on Bioethics (which supports live animal experimentation) uses the term "sentient" in its official reports.


Your marginal science fiction use the word isn't a coherent concept at all, its just a phrase that people on Star Trek throw around without adequately defining it (though given their usage it might mean something like 'thinks in a sufficiently similar way to us that we can talk to it on our magical translators' - but this is never made clear).

So no, no one knows "exactly what [you] mean" when you talk about this undefinable quality of Science Fiction Sentience that humans have and animals don't - because its not a real quality at all - its not a coherent concept at all - its just a literary convention used in science fiction. You are mistaking Star Trek for serious philosophy when this is actually a topic that university philosophy departments devote a great deal of attention to using the term in the conventional way not the star trek way.


As for literature on "strong AI" - that doesn't concern sentience at all but intelligence - a totally different quality.


-------------------------

On another note, did this thread get merged with another thread on animal rights? I really wish people wouldn't do that since these long threads are unwieldy and difficult enough to follow as it is. If it wasn't merged - sorry.

[Ele'ill]

Something is being lost in translation. What I meant was you’re castigating the human race for not living in ‘equilibrium’ with other species when no other species actually does this, or is even capable of doing so.

Are we competing with our immediate environmental inhabitants? You make it sound as if there is a great war being waged against humans by bears and elk and wolves and tuna and jellyfish and everything else that flys, swims and walks. This isn't the case for absurdly obvious reasons. We have the potential to pave the planet. So far we're paving the planet. The future looks like we're not dismounting from the backside of the natural world at any point with or without capitalism. This is a huge problem if we continue to pretend that we as a species don't have other options and are suffering from hunter gatherer styled 'scarcity'. Humans need to buck the fuck up and make a conscious decision about where we're going.

Taking a stance such as :smugface: "We couldn't help it, we had to compete with the natural world and kill 45 million turkeys for one day of celebration" comes off as a bit shy of intelligent.



A lot of this is extremely subjective. What is ‘necessary?’ In the immediate, hunter-gatherer sense, I don’t ‘need’ a computer, or books, etc. Do we ‘need’ art?Does art, computers, books etc cause physical pain and emotional distress in millions of creatures?

We're discussing this subject in light of 'social justice' or 'liberation from suffering'.




A lot of this is emotive language with no substance; ‘horrifically’, ‘disgusting’, etc.

..and it was backed up by, you know, the rest of my post. :rolleyes:




Why is agriculture fundamentally different from carnivores stalking prey? (I’m not necessarily arguing otherwise.)The difference between animal industry and an encounter between predator and prey is that the animals involved in the latter were born free, have the chance to escape and they don't live in physical pain and emotional distress before their death.




Because the amount of pain is not the only relevant factor.
Again, every sentient being is a unique consciousness, with the nearly infinite range of possibility that entails.

We're discussing nervous systems and specific animal's responses to stress. (causing emotional distress). We are not discussing the childhood trauma suffered by a slice of cheesecake.






it is wrong to deprive conscious entities of their right to make their own choices. This necessitates a degree of cognition which other species' brains aren’t capable of. And I disagree that these animals in question cannot 'appreciate or have the will to engage in' free choice. I believe they suffer emotional distress when it is taken away and restricted.

[Ele'ill]

No meat workers are not "counter-revolutionary."

Anyone that says they are obviously is into the whole animal rights crap.

Seriously how hard is this for the deluded to understand? We are superior to animals in every possible way.They can have the same rights as people when they get up and ask for them!

So the people that can't get up and ask for them shouldn't have rights either?

In all seriousness, nice troll post.

[Crimson Commissar]

What matters is that these animals in question feel pain and emotional distress.
That doesn't matter. They are of no significance to the world. When we kill them and use them as resources, we give them significance and use them to advance humanity. That's what matters.

[Ele'ill]

That doesn't matter. They are of no significance to the world..

They are of as much significance as humans. We don't allow such actions against humans because of the physical pain and emotional distress. Why engage in these 'wrong' actions against other creatures that suffer the same consequences?

[Ele'ill]

This conversation from the opposing side is sounding more and more like a religious position- claiming humans were created by God and animals were created by God for our use.

[TC]

This conversation from the opposing side is sounding more and more like a religious position- claiming humans were created by God and animals were created by God for our use.


Exactly. It is not an argument to say "we can eat animals because animals aren't significant, we can't eat humans because humans are significant" nor is the argument advanced further by saying "animals can only be given meaning by humans and we give them meaning by eating them." This is question begging. The entire point of contention is whether or not humans are the only entities that are significant, whether or not humans are the only entities that have meaningful interests. So making "arguments" based on continuing to restate your premises is no argument at all when your premise is what is being contested.


Now, you can argue that humans are ethically relevant because of quality X - because quality X is ethically relevant and thus entities with quality X are ethically relevant...but you'll have to make a case for why quality X is ethically relevant - and that ethical relevance cannot be based on a pure appeal to the original contested premise (because humans think its relevant and what human's think is relevant) for the above reasons.

Now, good luck finding a quality that 1. is rationally ethically relevant without resort to question begging as described earlier 2. common to all humans 3. excludes all animals.

And if you do, you can write a paper and publish it in Ethics cause its damn hard to come up with.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

We can eat animals because we can eat animals. We're able to outsmart them, prepare them, consume them and benefit from that consumption. Animals that can do the same do.

There's really no need to justify that to people who make the choice not to consume animals* any more than a lion has to justify its consumption of zebras to plant eating giraffes.

(* Which as I pointed out is a contradictory position unless they curl up and die, since all human development requires interference with nature: from housing to infrastructure, farming, medicine, etc., all of which alter the natural world and destroy living things, including animals, directly or indirectly.)

[TC]

We can eat animals because we can eat animals. We're able to outsmart them, prepare them, consume them and benefit from that consumption. Animals that can do the same do.

Yes of course that's true. But the question of whether we're physically capable of eating animals is irrelevant to the question of whether we are ethically justified in doing so.

I mean, we can eat humans too. Some people do and some cultures did.




There's really no need to justify that to people who make the choice not to consume animals* any more than a lion has to justify its consumption of zebras to plant eating giraffes.

Well, no one is demanding that you participate in this thread are they? The question was originally "are meat workers counter-revolutionary" - I think we all are in agreement that they are not - that workers revolution and animal interests are easily distinguishable and the former is not contingent on the later.

But the question at this point has clearly evolved into "is eating meat justified." Now, if you don't want to try to justify yourself, that's your prerogative, we don't owe each other anything. But this is, if you've not noticed, a forum for debate and discussion - and part of that is justifying your belief system. Now if you don't want to do that, no one is making you. But its a bit silly to just reiterate the fact that you don't want to participate in a debate over the justification or lack there of for eating meat - in a thread where thats what we're doing.


I mean, do you run around all the other threads stating "I don't have to justify what I think about this topic to anyone!!"? No right, cause that would be kind of weird.




(* Which as I pointed out is a contradictory position unless they curl up and die, since all human development requires interference with nature: from housing to infrastructure, farming, medicine, etc., all of which alter the natural world and destroy living things, including animals, directly or indirectly.)

Its impossible to live without causing harm - not only to animals, but to humans. People consume not only animal products but the products of exploitation and murder - resources mined by people in slave like conditions.

But does the inability to prevent all harm mean that we the amount of harm we inflict is irrelevant, that we shouldn't make an effort to minimize harm to the extent possible? No of course not, this would require another argument. And this is in fact the position that every serious vegan and animal rights organization takes - so the position is not contradictory, it simply isn't absolutist to the point of functional impossibility.

[hatzel]

There's really no need to justify that to people who make the choice not to consume animals* any more than a lion has to justify its consumption of zebras to plant eating giraffes.

While technically true, the lion has to eat the zebra, because a lion, as a cat, cannot survive without eating meat. Any vegan with a pet cat will confirm this. Even without this, though, the lion doesn't take the zebra and put it between a few fences, or in a cage in some warehouse somewhere, and it doesn't go through all the rigmarole of artificial insemination and selective breeding of the zebra. So sure, the question isn't one of justifying the eating of meat, which is naturally justifiable, but what about the systems we have put in place to procure meat, dairy and eggs? The lion doesn't have to justify this, as we humans are unique in our production methods, since the hunter-gatherer's method to procure these products went out of fashion...

And this is totally without touching the idea of whether or not human morality dictates that we should avoid inflicting suffering on animals. The lion, we presume, is free from any concept of morality in this case, but this isn't to say that we shouldn't consult our morality in this regard. Still, if we accept morality as a fluid concept, there can be no claim that the consumption of meat or other animal-derived product is immoral, and I make no claim that it is a universally accepted immoral act, or that it should be.

To return to the initial question of the thread: it depends how you define 'revolution'. Of course meat workers play no role in any political revolution, and do not run opposed to it, so they are not counter-revolutionary in that respect. If we go a bit Landauer-esque on the situation, and start talking about some kind of philosophical or psychological concept, some abstract 'revolution' concerned entirely with the human spirit and social interactions...well, then the question is open to debate, but I would still prefer to answer no, as I do not necessarily feel that the treatment of animals is of fundamental importance to any revolution. Maybe it's a nice little thing to include, but it's down the list somewhere, as far as I can tell...

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

But the question of whether we're physically capable of eating animals is irrelevant to the question of whether we are ethically justified in doing so.Why do we need to be "ethically justified" to harvest animals?


But the question at this point has clearly evolved into "is eating meat justified." Now, if you don't want to try to justify yourself, that's your prerogative, we don't owe each other anything. But this is, if you've not noticed, a forum for debate and discussion - and part of that is justifying your belief system. Now if you don't want to do that, no one is making you. But its a bit silly to just reiterate the fact that you don't want to participate in a debate over the justification or lack there of for eating meat - in a thread where thats what we're doing. The point is that the whole discussion is utterly ridiculous. This being a discussion board, I'm able to point that out here.


But does the inability to prevent all harm mean that we the amount of harm we inflict is irrelevant, that we shouldn't make an effort to minimize harm to the extent possible? No of course not, this would require another argument. And this is in fact the position that every serious vegan and animal rights organization takes - so the position is not contradictory, it simply isn't absolutist to the point of functional impossibility. Which proves that it's about moralistic personal consumption choices. A certain amount of interference in nature is OK. But there is a certain threshold that can't be broken?

What's proper? Is "31% interference" OK? How about planting crops? That requires the destruction of animal habitat. Is that OK, or should we only pick wild fruit and nuts? Why is using the electricity and the internet OK? The creation and maintenance of such things requires the destruction of habitat and the natural environment. Can we kill disease carrying insects? Why is that OK while killing a mink for its fur is not? The whole thing is absurd on its face.

It all boils down to a group of people looking down on the rest of us because we don't follow their strict dietary choices, which of course are "enlightened." It's a lot like religious people looking down on immoral atheists for their refusal to worship their god.


While technically true, the lion has to eat the zebra, because a lion, as a cat, cannot survive without eating meat. Any vegan with a pet cat will confirm this. Even without this, though, the lion doesn't take the zebra and put it between a few fences, or in a cage in some warehouse somewhere, and it doesn't go through all the rigmarole of artificial insemination and selective breeding of the zebra. Because it can't. We can. That's why we do. That's also a major reason why we've been able to advance as far as we have, out of the muck and mire of being completely subjected to nature to the point where we have some level of mastery over it. It's nothing to lament. It's something to be proud of and perfect. It's the only way forward to a world of material abundance in which the needs and wants of all are freely available so that we can all realize our real potential.

[electro_fan]

This question is directed toward those that view animals as being equal to and deserving of the same rights as those allocated to humans; to those that view the "liberation" of animals as an integral part of a socialist revolution. Given that slaughterhouse workers, butchers, grocery store employees, farmers, truck drivers, etc. facilitate the killing and consumption of animals, do you see them as counterrevolutionary and reactionary? (Even though this seems like a flamebait, I'm actually interested in how people justify this)

I mean, if the liberation of "oppressed" animals is viewed as being a congenital aspect of revolution, how are farmers and slaughterhouse workers any different from cops and prison guards? Most on the left are quick to dismiss the latter two aforementioned professions as reactionary and counterrevolutionary, so how do you view workers in the food industry?

I mean, some animal liberationists even go so far as to equate the plight of farmed animals to things like this:


So, is that farmhand that's feeding the bulls some grain occupying the same position as the SS guard at Auschwitz? And if not, then why?

I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but it seems the logical conclusion (from this horribly illogical ideology) is that the truck driver transporting chickens to a slaughterhouse is no different from the train operator transporting Jews to a concentration camp.

So, should all of the millions that work in the food industry get Nuremburgered (see what I did thar)? If not, throws a bit of a wrench in the works of your beliefs now doesn't it?

I dont think that humans are equal to animals, if you say that the meat industry is like Jews being killed in the holocaust I am sorry but you are basically saying that the holocaust is like the meat industry, ie those people were animals, ie devalueing their lives completely, which I don't accept at all.

[electro_fan]

imo,if you take such a view of humans it's no surprise that many "animal rights" people have gone over, or come from the far right as much (or more) than the left

think about it, that's a shocking view of humanity

[hatzel]

Because it can't. We can. That's why we do.

Of course it can't. But a lion also can't set up an efficient capitalist system, whilst we can. We can do a lot of things we maybe shouldn't do...


