Yeah, the whole humans are super violent really only began around the time of the Enlightenment with the state of nature arguments on behalf of centralized power.
We really tend to form heuristics about the past based on a few scant pieces of archaeological evidence, and some nifty, sloppy cross-species analogies with our closest primate cousins. Even that bit of reasoning appears to be suspect as chimps - the most common analogy for violent people - don't even appear to be all that violent outside of a few select groups.
More important than how violent humans are is the point that the amount of violence is down over time, and to me it's a natural development that more and more people are starting to question the ethics of killing animals for their meat, when it's a mostly unnecessary practice anyway.
Unnecessary from what perspective? Certainly not in terms of scaled economies or even aesthetics. If you mean that we can get by on a diet composed primarily of supplements and vegetables and beans, then sure, but it doesn't really take choice into account, does it.
I went vegetarian almost ten years ago. Prior to switching I had dated a vegetarian for years and swore that I would never do it, that I liked meat too much. I was semi-aware of the ethical issues behind it and I was apathetic too it. Then my band played a benefit show for an organization that fed the homeless but only vegetarian meals. I was on their website looking up details about the show and they provided the rational for why they only served vegetarian meals and that convinced me. Basically it came down to environmental reasons, animal-based diets result in much larger GHG emissions and just in general require way more resources (water, land, etc.)
For the first year or so, I was also very preachy about it. I thought that since I was able to be converted based on a rational argument and facts that others would be too if they were just informed. Eventually I realized how preachy I was being and decided that people needed to come about it more naturally rather than essentially being guilted into it.
I would love to be vegan but frankly it's just too much work. For what it's worth I found the switch to vegetarianism way easier than I thought it would be. I did miss chicken wings for a long time though and there is just no vegetarian substitute for it 25 cent wings, enjoy your $4 meal boys I think I will pay $12 for a veggie burger.
I've never hunted and don't personally agree with it, if I had to kill my own food I would have probably become vegetarian sooner. That being said, coming from an environmental vegetarian, hunting is a better way to get meat. Obviously everyone has different opinions on how much they are willing to sacrifice for the environment or for ethics. Going full vegetarian or even more so vegan, is a radical solution, the real solution I think is for people to just be more concious about the impacts of their diet and to reduce the amount of meat they eat or be more concious where they get it from relative to what they are willing to sacrifice.
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I went vegetarian almost ten years ago. Prior to switching I had dated a vegetarian for years and swore that I would never do it, that I liked meat too much. I was semi-aware of the ethical issues behind it and I was apathetic too it. Then my band played a benefit show for an organization that fed the homeless but only vegetarian meals. I was on their website looking up details about the show and they provided the rational for why they only served vegetarian meals and that convinced me. Basically it came down to environmental reasons, animal-based diets result in much larger GHG emissions and just in general require way more resources (water, land, etc.)
For the first year or so, I was also very preachy about it. I thought that since I was able to be converted based on a rational argument and facts that others would be too if they were just informed. Eventually I realized how preachy I was being and decided that people needed to come about it more naturally rather than essentially being guilted into it.
I would love to be vegan but frankly it's just too much work. For what it's worth I found the switch to vegetarianism way easier than I thought it would be. I did miss chicken wings for a long time though and there is just no vegetarian substitute for it 25 cent wings, enjoy your $4 meal boys I think I will pay $12 for a veggie burger.
I've never hunted and don't personally agree with it, if I had to kill my own food I would have probably become vegetarian sooner. That being said, coming from an environmental vegetarian, hunting is a better way to get meat. Obviously everyone has different opinions on how much they are willing to sacrifice for the environment or for ethics. Going full vegetarian or even more so vegan, is a radical solution, the real solution I think is for people to just be more concious about the impacts of their diet and to reduce the amount of meat they eat or be more concious where they get it from relative to what they are willing to sacrifice.
Thank you that is a good post.
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Captain James P. DeCOSTE, CD, 18 Sep 1993
Unnecessary from what perspective? Certainly not in terms of scaled economies or even aesthetics. If you mean that we can get by on a diet composed primarily of supplements and vegetables and beans, then sure, but it doesn't really take choice into account, does it.
