An Animal’s Place (2002) • Hacker News Board

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#31

Post by sweetheart » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

jbotz wrote: post #29

sweetheart wrote: post #10

Pollan has a tendency to talk himself into pretty weird conclusions, namely that because we can treat an animal well and give it a good life, killing it and consuming it before it naturally dies is somehow good. There is this made up notion that the animal is almost a sacrifice for us: in exchange for a peaceful safe life, it gives us its blood and flesh. But remember, never willingly. It never wants to die. It can n…

It's not so simple as all that. We raise chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese completely free range. Our homestead doesn't really even have fence on all sides and most of it is virgin forest. All these sepecies can survive on their own in the forest here, although not in the same population density that they have on our homestead. We feed them, we take care of them when they are sick, and we provide some protection fro…

You’re talking about justifying killing these animals to solve problems that are caused by farming the animals to begin with, which you even say yourself.

I can’t say anything about maintaining soil fertility because I know nothing about it, but what is about chickens that preserves the soil, and why can it only come from those chickens?

Something about nutrients in the soil I imagine, right?

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#32

Post by sweetheart » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

jhbadger wrote: post #26

haste410 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> killing e.g. a pig is as moral as plucking an apple from a tree. I don't know how you can make this argument. Does an apple tree feel pain, fear, or loss when it or another apple is plucked?

Not as much as an animal, but we are learning that plants are far more sophisticated than we've traditionally given them credit for, and do have ways to detect damage (which we call "pain" in animals) and can even alert other plants to danger (which could be called "fear")

The common retort to this argument (“plants feel pain too”) is to imagine that you call the fire department because your home is burning down, and unfortunately your pet is still in the house. When the fire fighters arrive, you tell them hurriedly that your pet is inside and it needs to be saved. Without hesitation the firefighter plunged into the flames and emerges minutes later, but not holding your pet, but instead your aloe plant.

You exclaim in a panic, Why didn’t you save my pet!? To which the fire fighter says, Well plants feel pain too you know! And we’re learning a lot more about how advanced they are and how they communicate.

Do you really think you’d stand and their and consider, Hm that’s a good point, there is no relevant difference between my pet being saved and my plant?

No one who has ever made the argument that plants and animals deserves equal moral consideration due to this capacity to suffer has ever, ever meant it.

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#33

Post by sweetheart » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

simiones wrote: post #15

sweetheart wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applying questions of the morality of eating meat to obligate carnivores makes no sense; there can be no moral question if there isn’t an option between two paths. Obligate carnivores MUST eat meat, so whether or not they “should” makes no sense to ask. Humans are not obligate carnivores, though, which is morally relevant. We can hold human beings to a standard (don’t eat animals if you can avoid it) but not carnivor…

Usually, killing another being in order for you to survive (outside of self-defense) is not considered morally right. Either way, even by your logic, tigers may be morally neutral, but bears or wolves should still be considered evil.

Well the first part of what you said seems just completely untrue. I don’t think if someone was starving and they needed to eat an animal to survive that anyone would say they acted immorally.

As to your second point: no. Those animals lack the moral reasoning ability to make a choice between eating meat and not eating meat. We don’t, though.

If I ever meat a bear who is able to make nuanced moral considerations like the ethics of eating meat, and who has access to a plant based diet on which they can survive, then sure I’ll hold them to the same standard as you and me.

I don’t think Im ever going to meet a bear like that though.

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#34

Post by shuntress » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

haste410 wrote: post #21

Asooka wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how you can string together such a consistent argument and still be so incredibly wrong. Killing animals for food is not wrong and never was. Killing for the love of killing is wrong, but killing e.g. a pig is as moral as plucking an apple from a tree. You bring up a curious point about dogs - eating dogs is not usually practiced, though there are existing cultures who do it and we have records of past cu…

> killing e.g. a pig is as moral as plucking an apple from a tree. I don't know how you can make this argument. Does an apple tree feel pain, fear, or loss when it or another apple is plucked?

The better angle to take here would be to point out that taking an apple from an apple tree does not harm the tree. From the plant's point of view this is actually beneficial. It wants animals to take away its seeds. So this is more alike to taking milk from a cow.

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#35

Post by shuntress » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

sweetheart wrote: post #32

jhbadger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as much as an animal, but we are learning that plants are far more sophisticated than we've traditionally given them credit for, and do have ways to detect damage (which we call "pain" in animals) and can even alert other plants to danger (which could be called "fear")

The common retort to this argument (“plants feel pain too”) is to imagine that you call the fire department because your home is burning down, and unfortunately your pet is still in the house. When the fire fighters arrive, you tell them hurriedly that your pet is inside and it needs to be saved. Without hesitation the firefighter plunged into the flames and emerges minutes later, but not holding your pet, but instea…

Whether or not the plant "feels pain" (and therefor whether or not it is morally wrong to do nothing while it dies in a fire) is immaterial here. People are more likely to build and maintain emotional attachments to their pets rather than their plants because their pets exhibit behaviors that are easier to identify and personify.

