Testing Chat IV: A New Hope

[Aaron]

They really should put the smugissar emoticon on TEO.

[Jung]

Re: veganism:

One thing that occurs to me is if you want to stop people eating meat because you care about animals maybe pushing vegetarianism or veganism is the wrong approach. You're pushing a commitment to go cold turkey on meat. I wonder if pushing for getting people to just eat a bit less might be more effective. A million people deciding to abstain from meat one day a week is going to save more animals than 1000 people going vegetarian, and abstaining from meat one day a week is a much less radical lifestyle change than going vegetarian. I could see myself doing something like observing a one day a week "save the livestock" day, or trying to go for a while with no meat to see how bad it would really be, or just trying to generally eat less meat, but going vegetarian for the rest of my life ... I don't know if I really have it in me.

Another thing might be to encourage people to eat more large animals; beef instead of chicken. It seems like a decent bet for reducing animal death and suffering, because you get a lot more meat out of one animal. I kind of like the idea of concentrating my meat eating on large animals and primitive ones like shellfish (on the logic the latter are most likely to be mindless), though I don't observe this in anything but the most haphazard fashion.

Sometimes I wonder if the problem with the US is that it is just too big, too diverse. De Gaulle jockingly said about France "How do you want to govern a country with more than 400 varieties of cheese ?". I think in this situation, in the us, it would be "How do you want to govern a country with 51 different constitutions and legislations ? [*]"

That occurred to me too. The USA is kind of unique among Western and First World nations in being a continental scale state in both territory and population. Seems plausible that would create some unusual challenges.

It's also unusual in being a state founded to be the vehicle of a specific political ideology, like the USSR. I suspect that goes a way toward explaining some things about it, like the issues it has with guns, the unusual level of patriotism, and the tendency to view itself as having some kind of heroic role in the world (and, on a more positive note, the relative ease with which it assimilates diverse people, since there's a strong current of the idea that being an American is a state of mind, not a question of ancestry).

[Civil War Man]

I also think, for those trying to encourage veganism or vegetarianism, the wrong approach is to push meat substitutes. It's fine to have something like tempeh as a substitute for chicken, but you're doomed for failure if it's the only thing keeping you from eating chicken.

[Darksi4190]

Yeah. Someone who loves meat so much that they have to use substitutes for it in their regular diet is not going to become a full vegan. You could probably talk to those people about reducing their meat intake like Jung said, but I doubt you could get them to drop it.

Of course if you're going with the reduction angle, it would become more important to stress the environmental aspects than the animal cruelty ones. Lets face it. Even If you buy a steak from a supermarket twice a month rather than once a week, you're still a bad person from the "animal cruelty" point of view because you're still supporting the meat industry, just not as much. Less meat consumption doesn't mean factory farming goes away, that genie's out of the bottle and it's never going back in. The factory method will always be the most profitable so it's the one corporations are going to stick with. At least some animals are still going to be slaughtered in "horrific" ways whether you eat four steaks a month or two. What reduced meat consumption will affect however, is the environmental effects of factory farming. Less meat consumption means fewer cows or pigs or chickens need to be slaughtered which means fewer facilities which means lower CO2 emissions.

[Jung]

Of course if you're going with the reduction angle, it would become more important to stress the environmental aspects than the animal cruelty ones. Lets face it. Even If you buy a steak from a supermarket twice a month rather than once a week, you're still a bad person from the "animal cruelty" point of view because you're still supporting the meat industry, just not as much. Less meat consumption doesn't mean factory farming goes away, that genie's out of the bottle and it's never going back in. The factory method will always be the most profitable so it's the one corporations are going to stick with. At least some animals are still going to be slaughtered in "horrific" ways whether you eat four steaks a month or two.

I was thinking of it from a more utilitarian approach to morality.

Yes, if you skip meat once a week lots of animals are still being factory farmed and killed for your consumption, but you're saving a chicken a week, a cow or pig every once in a while etc.. Get lots of people to do that and you might make a bigger dent in human-created animal suffering and slaughter than you would by getting people to turn vegetarian. Basically, assuming that while the meat industry is an evil it's an evil that isn't going anywhere any time soon, and aiming for reducing its scale as much as you can while still tolerating its existence, because that accomplishes more real good than a more ambitious but less successful strategy of trying to turn everyone into vegetarians.

