Is it true that there is some implied censure in the decision not to eat meat, or not to eat factory-farmed meat? Well, given that I have concluded that refraining from the purchase factory farmed meat is the ethical thing to for me to do, then it is indeed logically implied that I also think it is the ethical thing for you to do.
However, polite society thrives on people with ethical differences agreeing to live and let live. I leave room for the possibility of errors in my own judgment, for differences in situations and priorities, and for the fact that no human relationship can survive a strict accounting of every value difference. I think it would be nice if everyone thought hard about how much moral weight to give to the suffering of animals, and gave up meat for a month or so in order to find out how hard it would be to live without it. (Answer: not nearly as hard as you think. I eat meat perhaps a few times a month, and honestly don't much miss it--and I like to eat.)
On the other hand, I also think it would be nice if everyone tried hard, every minute, to be as nice as possible to those around them; volunteered with homeless children in their spare time; and supported a robust free market regime. I don't live up to all of these ideals, however, and living in society means understanding that others make differing value judgments. I presume you know better than I do whether you are really doing your best to do what is right. I'm not going to lecture you on your moral obligations. In return, I would very much appreciate it if people would refrain from attempts to argue me out of doing what I believe is right because they would enjoy their own value judgments better if they had more company.
In short, if my refusal to eat factory farmed meat makes you uncomfortable, then you should probably stop eating factory farmed meat. Because I am not, I swear, wasting one moment of an enjoyable dinner worrying about what's on your plate.
I mean, except if it's brains. That's just disgusting.
"[E]xcept if it's brains. That's just disgusting."
Megan, what an offal thing to say!
I mean, except if it's brains. That's just disgusting
So you're saying you *won't* be coming to my zombie dinner party? The missus will be so disappointed.
I think the problem with being a vegan is, it makes it impossible for us to be commensals at my home, and, traditionally, refusing to be a commensal bespeaks a posture of superiority. A posture of superiority (real or perceived) angers others. (Just ask the Jews.)
You might say, why doesn't eating meat equally represent a refusal to be a commensal, but it doesn't, because a most meat-eaters would accept an invitation to a vegetarian household and eat all the food that was served.
I mean, except if it's brains. That's just disgusting
And wasteful. The brains should be used for tanning the hide. It's the way nature intended us to make leather.
It's the way nature intended us to make leather.
Really? I thought the natural way was to take a whiz in a tree stump and maybe throw in some tea leaves for good measure.
Which, come to think of it, is a pretty good analogy for what took place in that previous thread...
I eat meat sometimes. I do and don't apologize for it. But every once in a while it strikes me that I'm consuming another creature - one that for all intents and purposes probably doesn't really want me to eat it. I know that's a stretch. Can a chicken have a thought that complex: "I hope no one eats me"? And the whole muscle/tendon/blood conundrum (and now I would add brain) really freaks me out sometimes. We bite, chew, suck and swallow veins for the love of Morrissey.
Life consumes life so is it a matter of how evolved the other is? We obviously have no problem with plant life and many people will eat fish but not fowl or mammals.
I eat chicken but cannot stand separating one to cook. I once cooked ribs in a slow-cooker for too long and was able to bite through the bones like they were Twix bars. I swear I channeled Moby at that moment. It had a sort of chalky feel and got stuck between my teeth.
But then I turn it all around and figure this. I don't want you to kill me, but if I'm already dead, go ahead and eat me.
I don't want you to kill me, but if I'm already dead, go ahead and eat me.
You should probably restrict yourself to eating animals that commit suicide in the wild.
You should probably restrict yourself to eating animals that commit suicide in the wild.
Slim pickins, I'm thinkin, but it would avoid any messy moral or ethical conundrums AND allow me to enjoy the flesh of others. Yum.
I eat meat sometimes. I do and don't apologize for it. But every once in a while it strikes me that I'm consuming another creature - one that for all intents and purposes probably doesn't really want me to eat it. I know that's a stretch. Can a chicken have a thought that complex: "I hope no one eats me"? And the whole muscle/tendon/blood conundrum (and now I would add brain) really freaks me out sometimes. We bite, chew, suck and swallow veins for the love of Morrissey.
The quickest and surest cure for this is to spend a week or two caring for someone's chickens. Chickens -- with the possible exception of turkeys -- have the dubious honor of simultaneously being both the dumbest and dirtiest of all farmed animals. Too much of what passes for humane concern for animals is merely an elaborate anthropomorphizing of the animals' abilities and desires, rather than an honest assessment of them.
This plea for being tolerant of others' moral decisions surely only holds water if our differences are not considered significant. Is Megan arguing that we should tolerate the views of rapists, child-abusers, etc., female "circumcision", cannibalism, genocide? Hey, let's just be tolerant and not presume we occupy the moral high ground? If you're beating your child black and blue, would it be rude of me to protest and perhaps even lecture you on morality?
