Testing Chat IV: A New Hope

[Darksi4190]

You got some details on those Jaina Solo books you mentioned? I've always liked the character so I'm curious. Hopefully they don't fuck it up. For all that it matters as the new movies may or may not render her non-canon anyway.

The series is called "Sword of the Jedi," and is supposed to be Jaina-centric, but i'm not hopeful. The author, Christie Golden, was the worst of the three authors involved in the "Fate of the Jedi" series. Alliston and Denning's books were at least entertaining to read, even if they were saddled by the overall "the galaxy is once again in peril" plot mandated by the editors. Alliston and Denning were able to do decent characterization, good action, and Alliston had his trademark humor. Golden's books had none of this. Maybe they just suffered because she was the middle writer, but her books are also noticeably shorter than the others. It just doesn't seem like she put much effort into writing them. According to Wookiepedia, FotJ is also the first thing she's ever done for the Star Wars franchise. I like Jaina as a character as well, and I really wish they were giving this series to a more veteran author.

[Straha]

I have a philosophical perspective that defends traditional points of view, and I apologize for getting aggressive, Straha. I don't think we can ever approach each other on this issue, and I regret making the post, because, it just seems silly now to even try to have a conversation about it. I will continue to eat meat according to my standards for the harvesting of meat which make it ethical, until the day I die, because I hold essentially identical value to plant, animal, and my car -- all have a kami, if you will, deserving of respect (which is to say I treat my cars like loyal horses, not the other way around, I hope I can be clear). Basically I see the definition of life we work with itself as being artificial, and regard myself and humans generally as agglomerations of cells working as collectives.

A number of things:

1. If I was overly flippant before it's only because the argument "You're mean to plants" is the probably the most common argument that vegans run into, along with "Don't you know that harvesting plants kills animals?", and it's just a bad argument all around and makes me want to run my head into a wall.

2. You and I definitely agree on the question of treating everything with respect, and I'm not lying when I say I'm a crypto-Jain in most of my life. My approach is more Butlerian based on the idea that we should never try to base our appreciation of other beings on being able to understand their capabilities, and rather should reject the intelligibility of other experiences as recognize them as worthwhile in their own right (very similar to what adr was talking about above.) We also agree on seeing beings as conglomerations of cells working together, which is something I see as being a very important shift in the way we treat and view ethics (I have a journal article coming out on this actually, I keep meaning to make a post in the third area and I swear I'll get to it soon).

3. That said, I'm genuinely curious as to how you reconcile these views with your stance on being an apex predator on two levels. The first is why does violence become permissible against these beings merely out of either tradition (humans have been hunting them for a long time) or human-made circumstances (we're here, the environment has been radically altered, so let's roll with this!)? It seems to be an ex post facto justification of human exploitation, and that leaves me deeply uncomfortable for a variety of reasons that I think are more or less apparent. Second, do you honestly believe that the exploitation of non-human animals is even possibly sustainable given the size of human populations? Case in point: I just got back to New York City yesterday. Is there a way to maintain this metropolitan area's population and engage in sustainable eco-friendly animal exploitation to feed them? Nebraska has roughly two million people living there, can that population engage in flesh-consumption and be sustainable?

I think there's a ton of common ground here because I don't think the answers to those questions can possibly be yes. I think your position logically has to default to one of practical widescale veganism, and that's a position I can get behind as long as you're open about that.

(Also, I'm acutely aware that you come from a more traditionalist background. Your recommendation of Citizens to me was part one of the intellectual journey that has brought me to being a far leftist radical. So thank you. )

[Zod]

What happens to the environment if we were suddenly to release all of these caged animals? Could this lead to desertification and land erosion given the lack of natural predators to keep them in check?

[evilsoup]

I'm pretty sure that a lot of caged animals wouldn't survive in the wild, since they're institutionalised.

[Aaron]

Cows, chicken, turkey will all be eaten by local predators.

Pigs survive well enough if the climate is favourable, they are fucking dangerous as hell once feral.

Sheep probably go the way of the cows, goats are pretty hardy and clever though.

[Zod]

So . . . in the end they still wind up getting eaten, but at least you can console yourself with the fact that you weren't the one doing the eating?