[zhaktronz]

Switching to veganism in Australia would probably cause more suffering as almost all of our non chicken meat is raised on marginal lands useless for other food production

[zhaktronz]

http://theconversation.com/ordering-the ... hands-4659

[Infinity Biscuit]

How possible would a conversion of Australian cattle industry to kangaroo and other animals that don't produce much methane? Range-fed cattle are immeasurably better than ones fed off crops, but they still produce a lot of methane that's damaging to the environment.

[Straha]

Re: veganism:

One thing that occurs to me is if you want to stop people eating meat because you care about animals maybe pushing vegetarianism or veganism is the wrong approach. You're pushing a commitment to go cold turkey on meat. I wonder if pushing for getting people to just eat a bit less might be more effective. A million people deciding to abstain from meat one day a week is going to save more animals than 1000 people going vegetarian, and abstaining from meat one day a week is a much less radical lifestyle change than going vegetarian. I could see myself doing something like observing a one day a week "save the livestock" day, or trying to go for a while with no meat to see how bad it would really be, or just trying to generally eat less meat, but going vegetarian for the rest of my life ... I don't know if I really have it in me.

Another thing might be to encourage people to eat more large animals; beef instead of chicken. It seems like a decent bet for reducing animal death and suffering, because you get a lot more meat out of one animal. I kind of like the idea of concentrating my meat eating on large animals and primitive ones like shellfish (on the logic the latter are most likely to be mindless), though I don't observe this in anything but the most haphazard fashion.

So a couple things:

On a moral/ethical sense it makes no sense for an animal rights activist to push abstaining from meat as a goal in and of itself. The act of the slaughter itself is what's wrong and to condone it in anyway is both unproductive and sets an incredibly bad standard. Hypothetical scenario: You get transplanted into the 1850s American North and have time for activism. Do you try to buy goods from plantations in the South that don't, for instance, use branding irons on slaves or do you abstain altogether and fight for abolition? For me there is no distinction between the two questions here in.

Moreover, as an advocate for change advocating for reduction makes no sense because you create a false dichotomy. As someone who pushes for vegetarianism/veganism and discusses the myriad impacts of animal agriculture, and has been successful at it, I'll say that the majority of people I talk to make a conscious decision to start eating less meat on their own because of the vegetarian evangelism. It's the gut first reaction, and it's one I never discourage. It also helps to get people to understand that the shift to being vegetarian isn't, as you put it, 'radical' and is actually pretty easy. Moreover, I'd say pushing for less meat consumption is problematic for me in a realm besides the ethical/rights sense because the entire idea of my advocacy isn't to force a shift, or bludgeon someone into veganism through a wrecking ball of rationality, because that's fucking stupid (usually). Rather it's to get someone to ask the question of "Why am I doing this?" on their own, to think about it independently and make the transition on their own terms. Empirically I'll say pushing for Veganism does this phenomenally well because it makes people question the entire enterprise, and it makes people talk about animal rights/liberation with their friends and family independently, I just don't think that pushing for less consumption of flesh can achieve the same goals. (Case in point: a former student of mine engaged me and my boss in conversations about veganism regularly, on her own she started eating less and less meat until she went mostly vegetarian. When she went home to the Ukraine she started talking with her family about it, sharing facts and videos. Now her and her extended family are all committed vegetarians, all because she talked about it on her own.

(Also, you're wrong about eating cows being more environmentally friendly. On average it takes about five pounds of plant matter to create one pound of consumable cow flesh, for pigs it's about 3:1, for chickens about 2.5:1. You might get more meat out of the individual creature but it takes so much more effort. But this is really a side note.)

