DopeMasterJFlow wrote:This is an interesting debate. It is also worth noting that there are no vegetarians in this debate. Kyle and Jesse are both pescetarians. This fact I think weakens both of your arguments. It is difficult to argue against the meat industry on grounds that the animals suffer when the seafood industry is equally as bad as the meat industry. Clearly, fish and crustaceans have nervous systems and feel pain. So when they are trolled up into nets and kept in tanks with low oxygen and zero space to move is that okay? Not to mention the excessive overfishing of our oceans. How are you able to justify seafood while opposing land based farm meat?
you can't defeat the anti-meat industry argument with logic because it is made out empathy, there is no logical reason not to make other things suffer. the only logical reason for kindness towards anything is fear of retaliation, and obviously we don't have to worry about that from animals. so its really just a question of which animals you empathize with.
we will never have a meat industry centered around these creatures because this is what you'd see when you're about to eat it:
so they're probably pescatarians because its harder to have any sympathy for this:
i'm not saying these are bad reasons for crusading against the abuse of some animals and not others, actually i'd say they're the best and the only reasons. i think you can literally see a thing's soul in its physical manifestation, not only its face, but the way it behaves. i think we've historically domesticated and eaten certain types of animals not just because they're delicious, but also because we just typically don't have as much sympathy or respect for them. i do see a reason to have sympathy and respect for pigs, cows, and ehhhhh... hard to say with chickens, i think they seem dumb as dirt and no nervous system jargon is gonna convince me that they have real fleshed out emotions, i would just have to literally hang out with some chickens for a while and see.
i'm basically with mike on this. i am disgusted by the meat industry and i hope it changes, i hope (and believe) we will find ways to get everyone their meat without having to continue with the repulsive system that we currently have in place, not just out of empathy, but also just necessity--the current system isn't just fucked up morally. but i honestly don't feel that its my battle to fight. people who think that they're making headway in converting the world to vegetarianism one person at a time are completely deluded. meat is DEEPLY ingrained into every culture around the world, it would be the equivalent to deciding that the use of paint is immoral and crusading against art everywhere (and please don't try to compare it to slavery again, because i don't want to have to try to explain how different slavery is from the meat industry, i have to believe that that argument was disingenuous.) i know the analogy between meat-eating and art-making doesn't go very far, but the point is just to get you to meditate on just how deeply ingrained meat is culturally, just think about every meal that people are having around the world and the type of emotional satisfaction that they get from that and how it runs through every fucking day of their lives. so many people literally live for that satisfaction. you can't say that about slavery.
everyone who is a vegetarian has very very good reasons imo, but they are personal. if i were to stop eating meat it would be because i am personally appalled by it, not because of some abstract notion that i'm the drop in the bucket that is going to cause the sea-change. if you are deeply, earnestly concerned with the transformation of the meat industry, you buy meat from local farmers, or if you still wouldn't eat that meat, then you take political and cultural steps to change things in that direction. that would be far more effective than just not eating meat at all because it is fostering a system that could conceivably eventually (a very long eventually) replace the current one.
so why aren't i a vegetarian, despite empathizing with some of the creatures we eat and acknowledging the industry is fucked up? just because i don't feel strongly enough about it. i don't feel that its my battle to fight. and most of the time i feel that i'm already behaving in a way that will do my part in influencing the culture at large to move in a positive direction. i communicate through all the means of expression and action that have moved me personally and i hope to become more and more successful at it. that is my project and i put all my energy into it with the blind faith that it is causing net good in the world; but the ~idea~ of creating good in the world isn't why i do it, its because something in the core of me moves me to do so. if something in the core of you moves you to become a vegetarian i seriously respect that, but i'm willing to bet that the cultural changes that brought about that sensitivity in the first place had nothing directly to do with thinking about the meat industry itself, it came from existing in a psycho-social environment created out of thoughtful and empathetic communication, which is what i'm more fascinated by and involved in that the specific politics of the meat industry.
Last edited by Karl on Sun Aug 22, 2010 10:00 pm; edited 2 times in total