Unnecessary in the literal sense. In the past, meat has been an important source of food. It's not anymore.
The demand for choice is a fundamentally narcistic argument that really has nothing to do with ethics. The whole point of ethics for a very large part can be summed up as "stuff that we don't do even though it'd be nice because it'd be bad". For example, animal torture in numerous forms (from straight up torture to setting up animal fights) is an age-old form of entertainment that we have largely stopped doing because we as a culture have mostly decided it's bad. (Or unethical.)
The argument that you should be allowed to eat animals if you like it is the exact same as arguing that you should be allowed to torture animals if you find it funny. Ethically there is no real difference, the only difference comes from what is considered normal and what is not.
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Born-again vegans are every bit as obnoxious as born-again Christians.
The first rule of veganism is you tell everyone how special you are to be a vegan.
I had one friend that thought to lecture me on his turn to being a veggie, he'd turned about 6 months before and we were eating dinner and he went into this long diatribe about eating meat and the ethics and the benefits of being a vegetarian.
I ordered the rarest steak I could and ate it without wiping the blood off of my mouth while making mooing sounds.
I mentioned that I could like to have surgery to shorten my arms so I would more closely resemble a T-Rex.
then I asked him if he was going to keep bringing up his veggie religion everytime we go for a meal or drinks. When he basically said that he felt he had to promote ethical eating I told him I was blocking his number and I left.
If you want to make a life style change, make it, if you have trouble with the ethics of eating a cow then don't eat a cow. But don't get on a pulpit and preach it, I don't care.
The opposable thumb has given me the right to tear into flesh and roar in triumph like the Alpha top of the food chain guy that I am.
If I could find a freezer big enough to hold the remains of Big Foot, I'd eat that too.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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Pretty much. Tell me you are a vegan/vegetarian and would appreciate going to a place that has options for your lifestyle, I'm cool with that. I can accommodate.
Start preaching to me, and you can F off wherever you like. I'm going to get a juicy, thick hamburger.
Enough of the hubris about meat eating. Easily as annoying as preachy vegetarians. Your opposable thumb is for using tools. Your dull flat teeth are good for soft, pulpy things not raw meat and hide.
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I ordered the rarest steak I could and ate it without wiping the blood off of my mouth while making mooing sounds.
I mentioned that I could like to have surgery to shorten my arms so I would more closely resemble a T-Rex.
The opposable thumb has given me the right to tear into flesh and roar in triumph like the Alpha top of the food chain guy that I am.
If I could find a freezer big enough to hold the remains of Big Foot, I'd eat that too.
Is CC actually Denis Leary?
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Enough of the hubris about meat eating. Easily as annoying as preachy vegetarians. Your opposable thumb is for using tools. Your dull flat teeth are good for soft, pulpy things not raw meat and hide.
My opposable thumbs are made for weapons, and getting one up on our friends in the animal kingdom, I can also use tools to strip the meat off of the bones.
While everyone enjoys a good salad to cleanse the palate and to make our poop nice and firm My teeth are really good at pulling muscle and sinew apart and chewing them into a delicious bloody pulp that slides into my stomach.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
It's really ironic how it's supposedly vegans that are "obnoxiously loud" about their diet choices, and in practice you see a thread full of "meat eaters" banging their chests over their desire to eat meat or whining about someone else's choice to eat vegetarian. I've known easily dozens if not hundreds of vegetarians of various levels in my life, and have in fact never met this mythical "obnoxiously in your face" type. But you can't open the internet on the topic without the "carnivores" going on and on about it.
It's pretty funny really, in a pathetic way.
I actually read a really good column on the topic where a reporter who tried "vegan challenge month" noticed how the worst part of veganism isn't any dietary impracticality or having to learn new ways to cook, it's mostly that you have to try and hide it in public or otherwise your meat eating friends will just not stop talking about it, to a point where having any normal conversations becomes impossible.
Too bad it was in Finnish, I'd find it and link it otherwise.
Last edited by Itse; 03-30-2016 at 11:02 AM.
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