People want the fire fighters to prioritize saving whatever has the most value to them personally. That may happen to be house plants. Or perhaps photo albums. Or (likely most common) pets.

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#36

Post by shuntress » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

meristohm wrote: post #25

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the end of the day, every living thing on this planet - every tree, every plant, every mushroom, every fish, every insect and every mammal dies and is eaten. Except humans. Humans cremate their corpses. While we might get into a debate about whether some forms of life somewhere on Earth technically consume your scattered ashes, it's quite the distance from hitting you on the head until you die and then chewing o…

I prefer for my body to be eaten by other living things, big or small, and ideally in a way that doesn’t pollute the land and water too much (I accept the heavy metals and other toxins I have built up over the years will leech one way or another). I have no problem separating the dead body from the previously-living being, and I hope more people can adopt this view. This doesn’t mean I will stop handling dead bodies…

I would assume based on your comment that you're already aware of these [0] but if not, consider reading up on "Towers of Silence". It may interest you.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#37

Post by sweetheart » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

shuntress wrote: post #35

sweetheart wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The common retort to this argument (“plants feel pain too”) is to imagine that you call the fire department because your home is burning down, and unfortunately your pet is still in the house. When the fire fighters arrive, you tell them hurriedly that your pet is inside and it needs to be saved. Without hesitation the firefighter plunged into the flames and emerges minutes later, but not holding your pet, but instea…

Whether or not the plant "feels pain" (and therefor whether or not it is morally wrong to do nothing while it dies in a fire) is immaterial here. People are more likely to build and maintain emotional attachments to their pets rather than their plants because their pets exhibit behaviors that are easier to identify and personify. People want the fire fighters to prioritize saving whatever has the most value to them p…

Okay then, let’s consider an alternate scenario then.

Let’s say that you’re a bystander at the fire, and you watch the firefighter rush into the flames. You walk up to your neighbor, whose house it is engulfed, and you ask, What are they going in for? Your puppy? to which your neighbor responds, Actually I have a really sentimental baseball glove that my dad gave me when I was a little kid. I couldn’t imagine losing the glove, but the puppy I could take or leave.

Would you understand the position, and agree that it’s better to safe the glove because it has more value to the neighbor? Or would you be appalled that your neighbor is opting to let a sentient animal burn to death in order to save a baseball glove? Albeit, a very sentimental one.

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#38

Post by jbotz » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

sweetheart wrote: post #31

jbotz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so simple as all that. We raise chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese completely free range. Our homestead doesn't really even have fence on all sides and most of it is virgin forest. All these sepecies can survive on their own in the forest here, although not in the same population density that they have on our homestead. We feed them, we take care of them when they are sick, and we provide some protection fro…

You’re talking about justifying killing these animals to solve problems that are caused by farming the animals to begin with, which you even say yourself. I can’t say anything about maintaining soil fertility because I know nothing about it, but what is about chickens that preserves the soil, and why can it only come from those chickens? Something about nutrients in the soil I imagine, right?

Since we plant things that we eat and sell (or give away) we are removing nutrients from the soil. Someone has to put them back. We could do that with industrial NPK fertilizer, but that's not very ecological. Chicken manure is a more complete and natural fertilizer, and for the most part the chickens even spread it around for us. They also engage in some pest control (the ducks are especially good at that, without them we'd have a problem with some foreign snails that have invaded around here).

We're not really "farming" the animals. We're more co-habitating with them. The birds and humans here are part of a society, an ecosystem that needs both and in which humans play a role of both caretakers and occasionally predators. Predators are necessary in a natural system and what we're trying to do is to imitate nature as best we can. This all may sound a bit pretentious, but, like I said, the birds are actually free to leave, and generally they don't, so it would seem they agree. In fact, a couple of times wild ducks have even voluntarily joined our little society!

Also, I'm not trying to "justify" anything. What we're trying to do here is a live a bit closer to nature than people generally do, reduce our ecological footprint a bit, and treat nature and all life with a bit more respect. And what we've found is that you can't be close to nature without facing death in various forms every day.

So ultimately, I don't think that Pollan's conclusion is "weird" and I don't think that "killing an animal ... is always wrong". I think treating nature with respect and letting sentient beings live their life in a way that respects their nature is more important than simply "not killing".

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#39

Post by sweetheart » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

jbotz wrote: post #38

sweetheart wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re talking about justifying killing these animals to solve problems that are caused by farming the animals to begin with, which you even say yourself. I can’t say anything about maintaining soil fertility because I know nothing about it, but what is about chickens that preserves the soil, and why can it only come from those chickens? Something about nutrients in the soil I imagine, right?