[evilsoup]

anyway, this a red herring, since we're not going to release all the animals suddenly. The best realistic scenario is a generational shift in attitudes, which would be slow enough for the meat industry to gradually be decommissioned.

[Infinity Biscuit]

Even assuming we halted it all in one go, the current generation of animals would still end up dead, yes, but there'd be no further ones raised to be slaughtered.

This really isn't the cutting attack you may have thought it was.

[Straha]

^These two posts.

I'll also posit this, suppose we spot you the entirety of your argument, why is that a reason to keep engaging in animal agriculture?

Edit: Also, Zod, are you in the City still?

I could buy plants having some level of awareness

But I very much doubt it's on the same level as a cow, or even a fish

It also strikes me as more arguable that plants have awareness. With things like cattle you can point to features of the nervous system that are homologous to human ones. With plants you're guessing what the cognition of something without a nervous system looks like.

It also seems to me if you're going to argue that plants are aware you could also argue that bacteria and many artificial machines are aware. They sense and react to their environments, after all.

I agree with a lot of what ADR says, my big thing is that I find the idea that we can understand and base what others think/feel/are to be incredibly problematic and instead try to create a system that accepts both the unintelligibility of all others and an acceptance of our own unintelligibility to others. I'd go on but a lot of it would be repetitive with adr, and I'm not going to be that guy.

As an aside, I just rewatched this video and was wondering what your thoughts on it might be:


http://youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g

[Zod]

^These two posts.

I'll also posit this, suppose we spot you the entirety of your argument, why is that a reason to keep engaging in animal agriculture?

I never said it was. But here's the thing, what makes you think you won't be inadvertently causing more suffering than you prevent? A lot of vegan literature strikes me as manipulative and hypocritical, so I'm a bit skeptical at anyone claiming their path is the most morally correct.

Edit: Also, Zod, are you in the City still?

For at least a couple more months.

[Straha]

I never said it was. But here's the thing, what makes you think you won't be inadvertently causing more suffering than you prevent? A lot of vegan literature strikes me as manipulative and hypocritical, so I'm a bit skeptical at anyone claiming their path is the most morally correct.

Because we're stopping the long term exploitation and slaughter of ten billion animals a year? Just on sheer scale this would be better than the world around us.

I'm also not saying I have 'the most morally correct' path, I think that's a bad way to look at things that leads to a problematic view of the world. I'm just striving for a better way to engage in the world.

For at least a couple more months.

We should have a NYC Testingstan meetup then, especially if other people could make it here.

[Zod]

Because we're stopping the long term exploitation and slaughter of ten billion animals a year? Just on sheer scale this would be better than the world around us.

What makes you think some species won't end up going extinct? Would that be better or worse than their current state of existence?

We should have a NYC Testingstan meetup then, especially if other people could make it here.

How many of us are actually in NYC though? I could probably show up depending on where and when.

[Straha]

Because we're stopping the long term exploitation and slaughter of ten billion animals a year? Just on sheer scale this would be better than the world around us.

What makes you think some species won't end up going extinct? Would that be better or worse than their current state of existence?

What makes that different from now? Just about every cow in existence is going to be murdered in a brutally horrific way well short of their life expectancy, does the fact that they'd die if released make the brutal slaughter of mechanized agriculture acceptable?

I think the way to deal with this is to come up with ways to try and save/transplant the non-humans who are being released from the agriculture system when we start shutting it down. When that day comes I will jump for fucking joy because that problem, no matter how difficult it is, is one that I'm extremely happy to try and challenge. Until that day the most that theorizing about that transition is distracting naval gazing without any real end point.

[adr]

You could always cross the extinction bridge when you come to it, if you do want to avert that outcome. The land we're currently (ab)using for their exploition would then be available, and could, in theory at least, be repurposed to being, idk like nature reserves or something, allowing them to live there without being birthed and slaughtered in a perpetual cycle of human servitude.

This basic concept is why I threw the word 'omniscient' in my one post though. All these tertiary and quaternary effects are far too difficult to predict in advance for any ordinary human to do, and thus serves to either reinforce the status quo (via analysis paralysis) or we try anyway and totally fuck it up (our predictions are often wrong). Maybe God hirself is qualified to be a proper utilitarian, but I don't think any of us are, and we sure as hell don't have a particularly great track record in trying.