That's also a major reason why we've been able to advance as far as we have, out of the muck and mire of being completely subjected to nature to the point where we have some level of mastery over it. It's nothing to lament. It's something to be proud of and perfect. It's the only way forward to a world of material abundance in which the needs and wants of all are freely available so that we can all realize our real potential.Of course I perfectly accept the necessity of animal oppression in the progress of society. But we now find ourselves in a situation whereby work animals have been replaced by machines, and we are able to meet our dietary requirements without the consumption of meat or other animal products. It's more than possible here in the developed world. And, in fact, it creates a world of greater material abundance. I won't go into the inefficiencies of the meat-production system, and the problems of 'wasting' arable products on fattening up animals. Of course this system has to be dramatically changed if we are going to continue to feed everybody, but that's a relatively easy change which won't need people to give up their meat-eating, luckily :-) I read an article about a book which outlined the inefficiencies of the system, and how it could be easily streamlined. Written from an ecological perspective. I'll see if I can find it somewhere, if anybody's interested...

EDIT:


I dont think that humans are equal to animals, if you say that the meat industry is like Jews being killed in the holocaust I am sorry but you are basically saying that the holocaust is like the meat industry, ie those people were animals, ie devalueing their lives completely, which I don't accept at all.

That's exactly why any comparison to the Holocaust or to slavery or whatever is totally rejected by the vast majority of animal liberation types as complete BS. And rightly so. PETA don't really represent the animal rights / liberation movements...

[TC]

Why do we need to be "ethically justified" to harvest animals?


Why do we need to be ethically justified to harvest humans? If not, would it be okay if someone harvests people?

If you think you need to be ethically justified to harvest humans but not animals than that either 1. requires an explanation - which is the answer to your question or 2. is arbitrary. I'm going to assume you don't think its random and arbitrary.



The point is that the whole discussion is utterly ridiculous. This being a discussion board, I'm able to point that out here.

You've given no explanation of why its ridiculous, you've just been repeatedly asserting your position and then demanding that it be acknowledged without justification. That's weird. That's not debate, its the internet version of shouting a rant over and over again.



Which proves that it's about moralistic personal consumption choices.

How?



A certain amount of interference in nature is OK.

Absolutely - some is harmless - collecting rainwater for example, I can't see how that hurts anything. But we're not talking about interference in nature anyways - we're talking about eating meat - so why are you going off the subject?



But there is a certain threshold that can't be broken?

No...again this isn't about nature in some abstract Mother Gaia way - this is about the meat industry. None of the meat industry is necessary.


How about planting crops? That requires the destruction of animal habitat. Is that OK, or should we only pick wild fruit and nuts?

When you choose to do what you need to do to survive at the expense of another aware being, you're making the choice between killing another and killing yourself. To me, it seems excusable to kill another to save yourself.

But when you make the choice between killing another and having a few minutes of gustatory pleasure, or sparing the other and losing the momentary entertainment...that is a different type of choice yes. Thats the difference. Its the difference between losing your life and losing a few minutes of gustatory entertainment.


Can we kill disease carrying insects? Why is that OK while killing a mink for its fur is not? The whole thing is absurd on its face.

The difference is that the former is killing in self defense - the later is killing for fashion. If you believe it is justifiable to kill a person for self defense but not to kill a person to wear their skin - then why hold that this is not the case for mink. You must have some reason. What is it, is the question. If you don't have any reason, then it would seem to be arbitrary - and typically arbitrary positions are considered philosophically unjustified.

Saying its "absurd on its face" just means you wont advance an argument or consider others' arguments - as you clearly know this is a matter of serious philosophical debate - if tenured professors, bioethicists, and activists on both sides of the issue, devote their lives to pouring over these arguments...don't you think it might be possibly a little ignorant and arrogant to dismiss the entire genre of discussion as "absurd on its face?" Just maybe?


It all boils down to a group of people looking down on the rest of us because don't follow their strict dietary choices, which of course are "enlightened." It's a lot like religious people looking down on immoral atheists for their refusal to worship their god.

The only person who seems to be making dogmatic proclamations - which is to say absolute statements without attempts at justification, as in an article of faith, like a religion - is you.

The only person dismissing others positions as "absurd on their face" and "ridiculous" and otherwise condescending people instead of engaging with them as equals - which is to say, looking down on them - is you.

Stop projecting your attitudes about your position onto others. I haven't made a single claim of the sort you mention.



Because it can't. We can. That's why we do. That's also a major reason why we've been able to advance as far as we have, out of the muck and mire of being completely subjected to nature to the point where we have some level of mastery over it. It's nothing to lament. It's something to be proud of and perfect. It's the only way forward to a world of material abundance in which the needs and wants of all are freely available so that we can all realize our real potential.

Humans used black slaves, sometimes entire societies as slaves, and women as chattel, and farmers as serfs, and wiped out their neighbors, while advancing - in fact Rome and America were built on slave labor and nearly every society was built with women occupying a type of chattel property role and workers and farmers and serfs living as exploited commodities.

But I guess all that is nothing to lament, just part of progress to be proud of, because it built what we have today, right? No, I don't think so. So why should we apply the argument you advanced to animals but not to oppressed humans?

[Crimson Commissar]

This conversation from the opposing side is sounding more and more like a religious position- claiming humans were created by God and animals were created by God for our use.
No. We as the dominant species of this world have the right to enslave animals and use them to better our own lives. We don't do this to humans because humans are intelligent beings with real feelings and emotions. Animals are ridiculously stupid and contribute nothing to the world. We are the only species to have evolved this far and we deserve the right to use animals in whatever way we please. We shouldn't have to restrict ourselves just because a few fucking cows or some shit don't want to be eaten. That is absolutely ridiculous.

[electro_fan]

Why do we need to be ethically justified to harvest humans? If not, would it be okay if someone harvests people?

that is totally mad, you are saying that human and animal life are worth the same, so presumably the holocaust and other atrocities mentioned on this thread are just as bad, in fact probably less bad, than the meat industry, because 6 million jews/60 billion chickens etc

do you not realise how fucked up this is?

[hatzel]

This conversation from the opposing side is sounding more and more like a religious position- claiming humans were created by God and animals were created by God for our use.
No. We as the dominant species of this world have the right to enslave animals and use them to better our own lives. We don't do this to humans because humans are intelligent beings with real feelings and emotions. Animals are ridiculously stupid and contribute nothing to the world. We are the only species to have evolved this far and we deserve the right to use animals in whatever way we please. We shouldn't have to restrict ourselves just because a few fucking cows or some shit don't want to be eaten. That is absolutely ridiculous.

Ah...and why exactly did you start that with 'no'? "No(!!!), we aren't claiming that animals are there for our own use, but we can use them however we want." I really don't understand what the issue is here...

[Crimson Commissar]

Ah...and why exactly did you start that with 'no'? "No(!!!), we aren't claiming that animals are there for our own use, but we can use them however we want." I really don't understand what the issue is here...
I meant "no, it's not like a religious position at all". Yeah, i should have been more clear really..

[TC]

Why do we need to be ethically justified to harvest humans? If not, would it be okay if someone harvests people?


that is totally mad, you are saying that human and animal life are worth the same, so presumably the holocaust and other atrocities mentioned on this thread are just as bad, in fact probably less bad, than the meat industry, because 6 million jews/60 billion chickens etc

do you not realise how fucked up this is?

Don't get hysterical and rant on tangents.

I didn't say they were the same (try to actually read my post, it did not contain the phrase "humans and animals are the same)

I said that if you want to say that one is acceptable and the other is unacceptable, you need an explanation for why this is the case. You still haven't said for example, why its not bad to slaughter billions of animals but it is bad to slaughter millions of humans - now since you clearly hold this to be the case, you shouldn't have a difficult time explaining why you do, should you? Is this not a considered opinion? Why don't you explain your reasoning instead of just babbling about the holocaust when you're the only one who made the comparison.

Animal and human lives may be different in many ways - the question is why and which of those differences are ethically relevant - and whether these also lead to the conclusion that animals are morally acceptable to slaughter for taste.

Given this, the relevant issue isn't actually whether animals and humans have "the same value" but whether momentary gustatory pleasure has a greater value than torturing and killing animals.

[electro_fan]

I said that if you want to say that one is acceptable and the other is unacceptable, you need an explanation for why this is the case. You still haven't said for example, why its not bad to slaughter billions of animals but it is bad to slaughter millions of humans - now since you clearly hold this to be the case, you shouldn't have a difficult time explaining why you do, should you? Is this not a considered opinion? Why don't you explain your reasoning instead of just babbling about the holocaust when you're the only one who made the comparison.

I never said it wasnt bad to slaughter billions of animals, I just find it slightly repellent that people are arguing that animal and human life are equivalent, I also think that the low value placed on human life by some of the more extreme "animal rights" types is a factor in violent behaviour against humans by them, (for example targetting cleaners and other workers at companies having dealings with huntingdon life sciences).

I also think that it is a factor in why some people - again not all, so dont get "hysterical" - in the animal rights movement have far right sympathies, because the ideology suggests that human life should have a weaker emphasis on it than animal life, especially in the case of what defines "personhood" (some people suggesting that great apes should be given limited human rights, whereas some severely disabled people might not be looked upon as proper "people")

i fully agree that the meat industry is disgustingly cruel in many cases, and i have been involved in quite a lot of activism against bloodsports and the like - but i cannot accept the position that you appear to be argueing here

[Ele'ill]

No. We as the dominant species of this world have the right to enslave animals and use them to better our own lives. We don't do this to humans because humans are intelligent beings with real feelings and emotions. Animals are ridiculously stupid and contribute nothing to the world. We are the only species to have evolved this far and we deserve the right to use animals in whatever way we please.

This has all been discussed earlier in this thread.


We shouldn't have to restrict ourselves just because a few fucking cows or some shit don't want to be eaten. That is absolutely ridiculous.

This was never said.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

The more I read of this thread, the more pertinent, strangely, I feel the holocaust metaphor is.
The difference between a lion eating a giraffe, or between the relationship of non-human animals to nature is fundamentally different from the holocaust in the same sense, as, for example, violent Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation is different from the holocaust (though it is, in a direct and literal sense, "murdering" Jews). Of course, in the same sense as the meat industry, any military, or arguably, capitalism generally, is similar to the holocaust in the sense that I'm hoping to elucidate.
The meat industry, like the holocaust, is characterized by the operation of a vast social and mechanical network, under the direction of the ruling class (the former, capitalist agribusiness, the latter, the state) that exists to carry out mass slaughter. No "[sympathy] to improving the conditions of agriculture, or establishing greater legal protections for animals with unusually sophisticated cognitive abilities" (NGNM85, ealier in thread) could possibly change the fundamental nature of these relationships. This should be obvious if one simply substitutes the word "Jews" for "animals" in NGNM85's sentence. This is to not deny that people (Jews or otherwise) are different than non-human animals, but to posit the similarity of the instruments of their extermination.
Rather than an argument about whether or not humans and non-human animals are ethical equivalents, what is of interest to me (and hopefully, of at least some people posting in this thread), is the character of the industrial machinery of extermination, and its place vis-a-vis a radical emancipatory communist project.
I would hope that it does not have one.

[Forward Union]

I hate animals and think they should be killed as punishment for the being themselves.

[Forward Union]

DI said that if you want to say that one is acceptable and the other is unacceptable, you need an explanation for why this is the case. You still haven't said for example, why its not bad to slaughter billions of animals but it is bad to slaughter millions of humans

Perhaps because he was, like me, surpirsed that anyone might pose sucn an infantile question. I mean, was this question for real? Are we really on such an infantile level of debate here? I read this as if I might hear a christian say something like "But so many people believe in God so he must be real" and think they've come up with some original and water proof argument. Am I really seeing this right?

The reason it's ok for us to kill cows, TC, is because, we are not cows. They are not our species, and we have no biological inscentive to be nice to them. We do however, have a biological inscentive to be nice to eachother, because we function socially in cooperation with eachother, and society would brake down on any other terms. So no, you can't take my first statement, and try to build a Social Darwinian strawman argument out of it, because scientists have already debunked that and moved on, so do keep up. Animals are not part of our society, they don't adhere to our cutstoms, they don't have our languages, and they don't return favours, they don't obey our laws, and they don't listen to reason, they are outside our society.

And please, for the sake of time and reason please don't conflate specise distinction with tribalism which I know you are just itching to do aren't you.


Given this, the relevant issue isn't actually whether animals and humans have "the same value" but whether momentary gustatory pleasure has a greater value than torturing and killing animals. #

Actually, I think your philosophical approach is entirely wrong. The real issue, is what natural force (not superstition or supernatural morality which guides actions over and above the real world of cause and effect) obligates me to deny myself anything for the sake of an animal. Because there are real consiquences which obligate me to behave in cooperation with other humans, well established evolutionary science.

[Ele'ill]

Yes, moving humanity forward by playing dumb frozen in a perpetual shrug and pretending to be robots driven by instinctual incentive while condemning physical pain and emotinoal distress for pleasure against one group while allowing it to be done to another via the uncannily questionable stance 'It's not pain and suffering if it isn't me, Ha. Ha. *end nervous laughter* loophole.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

So the people that can't get up and ask for them shouldn't have rights either?

In all seriousness, nice troll post.
Get lost....everyone can "get up" and ask for rights.

Last I checked,even Heller Keller-who was blind and deaf-could interact within the human world,and convey her wishes.

Who are these people whom "can't" ask for rights?

[NGNM85]

I don't want to wade into a thread like this that contains so much horrible confusion, horrible psudo-analysis, and horribly illogical emotional outbursts and dogma...

There’s a lot of that going around, especially on the ‘animal rights’ side of the debate.


But I can't help but comment on how frankly stupid this concept is.

In philosophical literature, the serious philosophical literature that actually…

Right. Science fiction is garbage. Marvelous. Even if this is true, it proves absolutely nothing.


