Let me get this straight. You’re saying that we should organize our societies along the lines of the lobsters?
The are really interesting animals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0c1e9NkY7M
In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster
81–90 of 314 posts
Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having to do with the fact that lobsters (according to Wallace) have decentralized nervous systems consisting of ganglia wired in series, so that slicing through one of them might not disable the creature's nociception upon being immersed in boiling water. You might just be keeping it from flailing around, paralyzed but still "aware" in whatever sense a lobster is aware of anything. Dave Arnold, another favorite writ…
> Dave Arnold, another favorite writer of mine, has a solution to this problem: clove oil anesthetizes lobsters (and fish). Clove oil, knife through the head, then boil. Or, you know, don’t kill them. Not sure why this idea is still considered extreme. Why harm fellow creatures when it is simply unnecessary? As Tolstoy wrote[1], "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats me…
Agriculture pretty much kills animals too. Pesticides kill animals, removing their habitats to replace them with farmed fields kills animals.
I don't think there currently is a sustainable way to live without killing animals. Humanity is not going to live off pure gathering.
Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having to do with the fact that lobsters (according to Wallace) have decentralized nervous systems consisting of ganglia wired in series, so that slicing through one of them might not disable the creature's nociception upon being immersed in boiling water. You might just be keeping it from flailing around, paralyzed but still "aware" in whatever sense a lobster is aware of anything. Dave Arnold, another favorite writ…
> Dave Arnold, another favorite writer of mine, has a solution to this problem: clove oil anesthetizes lobsters (and fish). Clove oil, knife through the head, then boil. Or, you know, don’t kill them. Not sure why this idea is still considered extreme. Why harm fellow creatures when it is simply unnecessary? As Tolstoy wrote[1], "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats me…
We clearly eat far more meat than we need and produce/harvest meat in ways that create unnecessary damage and suffering.
However, not everyone is like you. Some people develop deficiencies when they exclude meat from their diet. I have witnessed an ex-vegan health/nutritional professional advise a vegetarian to start eating some meat due to chronic health issues and lab-tested nutritional deficiencies.
It was an hard journey for both of them.
I'm glad it works for you right now while providing a sense of moral superiority, but not everyone is the same.
Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure about the meaning of your second paragraph, but in theory, animals bred for human consumption could live happy lives up to the point of a painless, instant death. The issue becomes whether they would be missed by other animals. Some would consider this a dangerous way of thinking, but someone like Temple Grandin would agree, I think, that the correct thing to worry about is suffering, not 'harm' in some abst…
Considering suffering alone seems like it could justify some counterintuitive conclusions. Would it be wrong to have a child, raise it happily to adolescence, and then give it a painless, instant death? If so, why?
That's a valid argument, but I think a more relevant question is: between the options of having a child, raising it happily to adolescence, and then killing it, vs. not having the child at all, which option is "better"? Which is more net positive in the world?
This is a closer scenario, since billions of e.g. cows would not be born and raised if not for our use for them as food. (Of course, in reality, they're mostly not raised happily).
When deciding the answer to the scenario, keep in mind that most parents who have children with e.g. terminally ill diseases, who die in adolescence, or even kids that die as teenagers from accidents, would probably not say it is better that they had not lived.
Also worth considering - we have children knowing that their lives will tragically end in death after 100 years at most. Why is that not wrong? Just cause we're used to 100 years being a lot, doesn't really change the fundamental argument does it?
Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Dave Arnold, another favorite writer of mine, has a solution to this problem: clove oil anesthetizes lobsters (and fish). Clove oil, knife through the head, then boil. Or, you know, don’t kill them. Not sure why this idea is still considered extreme. Why harm fellow creatures when it is simply unnecessary? As Tolstoy wrote[1], "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats me…
It's my nature. Robbing me of my nature is like penning a fox indoors all day. Or robbing zoo cats of the freedom to hunt. Might call it inhumane. Just playing the other side. I love meat but I don't take a stance on the matter.