Instead, i say we just gotta make do with what we've got and try to do the right thing as things emerge down the line.

[magic princess]

1. If I was overly flippant before it's only because the argument "You're mean to plants" is the probably the most common argument that vegans run into, along with "Don't you know that harvesting plants kills animals?", and it's just a bad argument all around and makes me want to run my head into a wall.

Neither of those was at all what I meant.

2. You and I definitely agree on the question of treating everything with respect, and I'm not lying when I say I'm a crypto-Jain in most of my life. My approach is more Butlerian based on the idea that we should never try to base our appreciation of other beings on being able to understand their capabilities, and rather should reject the intelligibility of other experiences as recognize them as worthwhile in their own right (very similar to what adr was talking about above.) We also agree on seeing beings as conglomerations of cells working together, which is something I see as being a very important shift in the way we treat and view ethics (I have a journal article coming out on this actually, I keep meaning to make a post in the third area and I swear I'll get to it soon).

3. That said, I'm genuinely curious as to how you reconcile these views with your stance on being an apex predator on two levels. The first is why does violence become permissible against these beings merely out of either tradition (humans have been hunting them for a long time) or human-made circumstances (we're here, the environment has been radically altered, so let's roll with this!)? It seems to be an ex post facto justification of human exploitation, and that leaves me deeply uncomfortable for a variety of reasons that I think are more or less apparent. Second, do you honestly believe that the exploitation of non-human animals is even possibly sustainable given the size of human populations? Case in point: I just got back to New York City yesterday. Is there a way to maintain this metropolitan area's population and engage in sustainable eco-friendly animal exploitation to feed them? Nebraska has roughly two million people living there, can that population engage in flesh-consumption and be sustainable?

I don't believe humans alter the environment completely; rather I think human culture is a holistic expression of the environment. "Harsh lives make harsh ways" is an acute description of the Fremen of Arrakis, and also a lovely description of how bedouin live or the Pueblo cities of the southwest prospering in the midst of inhospitable desert. I regard violence as a natural part of human life which is acceptable as a regular course. I think that is the key difference -- I don't hold violence as impermissible at all. I see violence as a natural part of the condition of all life which is regulated by the envirocultural context in which a society has developed in holistic connection to its ecology. Now, I am a child of gentle Caladan and her waves and shores, so natural bounty is very great in my land, but a great deal of it comes from the sea, and though I have essentially given up the consumption of mammals, I would never abandon the consumption of seafood because it is a fundamental part of the human mimetic evolutionary role in my native environment.

Therefore I adhere to the Deep Ecology school as expressed through science fiction by Frank Herbert, as you should be aware of by now. I think that, to quote Chief Sealth, "Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it" and that there is a certain arrogance in declaring that a universalist philosophy of human interaction with nature can exist. In short I object to the idea that you can possibly declare that there is a universal form of ecological morality. My argument is that ecological morality is constructed in relation to a particular ecoregion, and varies legitimately from ecoregion to ecoregion. In short Nebraska is a healthy region because its rural population is presently returning to one that can stably be supported; New York City may well, drawing on the surrounding resources, need to be vegetarian or vegan, perhaps with the exception of intensive aquaculture inspired by the Hawai'ian fish pond model. The diets of people in Nebraska and New York should be radically and incomprehensibly different, and this is one of the reasons I sometimes show Cascadian sentiments. If the Commonwealth of Cascadia ever were to really exist--I would probably be in the conservative opposition in Parliament, standing for the rights of the rural people and natives against the more progressive people in Portland and Seattle and Vancouver, but basically in concurrence on the importance of our society evolving away from the American one to one that incorporates local native traditions to live in harmony with the Cascadian ecoregion.

But I'm not a stranger to violence and I'm not afraid of it, and sometimes it has a place in human society and in the broader ecological world, and I do not think that the absurd arrogance which sapience has conferred to humanity makes it appropriate for us to stop eating meat within the needs of our ecoregion simply because of a presumption of rightness or correctness. I think it is insulting to the Bear, the Wolf, the Coyote, the Eagle, that refusing to accept thousands of years of cultural adaptation to the environment by eating elk and mussels and salmon and crab and clam is to again place ourselves on the top, to proclaim we are more than a thread in society. And if I die of violence myself that's just my fate in the world and you cannot go against fate. In the way, we've evolved to commit some violence in each ecoregion, and in the same way that cultures mediate violence between humans and evolve in each ecoregion differently, so also they mediate violence between species.