There was discussion before about whether or not it's a rights thing. The answer is for most vegans it's an unquestionable yes. I'll say for me it definitely is because I think the factory farm and slaughter house are by far the most disturbing creations of the 19th and 20th century and represent the concentration camp in its most complete and finished form. I've ranted and raved at length in the past about how there is no logically consistent distinction between who counts as human and doesn't before so I won't repeat that here, what I will say is that as long as that distinction remains pliable and socially constructed any group of beings, no matter the biology, can be pushed into the abattoir. This is not a hypothetical "OH TEH NOEZ THE POLICE R GOING TO GET US" scenario, it's happened at multiple points in history. I think perhaps the best example, for this board, is that until the 1967 referendum in Australia most relations with aboriginal peoples were governed by the Flora and Fauna acts because aboriginal peoples were viewed as no different than other 'naturally' occurring fauna in the land down under, and to change that there needed to be a mass referendum of people to grant them the right of being recognized as human. As long as we base our juridico-ethical systems on that sort of precedent then any concept of effective rights needs an utter commitment to animal liberation because of A. the inherent ineffectiveness of the current system of recognizing rights and B. because of the possibility of kicking people out of consideration based on moral principles (see: Peter Singer saying it's alright to kill disabled babies because their family won't love them properly).


tl;dr We lose more than we could possibly gain in both moral cohesion and the ability to effect change when we advocate for partial reduction of animal products as opposed to advocating for full vegetarianism/veganism.

[weemadando]

The big changes that I can think of for Australia would be altering habits - less meat, less often and a greater variety when we do. Push to add kangaroo, possum, rabbit and venison etc to the mainstream beef, lamb, pork and chicken.

Push for greater use of "whole animal" in a more meaningful way than just mince and sausage. Encourage (and legalise where necessary) urban farming/animal husbandry. Most backyards can support a few fowl which serve as natural insecticide, waste disposal and provide food in return. Some larger spaces could have goats or sheep supported, but the logistics involved with dairy make this a less prime example. It was only a generation or so ago that many houses did have their own chickens or similar and recent municipal laws have banned a lot of this.

The most important thing though would be to significantly reduce fisheries (or eliminate entirely) for a decade or three and RIGOROUSLY enforce this in order to allow stocks in our waters to recover to the "boom" levels of pre-industrial fisheries. We're managing pretty well, but are still facing a global crisis in terms of losing those stocks entirely should overfishing continue.

[Straha]

An addendum: I should add that it's not always effective to engage in vegan activism. Case in point: minority groups inside the United States tend to live in what are called 'food deserts' where it is functionally impossible to gain access to groceries or fresh food outside of fast food restaurants. To go there and advocate for veganism is pointless and all sorts of problematic (it actually lead to me leaving a dedicated animal activism group in a story I think I've shared here before), and instead a more multi-pronged approach is necessary (for instance, building community gardens, advocating for changing local zoning laws, etc.). But, as a general rule, veg* advocacy is the way to go.

http://theconversation.com/ordering-the ... hands-4659

This got passed around a number of animal activism communities. Ignoring the ethical consideration (which hangs as an a priori over all of this), a bunch of animal groups thoroughly debunked the study cited for the article in a most convincing manner. (Makes me wish I still had those e-mails.) Just from skimming the article again I'll say this off the top of my head, it advocates for changing meat consumption practices to a complex blend of a variety of local meat in a way that would be sustainable, but when it considers a veg* shift opts for a grain/rice shift that destroys local flora as if that were the only option. Moreover, it acts as if the mouse genocide is something that isn't already inherent in preserving grazing lands for non-humans being raised for feed. As someone who has spent time with free-range farmers I can tell you that that, going out there and killing 'varmints', is one of the biggest and most time consuming parts of their job. Put another way, the mass killing that the article tries to condemn vegetarians for already happens, given the choice between two genocides or one and a consciousness shift that's trying to stop that one too I'll take the latter any day.

[zhaktronz]

How possible would a conversion of Australian cattle industry to kangaroo and other animals that don't produce much methane? Range-fed cattle are immeasurably better than ones fed off crops, but they still produce a lot of methane that's damaging to the environment.

Pretty big tbh; Kangaroo generally tastes like shit, and isn't very versatile :V

[weemadando]

Kangaroo is awesome and just needs to be treated right.

But it is limited in some ways. Haven't figured out how to stew/casserole it without it going to shit. But quick cooking like bbq, stir fry - it's great.

[Jung]

Hypothetical scenario: You get transplanted into the 1850s American North and have time for activism. Do you try to buy goods from plantations in the South that don't, for instance, use branding irons on slaves or do you abstain altogether and fight for abolition?