… Now if you want to argue, as many have, that mere sentience is not an ethically relevant category,…

That is just a masterpiece of bullshit.


…or that it is relevant but not as relevant as say, tastiness, that's fine - you can make a legitimate and effective argument for that as many philosophers have. But you can't just deprive people of the ability to use a frequent word in the normal coherent way

Nobody is doing that.


in conversation because you are using it in a special incoherent way.

It’s not ‘incoherent’, nor is it particularly unusual.


This isn't a usage limited to just "radical AR types"

As far as I can see the individuals in question do not have a universally accepted designation, I think it’s as good as any.


- this is the usage of philosophers arguing against animal rights too like Michael Fox, Stanley Benn, Lawrence Becker, Russ Shafer-Landau, and most famously Peter Carruthers. Its the way the highly respected Nuffield Council on Bioethics (which supports live animal experimentation) uses the term "sentient" in its official reports.

I can produce an equally impressive list of individuals who use it in the context I just did, both philosophers and scientists, (As well as philosophers who are scientists.) including Michio Kaku, Stephen Hawking, etc.


Your marginal science fiction


‘Marginal’, yes, like Bradbury, Verne, or Asimov, or, while we’re at it, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack London, and Mark Twain, who also wrote science fiction. There’s no accounting for taste, but there is a substantial canon of very serious science fiction literature dealing with very profound ideas. You are merely advertizing your literary prejudices. Also, again, this is completely irrelevant.


use the word isn't a coherent concept at all, its just a phrase that people on Star Trek throw around without adequately defining it (though given their usage it might mean something like 'thinks in a sufficiently similar way to us that we can talk to it on our magical translators' - but this is never made clear).

There are several bogus assertions in there. First, that we cannot sufficiently understand something without being able to define it, and vice versa. What is ‘art’? What is ‘obscenity’? As Justice Potter Stewart said; ‘I know it when I see it.’ Just because we do not have the language to perfectly convey something does not mean we do not understand it, or, that it does not have a meaning. Infinity is, by nature, incomprehensible, yet we are able to use this concept in conversation, and in mathematics. Despite your claims to the contrary, you do know what I mean, which is what makes this so dishonest, you’re merely dodging the issue, which, as I pointed out earlier, is true to form.

Second, this concept is not so obscure or indefinite as you (disingenuously) claim it to be. Intelligence is necessarily part of it, so is consciousness, a sense of self and ones’ own existence. We should include an ability to perceive time flowing and differentiate between past, present, and future, to observe the flow of events chronologically. Abstract reasoning is also an essential component. We could streamline that, but I don’t think there’s actually any real confusion or ambiguity, here.

There’s nothing magical about ‘universal translators’, there’s no reason why we couldn’t theoretically build one. There are many different languages, but they, predictably, share common features. Simply by analyzing patterns in vocalizations, combined with very rudimentary observations, an advanced computer could develop a ‘Rosetta stone’ by which it could decode and decipher speech. We already have computers that convert speech to text, that are able to key in on specific words, etc. Also, despite the colorful and fascinating variety of strange beings in science fiction stories, it’s very likely that extraterrestrial persons, unless they had developed to the point where they could modify themselves through genetics and cybernetics would be very similar to us, physiologically, etc., so we could expect their speech patterns to have certain predictable characteristics.



So no, no one knows "exactly what [you] mean" when you talk about this undefinable quality of Science Fiction Sentience that humans have and animals don't - because its not a real quality at all - its not a coherent concept at all - its just a literary convention used in science fiction. You are mistaking Star Trek for serious philosophy when this is actually a topic that university philosophy departments devote a great deal of attention to using the term in the conventional way not the star trek way.

First of all, the use of ‘sentience’ in the aforementioned context substantially pre-dates Star Trek. You keep repeating this, again, hammering home your contempt of science fiction and everyone who reads it. This is a distraction.



As for literature on "strong AI" - that doesn't concern sentience at all but intelligence - a totally different quality.

It does include intelligence, but not strictly. Intelligence is the storage and processing of information. We could almost certainly create a computer that can store and process information to a far greater extent than the human brain, which still has little more awareness than a rock. Certainly, we would not expect to grant such a machine legal rights, or engage in shrill polemics about our moral obligations to it.

[NGNM85]

Are we competing with our immediate environmental inhabitants?

Not anymore, but that isn’t relevant, at least, not in the way you seem to think it is.
.

You make it sound as if there is a great war being waged against humans by bears and elk and wolves and tuna and jellyfish and everything else that flys, swims and walks. This isn't the case for absurdly obvious reasons. We have the potential to pave the planet. So far we're paving the planet.

Something is still getting lost. You’re criticizing the human species for devastating ecosystems, harming other species, etc. The problem is you seem to be under the illusion that any other species doesn’t do this at every given opportunity. That’s just instinct. Evolutionary programming is not especially sophisticated. If a river is dammed up, if a food source is more abundant for some reason, if an organism is introduced into a foreign environment, they will eat and multiply, even to the point of destroying the surrounding ecosystem, and themselves. There’s no malice involved.



The future looks like we're not dismounting from the backside of the natural world at any point with or without capitalism.

There is nothing that is separate from ‘nature.’ A computer is just as ‘natural’ as a birds’ nest.


This is a huge problem if we continue to pretend that we as a species don't have other options and are suffering from hunter gatherer styled 'scarcity'. Humans need to buck the fuck up and make a conscious decision about where we're going.

In a broad sense, I’d totally agree with you. The human species needs to get it together, we need to cast off tribalism, ethnic or otherwise, we need to get rid of religion, we need to get rid of these inherently exploitive and parasitic economic systems, and we need to get serious about the problems that we face, like climate change, and nuclear proliferation, and we need to think about where we’re headed.


Taking a stance such as :smugface: "We couldn't help it, we had to compete with the natural world and kill 45 million turkeys for one day of celebration" comes off as a bit shy of intelligent.

That’s not really analogous to what I’m saying.


Does art, computers, books etc cause physical pain and emotional distress in millions of creatures?

Presently, yes.


We're discussing this subject in light of 'social justice' or 'liberation from suffering'.
..and it was backed up by, you know, the rest of my post.

I must have missed it.


[FONT=Verdana][COLOR=black]The difference between animal industry and an encounter between predator and prey is that the animals involved in the latter were born free,


‘Freedom’ is not the same thing for humans and other animals. ‘Freedom’ for a dog or a cow is really an issue of physical space, freedom from constraint. This is a far cry from what ‘freedom’ means to humans. Also, this succumbs to an idealized notion of nature. My cat was born feral, had she not been adopted, had she lived, she would have spent her days exposed to the elements, scavenging for food, constantly threatened by any number of things, it is very likely she would not have lived to be nine years old. While cats are ‘naturally’ predators, evolved to live in the wild, I have no doubt she is substantially happier and healthier under my care.



have the chance to escape

Until they get too old, too slow, or are just unlucky.


and they don't live in physical pain and emotional distress before their death.

Again, I think there’s some romanticizing going on here.

Also, I would be totally in favor of establishing requirements for the conditions of farm animals. As I said, I don’t think anybody here is in favor of injecting animals with hormones and antibiotics which are bad for our health and their health. I don’t think anybody would disagree with establishing a minimum requirement of space allotted for each animal, so they can stretch or sit or whatever. I don’t think any of us consider the present circumstances to be ideal.




We're discussing nervous systems and specific animal's responses to stress. (causing emotional distress).

Yes, and I’m saying that just because two organisms might experience the same amount of pain (Again, it’s important to note that humans are capable of levels of suffering other creatures don’t experience.) does not mean that they necessarily deserve equal concern.



We are not discussing the childhood trauma suffered by a slice of cheesecake.

???


And I disagree that these animals in question cannot 'appreciate or have the will to engage in' free choice. I believe they suffer emotional distress when it is taken away and restricted.

This is like ‘freedom’, you can’t compare what it means for animals and human beings.

[guydebordismyhomeboy]

No. We as the dominant species of this world have the right to enslave animals and use them to better our own lives. We don't do this to humans because humans are intelligent beings with real feelings and emotions. Animals are ridiculously stupid and contribute nothing to the world. We are the only species to have evolved this far and we deserve the right to use animals in whatever way we please. We shouldn't have to restrict ourselves just because a few fucking cows or some shit don't want to be eaten. That is absolutely ridiculous.

First of all, humans are not the dominant species of this world. Over a quarter of the discovered species of this world are beetles. Less than .5% are mammals.

Secondly, even if we were the dominant species, there are no ethical obligations that follow from this premise. You've committed the naturalistic fallacy. The idea that because we have evolved this far, we therefore have the right to "enslave" animals, is utter nonsense. Where does this right come from? Since you're apparently a "militant anti-theist," I'm assuming you don't think it comes from God. So who/what gave us this right?

Your posts in this thread remind me a lot of the arguments in favour of American exceptionalism -- America is a "shining city on a hill," "the brightest beacon of freedom and opportunity in the world," and therefore has the right to bomb the ever-loving fuck out of any other country it pleases. I'm assuming you're opposed to American imperialism. Would you be okay with it as long as the US military only dropped bombs on cows and pigs, or gunned down flocks of sheep? I mean, humans are all that matter, right?

[Crimson Commissar]

First of all, humans are not the dominant species of this world. Over a quarter of the discovered species of this world are beetles. Less than .5% are mammals.
We don't have to be the most numerous to be the dominant species. I meant dominant as in, we basically control this world. We can do literally whatever we want with it. No other species is anywhere near powerful enough to resist us. If it was just that animals were weaker than us, then there'd be no problem with us co-operating with them. But they are far, far less intelligent and cannot comprehend the complexity of human society, so they have no place within the modern world other than to be exploited by us.


Secondly, even if we were the dominant species, there are no ethical obligations that follow from this premise. You've committed the naturalistic fallacy. The idea that because we have evolved this far, we therefore have the right to "enslave" animals, is utter nonsense. Where does this right come from? Since you're apparently a "militant anti-theist," I'm assuming you don't think it comes from God. So who/what gave us this right?
No one gave us it. But as the most powerful species I believe we have the right to do whatever the fuck we want with animals.


Your posts in this thread remind me a lot of the arguments in favour of American exceptionalism -- America is a "shining city on a hill," "the brightest beacon of freedom and opportunity in the world," and therefore has the right to bomb the ever-loving fuck out of any other country it pleases. I'm assuming you're opposed to American imperialism. Would you be okay with it as long as the US military only dropped bombs on cows and pigs, or gunned down flocks of sheep? I mean, humans are all that matter, right?
Well in my opinion, it wouldn't be "wrong", it'd just be absolutely fucking pointless. A waste of resources too, if they're not even using the remains for anything. The thing is, this is a thing that cannot be questioned. Humans ARE the dominant species on this world. And the only truly intelligent species. That's not a biased opinion like American exceptionalism, it's a fact. American supremacists have no right to demand that other humans obey them, as other humans are intelligent beings that deserve freedom and equal rights. Animals are not intelligent in the human sense, they're not contributing anything whatsoever to the world, so there's no reason why we shouldn't take advantage of them.

[Ele'ill]

Get lost....everyone can "get up" and ask for rights.

Last I checked,even Heller Keller-who was blind and deaf-could interact within the human world,and convey her wishes.

Who are these people whom "can't" ask for rights?


Those who know they're unhappby but don't know they have rights or even how to go about fighting the injustice in their lives, and those who can't stand up and ask for rights because they'll be killed.

[Ele'ill]

Not anymore, but that isn’t relevant, at least, not in the way you seem to think it is.

It is relevant. If we are beyond competing with other inhabitants then why can we not live in harmony given the vast array of options that we have which other species don't. I believe that we are intelligent and resourceful enough to begin taking steps (big steps) away from living as an industrialized species with a hunter gatherer's outlook on scarcity. We can live healthily and happily without inflicting physical pain and emotional distress (that we condemn within out own species) on other creatures for our pleasure.




Something is still getting lost. You’re criticizing the human species for devastating ecosystems, harming other species, etc. The problem is you seem to be under the illusion that any other species doesn’t do this at every given opportunity.To be honest here I've answered this at least three times now. Saying that 'something is getting lost in translation' and then asking the same question isn't going to yield a different response from myself. I believe that I have answered this in a satisfactory fashion every time.



That’s just instinct. Evolutionary programming is not especially sophisticated. If a river is dammed up, if a food source is more abundant for some reason, if an organism is introduced into a foreign environment, they will eat and multiply, even to the point of destroying the surrounding ecosystem, and themselves. There’s no malice involved. The fact that you can identify this is the fact that we're able to utilize other resources to survive- so that we don't continue to knowingly inflict physical pain and emotional distress on other creatures for our pleasure and so we don't pave the planet and further environmental degradation.




‘Freedom’ is not the same thing for humans and other animals.Freedom for a domestic cat wouldn't be 'the same' as freedom for a red-tailed hawk and much different than that of a cheetah or dolphin. The point is that freedom is taken away and replaced with physical pain, emotional distress and sub-standard living conditions (which is an understatement)




Also, I would be totally in favor of establishing requirements for the conditions of farm animals. As I said, I don’t think anybody here is in favor of injecting animals with hormones and antibiotics which are bad for our health and their health. I don’t think anybody would disagree with establishing a minimum requirement of space allotted for each animal, so they can stretch or sit or whatever. I don’t think any of us consider the present circumstances to be ideal.All of this is unnecessary because the product the industry is providing is unnecessary.




Yes, and I’m saying that just because two organisms might experience the same amount of pain (Again, it’s important to note that humans are capable of levels of suffering other creatures don’t experience.)Such as...