I'm afraid things aren't so simple. Meat-eaters typically don't see what they are doing as a moral issue, because either they consider animals to be "things", not "persons" (to make Kant's distinction), or because they have not really thought out the implications of their own ethical principles. Veg*ans of the ethical kind commonly believe there is a major moral issue involved in meat-eating. Except where meat-eaters can be convinced that their own principles enjoin them to refrain from meat, what we have is a clash of ethical paradigms -- which, like conflicting scientific paradigms, cannot be adjudicated by agreed-upon standards. I don't think "tolerance", or fence-sitting, is a logically coherent position here.
Answer: not nearly as hard as you think.
Or a lot harder.
I gave up meat once for a few months for financial reasons and felt like absolute crap after the first couple of days. I was always tired, I was losing muscle strength and cardio endurance (as measured by the three times a week gym routine I'd been doing for years that suddenly I couldn't do anymore), I was constantly sick, minor injuries took forever to heal ... all this despite the fact that I was on what was considered to be an excellent mostly vegan diet according to a number of books and discussions with the veg*ns I know.
I gave up and started eating meat again; within a few days I started to feel better, and within a month or so I was back to where I'd been before the whole thing started.
Was it a need for animal protein specifically? Probably not. It was probably food intolerance to something or some combination of somethings that I was eating to replace it. Trying to figure out what by process of elimination didn't find anything, nor did the allergy tests I took a couple of years later when I had time and money.
Just because giving up meat sounds like it should be easy, doesn't mean it is.
I saw a bumper sticker today that said: Meat is murder
And I thought to myself that if you're a cannibal then murder is meat
"You should probably restrict yourself to eating animals that commit suicide in the wild."
Lemmingatarians, unite!
(yes, I know, the whole suicidal lemmings thing is basically a myth, but hey . . . and this way, I can imagine whole villages tucked under seaside cliffs which each year hang out nets and celebrate the annual Dropping of The Lemmings which sustains them . . .)
Is Megan arguing that we should tolerate the views of rapists, child-abusers, etc., female "circumcision", cannibalism, genocide?
Yes, I believe that is her argument - and one I wholeheartedly endorse.
"If the Great Juju had meant us not to eat people,
he wouldn't have made us of meat!" - "Don't Eat People", Flanders & Swann
What's going on here? Megan is offending meat-eaters and those who are sensitive about suicides?
What is it about the Atlantic that's bringing this out of you?
I am an old man that was raised on a plantation deep in south Louisiana. I was raised to believe that intelligent people don’t argue about matters of taste therefore I won’t comment about your disdain of brains; however, I do care to make an observation about your ethical critique of meat eating. Only those sufficiently removed from the production of ridiculously bountiful, cheap, wholesome and easily accessible food make ethical judgments about how it ends up in a pot. I have traveled to a number of places where the most important criteria is that food is in the pot, not how it got there. A well fed society should concern itself how animals are slaughtered and treated, but please let’s not use our circumstances as the ethical criteria of those that do not share our circumstances. Besides you just might enjoy a traditional “boucherie.”
"what we have is a clash of ethical paradigms -- which, like conflicting scientific paradigms, cannot be adjudicated by agreed-upon standards. I don't think "tolerance", or fence-sitting, is a logically coherent position here."
I do not agree with this conflation of the vegetarian moral argument with science. It is more like a religious argument. I believe that there is nothing morally wrong with my eating meat or dairy, while moral vegans believe that this is morally unacceptable, for a number of reasons that I understand, but do not accept. The scientific vegan arguments are easy to refute, if you really argue scientifically - they are falsiable, because there are LOTS of people who live very long, healty lives, while eating meat, so the "scientific" arguments that it is healthier, fail. They are demonstrably falsifiable, which is the scientific test. I have not seen any double blind nutrition tests of vegan vs meat-eater that have produced results showing the vegan lifestyle is superior. The statistical arguments are not science. Having spent the large part of my adulthood evaluating statistical arguments in engineering, I feel confident stating this.
I have no problem letter vegans continue to believe (and eat, or not) whatever they wish. In the same way that I don't care what you believe, religiously. However, when a vegan, or a Mormon, or a fundamentalist Christian, or a Muslim, or a hard-core environmentalist sticks him- herself in my face and tells me that I am going to hell because I do not comport with their view of how I should live my life, then my tolerance stops.
I actually did this on an airplane with a nice young man who wanted to talk to me about his Savior. I told him that I would listen to him if would listen to my counter-arguments, which might cause him some offense and distress. He was willing, and he left the flight with a number of unresolved issues, while I went on with my business with a clear conscience(!).
Generally, I believe(!) that people who need to talk about these sort of moral issues really do want to change the society towards the direction they want it to go. Why else would they talk about it so much? Just for entertainment purposes? The slavery argument that has been flung at me is particularly telling. The purpose of all of the arguments against slavery, was the abolition of slavery. It(abolition) was a good thing, IMHO. On the other hand, abolition was followed by the temperance movement, which was not a good thing, again IMHO. This begat the drug wars, again, not good, and now we have veganism and deep environmentalism, both of which are pushing to get their morality installed in the scocietal psyche. The environmentalists are almost there, but the vegans are not far behind.