I think my answer to that would be colored by knowing that abolition succeeded in a relatively short time in real life. What about if we were talking about slavery in ancient Rome instead of the 1850s USA? Then the question seems more ambiguous to me. Getting the Romans to treat their slaves better without completely destroying the institution strikes me as ... well, still worth something, and a better result than accomplishing nothing if the latter is what pushing for abolitionism gets you.

Rather it's to get someone to ask the question of "Why am I doing this?" on their own, to think about it independently and make the transition on their own terms. Empirically I'll say pushing for Veganism does this phenomenally well because it makes people question the entire enterprise, and it makes people talk about animal rights/liberation with their friends and family independently, I just don't think that pushing for less consumption of flesh can achieve the same goals. (Case in point: a former student of mine engaged me and my boss in conversations about veganism regularly, on her own she started eating less and less meat until she went mostly vegetarian. When she went home to the Ukraine she started talking with her family about it, sharing facts and videos. Now her and her extended family are all committed vegetarians, all because she talked about it on her own.

Well, I see your point there.

Also, you're wrong about eating cows being more environmentally friendly. On average it takes about five pounds of plant matter to create one pound of consumable cow flesh, for pigs it's about 3:1, for chickens about 2.5:1. You might get more meat out of the individual creature but it takes so much more effort. But this is really a side note.

I wasn't arguing that it was more environmentally friendly, I was arguing it was more humane, because you only kill one cow instead of a whole bunch of chickens to get the same amount of meat, hence fewer victims.

[Oxymoron]

Also, you're wrong about eating cows being more environmentally friendly. On average it takes about five pounds of plant matter to create one pound of consumable cow flesh, for pigs it's about 3:1, for chickens about 2.5:1. You might get more meat out of the individual creature but it takes so much more effort. But this is really a side note.

I wasn't arguing that it was more environmentally friendly, I was arguing it was more humane, because you only kill one cow instead of a whole bunch of chickens to get the same amount of meat, hence fewer victims.

Then obviously the answer is to breed elephants as cattle and resume whale hunting.

[Civil War Man]

Also, you're wrong about eating cows being more environmentally friendly. On average it takes about five pounds of plant matter to create one pound of consumable cow flesh, for pigs it's about 3:1, for chickens about 2.5:1. You might get more meat out of the individual creature but it takes so much more effort. But this is really a side note.

I wasn't arguing that it was more environmentally friendly, I was arguing it was more humane, because you only kill one cow instead of a whole bunch of chickens to get the same amount of meat, hence fewer victims.

Then obviously the answer is to breed elephants as cattle and resume whale hunting.

You are thinking way too small. The answer is cloned dinosaurs.

[Oxymoron]

Whatever the question is

The answer is dinosaurs

dinosaurs

[Straha]

I think my answer to that would be colored by knowing that abolition succeeded in a relatively short time in real life. What about if we were talking about slavery in ancient Rome instead of the 1850s USA? Then the question seems more ambiguous to me. Getting the Romans to treat their slaves better without completely destroying the institution strikes me as ... well, still worth something, and a better result than accomplishing nothing if the latter is what pushing for abolitionism gets you.

I still think you're creating a false dichotomy, and this leads to a troublesome place for me. A peer pressure morality where we can be accepting of problematic practices if everyone else does it and we just try to be a little better.

I suppose this is my question, watch this:


http://youtube.com/watch?v=THIODWTqx5E

And then explain to me why it's morally good to support that system in anyway. Not how you can make it less bad, but why is it ethically good that anyone give time, effort, or money to support it and propagate it further.

(To cut off the inevitable "but it tastes so good" line here's my question. You see a rapist holding a woman down about to have their way with the victim and yell at them to stop. When they reply "but it feels good, so why should I care for them?" what do you say?)

[RyanThunder]

Masterful job there, equating meat-eating to rape. I thought "Meat is Murder" was as low as they'd go but this... This is a grand, new precedent.

EDIT: I'm willing to advocate replacing meat with an artificially grown substitute that is identical in all the right ways to actual meat, and until that's available I'm willing to advocate better conditions for animals in farms. That's all you're getting out of me.

Furthermore your assertion that we could somehow end up factory farming /people/ if we don't cease consuming meat products is just so absurd that I can't even formulate a proper response.

[RogueIce]

I'm not all super philosopher academic type person, so I guess I can only give the "layperson" response to that.