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Those who know they're unhappby but don't know they have rights or even how to go about fighting the injustice in their lives, and those who can't stand up and ask for rights because they'll be killed.
but they are capable of asking for rights,their circumstances merely prevent them from doing so.

Once more it seems we are at the junction of human superiority (the capability to ask) and the struggle against imperialism.

These people can demand rights through revolution (or an angry mob...whichever gets the job done).

[Os Cangaceiros]

Well at least this thread has helped me add a new phrase to my vocabulary: "gustatory entertainment"

[Ele'ill]

but they are capable of asking for rights,their circumstances merely prevent them from doing so.

Once more it seems we are at the junction of human superiority (the capability to ask) and the struggle against imperialism.

These people can demand rights through revolution (or an angry mob...whichever gets the job done).

Then you're suggesting those without a voice or the ability to ever voice their opinion should be unnecessarily preyed upon for pleasure regardless of the fact that they suffer the same physical pain and emotional distress that we as humans would. :rolleyes:

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Then you're suggesting those without a voice or the ability to ever voice their opinion should be unnecessarily preyed upon for pleasure regardless of the fact that they suffer the same physical pain and emotional distress that we as humans would. :rolleyes:
In terms of humans I never said such a thing,and animals...we are once more at the point of human superiority.If humans want to want animals for food or sport then they can go right ahead.

"Those" (by which I suspect you mean animals) aren't advanced enough to warrant rights.

[Ele'ill]

In terms of humans I never said such a thing,and animals...we are once more at the point of human superiority.If humans want to want animals for food or sport then they can go right ahead.

"Those" (by which I suspect you mean animals) aren't advanced enough to warrant rights.


I do not care to restart the thread every time someone decides their post is going to add something new on page 8. This has already been addressed.

[FreeFocus]

First I'm going to start off by saying that the "might makes right," or "might makes facts" argument is hilarious and pathetic. I have no doubts that the people making this argument are cowards in real life; they don't know how to fight, much less hunt or know what to do when a raging animal is charging at them. You speak from a position of comfort, just like Whites who deny that white privilege exists (some of the people arguing against animal rights also take up this position on white privilege. Funny that they correlate). You'll say this stuff when other people are laboring, in harsh, disgusting conditions to provide meat for you. You don't have to do anything yourself; all you see, all you know, all you do, is go to the supermarket and pay for some meat.

Some people in this thread also need to get their arguments straight. You can't have it both ways: either we demystify humanity (in the tradition of Charles Darwin himself) and recognize that we are animals too, that we are a part of nature, not outside of it or above it; or we continue to mystify humanity, in the tradition of theism (primitive and modern). If you opt to demystify it, then this entire argument that humans are fundamentally different is just false. We are related to every lifeform on the planet, that's the essence of the tree of life and any basic, introductory biology class will teach you this. That's something you can't escape.



I think I'm fairly familiar, I've read Peter Singer, Derrick Jensen, John Zerzan, as well as PETA literature. They're all insane to varying degrees.

Feel free to enlighten us on this 'complex relationship.'

Well, there's the concept of animal rights, which has to do with what exactly are the ethical or moral ramifications of our relationships with animals, that might be valuable. I'm sympathetic to improving the conditions of agriculture, or establishing greater legal protections for animals with unusually sophisticated cognitive abilities, like the great apes, perhaps dolphins or elephants, etc. Also, there's this subculture, this movement, that claim to be the standard bearers of the cause of animal rights, most of which are completely out to lunch.

You need to understand this is totally wrong. Comparisons to racism are completely baseless because these are fundamentally different things. Institutionalized racism did not end because people invented new systems of morality. Ethnic oppression is now seen as abhorrent because of the fact that other ethnic groups are human beings. The whole concept of 'speciesism' is a logical fallacy, this is a false comparison.

By all means...

You've been reading some of the least sophisticated analyses of environmentalists and animal rights activists then. Even Derrick Jensen has some very legitimate criticisms, even though his solution is absurd. It isn't necessary to deindustrialize, but rather, reimagine what industry can and should be and how it should operate. It's perfectly within our ability to produce without pollution, deforestation, and destroying biodiversity. It's capitalism that prevents this, not human nature or human interests.

So if I recommended that you read some other material, would you be willing to do so? Or are you stuck in the frame of mind you're in now, despite not having read any real analysis that links animal rights, human rights, and socialism?

First off, institutionalized racism still exists (it didn't "end"). Part of the reason why its been discredited is because of a tendency to be more inclusive in human civilization rather than less. White supremacists of yesteryear engaging in colonialism and slavery didn't consider non-Whites to be humans. Of course non-Whites are humans, but if Western society had more respect for the natural world, it would not at all be possible to deny a human being their rights by saying "oh, you're an animal." This is a distinctly western problem, more or less, from what I see. Most cultures around the world have respected the natural world for millenia. European capitalism has ran roughshod over that.

Some quotes from Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights by Bob Torres:


In short, when I thought long and hard about it, and decided to be honest with myself, I found that my own politics and ethics could not justify domination based merely on the category of "species," just as I could not justify domination based merely on gender, or race, or nationality. When I looked at how animals are exploited as commodities, I saw similarities with how humans are exploited as labor power.

He uses David Nibert's three points/features of oppression (outlined in Nibert's book Animal Rights / Human Rights) to talk about the position of animals in capitalist society:


Taking the first part of Nibert's theory - that maintaining oppression relies upon economic exploitation or competition - it is clear that we exploit animals for our own interests and tastes. We directly consume the bodies of animals for food, but we also use them as factories for milk, eggs, and other products...

The second bit of Nibert's theory - that the dominant group have unequal power and the ability to exploit the other, with control vested in the state - is abundantly clear in the case of animals. We chain animals up, confine them, and cage them, and we do this to animals as our property, with the blessing of the law...

Finally, ideological manipulation convinces us that this order of oppression is natural, desirable, and beneficial for all. This, in turn, drives the processes of exploitation in the first two parts of Nibert's theory...Most of us give the consumption of animals and their products about as much thought as we do the oxygen we breathe. Whites who benefit from white privilege infrequently, if ever, have to think about the nature of their privilege. They don't have to understand its history, its origins, or its implications to benefit and accept it as natural. They don't even have to know that it exists.

He notes that, "animals become nothing more than living machines, transformed from beings who live for themselves into beings that live for capital" (11). He later states that, "They [animals] are exploited and suffer voicelessly, and we rarely hear their cries...As neither exactly like human slaves or exactly like human wage laborers, animals occupy a different position within capitalism: they are superexploited living commodities. Animals never see a separation between "home" and "work," and find themselves within the grasp of productive capital at all times" (39).

I don't want to type three pages of text from the book out, but from pages 46 to 49, he quotes a meatworker who did an interview with Gail Eisnitz for her book Slaughterhouse. The worker, Ed Van Winkle, talked about the brutality of the industry, the emotional capacity of hogs, and the terrible mental effects working in a slaughterhouse has on workers (which manifests itself in things such as crime, domestic violence, alcoholism, etc.). I remember bringing these things up two years ago and being ridiculed on here, by BobKindles if I'm not mistaken. The intersectionality of oppression is real, and it has real, undesirable manifestations.

For the record, I'm not even a vegan. I do like the way meat tastes. I would like to hunt all of my meat (I don't object to hunting for food, which some people might consider inconsistent with my objection to other ways of acquiring meat), but I'm not at the point where I can do that yet. The thing is that people shouldn't be eating meat if they wouldn't have the heart to take a life themselves, and that's the case for a ton of people who just waltz into a supermarket to buy meat, thinking that makes them and Homo sapiens the rulers of the damn universe.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I do not care to restart the thread every time someone decides their post is going to add something new on page 8. This has already been addressed.
Which doesn't change the base fact that your arguments are fundamentally wrong (animals...and rights??? :laugh: ).

[Ele'ill]

Which doesn't change the base fact that your arguments are fundamentally wrong (animals...and rights??? :laugh: ).

Seeing how you apparently missed the only 9 pages of this thread I suggest that- rather than making trollish comments- you go back and read the conversation so that you can ask questions that have not already been answered two and three times- and also so that you might be able to participate in conversation on topics that are actually being discussed.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Seeing how you apparently missed the only 9 pages of this thread I suggest that- rather than making trollish comments- you go back and read the conversation so that you can ask questions that have not already been answered two and three times- and also so that you might be able to participate in conversation on topics that are actually being discussed.
When did the entire Far-Left community adopt animal rights as a item on the agenda? The issue hasn't been settled.And if you "answered" this already a couple times before,than what's one more time?

I'm confused...it wasn't no more than a couple post ago that you said I "added something new," so which is it,do my comments repeat or add newness?

I hardly see how adding to the conversation is "trolling."

[FreeFocus]

I hardly see how adding to the conversation is "trolling."

And I hardly see how you're adding to the conversation.

There's two ways to "add to a conversation." One way is by putting forth new ideas. The other way is to clarify your argument (or another person's argument, by asking them legitimate questions). You're doing neither.

[Ele'ill]

When did the entire Far-Left community adopt animal rights as a item on the agenda?

I don't know. When did they?




The issue hasn't been settled.And if you "answered" this already a couple times before,than what's one more time?

Because it's incredibly hard as it is to respond to lengthy posts from people that have hung through the thread and deserve a response and hopefully closure to the issue but when that's coupled with questions being asked on page 8 that have been answered through the conversation up until that point it restarts the thread all over again where you'll ask the same series of questions that the other people have already up until that point in which someone else will come in and ask the same question etc..





I'm confused...it wasn't no more than a couple post ago that you said I "added something new," so which is it,do my comments repeat or add newness?

That post by me meant 'the person coming in at page 8 thinks they're adding something new when in fact their idea and conversation surrounding it have already been done earlier.'


I hardly see how adding to the conversation is "trolling."

It was making a claim that wasn't true and suggesting conversation on a topic that wasn't specifically addressed. It was a bait post.

Edit- it would be sort of like if I were to waltz into a thread made by kayl about what technology to add to the human body and given that a few other comments in that area of the forum recently were regarding a similar topic I may reply with something like 'Compassion and educated foresight' but given the area of the forum being chitchat it would be relatively acceptable in small quantities.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

And I hardly see how you're adding to the conversation.

There's two ways to "add to a conversation." One way is by putting forth new ideas. The other way is to clarify your argument (or another person's argument, by asking them legitimate questions). You're doing neither.
I still don't see how I'm doing anything wrong.The only reason you have grievances is because you don't want to answer something,supposedly,addressed before.

You could have very easily just have ignored me and proceeded to continue your debate with the other members.However,you choose to engage me in talk...I fail to see how any of this isn't adding to the conversation,when it was you people who fired things off.

[Ele'ill]

.However,you choose to engage me in talk...

It was to let you know why your question wasn't going to be answered.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

It was to let you know why your question wasn't going to be answered.
I hardly interpreted in that manner.

Nonetheless,it was a reply.

[Ele'ill]

I hardly interpreted in that manner.

Nonetheless,it was a reply.

I don't care

[Crimson Commissar]

What else is there to discuss? You keep claiming that you have disproven our arguments, but you haven't. The truth is very, very simple. Humans are superior to lesser animals. We have evolved far past them. We deserve the right to control nature and use it as we see fit. We're not the same as other animals and we never will be. That's a fucking FACT.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Which doesn't change the base fact that your arguments are fundamentally wrong (animals...and rights??? :laugh: ).

Rights-discourse is fucking st00pid.
I'm not interested in animal or human rights (establishing guidelines within the existing structures of law and mass industrial slaughter) I'm interested in liberation.
Instead of worrying about which rights/freedoms are applicable to which (non-)human animals under which circumstances, we should be concerned with the broader character of the context in which "rights" - which only exist insofar as they are defined by their exceptions - exist.

[Ele'ill]

The truth is very, very simple.
:rolleyes:



Humans are superior to lesser animals.

In what ways and do those ways have anything at all to do with what we're talking about?


We deserve the right to control nature and use it as we see fit.

The issue here is 'we' and 'fit'.



We're not the same as other animals and we never will be. That's a fucking FACT.

Many other animals suffer from physical pain and emotional distress. Why do we inflict this for pleasure industries on them but condemn it within our own sphere of existence?

[Crimson Commissar]

In what ways and do those ways have anything at all to do with what we're talking about?
We're far more intelligent than them. It's obvious, just look at the MASSIVE differences between human civilization and animal "civilization".


Many other animals suffer from physical pain and emotional distress. Why do we inflict this for pleasure industries on them but condemn it within our own sphere of existence?
They're insignificant to human civilization, and by using them as resources we can give ourselves better lives. There is nothing wrong with that whatsoever. You keep saying that we're bringing up the same shit, but then you keep repeating this crap about pain and distress. It doesn't matter if some animal is in pain. It literally doesn't matter in any way at all. We should always do what is best for the human race, and this animal rights bullshit is NOT what is best for humanity.

[Amphictyonis]

you keep repeating this crap about pain and distress. It doesn't matter if some animal is in pain. It literally doesn't matter in any way at all.

Yes it does.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Yes it does.
How does it matter?

[Ele'ill]

We're far more intelligent than them. It's obvious, just look at the MASSIVE differences between human civilization and animal "civilization".

I don't care. Advanced intelligence and advancements in civilization don't justify inflicting pain and distress for pleasure.



They're insignificant to human civilization, and by using them as resources we can give ourselves better lives.

Their 'purpose' is to live without pain and distress as is our purpose. We can live the same lives we live now without relying on animal industry which serves as pleasure industry as was already discussed.



You keep saying that we're bringing up the same shit, but then you keep repeating this crap about pain and distress.