It will be interesting to see how these clashes of ideas ultimately fare in the new electronic environment, where people (not animals, not plants, not rocks) communicate.
an interesting idea for a new product. Certified Voluntary Meat?
Anyway, this whole "agree to disagree" thing is why politics has become notorious as one of the subject most likely to provoke an argument, and thus not suitable for polite conversation at social events. Democracy and Republic is, in its very essence, the notion of elevating individual personal opinions and preferences and value judgments into law.
And the specific vegan vs. meat eater debate reminds me of the abortion debate. One side honestly believes that the other side is committing mass murder or slavery. Try to put yourself in the mindset of someone observing Nazi Germany's concentration camps, or the chattel slavery of the American South. Can you still hang on to your "live and let live, agree to disagree" mindset?
Personally, I hold neither of these beliefs. I eat meat everyday, and I am glad abortion is legal, but that's because I do not believe these things to be murder or slavery. But I have a hard time seeing "agree to disagree" as a compelling argument to those who do. I don't like being hectored and criticized either, but I at least understand why they feel the need to do so.
My principle problem with vegans (and to a *much* lesser extent vegetarians) is that they're a pain the ass to have over for dinner parties or go out to dinner with.
Most places will have some vegetarian options, and a decent host will have prepared enough food such that in the worst case a vegetarian can have extras of the salad / sides (a good host will actually have something more). That's at worst a small bother, and at best hardly noticeable.
But vegans are quite a bit different. They essentially require their own preparation. No cheese, no butter, no eggs, etc. Those limitations make it very difficult to plan a menu that they can eat without also inflicting it on everyone else. And it's just annoying when you're out to dinner and they ask the server about the preparation of every item on the menu in search of something that meets their requirements.
I think there is a crucial distinction that needs to be made here. Any reasonably sane observer would have to agree that there is disagreement in our society over the moral status of animals and fetuses. Some people believe that animals have moral status and deserve humane treatment -- these then attempt to eat ethically within that framework (either become veg*ns or at least reject factory farming). Similarly, some people believe that fetuses have some moral status, and thus presumably don't get abortions.
But in neither case is there any consensus as to which moral framework is "better", and thus, as a tolerant society, we have to accept that there are some moral issues that we will agree to disagree about; hence the "live and let live" attitude.
However, just because we as a society agree to disagree about some moral issues, doesn't mean we therefore have to agree to disagree about ALL moral issues. Obviously we don't have tolerate the moral claims of an individual who thinks that children have no moral standing, and thus happily kills kids. This is where the the Nazi Germany and slavery examples kind of go off the rails, I think. As a society, we condemn people who refuse to accept that Jews or African-Americans have moral standing equal to all other humans.
Now, I guess a vegan might reasonably argue that it would be better if our society universally believed in moral rights for animals. But then the logical argument is that animals have moral rights, not that "meat is murder". Meat isn't murder until you've accepted that animals can be murdered (or tortured, or mistreated).
One thing I will say that I think points to the general inconsistency of most people on this issue, however: we typically get very upset when people mistreat there pets, and people get very caught up in the health and well-being of famous horses. Why is it that we seem to accept as a society that dogs, cats, and horses have some moral standing, but pigs, cows, and sheep do not. If I were an evangelical vegan (which I'm not, although I do try to eat only humanely raised animal products), I would start the argument with "why is it okay to treat pigs worse than dogs", rather that "meat is murder".
TW Andrews made an interesting point when he mentioned the difficulty involved in creating a menu for a dinner with vegans, "[T]hose limitations make it very difficult to plan a menu that they can eat without also inflicting it on everyone else."
When a family member converts to veganism there are three dinner planning options. The menu can largely geared to the vegan, with a hamburger added for the meat eaters. The menu can be largely geared for the meat eaters, and the vegan can eat a salad or side dish. Or the menu can be expanded, with several dishes for the vegan and several for the meat eaters. This last option involves considerably more time and trouble to prepare. For this reason, the family almost always chooses one of the first two options.
There may be some tendency to largely gear the menu toward the vegan, because the meat eaters have no abhorrence for eating vegan dishes. In this way, veganism can become the default standard family dinner menu.
But it mainly comes down to how things such as how much solicitude the parents have toward the vegan or how much family influence the meat eaters and vegan have.
Absolutely true here and now, but that wasn't the case in Nazi Germany and Civil War era America.
It was widely spoken and written that African-Americans were less than full human beings, and they were even counted as fractions of persons in the Constitution. Even those in the North who opposed slavery often thought much the way we do about animal cruelty now - not that these were full persons equal to you and I, but that they're something living, so don't abuse them so horribly.
We know this to be terrible now, but back then it was societal norm. If you were placed into that society, would you say to yourself "oh well, this is the societal norm, agree to disagree?"
If you were placed into that society, would you say to yourself "oh well, this is the societal norm, agree to disagree?"
I suppose that depends on whether your intention is to cause change (which is almost always gradual) or just show off your own moral purity.