It's beacuse a mutation of covid was discovered in minks. I'm sure they have already been added to the list of Victims of Communism. Pure hellworld. Fuck everyone who wears fur coats.
It's beacuse a mutation of covid was discovered in minks. I'm sure they have already been added to the list of Victims of Communism. Pure hellworld. Fuck everyone who wears fur coats.
I think you’re right in part, that definitely does provoke a knee-jerk emotional reaction from people. But do they just never really think it through at all? Before I was vegan I still thought it was important to have a consistent ethic that justified the mass slaughter of animals for personal pleasure, but maybe that’s not something other people really consider?
Or maybe it’s just because they don’t really care about the actual minks and just don’t like the idea of a cute animal being killed for a product they don’t personally want. Which would explain why people just get upset at hearing about the slaughter but don’t demand any kind of mass action to end it and then forget about it as soon as it stops being reported on. I don’t know, I just struggle to understand how people can feel such selective empathy for animals and be completely unbothered by the incoherent ethics they have to embrace as a result.
selective empathy for animals takes place all the time
living things die, and those living things that survive are sustained by that death and re-circulation of energy/nutrients... it's not an ethical position to say that animals & plants & fungi all depend in varying degrees on the deaths of one another
that doesn't mean animals can't feel pain or don't have personality, but selective empathy is literally the name of the game.
Jains don't eat root vegetables because they believe these veggies have more spirit than leafy greens etc.
these are inconsistent metrics & emotionally wrought positions, not well-established doctrines
Of course it does, as does selective empathy for other humans and even for inanimate objects. I’m not confused by the existence of selective empathy, just that so many people accept it uncritically for the fundamental basis of their ethics. I know it’s super common, I just can’t really wrap my mind around it. Maybe it’s just because I’m neurodivergent? Or something?
Isn’t this basically “the circle of life exists, therefore the exploitation and slaughter of any and all animals is ok because that’s just how the universe be”? It’s just a strange thing to bring up because it’s not actually what people believe, or else they wouldn’t be bothered by minks or dogs being killed. Sure, some people will claim to believe it to justify why it’s ok to eat burgers or make leather jackets but obviously it isn’t a standard they universally apply to animals, let alone to other humans. I’m just confused because it seems so obvious to me that people are applying openly contradictory moral standards and yet it doesn’t seem to bother them and I can’t relate to that.
And of course it’s an inherently ethical decision to say that slaughtering one species of mammal for personal pleasure is wrong but doing it to a different species of mammal is justified. Just because death and consumption exist doesn’t mean they are somehow entirely outside of the scope of ethics.
But we generally don’t accept selective empathy as a basis for morality for other humans because at it’s core it’s just an arbitrary mental response to certain stimuli, not a reasonable way of recognizing the moral worth of human and non-human animals. I understand that many people do effectively base their morality around their selective empathy, I just don’t understand how they don’t realize it or how it doesn’t deeply bother them on a fundamental level. I just really care about understanding other people and why they think the way they do, but a lot of the time it feels like we’re so fundamentally different that I can’t really get them.
Exactly! This is what I really don’t get. Is this something billions of people are just ok with? Like, they don’t spend their time doing everything they can to continually develop a consistent moral framework because they feel like they must do the Right Thing? Do people just not think about ethics all that much? It’s just incomprehensible to me, I can’t imagine how people can constantly talk about morality and claim to be moral people and then just... not think about it all that much. What’s that like? I just don’t get it.
i didn't say anything justifies eating burgers or making leather jackets, I said that without any ethical considerations made by concerned individuals, there is still an energy & nutrient cycle that humans must participate in
if we can't get interpersonal & intersubjective human dynamics right, then I think it's a tall order to expect average people to take such an all-encompassing & immaculate/morally hygienic approach to their individual consumption
in other words, you are right to say that wholesale slaughter & exploitation of meat/dairy/fur animals should be more closely examined, but I don't think that finger wagging or shaming strangers in vague ways is how we go about it
But remember we live in a society & people have "preferences" as well as aversions. we can't let the real material concerns of veganism & food ethics be swept up in marketized atomized concerns and petty grievances
Ok, I think I was confused because I don’t see how this has anything to do with anything I’m saying. Literally no one on earth would dispute that we must ingest nutrients to live and that’s historically why humans have consumed animals. Is there any reason you think it’s important to point this out?