Perhaps it's the main point that you're missing. :rolleyes:






It doesn't matter if some animal is in pain. It literally doesn't matter in any way at all. We should always do what is best for the human race, and this animal rights bullshit is NOT what is best for humanity.

Welcome to the conversation, we're nearly eleven pages in. I am now having the same conversation with four different people.

[Ele'ill]

How does it matter?

It matters as much as when a human is in pain or distress. It's undesirable because we know what it feels like.

[Crimson Commissar]

I don't care. Advanced intelligence and advancements in civilization don't justify inflicting pain and distress for pleasure.
We don't do it with the purpose of causing pain, we do it with the purpose of advancing humanity.


Perhaps it's the main point that you're missing.
I'm not. I along with many others have already replied to it.


Welcome to the conversation, we're nearly eleven pages in. I am now having the same conversation with four different people.
Well bring up another damn topic then. I've already stated my reasons for supporting the exploitation of lesser animals, and you just refuse to accept them.

[Amphictyonis]

How does it matter?

I'm not making the argument meat workers are counterrevolutionary I'm making the argument we should minimize animals suffering as much as possible. It matters. If it doesn't matter go out and torture a dog and eat it afterward. Or not, just torture it if it doesn't matter.


QDWH_Sfnoc0

Engineers are in fact working to minimize animal suffering. This isnt a pointless task it's actually part of what separates us from the animals.

[Crimson Commissar]

Engineers are in fact working to minimize animal suffering. This isnt a pointless task it's actually part of what separates us from the animals.
I don't think any sane person would oppose that. As long as it doesn't harm the quality of the meat I see no reason why we shouldn't reduce their pain as much as possible.

[Ele'ill]

We don't do it with the purpose of causing pain, we do it with the purpose of advancing humanity.
Pleasure industry is not advancing humanity

[Ele'ill]

I don't think any sane person would oppose that. As long as it doesn't harm the quality of the meat I see no reason why we shouldn't reduce their pain as much as possible.


Then it matters

[Crimson Commissar]

Pleasure industry is not advancing humanity
Maybe it isn't, but trying to fucking shut it down DEFINITELY isn't advancing humanity.

[Amphictyonis]

I don't think any sane person would oppose that. As long as it doesn't harm the quality of the meat I see no reason why we shouldn't reduce their pain as much as possible.
Originally Posted by Crimson Commissar http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1971057#post1971057)
you keep repeating this crap about pain and distress. It doesn't matter if some animal is in pain. It literally doesn't matter in any way at all.

[Ele'ill]

Maybe it isn't, but trying to fucking shut it down DEFINITELY isn't advancing humanity.


If it isn't advancing humanity (i.e. does not serve much of a purpose at all outside of pleasure) then why not shut it down. It's causing pain and suffering that we've just now established matters.

[Crimson Commissar]

Originally Posted by Crimson Commissar http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1971057#post1971057)
you keep repeating this crap about pain and distress. It doesn't matter if some animal is in pain. It literally doesn't matter in any way at all.
No, it doesn't matter. But there's no reason why we shouldn't minimize it as much as possible, AS LONG AS it doesn't harm the quality of the meat, as I said before.


If it isn't advancing humanity (i.e. does not serve much of a purpose at all outside of pleasure) then why not shut it down. It's causing pain and suffering that we've just now established matters.
Pleasure does advance humanity. We should have as much pleasure as possible in our lives. Do you know how fucking boring life would be if we abolished everything that harmed animals or the environment?

[Ele'ill]

Pleasure does advance humanity. We should have as much pleasure as possible in our lives.

If the only pleasure or the most important pleasure that's moving us forward as a species involves inflicting physical pain and emotional distress in other creatures I think we have a long way to go before we're fit to reign as 'superior'. :rolleyes:



Do you know how fucking boring life would be if we abolished everything that harmed animals or the environment?

lol


The same power structures and levels of exploitation you're seeking to abolish by ridding the world of capitalism are the ones you're using to afflict creatures that feel the same effects.

[Crimson Commissar]

If the only pleasure or the most important pleasure that's moving us forward as a species involves inflicting physical pain and emotional distress in other creatures I think we have a long way to go before we're fit to reign as 'superior'. :rolleyes:
But why abolish it? Why deny people the right to eat what they want? Why do you seem to want to decide what people can and can't do based on some animal rights shit?

[Amphictyonis]

Cyborg meat market robots? Meat technology?

rqONDaUBtE8

I'm going to laugh if all of the alien conspiracies are true and we're just cattle for restaurants in some other solar system. At least we don't know it, think what life would be like if the aliens had us living knee deep in shit knowing our own death is just around the corner? That would be sorta cruel and unusual yes?

[Crimson Commissar]

I'm going to laugh if all of the alien conspiracies are true and we're just cattle for restaurants in some other solar system. At least we don't know it, think what life would be like if the aliens had us living knee deep in shit knowing our own death is just around the corner? That would be sorta cruel and unusual yes?
If aliens were to do that, of course it would be wrong. We are an intelligent species, we shouldn't be exploited in such ways. Likewise, if we were to come into contact with a less-developed, intelligent alien race, we should co-operate with them and develop their civilization to our level. The only animals that should be exploited are those that are too stupid to contribute to civilization in any significant way.

[Amphictyonis]

If aliens were to do that, of course it would be wrong. We are an intelligent species, we shouldn't be exploited in such ways. Likewise, if we were to come into contact with a less-developed, intelligent alien race, we should co-operate with them and develop their civilization to our level. The only animals that should be exploited are those that are too stupid to contribute to civilization in any significant way.

If aliens had the ability to travel here we would look like cows to them so why would it matter if we suffered under their food program? If it doesn't matter how we treat animals, which is exactly what you said, then go out and kill one right now. Let me know how you feel afterward.

[Ele'ill]

If aliens were to do that, of course it would be wrong. We are an intelligent species, we shouldn't be exploited in such ways.

Intelligence has nothing to do with it- feeling pain and distress does. Having freedom taken away does. Living in substandard conditions does.




Likewise, if we were to come into contact with a less-developed, intelligent alien race, we should co-operate with them and develop their civilization to our level.

Why, how is this any different than other animals here on this planet.



The only animals that should be exploited are those that are too stupid to contribute to civilization in any significant way.

I'd like to see you build a termite mound. :thumbup1:

(without the use of termites)

[FreeFocus]

If aliens were to do that, of course it would be wrong. We are an intelligent species, we shouldn't be exploited in such ways. Likewise, if we were to come into contact with a less-developed, intelligent alien race, we should co-operate with them and develop their civilization to our level. The only animals that should be exploited are those that are too stupid to contribute to civilization in any significant way.

This is the type of despicable arrogance that makes a lot of people reject the Left. You're talking about using animals to help humanity, and yet they "don't contribute to civilization in any significant way?" If they feed us, provide clothing, and labor, of course they contribute to civilization. If every animal on the planet disappeared tomorrow, human civilization might collapse. There would be food shortages and some industries would just cease to exist.

Is intelligence a gradient or is it a threshold? There could conceivably be aliens much more advanced than we are, biologically and technologically. If intelligence is more a gradient than a threshold, and if these aliens were far more advanced than we are, your logic would support their enslavement of humanity. But hypotheticals are irrelevant; to our knowledge, there aren't any aliens. Even more of a reason to respect Earth and its life; it's the only home we know, and the only place in the UNIVERSE that we know has life.

A lot of critics of Western civilization seem to gain more credence from threads like these. A lot of things that are attributable to capitalism, itself a Western product, seem to be endemic to Western civilization now. Like this logic of human primacy instead of stewardship.

[NGNM85]

It is relevant. If we are beyond competing with other inhabitants then why can we not live in harmony given the vast array of options that we have which other species don't. I believe that we are intelligent and resourceful enough to begin taking steps (big steps) away from living as an industrialized species with a hunter gatherer's outlook on scarcity. We can live healthily and happily without inflicting physical pain and emotional distress (that we condemn within out own species) on other creatures for our pleasure.

No, we really can't, not at this level of technological development. While we still inhabit this planet, our existence necessitates inconveniencing if not killing millions upon millions of organisms, the real question is about how many and to what degrees.


To be honest here I've answered this at least three times now. Saying that 'something is getting lost in translation' and then asking the same question isn't going to yield a different response from myself. I believe that I have answered this in a satisfactory fashion every time.

Then there's nothing more to say.


The fact that you can identify this is the fact that we're able to utilize other resources to survive- so that we don't continue to knowingly inflict physical pain and emotional distress on other creatures for our pleasure and so we don't pave the planet and further environmental degradation.

This is unavoidable, as long as the human species exists, and occupies this planet. Again, the question is ‘How much?” and “To what degree?” Now, I’m totally in favor of taking substantial measures to combat climate change. This is why I drive a hybrid, why I recycle, and why I only eat meat once a day, a couple times a week. There’s no arguing that reducing the consumption of meat is better for the environment. The difference is that is an ironclad argument, it is sound, coherent, and based on hard, incontrovertible facts.


Freedom for a domestic cat wouldn't be 'the same' as freedom for a red-tailed hawk and much different than that of a cheetah or dolphin. The point is that freedom is taken away and replaced with physical pain, emotional distress and sub-standard living conditions (which is an understatement)

Freedom for all of these animals, essentially, again, boils down to freedom of movement. That is but a pale sliver of what ‘liberty’ means for human beings. There is no comparison.


All of this is unnecessary because the product the industry is providing is unnecessary.

How do you define ‘necessary’?


Such as...

Guilt, disgust, spiritual experiences, etc. There are a whole host of experiences that other animals don’t have access to, mainly because they don’t have the mechanisms in their brains which allow them to access them.

[Os Cangaceiros]

First I'm going to start off by saying that the "might makes right," or "might makes facts" argument is hilarious and pathetic. I have no doubts that the people making this argument are cowards in real life; they don't know how to fight, much less hunt or know what to do when a raging animal is charging at them. You speak from a position of comfort, just like Whites who deny that white privilege exists (some of the people arguing against animal rights also take up this position on white privilege. Funny that they correlate). You'll say this stuff when other people are laboring, in harsh, disgusting conditions to provide meat for you. You don't have to do anything yourself; all you see, all you know, all you do, is go to the supermarket and pay for some meat.

I dunno man, I don't think that people in the meat industry really care one way or another about animal rights. I mean, personally my job can be pretty gross; probably not as gross as what some people do in the beef industry, but I've spent a fair deal of time scooping rotten guts and intestines out of drain pipes, scrubbing scum off fiberglass with hydrochloric acid that makes you feel like someone has a vice grip around your lungs, and various other unpleasantries. In addition I've also brutally slain a number of assorted rabbits, deer, ducks and elk (that wasn't for my job, though, just for food). And like I said, I'm pretty indifferent on the matter of animal rights.

I will say that if and capitalism falls in favor of something else, people are going to reconsider a lot of things, their relationship to the natural environment included. I'll also say that I'm a bit skeptical (to say the least) of some animal rights people. Some of the biggest resource extractors in regards to the local wildlife near where I live are Yu'pik, Aleut, Aluutiq and assorted other native americans. Culturally they've considered themselves very much part of nature and the environment, so I don't think that the man as nature/animals or man as something apart from nature/animals is really what the debate hinges upon, although it may for some.

[Ele'ill]

Sorry it took me so long to respond, even though I was clearly online here and viewing this thread. It took me about twenty five minutes to delete your font tags.


No, we really can't, not at this level of technological development. While we still inhabit this planet, our existence necessitates inconveniencing if not killing millions upon millions of organisms, the real question is about how many and to what degrees.

We don't need meat and we don't need fur. These are facts V:mellow:V
The animals in question feel pain and distress. How can we allow unnecessary industries to exist like this when we'd never allow them against our own species? Because they inflict pain and distress or because we're human? That's a broken argument from your side of the conversation that needs fixing or retiring.


boils down to freedom of movement.

Incorrect- there's more of an emotional spectrum felt by animals. Not simply 'oh good I'm moving around'. Lack of movement causes panic and thus distress.


That is but a pale sliver of what ‘liberty’ means for human beings. There is no comparison.

Irrelevant.

How do you define ‘necessary’?

As in for survival.


Guilt, disgust, spiritual experiences, etc. There are a whole host of experiences that other animals don’t have access to, mainly because they don’t have the mechanisms in their brains which allow them to access them.

Then I don't care because those emotions are completely irrelevant to what we're discussing.

This was your original quote that prompted me to ask 'Such as.."


Yes, and I’m saying that just because two organisms might experience the same amount of pain (Again, it’s important to note that humans are capable of levels of suffering other creatures don’t experience.)

[NGNM85]

Some people in this thread also need to get their arguments straight. You can't have it both ways: either we demystify humanity (in the tradition of Charles Darwin himself) and recognize that we are animals too, that we are a part of nature, not outside of it or above it; or we continue to mystify humanity, in the tradition of theism (primitive and modern). If you opt to demystify it, then this entire argument that humans are fundamentally different is just false. We are related to every lifeform on the planet, that's the essence of the tree of life and any basic, introductory biology class will teach you this. That's something you can't escape.

This is incorrect, well, you’re conclusion is incorrect. All life on earth shares a common source, that’s true, humans are animals, that is also true. However, humans are the only animals that are sentient, (For those who get all emotional about that sort of thing, just go ahead and substitute a word or words that doesn’t upset you so.) that makes us different. That is a morally relevant distinction. First it is relevant because sentient beings can experience greater levels of suffering. Also, because each sentient lifeform is a unique consciousness, a ‘judge of the universe’, with all of the near-infinite possibilities that entails, this is made more significant by the fact that it is exceedingly rare, by all appearances, the most rare characteristic in nature. None of that involves taking anything on insufficient evidence, or subscribing to any kind of religious dogma.



