“But, the phenomenon of animal crackers remains problematic and part of a wider culture of speciesism.”

Yeah most vegans don’t bc most vegans like most people aren’t intrusive and judgmental

i tend toward both those qualities so i'm sure i'd be an insufferable vegan.

i should start evangelizing about the moral imperative of vasectomies irl

It's weird to actively judge people based on what they decide is the kind of food they prefer to eat. (Well, maybe apart from cannibalism, but that's a very delicate subject.) This weirdness applies equally to judging vegans harshly simply for being vegans and to vegans judging omnivores harshly simply for being omnivores.

Go with God

Well, maybe apart from cannibalism, but that's a very delicate subject.

and a very delicate prep job

HAHA

the best thing about being vegan is i feel no guilt about calling my dogs shitheads to their face bc hey at least im not eating them

now before you precious dog lovers get up in arms about that, just remember that my dogs are shitheads

cats rule dogs drool

cats are also bad

It's weird to actively judge people based on what they decide is the kind of food they prefer to eat.

Unless they crack open a plastic container of something vile-smelling on public transportation. Then you can judge away.

i have a conservative friend who voted for evan mcmullin last election not trump but often we debate trump and the GOP because he argues that trump is neither explicitly, not obviously implicitly, racist and that the left uses idpol to discredit right-wing arguments without examining them on the merits etc aka a guy ilx would really enjoy. He's very bright so it's enjoyable to argue with him. Also, he believes that almost all moral issues are debatable but the one he thinks has the least credibility is the idea that humans can eat animals. He a staunch (tho not generally evangelizing) vegan, no leather, no eggs, etc. Last night we were chatting (bc I sent him that PETA tweet), and I argued that human capacity for morality or philosophy suggested that we're qualitatively different from the animals that we eat. He asked me if that means we can eat very young children. I argued that very young children have the potential to develop into humans who can think morally, but then he argued that fetuses can do the same and I'm pro choice. Anyway the conversation branched from there but I just wanted to introduce you all to my deep thinking hardcore vegan moderate Republican friend. He used to be a progressive when he was younger (he's in his late 40s now), and he says he once went to a liberal campus meeting where they were talking about the issues of the day (apartheid, civil rights, etc) and he raised animal rights and they blew him off and he feels like that's bc it was the one time they were forced to contend with their own oppressiveness. Anyway, I love eating meat it tastes great and the Bible says I can do it so I'm not worrying about it to much from a moral perspective, tho from a climate perspective as mentioned upthread animal farming does concern me. And it seems to be awfully cruel - we should be able to farm animals and not treat them like victims in a Saw flick.

nor* obviously

It's kind of miraculous that human beings are ever able to hold two or more ideas that don't inherently contradict one another. I mean, it doesn't happen often, but it's really something to behold when it does.

reading yr posts i am often struck with amazement that you can hold even one idea

the argument for human exceptionalism is normally based on consciousness rather than any particular intellectual tradition bc they're not v old old and most ppl before and since know little to nothing about them. modern western society has weird hangups and ideas around age, childhood & adulthood but what mordy's friend says abt kids seems obviously true. the sort of humanity ppl think of as being exceptional is transient, mutable and dynamic, ppl achieve and express it in different degrees, inconsistently and sometimes not really at all.

saying that it's only bad for humans to eat animals seems like another form of exceptionalism unless you condemn all carnivores and long for some pre-cambrian, prelapsarian idyll.

-old, ho hum, you get the idea

I'll confirm after I've returned from the hospital but I'm pretty sure that was a third-degree burn u just inflicted on me Mordy.

what I want to know is whether we're still allowed to wax the dolphin any more

he says he once went to a liberal campus meeting where they were talking about the issues of the day (apartheid, civil rights, etc) and he raised animal rights and they blew him off and he feels like that's bc it was the one time they were forced to contend with their own oppressiveness

This is hilarious.

did they even discriminate between animals of difft color/gender or was it all one big "not all hoomanz" handwave

intersectional veganism or bust

this is actually a really good book if you want to read about veganism and feminism:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sexual-Politics-Meat-Feminist-Vegetarian-Revelations/dp/1501312839/

Mordy: Daniel 1:12-15. You'd be "handsomer and fatter" eating only pulses (food grown from seed).

Pretty sure that’s about eating kosher food only not about eating vegetarian only

Sounds good if you want to be fat but fine.

lots of very left-wing people are very averse to veganism and get upset about it. my favourite one i ever got - and i never, ever proselytized when i was vegan - (obviously from a fucking white person) was some concern about it being a colonialist mindset because first nations peoples' traditional ways of life include hunting and fishing, using the whole animal etc. and the very obvious rejoinder was "you're white lol and I'm not telling indigenous people to stop their very responsible stewardship of their traditional lands i just think you, white person, should maybe consume less animal products"

Jim's rejoinder OTM. I have been a strict vegetarian for about a year and a half, now, for primarily ethical reasons, but the framework of "animal rights" is pretty suspect to me. As it's already been noted, it's not like animals (or humans) have had a guarantee of rights for the vast bulk of history. The only coherent justification is that animals can suffer, and needless suffering is bad, so maybe we should cool it with anything that increases animal suffering, so far as we can. I do think it's possible to farm animals for livestock without unnecessary suffering, but I doubt it's possible to do at the current scale of factory farming.

he believes that almost all moral issues are debatable but the one he thinks has the least credibility is the idea that humans can eat animals.