I haven’t even been arguing that people should be vegan! I explicitly said that I had consistent ethics regarding animal exploitation as a non-vegan and I’m confused why so few people seem to have a consistent view themselves, even if it isn’t vegan. I haven’t told people to be vegan, or shamed people for eating meat, or anything of the sort.
Really this is why I hate talking about veganism. Regardless of what I say, people will assume I’m a moral scold who expects everyone else to be perfectly pure all the time, and that makes me the unreasonable one so I should just stop talking about the ethical considerations of animal exploitation. It’s the exact same shit I get from chuds and it’s just exhausting to deal with.
Seriously? I can talk about the ethics of human exploitation all day here and no one will accuse me of being a vague moral scold, but if I discuss that people don’t seem to have internally consistent ethical frameworks for animal exploitation and suddenly I’m “finger wagging”?
Me: End the exploitation of the working class!
Random chapos: Yes, reasonable, good take, all leftists must agree.
Me: Why don’t people have consistent ethics regarding animal exploitation?
Random chapos: No, scolding, rude, just mentioning it is judgmental.
No shit? I haven’t said a damn thing about what people should do, I’m just confused that people apparently don’t put much thought into it and why they’re ok with that because I’m neurodivergent or some other reason.
You can have a consistent framework that says all non-human animals have a inherently lower moral worth and that their lives and well-being are of less importance than human needs and desires. It’s literally what I used to think, and I’m confused by how few people I’ve encountered have any similar kind of understanding instead of just uncritically basing their view off of selective empathy or whether they personally can afford the animal products. My issue isn’t that not everyone is vegan, it’s confusion about why so many people are averse to critically and systematically applying ethics to non-human animals.
you mean applying "human" morals/ethics to non-human animals
Nope, that’s definitely not what I mean.
That said, I have no idea why you put human in quotes or what part of my posts you’re replying to with this.
because of the last sentence in your post
expecting people to apply a similar level of emotional attachment & ethical consideration they reserve for their children & loved ones onto random meat or dairy animals on factory farms is a tall order... and I think we are fooling ourselves in expecting others to consider the equivalency even as a rhetorical device or thought experiment
that's why I think making larger ecological & political/societal arguments about maintaining a level of "progress" while navigating climate & biodiversity concerns is more important&effective than attempting to humanize those animals born & bred & raised for consumption
What you wrote has no connection to my last sentence or anything I’ve been saying. I’m talking about having internally consistent ethics, not what ethical standards out to be applied to human or non-human animals.
I swear to God you aren’t reading anything I’m writing here. Of course I don’t expect people to have a similar emotional attachment to animals as they do to their own children because that’s a completely ridiculous thing to expect. For the fifth time, I’m just confused about why people don’t seem to care about having consistent ethics regarding animals, even if their ethics conclude that animal exploitation is a morally good thing.
Here’s how our conversation has been going:
Me: people should have consistent ethics regarding the treatment of animals
You: You can’t judge people for not loving all animals like their own children.
Do you see how your reply has absolutely nothing to do with what I’m saying? Am I just not communicating this well to you? Or do you just feel defensive because I’m vegan and that makes you think I’m judging people like you? Whatever it is, you have consistently not been replying to any point I’ve actually brought up despite me repeatedly clarifying myself in the plainest language I can manage and it’s frankly tiresome.
Then it’s a good thing that I’ve never said or thought they were equivalent, and I have no idea why you would think otherwise.
I happen to strongly disagree, but I’m not going to get into it because this has absolutely nothing to do with anything I’ve been saying.
Why are you so convinced that I’ve been trying to convince people to be vegan or even argued for the end any kind of animal exploitation? Seriously, I keep telling you I’m saying nothing of the sort and then you just ignore me and keep arguing against things that no one is even saying.