You've been reading some of the least sophisticated analyses of environmentalists and animal rights activists then.

Really? Peter Singer is generally regarded as the titan of animal rights extremists. He’s also totally out to lunch, but that goes without saying.


Even Derrick Jensen has some very legitimate criticisms, even though his solution is absurd.

That’s putting it mildly, the man is actually advocating genocide on a scale unparalleled in human history.


It isn't necessary to deindustrialize, but rather, reimagine what industry can and should be and how it should operate. It's perfectly within our ability to produce without pollution, deforestation, and destroying biodiversity. It's capitalism that prevents this, not human nature or human interests.

Producing with no pollution, whatsoever is presently impossible, although it is, theoretically possible.


So if I recommended that you read some other material, would you be willing to do so? Or are you stuck in the frame of mind you're in now, despite not having read any real analysis that links animal rights, human rights, and socialism?

The problem is these links don’t exist. That’s the fundamental problem. Let’s take two examples, in Revolutionary Spain, in the Anarchist strongholds, say, Catalonia, that’s probably the closest historical example to a libertarian socialist ideal, where agriculture was practiced without any of this kind of hand-wringing and so forth. On the other hand, the third Reich enacted legal protections for animals that are, I think, unparalleled in human history. The Nazis outlawed vivisection, you couldn’t cook shellfish, or even shoe horses, the punishments were also extremely severe, one could be sent to a concentration camp for violating these prohibitions. These ‘humane’ policies didn’t have any effect on the systematized, mass extermination of human beings. There was absolutely no conflict between these directives. The insistence that agriculture is the primal source of oppression or exploitation of human beings is totally unsubstantiated, and completely bogus.


First off, institutionalized racism still exists (it didn't "end").

Of course it does, but I was speaking in very broad terms, I trust there is no misunderstanding.


Part of the reason why its been discredited is because of a tendency to be more inclusive in human civilization rather than less. White supremacists of yesteryear engaging in colonialism and slavery didn't consider non-Whites to be humans. Of course non-Whites are humans, but if Western society had more respect for the natural world, it would not at all be possible to deny a human being their rights by saying "oh, you're an animal." This is a distinctly western problem, more or less, from what I see.

Here’s where you’re going off the rails. As civilization has progressed we have been moving towards a state of equality between different groups. At times in human history various groups have been devalued, but that did not change because of new, bizarre, systems of ethics, it changed because of the fact that these individuals were no more or less human than any other member of our species. They did not need to invent an entirely new system of morality and ethics.


Most cultures around the world have respected the natural world for millenia.

I’m highly skeptical of that contention. Not least, because there is nothing that is outside the ‘natural world.’ Again, computers are just as ‘natural’ as beaver dams. This is a false dichotomy.


European capitalism has ran roughshod over that.

There is nothing intrinsically ‘European’ about capitalism, that’s like ‘Jewish physics.’ Also, as far as I know, capitalism doesn’t exist.


Some quotes from Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights by Bob Torres:

He uses David Nibert's three points/features of oppression (outlined in Nibert's book Animal Rights / Human Rights) to talk about the position of animals in capitalist society:

He notes that, "animals become nothing more than living machines, transformed from beings who live for themselves into beings that live for capital" (11). He later states that, "They [animals] are exploited and suffer voicelessly, and we rarely hear their cries...As neither exactly like human slaves or exactly like human wage laborers, animals occupy a different position within capitalism: they are superexploited living commodities. Animals never see a separation between "home" and "work," and find themselves within the grasp of productive capital at all times" (39).

I don't want to type three pages of text from the book out, but from pages 46 to 49, he quotes a meatworker who did an interview with Gail Eisnitz for her book Slaughterhouse. The worker, Ed Van Winkle, talked about the brutality of the industry,[/quote]

See above.


…the emotional capacity of hogs,

…Which isn’t remotely comparable to human beings. Again, I’ve stated I’m supportive of extending extra legal protections for animals with unusually advanced mental faculties, however, I don’t think pigs are one of these species.


and the terrible mental effects working in a slaughterhouse has on workers (which manifests itself in things such as crime, domestic violence, alcoholism, etc.).


Are there credible, scientific studies that corroborate this assertion?

[NGNM85]

We don't need meat and we don't need fur. These are facts V V

In general, it is possible for human beings to survive without these things.


The animals in question feel pain and distress.

Yeah, they probably do.


How can we allow unnecessary industries to exist like this when we'd never allow them against our own species? Because they inflict pain and distress or because we're human? That's a broken argument from your side of the conversation that needs fixing or retiring.

There is no contradiction. I’m saying that we are justified, in fact, we’re obligated, to put a higher moral premium on sentient life. Also, we have an imperative to have a moral bias for our own species, that’s part of the survival imperative.


Incorrect- there's more of an emotional spectrum felt by animals. Not simply 'oh good I'm moving around'. Lack of movement causes panic and thus distress.

Irrelevant.

What is being compared is one specific experience, namely freedom. In the case of other animals ‘freedom’ simply boils down to freedom of movement. This is in no way comparable to what it means for human beings.


As in for survival.

Then, art is totally ‘unnecessary’, lets get rid of all of it, films, literature, sculpture, into the dustbin of history, along with almost everything else that we enjoy.

Then I don't care because those emotions are completely irrelevant to what we're discussing.


This was your original quote that prompted me to ask 'Such as.."

Again.. Human beings, because of the unique evolved features of the human brain, experience emotional states that no other animal on earth can, including types of suffering, which are only accessible to human beings.

[NGNM85]

If aliens had the ability to travel here we would look like cows to them so why would it matter if we suffered under their food program? If it doesn't matter how we treat animals, which is exactly what you said, then go out and kill one right now. Let me know how you feel afterward.

I hate to interject, but this argument really bugs me. An extremely advanced alien civilization, even a level three on the Kardashev scale, should not be any less ethically compelled to respect human life than we are. Even the most advanced being we could comprehend would be no less or no more sentient than human beings, they would just be smarter.

[Ele'ill]

There is no contradiction. I’m saying that we are justified, in fact, we’re obligated, to put a higher moral premium on sentient life.

The animals in question are sentient.




Also, we have an imperative to have a moral bias for our own species, that’s part of the survival imperative.

The industries in question are not necessary for our survival.





What is being compared is one specific experience, namely freedom. In the case of other animals ‘freedom’ simply boils down to freedom of movement. This is in no way comparable to what it means for human beings.

This is not true. The lack of movement causes a display of distress similar to what would be observed of a human.



Then, art is totally ‘unnecessary’, lets get rid of all of it, films, literature, sculpture, into the dustbin of history, along with almost everything else that we enjoy.

:rolleyes:

Those things are not causing physical pain and emotional distress (and death) in creatures being exploited for pleasure.



Then I don't care because those emotions are completely irrelevant to what we're discussing.

We're not discussing art, literature and film- we're discussing harmful industry which is unnecessary and getting rid of it because it's harmful, not only because it's unnecessary ;)



Again.. Human beings, because of the unique evolved features of the human brain, experience emotional states that no other animal on earth can, including types of suffering, which are only accessible to human beings. [/FONT][/COLOR]

I don't care about other emotions that aren't going to be felt even by humans in those situations present within harmful animal industry. Most of the harmful acts we don't allow to our own species cause emotional distress and physical pain which are the two felt by animals for all intents and purposes of this conversation.

We don't disallow beatings to fellow humans because it causes a spiritual crisis we disallow it because of its control- using physical pain and emotional distress.

[NGNM85]

The animals in question are sentient.

This is absolutely pointless; you’re just playing games with words. You know exactly what I mean. Like I said; if you don’t like my phrasing, insert your own word, but simply relabeling something does not constitute an argument, this is just going around in circles.


The industries in question are not necessary for our survival.

Again, Homo sapiens can survive without eating meat. I wasn’t claiming otherwise. I was saying that we have a natural, biological imperative to value our own species above others.


This is not true. The lack of movement causes a display of distress similar to what would be observed of a human.

The lack of movement, yes, but freedom of movement is not what freedom means, not to human beings.


Those things are not causing physical pain and emotional distress (and death) in creatures being exploited for pleasure.

Of course they are. Every time we build a house, or a computer we have to mine resources from the natural world, which necessitates inconveniencing, injuring, and in many cases killing, millions upon millions of living creatures, even excluding agriculture.


We're not discussing art, literature and film- we're discussing harmful industry which is unnecessary and getting rid of it because it's harmful, not only because it's unnecessary

What is harmful has more to do with economics than agriculture. I’m completely in favor of terminating the practice of injecting livestock with chemicals that make both of us sick, I’m fully in favor of larger, cleaner, enclosures, I’m fully in favor of streamlining the process to make it more humane, and running the farms on the basis of Anarcho-Syndicalist collectives, those are fabulous ideas. I also recommend that people, carefully, cut down on the amount of meat in their diet, but not because of these crackpot philosophical ideas, but because of testable, irrefutable facts.


I don't care about other emotions that aren't going to be felt even by humans in those situations present within harmful animal industry. Most of the harmful acts we don't allow to our own species cause emotional distress and physical pain which are the two felt by animals for all intents and purposes of this conversation.

We don't disallow beatings to fellow humans because it causes a spiritual crisis we disallow it because of it's control using physical pain and emotional distress.


No, we don’t allow beatings to human beings because they are sentient beings, and because they are fellow humans.

[Ele'ill]

This is absolutely pointless; you’re just playing games with words.

In regards to? Sentience? The animals in question are sentient and you're saying they're not.

A step further or perhaps even away from this- the animals in question feel physical pain and emotional distress. We do not disallow animal industry treatment to humans 'because humans are sentient' we disallow it because of the immediate and long term effects. The animals in question suffer no less.




You know exactly what I mean. Like I said; if you don’t like my phrasing, insert your own word, but simply relabeling something does not constitute an argument, this is just going around in circles.

It's going around in circles because you are fanning it in that direction mainly because you cannot move past the above point that I made because I am correct.






Again, Homo sapiens can survive without eating meat. I wasn’t claiming otherwise. I was saying that we have a natural, biological imperative to value our own species above others.

How are those two related to each other and to this conversation?




The lack of movement, yes, but freedom of movement is not what freedom means, not to human beings.

I was specifically commenting on lack of movement because that's what you were focusing on. This is not the only element involved as we've seen through out the eleven or twelve pages of this thread.





Of course they are. Every time we build a house, or a computer we have to mine resources from the natural world, which necessitates inconveniencing, injuring, and in many cases killing, millions upon millions of living creatures, even excluding agriculture.

I believe the last set of examples you gave were "Then, art is totally ‘unnecessary’, lets get rid of all of it, films, literature, sculpture, into the dustbin of history, along with almost everything else that we enjoy."

Let's not make this discussion absurd, please.





What is harmful has more to do with economics than agriculture. I’m completely in favor of terminating the practice of injecting livestock with chemicals that make both of us sick, I’m fully in favor of larger, cleaner, enclosures, I’m fully in favor of streamlining the process to make it more humane, and running the farms on the basis of Anarcho-Syndicalist collectives, those are fabulous ideas. I also recommend that people, carefully, cut down on the amount of meat in their diet, but not because of these crackpot philosophical ideas, but because of testable, irrefutable facts.


To me this sounds like a liberal reformist approach from someone who cannot identify undesirable systems of exploitation.




No, we don’t allow beatings to human beings because they are sentient beings, and because they are fellow humans.

We don't allow beatings and such because it causes immediate and long term physical pain and emotional distress. Which are the two things also felt by animals in exploitive industry.

[NGNM85]

In regards to? Sentience? The animals in question are sentient and you're saying they're not.

Again, you are playing word games. Even if, for some bizarre reason, passionately object to my use of the word ‘sentient’ in this context, although it is hardly unusual, (So does Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Ray Kurzweil, etc.) you do, in fact, understand what I mean. I invite you to use your own language. This does not remotely address the fact that humans are <insert emotionally acceptable language here> and animals are not, or that that is a morally relevant criteria.


A step further or perhaps even away from this- the animals in question feel physical pain and emotional distress.

Yes.


We do not disallow animal industry treatment to humans 'because humans are sentient' we disallow it because of the immediate and long term effects. The animals in question suffer no less.

No, we object to treating humans this way because it is an unjustifiable way to treat a sentient being.

Animals typically cultivated as livestock do have comparable nervous systems.


It's going around in circles because you are fanning it in that direction mainly because you cannot move past the above point that I made because I am correct.

That is not an accurate characterization of what is happening.


How are those two related to each other and to this conversation?

I was simply stating that one of the reasons humans value each other over other species is part of the evolved survival instinct. You responded by saying that; ‘these industries are not necessary for our survival’ blending the two. These facts don’t really have any fundamental connection.



I was specifically commenting on lack of movement because that's what you were focusing on. This is not the only element involved as we've seen through out the eleven or twelve pages of this thread.

No, it is, you just don’t understand it. You keep bringing up manifestations emotional stress which are…the…result…of…physical…confinement. Human beings’ conception of freedom has virtually no relationship to this at all.



I believe the last set of examples you gave were "Then, art is totally ‘unnecessary’, lets get rid of all of it, films, literature, sculpture, into the dustbin of history, along with almost everything else that we enjoy."


Let's not make this discussion absurd, please.