It's also in your nature to murder other humans, steal things, and participate in all sorts of mischief. If you're of a certain disposition it's in your nature to rape children, maybe hang cats, or try to destroy the lives of other people in other ways. I personally do not eat meat but I also don't shun those who do - my goal is only to do my best to reduce suffering as much as I can - but I think that to argue that it's in your nature to do something is a very poor argument. Being human means we can largely overcome our nature, or at least make rational choices about it.
Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s fairly difficult not to kill them, you know, when you plan to eat them. If your Tolstoy quote is accurate, it seems fairly sloppy reasoning to me. Animal protein is an essential component of nourishing billions of people. Calling sustenance “appetite” is a rhetorical flourish which undermines the argument. I think what would be immoral is telling billions of people they can’t eat meat. There are many ways one co…
>humans are entitled to a certain degree of leeway in this regard. Sustainably eating the plants and animals beneath us on the food chain is one of those areas. If we ever come into contact with extraterrestrial life, I hope that they don't share this view.
I hope they do, because we are going to eat them.
Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been struggling with this recently as well. I don't need to kill animals in order to survive and so doing so is just for my pleasure. It's surprisingly easy to put this out of your mind when you're sitting down to a nice dinner, but I do doubt that I'd be able to kill animals if I needed to do it with my own hands. Yet I and most others decide all the time that ending the life of another animal can be justified…
Why do you, and many contemporaries with you, doubt you'd be able to kill animals? Especially when apparently our ancestors had no such qualms. I venture this is a matter of exposure, we rarely see animals butchered. In fact, most animals we see are pets, contant with wildlife is very minimal. So we recoil at killing animals, because pets are like family, and most of our experience with animals are with pets. Thus, w…
Rights are fundamentally a social construct, or perhaps we should say a social compact. So far, animals have a much more limited ability to comprehend and reciprocate our social mores. I believe this may be related to the limits we place on animal rights.
Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is worse, causing pain or killing? If we consider an extreme case of someone going through a horrible torture, but the next day waking up as healthy as before, and without some kind of mental illness, and without losing significant amount of his time, or opportunity, would it be any different than a game? Would most people try such a game, where they play for someone getting executed in middle ages? My guess is…
Wait, what? You mean most people would volunteer to be tortured horribly as long as any damage is 100% reversed the next day? Uh, I’m not sure whether your model of people is entirely accurate.
Not volunteer for it alone, but try it as a part of a bigger package. Kind of like a more realistic version of a horror movie/game.
Do you think i am entirely wrong, and suffering is worse than death?
Do you think it is better to die, instead of enduring suffering and then getting to live some more?
Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only animals that don't generally die mostly from predation are those on top of whatever food chain they're a part of (bears, big cats, etc.) And we don't tend to eat those. For the rest, if we aren't eating them, something else is going to eat them. It's not a question of "taking an animal life"—the animal's life is going to get taken, in a messy, bloody, terrifying way. It is considered by some to be an increas…
I don't understand how your argument exists alongside the fact that we farm the animals that we eat. The chicken that you buy at the grocer isn't one we swiped away just as a wolf was about it eat it. The chicken was grown indoors in a factory, likely hadn't even seen the light of day. Even a wolf-eaten wild chicken gets that courtesy.
A wolf-eaten chicken also gets courtesy parasites.
Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
The gp is still pointing out that causing suffering to other creatures is a downside of eating meat. While all items you listed are not necessary, only one of them has that downside. Unless one argues with the premise that the killing/pain of other creatures is harmful, we'll only be talking past one another.
Having sex without the intent to procreate can lead to having children whom you aren't prepared to take care of. Tourism fuels and is fueled by organizations that destroy ecosystems. Everything humanity does destroys the planet and its inhabitants, including ourselves. A vegan thinks they're doing their small part, while texting up a storm on their iPhone, driving to work in their Camry, living in their downtown 1000…
Not my point. My point is that the poster I was replying to is talking past the initial poster, rather than responding to them.
I don't think vegans/vegetarians do so because of their singular impact on the world. Worth saying that (presumably) you and I choose not to kill other people, knowing that our taxes might be funding wars, our gadgets might be built in sweatshops, etc.