I think there's a ton of common ground here because I don't think the answers to those questions can possibly be yes. I think your position logically has to default to one of practical widescale veganism, and that's a position I can get behind as long as you're open about that.

I don't believe so. I think that the cultures which evolved harmoniously with each region, instead, explain how and when to eat meat there and that their rules should be followed. The imposition of large-scale civilization may require adaptation in some situations, but the basic correctness of the natural cultural evolution in a bioregion should not be denied. If our cultures were harmonious with bioregions, then this wouldn't be a problem as changed human states would alter back to harmony with them. In short, the problem is essentially the creation of human societies which are not based on an envirocultural continuum but instead impose cultural practices across many ecoregions with a uniformity in diet.

(Also, I'm acutely aware that you come from a more traditionalist background. Your recommendation of Citizens to me was part one of the intellectual journey that has brought me to being a far leftist radical. So thank you. )

An interesting perspective to take from that book, considering it deeply influenced me toward traditionalist thought.

[Dooey Jo]

ooh we should have a swedish testingstan meetup


by which i mean i should go to a restaurant at some point

[Straha]

1. If I was overly flippant before it's only because the argument "You're mean to plants" is the probably the most common argument that vegans run into, along with "Don't you know that harvesting plants kills animals?", and it's just a bad argument all around and makes me want to run my head into a wall.

Neither of those was at all what I meant.

I think that plants are as capable of feeling and communicating as most animals, and making yourself a vegan is to preferentially choose less anthropomorphic victims of your need to consume as an animal for essentially emotional rather than ethical reasons... Straha's veganism is... part of an animal supremacist ideology

That seems pretty unequivocal.

I don't believe humans alter the environment completely; rather I think human culture is a holistic expression of the environment. "Harsh lives make harsh ways" is an acute description of the Fremen of Arrakis, and also a lovely description of how bedouin live or the Pueblo cities of the southwest prospering in the midst of inhospitable desert. I regard violence as a natural part of human life which is acceptable as a regular course. I think that is the key difference -- I don't hold violence as impermissible at all. I see violence as a natural part of the condition of all life which is regulated by the envirocultural context in which a society has developed in holistic connection to its ecology.

I think that's an overly primitivist view of human life, and a fetishization of the environment. Even if I were to spot you your premises, I think that there are no claims to environmental legitimacy in the first world. To limit myself to just the United States: the strip clearing of trees in the North East in the 1600s, the mass extinction of the Buffalo herds of the Mid-West, the prolific irrigation and water consumption of the South West all so fundamentally altered the environment so as to make it an expression, in large part, of unsustainable human desires. Moreover, I think the environment is not a process that pre-exists the living inhabitants but a creation of a multitude of different beings moving and shaping the world, and that a healthy relationship with other beings is realizing when we've pushed and shape these processes to only favor us. I have a broader critique of the environment, especially because I think the abstraction can end up being used to justify just about anything, but I'll save that for another time and merely say that the environmental systems that we do engage with are broken in large part because of processes like animal agriculture and until we shift away from it en masse sustainability is an impossible pipedream (see: Livestock's Long Shadow for that in action.)

As for violence, again we don't disagree. I do think that violence against the Other is an inevitable part of existence and has historically been a far larger role in existence. My issue comes from you equivocating inevitable or traditional with inherently good. Just because we had to do it doesn't mean that we shouldn't reduce the process as much as possible. I deal with this more directly below, but it's essentially the same question I asked above: What makes this morally good?

Now, I am a child of gentle Caladan and her waves and shores, so natural bounty is very great in my land, but a great deal of it comes from the sea, and though I have essentially given up the consumption of mammals, I would never abandon the consumption of seafood because it is a fundamental part of the human mimetic evolutionary role in my native environment.