Well the modified layperson response. Pretty sure that whole rape analogy would get most laypeople to tell you to fuck off and that'd be the end of it. But I'll just move along.

EDIT: Y'know, like Ryan's reaction above which I didn't see until after I posted this.

Which is to say that the answer is basically, "Because humans that's why." You may not like the answer, you may not find it logically sound, you can get into the whole ethical and moral thing and start dropping down fancy terms, but there it is. Most people are going to put their fellow humans up higher than cows, chickens and the like. We'll roll with '"but it tastes so good" and if you toss that rape example out the difference is she's a human being and you typically wouldn't let someone rape and murder her. (EDIT: Or again, "Fuck you for equating meat eating to rape you fucking fucker, conversation over.")

And most people are probably against sex with animals but probably aren't going to care about the fate of a cow destined to be a hamburger anyway, so they won't consider it murder. Any more than a lion eating a gazelle is murder.

I'm sure you can get all Philosophy Major about that one, too, but for the average person it's good enough. *shrug*

I actually went back and looked up some of the old SDN threads about it and I'd have to say my position is along the lines of what some people (back in 2010, anyway) kind of hinted at: I probably can't morally/ethically/logically justify eating meat, but I do anyway. I suppose there's a vague sense of "well don't make the animals unduly suffer" but since they're destined to be food anyway it's really pretty easy to put it out of one's mind. As far as the environmental impact is concerned there's the notion of "well maybe we can do it in a more sustainable way" or cut back excessive meat consumption, but I'm certainly not going full vegan and having to take supplements and stuff. I'm gonna keep eating meat and that's just the way it goes, sorry if that offends you.

[Straha]

Masterful job there, equating meat-eating to rape. I thought "Meat is Murder" was as low as they'd go but this... This is a grand, new precedent.

What's the difference then? Explain it.

Furthermore your assertion that we could somehow end up factory farming /people/ if we don't cease consuming meat products is just so absurd that I can't even formulate a proper response.

Funny because this is historically empirically true. Australia did it to the aboriginal peoples as cited above. Britain, Spain, and the United States did it to Native Americans and Africans. Britain did it pretty brutally to Indians. And pretty much the entire Western world relied on the "Women are more bestial than men" argument for a good century to justify patriarchy and misogyny. For me it's not a question of "will we factory farm humans?" that's a outlandish hypothetical, the real question "will we allow the oppression and slaughter of beings because we declare they lack human traits?" That's been answered yes, again and again and again irrespective of biological species.

EDIT: Also, you (and RogueIce) ducked the question I asked. It's not why don't you rape, it's what do you say to the rapist who doesn't care about their victim because their pleasure outweighs. To just declare that there's a biological difference doesn't get to the point I'm making, which is how do you defend your moral system when confronted with others who would reject it. If you can't then there's a problem.

I actually went back and looked up some of the old SDN threads about it and I'd have to say may position is along the lines of what some people (back in 2010, anyway) kind of hinted at: I probably can't morally/ethically/logically justify eating meat, but I do anyway. I suppose there's a vague sense of "well don't make the animals unduly suffer" but since they're destined to be food anyway it's really pretty easy to put it out of one's mind. As far as the environmental impact is concerned there's the notion of "well maybe we can do it in a more sustainable way" or cut back excessive meat consumption, but I'm certainly not going full vegan and having to take supplements and stuff. I'm gonna keep eating meat and that's just the way it goes, sorry if that offends you.

You know what? That's fine. I'm not going to try and convert you and despite my willingness to talk about this whenever I'm not going to pillory you. All I ask is that you keep your logic in mind next time you try to condemn someone for being racist, sexist, whatever. Because if your logic is "this is the group that I belong to and that means they get better protection" your logic is literally no different than the white supremacist.



As an aside, it's funny that the two of you lash out at the rape discussion, because historically that's a line that I've seen used in the streets that almost always guarantees some of the most open and honest discussions. It's also a reason why there has been a wave of battered women's shelters that have been going vegetarian or vegan, because feminist groups have been rallying behind the stop rape in any instance argument and it's a compelling one to a lot of people.