Since we plant things that we eat and sell (or give away) we are removing nutrients from the soil. Someone has to put them back. We could do that with industrial NPK fertilizer, but that's not very ecological. Chicken manure is a more complete and natural fertilizer, and for the most part the chickens even spread it around for us. They also engage in some pest control (the ducks are especially good at that, without t…

> I think treating nature with respect and letting sentient beings live their life in a way that respects their nature is more important than simply "not killing".

But isn't the best way to respect these animals is to avoid killing them when we don't need to in order to survive? I've talked to so, so many people who keep animals and ultimately kill them that talk about this reverence for the natural world, and they talk about how death is an intrinsic part of that natural world.

Sure, that's true, but that doesn't mean we need to contribute to that death (and suffering, naturally), when it doesn't need to take place. Will there always be gruesome, painful deaths? Of course. Will there always be animals that eat other animals? Definitely. But that doesn't mean it's totally fine for us to decide when animal lives or dies. An animal that has made no deals with you, has not agreed to any sort of symbiotic relationship which ends in it's death in order to feed you. Sure, the animals are treated well, and sure the birds at least can decide to leave, but them deciding not to doesn't mean they are agreeing to get slaughtered.

> and I don't think that "killing an animal ... is always wrong"

You left out the most important part of what I said in that quote, and mischaracterized it. I don't think it's always wrong to kill an animal. I said its always wrong to kill an animal when we don't need to do it in order to survive. That last part is really, really important.

At the end of the day, I'm not saying you don't care about animals, or want to live in harmony with them. You do, and I do as well. All I'm trying to do is get you to consider that maybe we can do that and also understand that animals don't want to die for us, and they don't need to. That's it. You want to live closer to nature? Hell yeah, that's great. You provide a safe place for animals to live and prosper and enjoy life? Amazing, I'm so in support of you for doing that. But then let's continue that respect and peace by deciding to simply not kill the animal.

> I think treating nature with respect and letting sentient beings live their life in a way that respects their nature is more important than simply "not killing".

In situations that are not life and death, i.e. you are not in a sitation in which you must kill one of these animals in order to survive, how are "treating nature with respect and letting sentient beings live their life in a way that respects their nature" and not killing them not the same exact thing?

Re: An Animal’s Place (2002)

#40

Post by abstractbarista » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #30

Asooka wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how you can string together such a consistent argument and still be so incredibly wrong. Killing animals for food is not wrong and never was. Killing for the love of killing is wrong, but killing e.g. a pig is as moral as plucking an apple from a tree. You bring up a curious point about dogs - eating dogs is not usually practiced, though there are existing cultures who do it and we have records of past cu…

As you state, plucking an apple for food is morally fine - few would disagree, and anyone who does is likely to get quite hungry quite quickly. Meanwhile, killing people for food is obviously wrong, yes? Morally abhorrent, in fact! But there's a spectrum between those two extremes. To set a boundary, you need to determine the reasons why one is acceptable and the other is not. Maybe you intuitively draw the line righ…

This conversation triggered memories of hunting for my first time as a teenager: I shot a beautiful doe with a black powder rifle using iron sights.

Observing the forest with my eyes and ears, waiting in still silence for hours in chemical and visual camouflage, lining up with its chest, making a slight sound to get it to pause... You feel a certain focused hunger as you gaze down the barrel, that you've never felt before. But the way it feels... It's something you know. Something that is deeply ingrained in you. The moment feels like forever, as you release a deadly projectile from your species' 'advanced technology'. Then, gutting it in the forest, dragging it out, hanging it up on the gambrel, cutting all the meat out, seasoning it, grilling it, and eating it...

Probably the most powerful, self-realizing, humbling, spiritual experience I have ever had. For the first time in my life, I actually felt like an animal! A real animal!

Did I have to kill that doe to survive? Absolutely not. I could have driven down the road to McDonalds and had a burger in my stomach in under 10 minutes.

Once I found the doe on the ground, I sat with it for a couple minutes in silence. I felt very thankful for it. "My God! I just killed this thing!" (I'm agnostic.) There is a certain realization - that we are all simultaneously frail, and immensely powerful. In that moment, you feel your place in the hierarchy.

I have a feeling that many among us today choose to actively fight this innate reality. People implicitly reject the concept that they are animals. They don't like the idea that they exist today because their ancestors killed things. Did things we now consider immoral. It can manifest in to a sort of self-hatred that is reflected on to others.

"Why do we even eat meat today? It's not necessary." Absolutely true! But to that, I say, because I enjoy it, and because I can. No other support is needed. My species has clearly evolved to enjoy consuming it, and to devise technology to acquire it. Become comfortable with what you are made of, animal spirits and all.

But above all, with great power, comes great responsibility. Hone your sense of morality, as we are in a position privileged to do so. Thanks for reading my rambling. :)