That's an argument I don't buy when there are other more environmentally friendly substitutes in existence that allow us to shift away from unnecessary harm of living life. I also find the claim that just because something was part of the evolutionary process that it must, therefor, be good to be incredibly problematic. Cases in point: A number of evolutionary biologists make the direct claim that the human phallus is designed for engaging in rape, and a number have claimed immensely high rates of rape in early human development. Does this mean rape is something that should be protected? Slavery also seems endemic to human existence up until the modern age. Does the fact that it's played a fundamental role in human evolutionary and historical development protect it from attack? Where's the brightline?

My argument, point blank, is that animal agriculture and consumption is one of those processes that are primarily historical and that once we have the ability to exist without it we ought exist without it.

(This leaves aside the thornier epistemological issue of how we determine what is and isn't a part of evolutionary development and what is an expression of cultural development which is what drove me away from any ability to cling to an idea of intelligible evolutionary development in the first place.)

Therefore I adhere to the Deep Ecology school as expressed through science fiction by Frank Herbert, as you should be aware of by now. I think that, to quote Chief Sealth, "Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it" and that there is a certain arrogance in declaring that a universalist philosophy of human interaction with nature can exist. In short I object to the idea that you can possibly declare that there is a universal form of ecological morality.

What is your objection to the claim that we should do the least amount of harm possible to the other?

In short Nebraska is a healthy region because its rural population is presently returning to one that can stably be supported; New York City may well, drawing on the surrounding resources, need to be vegetarian or vegan, perhaps with the exception of intensive aquaculture inspired by the Hawai'ian fish pond model.

Do you honestly think that Nebraska can support two million people with animal flesh as a regular part of the diet without being radically destructive? More importantly, why is it good for the people and environmental processes of Nebraska to engage in such consumption? Are there any benefits beyond human entertainment?

The diets of people in Nebraska and New York should be radically and incomprehensibly different

Mostly agreed. I think transportation and certain mechanization processes of plant agriculture are probably good and should be protected as being the least environmentally harmful option (and even beneficial at times), but local consumption is something I support with caveats (I am by no means a 'localvore', usually quite the opposite.)

But I'm not a stranger to violence and I'm not afraid of it, and sometimes it has a place in human society and in the broader ecological world, and I do not think that the absurd arrogance which sapience has conferred to humanity makes it appropriate for us to stop eating meat within the needs of our ecoregion simply because of a presumption of rightness or correctness.

Why does the ecoregion need us to kill other beings? That's a very tenative claim at best, and I doubt it follows through to actual sustainability, especially on the scale of human population in present day North America. (I will grant that there might be exceptions, deer overpopulation in the North East of the United States being an example of that. The reasons that would make that true, however, come out of human destruction and reconstruction of local environments which would then seem to undercut your broader point that humans are products of, instead of joint producers of, the environment.) Moreover, I'm curious what other system you would propose using besides a question of morality/ethics to judge our engagement with others?

I think it is insulting to the Bear, the Wolf, the Coyote, the Eagle, that refusing to accept thousands of years of cultural adaptation to the environment by eating elk and mussels and salmon and crab and clam is to again place ourselves on the top, to proclaim we are more than a thread in society.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. Could you elaborate?

I don't believe so. I think that the cultures which evolved harmoniously with each region, instead, explain how and when to eat meat there and that their rules should be followed. The imposition of large-scale civilization may require adaptation in some situations, but the basic correctness of the natural cultural evolution in a bioregion should not be denied. If our cultures were harmonious with bioregions, then this wouldn't be a problem as changed human states would alter back to harmony with them. In short, the problem is essentially the creation of human societies which are not based on an envirocultural continuum but instead impose cultural practices across many ecoregions with a uniformity in diet.

I am highly skeptical of claims that 'harmonious' evolution with other groups can involve regular, systemic, brutal violence. I am more curious how you think modern first world culture evolved with, say, the North East corridor. Because that seems to be an ahistorical reading of our relation to other species over the past four hundred years. Perhaps you could define what it means to be harmonious with a group, because right now I think a case could be made based on the way you're phrasing it that European civilization had a harmonious relationship with Jewish groups in the Middle Ages.

An interesting perspective to take from that book, considering it deeply influenced me toward traditionalist thought.