[RogueIce]

You know what? That's fine. I'm not going to try and convert you and despite my willingness to talk about this whenever I'm not going to pillory you. All I ask is that you keep your logic in mind next time you try to condemn someone for being racist, sexist, whatever. Because if your logic is "this is the group that I belong to and that means they get better protection" your logic is literally no different than the white supremacist.

I'll be honest, my moral system more-or-less boils down to, "Try to be good, don't be a bad person."

Naturally defining the difference between good and bad is the tricky part and is obviously very complicated, but that's why I don't really try to get into the morality arguments. I know full well a lot of how I view morality, ethics and the like is pretty much based on my gut feeling of right and wrong. Which obviously isn't something I can take into any kind of formal or logical discussion on the matter. So it's not quite so much "this is the group that I belong to and that means they get better protection" as it is, "Is this what I feel is right or wrong?"

Which probably isn't much better but I can freely admit my shortcomings in this area. I'm not really the intellectual type, sad to say. Not that I value ignorance or anything like that, but, bleh. I don't know how to say it, I guess.

As an aside, it's funny that the two of you lash out at the rape discussion, because historically that's a line that I've seen used in the streets that almost always guarantees some of the most open and honest discussions. It's also a reason why there has been a wave of battered women's shelters that have been going vegetarian or vegan, because feminist groups have been rallying behind the stop rape in any instance argument and it's a compelling one to a lot of people.

Actually I wasn't attacking that rape thing, sorry if it seemed that way. I was just trying to give, what I think anyway, my view of the "layperson" argument and well, you have to admit that's definitely a reaction you could get. It seems that you don't get that reaction from people you talk to, so maybe I'm mistaken on that front. But not knowing where you live, who you talk to, what the general circumstances are when this topic gets brought up and so on means there's obviously lots of variables for how it goes down.

[Straha]

I'll be honest, my moral system more-or-less boils down to, "Try to be good, don't be a bad person."

And that's admirable, really. I think it's probably the only coherent ethical system that we can engage in. But that begs the question I asked earlier why are the practices in that video good and worthy of material support?

There's no wrong answers, bad answers yes, but I'm happy with "It's not but I'm going to do it anyway." because that at least means you're thinking about it on your own. I'm not going to try to engage in the wrecking-ball of reason approach because that's stupid and gets nowhere, see: TEO as a sort of example of that in action, all I ask is that you think about it on your and don't lie/get needlessly defensive if you're going to talk it out.

Which probably isn't much better but I can freely admit my shortcomings in this area. I'm not really the intellectual type, sad to say. Not that I value ignorance or anything like that, but, bleh. I don't know how to say it, I guess.

Ethics is a boring and esoteric field for most. I'm in because... I don't have a choice. You're doing just fine articulating yourself, and however much I disagree with your stance I respect that you'll defend them openly.

Actually I wasn't attacking that rape thing, sorry if it seemed that way. I was just trying to give, what I think anyway, my view of the "layperson" argument and well, you have to admit that's definitely a reaction you could get. It seems that you don't get that reaction from people you talk to, so maybe I'm mistaken on that front. But not knowing where you live, who you talk to, what the general circumstances are when this topic gets brought up and so on means there's obviously lots of variables for how it goes down.

The first time I heard that activists were using that line I thought it would be a great way to preach to the choir/ardent feminists but not a way to convert the masses. I've seen it in person though, and I was wrong. It works wonders on the street, and apparently does consistently across most of the country.

[Losonti Tokash]

Straha, I don't always agree with you, but I love that you're passionate about what you believe in and can communicate it so I at least understand.

As an aside I know someone who is more or less vegan due to digestive problems, but has problems with vitamin B12 deficiencies. What's a good alternative to animal products that isn't made from a fungus?

[RogueIce]

And that's admirable, really. I think it's probably the only coherent ethical system that we can engage in. But that begs the question I asked earlier why are the practices in that video good and worthy of material support?

It's not and I think what I saw in that video is terrible.

My only response is to say to, well, try to do it in a more "humane" way (or as humane as you can call it when raising an animal destined to be killed for food). How you would go about that while being able to produce enough meat for the general public to consume is an answer I don't have, since I probably know less about farming than I do about formal ethics.

That's why I'm not against trying to reduce meat consumption for both general health reasons and to hopefully make it more viable to move away from the factory farm thing if it all possible.