I wish I could type slower. Houses, movies, sculptures, paintings, televisions, etc., do not magically appear out of thin air. They involve mining materials and cutting down trees, there must be roads to travel, factories and studios to create these things, workers and artisans who make them need homes, and schools and hospitals, etc. Any kind of civilization necessitates, by it’s very existence, a veritable ‘holocaust’ of other life forms. Agriculture is just a drop in the bucket, more organisms (Many of which have comperable nervous systems.) are killed or wounded by any number of other industries.

If you actually try to apply these ideas, fallacious as they are, in real life you create, in the words of Judge Posner; ‘bizarre vistas of social engineering.’



To me this sounds like a liberal reformist approach from someone who cannot identify undesirable systems of exploitation.

You’re making it really difficult to take you seriously.


We don't allow beatings and such because it causes immediate and long term physical pain and emotional distress. Which are the two things also felt by animals in exploitive industry.

No, we don’t allow them because it causes ‘and long term physical pain and emotional distress’ to humans, who are sentient, (Because of that fact.) or whatever you want to call it.

[electro_fan]

I dont think anyone is saying that people have the right to be cruel and inflict unnecessary pain on animals, but then if humans and animals have equal rights then why not ban animals from eating each other? that's where the argument logically leads surely?

[Ele'ill]

Again, you are playing word games. Even if, for some bizarre reason, passionately object to my use of the word ‘sentient’ in this context, although it is hardly unusual, (So does Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Ray Kurzweil, etc.) you do, in fact, understand what I mean. I invite you to use your own language. This does not remotely address the fact that humans are <insert emotionally acceptable language here> and animals are not, or that that is a morally relevant criteria.


No, we object to treating humans this way because it is an unjustifiable way to treat a sentient being.

Animals are sentient. For the purposes of this conversation they feel the same negative effects from industry as humans would. There are no word games being played.





]Animals typically cultivated as livestock do have comparable nervous systems.

They feel pain and exhibit signs of emotional distress. whether or not they are capable of feeling past these is irrelevant to this conversation.


That is not an accurate characterization of what is happening.

It quite literally is.





No, it is, you just don’t understand it. You keep bringing up manifestations emotional stress which are…the…result…of…physical…confinement. Human beings’ conception of freedom has virtually no relationship to this at all.

The emotions or feelings we are discussing have to relate to what we're discussing. I don't care if humans feel past physical pain and emotional distress into deeper more complex emotion- the issue isn't 'well this group feels it more' the issue is 'this group feels it enough to matter' because we as humans also feel those emotions (pain and distress) at the same level that those animals do within that specific industrial setting- whether or not humans eventually begin to feel more of a range of distress or pain is irrelevant as even the most basic onset stages of these emotions felt are unacceptable within our own sphere of existence. Why would we impose such conditions on another creature?



I wish I could type slower. Houses, movies, sculptures, paintings, televisions, etc., do not magically appear out of thin air. They involve mining materials and cutting down trees, there must be roads to travel, factories and studios to create these things, workers and artisans who make them need homes, and schools and hospitals, etc. [I]Any kind of civilization necessitates, by it’s very existence, a veritable ‘holocaust’ of other life forms. Agriculture is just a drop in the bucket, more organisms (Many of which have comperable nervous systems.) are killed or wounded by any number of other industries.

The unnecessary industries we are discussing within this conversation have the sole purpose of killing animals for pleasure. Without ignoring the ecological impact of other industries- for intents and purposes of this conversation we will not discuss them because it begs several thread lengths of its own.

I do not hold a computer component industry equal to the fur industry. I don't believe this needs further illustration as we both agree that they both contribute greatly to the issues at hand- the computer component industry can be reformed (this is where technocracy would come in) while the fur industry- regardless of how much reform- still serves the sole purpose of killing for fashion and pleasure.



You’re making it really difficult to take you seriously.

I heard this from a liberal friend just the other day in light of party politics and reform.



No, we don’t allow them because it causes ‘and long term physical pain and emotional distress’ to humans, who are sentient, (Because of that fact.) or whatever you want to call it.

This is the twenty second time I have said this. The animals in question feel the same emotional distress and physical pain that humans would at the immediate point when introduced to a similar industrial setting. This is why it's not allowed within our sphere of existence.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Rights-discourse is fucking st00pid.
I'm not interested in animal or human rights (establishing guidelines within the existing structures of law and mass industrial slaughter) I'm interested in liberation.
Instead of worrying about which rights/freedoms are applicable to which (non-)human animals under which circumstances, we should be concerned with the broader character of the context in which "rights" - which only exist insofar as they are defined by their exceptions - exist.

The concept of liberation is just as artificial as the concept of rights. Now if you want to dismiss rights as a concept then that is fine, but why should I at the same time consider your particular concept of liberation (which includes non-human animals) to have any valency to one I might possibly have (which doesn't)?

As far as I see it, if you had your way my liberty to eat meat would limited to what I could clandestinely acquire on the black market. Why the hell should I stand for that? I've no reason to believe that drug use is any harder to erase from our proclivities than meat consumption. There's no pressing personal reason for me to not eat meat - if I wanted to improve my health, I would start by quitting smoking, getting more exercise, and eating more fruits and vegetables, not cutting out meat from my diet. Despite (or more likely because of) having worked with farm animals, both live and during processing, my taste for meat has not dimmed - I feel no personal connection to the dumb herbivores or their insides that I was made to seperate.

Let me be clear. There is shocking waste and needless brutality, and neither that nor meat consumption will cease to exist as long as capitalism exists. Hopefully once capitalism is consigned to history, the worst of it can be shed like a chrysalis and we can begin to enjoy a healthier relationship with the organisms we have taken it upon ourselves to domesticate.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Some of the biggest resource extractors in regards to the local wildlife near where I live are Yu'pik, Aleut, Aluutiq and assorted other native americans. Culturally they've considered themselves very much part of nature and the environment, so I don't think that the man as nature/animals or man as something apart from nature/animals is really what the debate hinges upon, although it may for some.

Of course, the distinction between wildlife and animals bred, raised, killed within a machinery of slaughter should be evident, even by the word itself.


There is no contradiction. I’m saying that we are justified, in fact, we’re obligated, to put a higher moral premium on sentient life.

Of course, yr confusingly narrow definition of sentience excludes many human beings. To begin, I'm going to begin by giving you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you do not put a lower moral value on the lives of mentally impaired persons. What is implicit, then, is that you're not interested in sentience even by yr own understanding of the term, but simply human-or-not-human. Non-human animals are inferior because they are non-human animals. Totally brilliant. Well thought out. Way to go.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Likewise, if we were to come into contact with a less-developed, intelligent alien race, we should co-operate with them and develop their civilization to our level. The only animals that should be exploited are those that are too stupid to contribute to civilization in any significant way.

Colonialism for win.

[NGNM85]

Of course, yr confusingly narrow

There's nothing particularly confusing about it, that's just bullshit. Second, it isn't 'my' definition, any more than it is Steven Hawking’s or Isaac Asimov's, it's been used that way for decades by writers, scientists, etc. Again, if it causes you so much emotional stress, substitute something else, this is a distraction.


definition of sentience excludes many human beings. To begin, I'm going to begin by giving you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you do not put a lower moral value on the lives of mentally impaired persons.

That's generally correct.


What is implicit, then, is that you're not interested in sentience even by yr own understanding of the term,

This is asinine.


but simply human-or-not-human. Non-human animals are inferior because they are non-human animals. Totally brilliant. Well thought out. Way to go.

This has only the faintest resemblance to what I actually said. I said our preference for human life is twofold; we have an ethical obligation to place a higher premium on sentient life, you managed to catch that part, I also said we have a natural, hard-wired preference for other humans, this is part of the natural survival imperative. We are not unbiased when it comes to our own species, nor should we be. So, to get more to your hypothetical, there are a number of severely retarded, or brain-damaged individuals who fall below the threshold of sentience, but they are still homo sapiens, so we have a loyalty to the brand. Even if this were not the case, this does not mean we should arbitrarily euthanize or brutalize said individuals.

I never used the word ‘inferior’, although that isn’t to say it is without merit. It’s perfectly conceivable that we could one day encounter a sentient extraterrestrial, or, perhaps even more likely, that we will create an artificial intelligence, a thinking machine. Neither of these creatures would be human, but we would be obligated to accord them all the rights we expect for ourselves.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Of course, the distinction between wildlife and animals bred, raised, killed within a machinery of slaughter should be evident, even by the word itself.

OK.

I'm still trying to sort out certain people's positions on the topic of consuming animals, as the "we shouldn't kill animals because they feel pain" position and the "we shouldn't kill animals because of the present economic context their death takes place in" position seem to be commonly intertwined.

[NGNM85]

Animals are sentient. For the purposes of this conversation they feel the same negative effects from industry as humans would. There are no word games being played.

Yes there are. Ok, if you want to pretend you don’t understand what I’m saying that’s fine, although it places serious limitations on the possibilities of discourse. Although, frankly, I wasn’t very optimistic.


They feel pain and exhibit signs of emotional distress. whether or not they are capable of feeling past these is irrelevant to this conversation.

The emotions or feelings we are discussing have to relate to what we're discussing. I don't care if humans feel past physical pain and emotional distress into deeper more complex emotion- the issue isn't 'well this group feels it more' the issue is 'this group feels it enough to matter' because we as humans also feel those emotions (pain and distress) at the same level that those animals do within that specific industrial setting- whether or not humans eventually begin to feel more of a range of distress or pain is irrelevant as even the most basic onset stages of these emotions felt are unacceptable within our own sphere of existence. Why would we impose such conditions on another creature?


It’s relevant because it requires us to place a higher premium on lifeforms that can. If you say we have this moral imperative to care about creatures that can suffer, it would make sense that we would care more about creatures with an even greater capacity for suffering. It’s about the fundamentals.



The unnecessary industries we are discussing within this conversation have the sole purpose of killing animals for pleasure. Without ignoring the ecological impact of other industries- for intents and purposes of this conversation we will not discuss them because it begs several thread lengths of its own.

I do not hold a computer component industry equal to the fur industry. I don't believe this needs further illustration as we both agree that they both contribute greatly to the issues at hand- the computer component industry can be reformed (this is where technocracy would come in) while the fur industry- regardless of how much reform- still serves the sole purpose of killing for fashion and pleasure.

It really isn’t that complicated. I’m sure your in favor of schools and hospitals and the arts, etc., but these social institutions combined by their very existence necessitate the injury and death of more animals than agriculture. This makes your whole preoccupation with it completely arbitrary. Apparently, you care about the direct injury and killing of animals, but the collateral damage is just the cost of doing business. I’m trying to illustrate, that A: These ideas are logically incoherent. B: That whenever you try to actually apply them to the real world you end up with results that range from bizarre to horrifying; a plethora of dystopias.

Second, you’re characterization of agriculture is flawed and simplistic. ‘Crush videos’ and dog fights are examples of ‘killing animals for pleasure.’ The key issues are the objective, and the utility. People who eat meat are not unrepentant sadists who experience vicarious delight from the suffering of livestock. People eat meat because they want to acquire nutrients to stay alive, specifically, iron, calcium, vitamin B12, and complete proteins, which are essential amino acids. I’m not arguing that you can’t get these things, with some extra effort, from other sources, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is the primary motivation. We also have to acknowledge that livestock are very nutritious, the only non-animal foodstuffs with complete proteins are soybeans and quinoa, vitamin B12, which is usually a particular concern for vegans, it is much easier to meet our nutritional requirements with a mixed diet than a vegan diet. So, to characterize agriculture as totally unnecessary, and solely motivated by pleasure is deeply inaccurate, and more than a little disingenuous.


I heard this from a liberal friend just the other day in light of party politics and reform.

I hope we can conduct ourselves without degenerating into schoolyard tactics, name-calling, and bogus accusations.


This is the twenty second time I have said this. The animals in question feel the same emotional distress and physical pain that humans would at the immediate point when introduced to a similar industrial setting. This is why it's not allowed within our sphere of existence.

That is wrong on both counts.

Animals experience some, or perhaps, perhaps, even most, of what we would feel in a similar situation. They don’t feel exactly what we would experience in a similar situation because they don’t have the hardware to have those experiences.

We don’t treat humans the way we treat livestock for a number of reasons. It goes against our survival imperative, for one. (Although, there are specific cases where individual humans are motivated to cannibalism because of their survival imperative.) There are also a number of practical reasons, human meat is very tough, more importantly, cannibalism is a fantastic way to spread really debilitating diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob, or kuru. However, among the most important of these reasons is that humans are sentient beings.

[Ele'ill]

Yes there are. Ok, if you want to pretend you don’t understand what I’m saying that’s fine, although it places serious limitations on the possibilities of discourse. Although, frankly, I wasn’t very optimistic.




It’s relevant because it requires us to place a higher premium on lifeforms that can. If you say we have this moral imperative to care about creatures that can suffer, it would make sense that we would care more about creatures with an even greater capacity for suffering. It’s about the fundamentals.




It really isn’t that complicated. I’m sure your in favor of schools and hospitals and the arts, etc., but these social institutions combined by their very existence necessitate the injury and death of more animals than agriculture. This makes your whole preoccupation with it completely arbitrary. Apparently, you care about the direct injury and killing of animals, but the collateral damage is just the cost of doing business. I’m trying to illustrate, that A: These ideas are logically incoherent. B: That whenever you try to actually apply them to the real world you end up with results that range from bizarre to horrifying; a plethora of dystopias.