It pushed me traditionalist too for a while, but it made me look a lot more at power relations which ended up with me engaging directly with Foucault and Agamben, then with a number of other theorists which eventually made me realize the inherent mass violence that is coupled with traditional power structures and turned me into whatever I am today.

[zhaktronz]

If meat consumption is harming the environment then eventually meat production will degrade the environment in such a way as to render meat production more expensive. This will make meat less attractive to consumers in comparison to plant products. Thus if we keep consuming meat at the current rate we maximise the speed at which meat production will eventually become untenable and a plant based subsistence model will become the norm.

Qed

[magic princess]

I think that plants are as capable of feeling and communicating as most animals, and making yourself a vegan is to preferentially choose less anthropomorphic victims of your need to consume as an animal for essentially emotional rather than ethical reasons... Straha's veganism is... part of an animal supremacist ideology

That seems pretty unequivocal.

Yes, but it was just a facet of a broader critique I then elaborated on, after apologising for the first statement. I will continue to elaborate, of course.

I think that's an overly primitivist view of human life, and a fetishization of the environment.

I think human life is intensely primitive and that modern developments have largely served to produce neuroses. Ah, but if only I could find the mouse (or was it rat?) study that showed how population density literally drives human dysfunction. It helped make me a rural agrarianist, though. I grew up eight miles out of town in the middle of nowhere in the foothills, and some time in 2009 or 2010 I do believe I just started crying driving along the state highway in the floodplain near my home, looking around at the Cascade foothills and realizing that I was born by them, I'd grown up by them, and I was going to live my life where the mountains meet the sea, and I loved the thought of that--and that was my /motherland/, the soil I was born into, and it was more important than anything else. That, alas, is not an experience I can convey to you... Or something you can take from me.

Even if I were to spot you your premises, I think that there are no claims to environmental legitimacy in the first world. To limit myself to just the United States: the strip clearing of trees in the North East in the 1600s, the mass extinction of the Buffalo herds of the Mid-West, the prolific irrigation and water consumption of the South West all so fundamentally altered the environment so as to make it an expression, in large part, of unsustainable human desires.

Oh, there is going to be a very great correction of first world practices, but I think by my philosophy of deep ecology it is already happening. I don't believe that the decline in birth rate is a result of human decisions so much as it is a biological response to human overpopulation throughout the western world. Note how it breaks down by ethnic groups with radically different practices (the Maori/English New Zealander split for instance). I think the culture is expressing the environment there and that human population levels will naturally return to stable levels in the west. For a variety of socio-cultural reasons the population of France seemed to follow a healthier trend until the second half of the 20th century and I expect that broadly the industrialized world needs to lose about 40% of its population based on that example to stabilize at a healthy level.

Moreover, I think the environment is not a process that pre-exists the living inhabitants but a creation of a multitude of different beings moving and shaping the world, and that a healthy relationship with other beings is realizing when we've pushed and shape these processes to only favor us. I have a broader critique of the environment, especially because I think the abstraction can end up being used to justify just about anything, but I'll save that for another time and merely say that the environmental systems that we do engage with are broken in large part because of processes like animal agriculture and until we shift away from it en masse sustainability is an impossible pipedream (see: Livestock's Long Shadow for that in action.)

I don't think animal agriculture is the problem, but rather that over-concentration of animals is attendant to overconcentration of humans. The best thing to do would be to require each animal to exist within the limits of its evolved niche within our society; Goats are raised and used to the extent of the highland grazing we have; sheep or cattle (which I don't eat at all out of religious respect reasons) to the extent of lowland grazing; chickens are fed on scraps and waste and hogs the same. Traditional aquaculture like that practiced in Hawai'i is permitted, but intensive fish farming is not. Harvesting of wild animals is set to carrying limits. The intent of the ecology is honoured, in short.

As for violence, again we don't disagree. I do think that violence against the Other is an inevitable part of existence and has historically been a far larger role in existence. My issue comes from you equivocating inevitable or traditional with inherently good. Just because we had to do it doesn't mean that we shouldn't reduce the process as much as possible. I deal with this more directly below, but it's essentially the same question I asked above: What makes this morally good?

What makes anything morally good? I see it as an inevitability, not a good, that the principles of deep ecology be adhered to--and like I said, see population collapse in the western world and Japan as a corrective of the ecological connections of life that is already being applied. I don't think humans can effectively judge moral good and so have to rely on signs from the world around us as to a rough approximation of what it is; thus my support for traditionalism.