There are many lines of reasoning that can be applied here, but the one to dig into, based on your representations of his arguments, would be to separate the incidental aspects of eating animals, which are almost all of the aspects alluded to by vegans when claiming a moral position (e.g. oppression or cruelty), from the primary aspects of eating animals (introducing some part of that animal into your digestive system). This also allows a separate inquiry into other vegan tenets, such as not wearing leather.

Once you have unpacked each of the components of our relationship with animals, you can evaluate the morality of each component more clearly and develop a more complete and rational moral philosophy.

btw, I would argue that the concept of "rights" requires mutuality. Animals must respect and agree to observe all fundamental rights in regard to humans and to one another before it is possible to speak of the rights we are required to respect and observe in regard to them. Such 'natural' rights exist, but animal rights activists tend to claim many rights that do not fit this criterion.

btw, I would argue that the concept of "rights" requires mutuality. Animals must respect and agree to observe all fundamental rights in regard to humans and to one another before it is possible to speak of the rights we are required to respect and observe in regard to them. Such 'natural' rights exist, but animal rights activists tend to claim many rights that do not fit this criterion.

Exactly. Animals eat each other - therefore, it's OK for me to eat animals. (And if I do something stupid that winds up with me being eaten by an animal, I have to accept that outcome with relative equanimity.)

Exactly. My own qualm has never been eating animals per se, it's rather the treating them like commodities first and sentient beings far second that gives me moral pause.

btw, I would argue that the concept of "rights" requires mutuality. Animals must respect and agree to observe all fundamental rights in regard to humans and to one another before it is possible to speak of the rights we are required to respect and observe in regard to them. Such 'natural' rights exist, but animal rights activists tend to claim many rights that do not fit this criterion.

― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, December 5, 2018 11:33 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're asking for mutuality from beings not able to understand the concept, that makes no sense

break down into delicious/cute

if both, the ratio comes into play

i think the idea of natural rights is the more suspect bit of this line of thinking

btw, I would argue that the concept of "rights" requires mutuality.

if you read my entire post you'd understand why this is insane being as how it would allow for eating human babies

it also would allow eating any one of us if we had a major brain injury

if you read my entire post you'd understand why this is insane being as how it would allow for eating human babies

And?

I'm not sure rights do require mutuality: partly because we consider babies, the severely disabled etc. to have rights; but also because I don't think that if someone does not return your recognition of a right it would justify your abusing their rights.

And as for 'animals eat each other, so it's OK for me' - that's such a silly argument.

This is maybe tangential, but I think that maybe a useful question in this context is whether all moral obligations necessarily involve (or need to involve) the concept of rights.

I agree I think moral obligation is key rights are a distraction

I think moral obligations and proscriptions can be understood and expressed as rights.

I think your analysis that mutuality would deprive babies of their right not to be eaten is overly hasty and suffers from a shallow evaluation of the merits of that argument. The 'right' not to be eaten is not a 'natural' right of human babies. It is a social right, granted within the human community by mutual assent and accord. It is quite obvious that babies are among the favorite foods in nature.

But don't you then end up believing that people in societies which don't assent to those rights don't have them? It's an acceptable position, of course, but it seems undesirable to say that slaves in the C18th southern US didn't have a right to life and freedom.

there are no moral obligations hows that

I think your analysis that mutuality would deprive babies of their right not to be eaten is overly hasty and suffers from a shallow evaluation of the merits of that argument. The 'right' not to be eaten is not a 'natural' right of human babies. It is a social right, granted within the human community by mutual assent and accord. It is quite obvious that babies are among the favorite foods in nature.

― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, December 5, 2018 11:53 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so if i come across a tribe in the jungle that practices slavery and cannibalism and rape of captives etc. then i can just do that to them?

yes

It's a popular, but wrong, opinion, yes. (x-posts)

"can"

It's a slippery slope from banning animal crackers to banning meatloaf babies

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/b0/96/9e/b0969ece037b90c99394d57150fd5679--cake-wrecks-baby-cakes.jpg

Looks delicious...

it seems undesirable to say that slaves in the C18th southern US didn't have a right to life and freedom.

The rights of slaves to life and freedom were argued into existence. Once the abolitionists succeeded in establishing the grounds for the argument upon whether God's commandments, as conceived by the Christian religion, required its adherents to treat slaves with a love equal to their love for themselves, then it became a theological battle over what God's law required of Christians.

The most acceptable formulation of this would be that the right of slaves in the C18th southern US to life and freedom were unrecognized. Once we emerged from our state of confusion, those rights were recognized and became effective as well as implicit. But that just disguises the theological content of the argument.