Second, you’re characterization of agriculture is flawed and simplistic. ‘Crush videos’ and dog fights are examples of ‘killing animals for pleasure.’ The key issues are the objective, and the utility. People who eat meat are not unrepentant sadists who experience vicarious delight from the suffering of livestock. People eat meat because they want to acquire nutrients to stay alive, specifically, iron, calcium, vitamin B12, and complete proteins, which are essential amino acids. I’m not arguing that you can’t get these things, with some extra effort, from other sources, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is the primary motivation. We also have to acknowledge that livestock are very nutritious, the only non-animal foodstuffs with complete proteins are soybeans and quinoa, vitamin B12, which is usually a particular concern for vegans, it is much easier to meet our nutritional requirements with a mixed diet than a vegan diet. So, to characterize agriculture as totally unnecessary, and solely motivated by pleasure is deeply inaccurate, and more than a little disingenuous.



I hope we can conduct ourselves without degenerating into schoolyard tactics, name-calling, and bogus accusations.



That is wrong on both counts.

Animals experience some, or perhaps, perhaps, even most, of what we would feel in a similar situation. They don’t feel exactly what we would experience in a similar situation because they don’t have the hardware to have those experiences.

We don’t treat humans the way we treat livestock for a number of reasons. It goes against our survival imperative, for one. (Although, there are specific cases where individual humans are motivated to cannibalism because of their survival imperative.) There are also a number of practical reasons, human meat is very tough, more importantly, cannibalism is a fantastic way to spread really debilitating diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob, or kuru. However, among the most important of these reasons is that humans are sentient beings.

1. I've pushed the conversation past your last rebuttal, but you cannot reciprocate because your position is incorrect. I am waiting at step 3 of this debate while you are continuing to futilely rephrase your position at step 2. I am not interested in 'looking at what your position is from a different angle'. I disagree with it and have provided the same reasons why which have gone unanswered.

2. I will repeat once more because I am patient. You have stated that other animals feel pain and distress in the same manner that humans do- ok, we agree- I don't care about emotional depth that is unique to humans because it does not apply here. If we are going to disallow actions causing physical pain and emotional distress between humans because those feelings/emotions are unjust, controlling, not right, bad, horrific, whatever you want to call them- then why would we allow such actions be done to other creatures that feel the same effects- especially when the industry such as fur in particular (just to try and make progress in this conversation) is entirely for pleasure?

If we do not allow it between humans because it stops us advancing then it would be because the pain, suffering and misery is what prevents us from advancing which then begs the question of using drugs to stop these symptoms so that exploitation can continue unceasingly and with no worries of hindering human advancement. This is obviously incorrect. The issue is with the pain and suffering and with the controlling aspects of animal industry.

[Iskalla]

Eating meat and supporting the meat industry has terrible consequences regardless of the taste, and their are plenty of alternatives available. Cows produce milk for their young, not adult humans, and their systematic forced impregnation and slaughter of their young is terrible. Especially considering the impact on the environment, and the food and water that could be distributed to suffering, starving humans that we continue to give to farm animals. We do not need meat.

[electro_fan]

you personally might not need meat but other people do, some people get severely ill if they don't have it, and what about the dairy industry, surely that's, if anything, even worse than the meat industry, but people get severely ill through not having dairy products and not having any supplements to make up for it, and so far i don't know of many vegan foods that can provdie all the nutrients meat and dairy do

[Ele'ill]

you personally might not need meat but other people do, some people get severely ill if they don't have it, and what about the dairy industry, surely that's, if anything, even worse than the meat industry, but people get severely ill through not having dairy products and not having any supplements to make up for it,


Out of idle curiosity- like what?



and so far i don't know of many vegan foods that can provdie all the nutrients meat and dairy do

From a nutritional standpoint this isn't true at all. I already broke this down and discussed it earlier in the thread.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

OK.

I'm still trying to sort out certain people's positions on the topic of consuming animals, as the "we shouldn't kill animals because they feel pain" position and the "we shouldn't kill animals because of the present economic context their death takes place in" position seem to be commonly intertwined.

I feel like the two are intertwined.
We shouldn't kill people 'cos they feel pain, etc. - as a general sort of thing. Further, in particular, the way people are slaughtered by capitalism (the state, environmental degradation, and so on) is particularly vile.
At the same time, there are totally some people we should kill - similarly with non-human animals. As a general rule killing animals is not desirable, and in particular, the mass slaughter of animals within capitalism is particularly vile. At the same time, there are totally some animals we should kill.

[electro_fan]

well for example, i have a friend who was vegetarian for a long time, but she discovered that she is also intolerant to a whole host of vegetarian foods, she was also becoming anaemic due to an iron deficiency, despite the fact that she was eating iron-rich foods, face it, being vegetarian or vegan is not a viable option for many people and if you deny this that is just the sort of shit that leads to people not taking the animal rights movement seriously

[electro_fan]

i don't think that people should be forced into diets that lead to them becoming seriously ill and not getting the nutrition that they need on the basis of ideas that animal suffering is greater than human suffering and that animals need greater consideration

by the way, i have done activism with the anti bloodsports movement, and i have translated a film into english about bullfighting and how people are being trained to become bullfighters at a very young age which is absolutely disgusting , animal welfare is actually something that i am extremely passionate about, but at the end of the day i am not going to accept that everyone should stop eating meat and go vegan when to do so is in many cases seriously damaging to people's health

[Ele'ill]

well for example, i have a friend who was vegetarian for a long time, but she discovered that she is also intolerant to a whole host of vegetarian foods,

As am I.



she was also becoming anaemic due to an iron deficiency, despite the fact that she was eating iron-rich foods,

How?




face it being vegetarian or vegan is not a viable option for many people and if you deny this that is just the sort of shit that leads to people not taking the animal rights movement seriously

What a stupid comment.

[Ele'ill]

i don't think that people should be forced into diets that lead to them becoming seriously ill and not getting the nutrition that they need on the basis of ideas that animal suffering is greater than human suffering and that animals need greater consideration

Your position is incorrect due to incorrect theory chain


by the way, i have done activism with the anti bloodsports movement, and i have translated a film into english about bullfighting and how people are being trained to become bullfighters at a very young age which is absolutely disgusting , animal welfare is actually something that i am extremely passionate about, but at the end of the day i am not going to accept that everyone should stop eating meat and go vegan when to do so is in many cases seriously damaging to people's health

I don't care. It's not damaging to ones' health.

[electro_fan]

that's your problem then

[Ele'ill]

that's your problem then

We're on page 12. A lot of the issues you brought up were brought up on page one, two and three and then discussed heavily up to this point.

[electro_fan]

let me ask you a question

do you agree with workers in labs which test on animals being targetted and harrassed by the animal rights movement? by that i don't just mean the researchers, i mean the cleaners, the catering staff, etc etc etc

do you think that their homes and families should be targetted because they work for these companies?

[Ele'ill]

let me ask you a question

Thomas Sankara?


do you agree with workers in labs which test on animals being targetted and harrassed by the animal rights movement? by that i don't just mean the researchers, i mean the cleaners, the catering staff, etc etc etc

do you think that their homes and families should be targetted because they work for these companies?

You are mentioning a tactic used by very few. I think those are fail tactics. Those tactics have been criticized heavier within the radical environmental community than from outside it.


I have not heard of anybody other than lead figures being harassed.

[electro_fan]

right, ok, it's just that where i am from the animal rights movement has a very, and i mean a VERY, bad name due to these tactics, there was one case where activists accused people working for a vivisection lab of being paedophiles and distributed leaflets to the community saying so, threatened to kill them, and so on, eventually some of them dug up the dead grandma of the family which owned the farm, and so far nothing i've seen in your or anyone else's replies is particularly reassuring - i've seen killing animals for food compared to killing people for food for example. how are you going to convince people that your position is not extreme if you just brush aside these objections without properly addressinng them

[Ele'ill]

right, ok, it's just that where i am from the animal rights movement has a very, and i mean a VERY, bad name due to these tactics,

You only mentioned one tactic why are you using the word 'these' ?




there was one case where activists accused people working for a vivisection lab of being paedophiles and distributed leaflets to the community saying so,

Where? When? Links.



threatened to kill them, and so on, eventually some of them dug up the dead grandma of the family which owned the farm,

Links.



and so far nothing i've seen in your or anyone else's replies is particularly reassuring

The questions you've asked so far have been answered already and the specifics asked of your position have gone unreplied.



- i've seen killing animals for food compared to killing people for food for example. how are you going to convince people that your position is not extreme if you just brush aside these objections without properly addressinng them

Extreme in relation to what?

[electro_fan]

extreme in relation to what the majority of people think

[electro_fan]

Here you are

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/oct/25/animal-research-animal-welfare


The court heard the group targeted companies which supplied Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), of Cambridge, with the aim of closing the firm's animal testing lab. Some company directors had leaflets distributed near their homes falsely telling neighbours they were convicted paedophiles and others received tamponsin the post with messages saying the blood was HIV positive.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article704189.ece


The family were accused of being paedophiles and banned from their local pub and golf course. They closed their farm in December after the exhumation and removal from the village churchyard of the remains, still missing, of Gladys Hammond, the mother-in-law of Chris Hall.
Announcing the closure, they issued a statement saying: “We hope that, as a result of this announcement, those responsible for removing Gladys’s body will return her so she can lie once again in her rightful resting place.


get it now ???

[Ele'ill]

extreme in relation to what the majority of people think

I mean, this is a website for discussion about revolutionary leftist ideology. What the majority of the people think right now is not anywhere near what most of the people on this forum think and know is correct. If you're criticizing tactics, fine but don't criticize the talking points in a thread on a website such as this as being 'unapproachable' as most of us wouldn't have exchanged as we did.

[Vanguard1917]

Eating meat and supporting the meat industry has terrible consequences regardless of the taste, and their are plenty of alternatives available. Cows produce milk for their young, not adult humans, and their systematic forced impregnation and slaughter of their young is terrible. Especially considering the impact on the environment, and the food and water that could be distributed to suffering, starving humans that we continue to give to farm animals. We do not need meat.

So "starving humans" should be content with cow-feed?

The vast majority of the world's poor want more meat in their diets and don't want to live on food fit for farm animals. By abolishing poverty and futher expanding and making efficient factory-farming methods, humanity is quite capable of meeting the dietary needs and desires of humanity as a whole. Vegetarians who wish to ban factory farming display their dictatorial tendencies and their contempt for most basic human demands.

[electro_fan]

the animal rights movement isn't left wing though, not necessarily. what is left wing about lecturing people about whether they should eat meat, how is that gonna bring down capitalism

like i said, there's no surprise that many animal rights extremists don't have a left wing position at all, many have gone to join the BNP, NF or other far-right organisations

[Enragé]

No

.

[electro_fan]

In fact the position expressed by PETA (that the meat industry and its slaughter of billions of chickens is somehow equivalent to the genocide of 6 million jews in the holocaust) - well, if you think that people killed in a genocide because of their race is equivalent to animals being killed for food, i don't get how that's a left wing position at all, in fact its quite the fucking opposite, and this shouldn't even need to be spelled out

[Ele'ill]

Thanks for those links but I hope you realize that every movement has small numbers within it engaging in fail tactics.


the animal rights movement isn't left wing though, not necessarily. what is left wing about lecturing people about whether they should eat meat, how is that gonna bring down capitalism

My point was that both sides of the discussion already had a fairly detailed understanding of the issues.




like i said, there's no surprise that many animal rights extremists don't have a left wing position at all, many have gone to join the BNP, NF or other far-right organisations

The vast majority of animal and environmental entities are left.

[Ele'ill]

In fact the position expressed by PETA (that the meat industry and its slaughter of billions of chickens is somehow equivalent to the genocide of 6 million jews in the holocaust) - well, if you think that people killed in a genocide because of their race is equivalent to animals being killed for food, i don't get how that's a left wing position at all, in fact its quite the fucking opposite, and this shouldn't even need to be spelled out

I don't care.

PETA isn't the mouth piece of the animal liberation and environmental movements.

[electro_fan]

no, the majority of animal rights organisations don't have a political position apart from animal rights, in fact ive seen some of them take the view that "sentient" animals' lives are worth more than mentally handicapped people

some (like stop our shame in spain) do take a somewhat class based analysis of the issue surrounding bloodsports, but ive seen people boasting that in their animal rights organisation they have both people from say the CWI and other anti capitalist groups and activists for the french Front Nationale and that it is a good thing that there are people from both in the organisation as it "proves" that ideology doesnt matter if it comes to animal rights (although i bet if the CWI comrades and anyone else knew they would be horrified at the thought of working with fash)

and saying that the environmentalist movement is largely left wing, that's total bollocks, some of them may be, but i am sure that you have heard of a certain right wing movement in the green movement which believes that the worlds probelms are caused by overpopulation (usually by those brown people)

not trying to have a go but if you deny this that is just stupid, it can't all be put down to tactics either, if you have an ideology that says animal life is worth the same or almost exactly the same as human life, it's no surprise that some of your activists will end up treating people like vermin

[electro_fan]

I don't care.

PETA isn't the mouth piece of the animal liberation and environmental movements.

sure, but you can't then say that the majority of animal rights activism is left wing, the majority of animal rights organisations are non political when it comes to other issues apart from that. one of the hardest working activists i know when it comes to animal rights in france is a UMP member and agrees with everything nicholas sarkozy does, she's definitely not the only one

not trying to say that wishing to improve animal welfare is a bad thing but don't try and say that it's intrinsically left wing when many of the positions expressed by the more extreme animal rights activists are anything but, and this isn't always entirely unrelated to the overall mentality of the movement either


Also if im not mistaken, being a socialist or being on the left should involve wishing to improve the lives and living standards of ordinary people, lecturing them about the evils of meat-eating isn't going to do that, they are going to think you are a fucking lunatic, it also isn't going to go any way towards improving the overall conditions of people AND animals either