That's an argument I don't buy when there are other more environmentally friendly substitutes in existence that allow us to shift away from unnecessary harm of living life. I also find the claim that just because something was part of the evolutionary process that it must, therefor, be good to be incredibly problematic. Cases in point: A number of evolutionary biologists make the direct claim that the human phallus is designed for engaging in rape, and a number have claimed immensely high rates of rape in early human development. Does this mean rape is something that should be protected? Slavery also seems endemic to human existence up until the modern age. Does the fact that it's played a fundamental role in human evolutionary and historical development protect it from attack? Where's the brightline?

Force change. Then see what the new equilibrium is. But you cannot avoid equilibrium. My objection is trying to keep the oscillations continuing indefinitely, which seems to be a human function. I suspect people like you will succeed enough to end factory farming--and then you will be ignored until you go away. This will serve the purposes of the environmental balance, and the environmental pressures on cultural mimetics are what are driving you. Broadly my belief is that, again, we can only dimly discern morality from how our surroundings organise themselves over a long period of time.

My argument, point blank, is that animal agriculture and consumption is one of those processes that are primarily historical and that once we have the ability to exist without it we ought exist without it.

(This leaves aside the thornier epistemological issue of how we determine what is and isn't a part of evolutionary development and what is an expression of cultural development which is what drove me away from any ability to cling to an idea of intelligible evolutionary development in the first place.)

And my response is that animal herding and grazing practices and fish/shellfish aquaculture will be practiced where they work best and abandoned where they do not, and that attempts to spread them contrary to the environment of a region will ultimately see an envirocultural pushback which will influence that society back into equilibrium with its environment.

What is your objection to the claim that we should do the least amount of harm possible to the other?

My objection isn't to that statement, but rather to the belief that is possible for humans to know what the least amount of harm actually is. I think the ecosystem itself determines that, and drives us into a balanced state--by causing mass death and destruction among humans if necessary, other times by much more subtle methods. The Mayan and the inhabitants of Easter Isle didn't die out. They were just made to conform with the situation on the ground. We will be, also.

Do you honestly think that Nebraska can support two million people with animal flesh as a regular part of the diet without being radically destructive?

It depends on how you define regular. My rate of animal consumption is about 1/20th of the average American; but it still forms an important part of the life of many people in terms of nutrition and other factors. But yes, certainly Nebraska can if managed properly provide the same level of meat consumption as say Ukrainian peasants had in the 16th century.

More importantly, why is it good for the people and environmental processes of Nebraska to engage in such consumption? Are there any benefits beyond human entertainment?

The benefits are unknowable. The only quantifiable trait of an ecoregion is that we know that the native Americans who originally lived there hunted buffalo and that with higher population densities the Ukrainians on similar ecoregions with our cultural heritage herded. So we go with that, and see where the different factors ultimately come into balance over the centuries. Human arrogance is in assuming that exact morality is a knowable trait.

Mostly agreed. I think transportation and certain mechanization processes of plant agriculture are probably good and should be protected as being the least environmentally harmful option (and even beneficial at times), but local consumption is something I support with caveats (I am by no means a 'localvore', usually quite the opposite.)

I only really favour trade in the smallest of dried commodities, since it seems by far the most sustainable -- spices, etc.

Why does the ecoregion need us to kill other beings? That's a very tenative claim at best, and I doubt it follows through to actual sustainability, especially on the scale of human population in present day North America.

I don't know the answer to that question, but humans living in nearly all ecoregions engaged in hunting, and I think that humans living in an ecoregion and doing something that wasn't useful to its balance over a long enough period of time would suffer a corrective and cease to do it. The Mayan stopped building cities except for a few small ceremonial cities around lakes and the inhabitants of Easter Island stopped raising statues. But they both still ate meat. I think if the meat eating was disadvantageous on a large scale, then social collapses as a result of its consumption would have occurred in many cultures over history.

(I will grant that there might be exceptions, deer overpopulation in the North East of the United States being an example of that. The reasons that would make that true, however, come out of human destruction and reconstruction of local environments which would then seem to undercut your broader point that humans are products of, instead of joint producers of, the environment.) Moreover, I'm curious what other system you would propose using besides a question of morality/ethics to judge our engagement with others?

A system of imitating accrued experience for a given area.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. Could you elaborate?

They were driven to adapt to eat meat, if an ecoregion promotes us in eating meat in it, we should accept that also.

I am highly skeptical of claims that 'harmonious' evolution with other groups can involve regular, systemic, brutal violence. I am more curious how you think modern first world culture evolved with, say, the North East corridor. Because that seems to be an ahistorical reading of our relation to other species over the past four hundred years. Perhaps you could define what it means to be harmonious with a group, because right now I think a case could be made based on the way you're phrasing it that European civilization had a harmonious relationship with Jewish groups in the Middle Ages.

I'm referring to harmony with the ecoregion as a collectivity, not necessarily the species themselves, which may be in strife and conflict--Spotted Owls may for instance be driven extinct, but the Owl species taking their place will be driven to behave in similar ways to them, taking their place in the ecoregion.

It pushed me traditionalist too for a while, but it made me look a lot more at power relations which ended up with me engaging directly with Foucault and Agamben, then with a number of other theorists which eventually made me realize the inherent mass violence that is coupled with traditional power structures and turned me into whatever I am today.

Foucault just cemented an anti-modernist belief set in me. Probably because I'm willing to accept the spectacle and paegentry of traditional punishment and regard violence as normative in state organisation without any real reason to criticize it, just as we don't criticize violence between wolf and deer; whereas, to me, the modern Panoptical surveillance apparatus is troubling, even fundamentally terrifying at the core of my being.

[magic princess]

If meat consumption is harming the environment then eventually meat production will degrade the environment in such a way as to render meat production more expensive. This will make meat less attractive to consumers in comparison to plant products. Thus if we keep consuming meat at the current rate we maximise the speed at which meat production will eventually become untenable and a plant based subsistence model will become the norm.

Qed

That's actually exactly what is happening. The environment will also rapidly recover; I think a lot of people ignore just how quickly the jungle returned when Tikal became a memory cast in stone.

[Flagg]

If meat consumption is harming the environment then eventually meat production will degrade the environment in such a way as to render meat production more expensive. This will make meat less attractive to consumers in comparison to plant products. Thus if we keep consuming meat at the current rate we maximise the speed at which meat production will eventually become untenable and a plant based subsistence model will become the norm.

Qed

That's actually exactly what is happening. The environment will also rapidly recover; I think a lot of people ignore just how quickly the jungle returned when Tikal became a memory cast in stone.

Well considering the fact that we are altering the entire global climate...

[magic princess]

If meat consumption is harming the environment then eventually meat production will degrade the environment in such a way as to render meat production more expensive. This will make meat less attractive to consumers in comparison to plant products. Thus if we keep consuming meat at the current rate we maximise the speed at which meat production will eventually become untenable and a plant based subsistence model will become the norm.

Qed

That's actually exactly what is happening. The environment will also rapidly recover; I think a lot of people ignore just how quickly the jungle returned when Tikal became a memory cast in stone.

Well considering the fact that we are altering the entire global climate...

That isn't really a big difference from the continent-wide changes humans induced even in our birthland of Africa through controlled burns tens of thousands of years ago.

[Flagg]

If meat consumption is harming the environment then eventually meat production will degrade the environment in such a way as to render meat production more expensive. This will make meat less attractive to consumers in comparison to plant products. Thus if we keep consuming meat at the current rate we maximise the speed at which meat production will eventually become untenable and a plant based subsistence model will become the norm.

Qed

That's actually exactly what is happening. The environment will also rapidly recover; I think a lot of people ignore just how quickly the jungle returned when Tikal became a memory cast in stone.

Well considering the fact that we are altering the entire global climate...

That isn't really a big difference from the continent-wide changes humans induced even in our birthland of Africa through controlled burns tens of thousands of years ago.

Say whaaaaaaaaaat?

[zhaktronz]

We did it an Australia too duchess

[magic princess]

++http://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/847.full

Long story short, humans actually burned more biomass in Africa 70 - 40k years ago than they do today and radically altered the climate of the entire continent because of it.