My wife is fortunately still alive so maybe that colours my view. However when I’ve lost other people the blessed anaesthesia of forgetting has been essential in being able to function.
From the short quote it seems like she maybe has a healthy-ish attitude but idk… I feel like this would be a shallow simulacrum that prolongs grief.
Most humans enjoy positions of blithe supremacy. It’s much harder to kill/farm/displace etc creatures if they’re like us and so they are not as we wish to do that.
Scientists are exactly as biased and politically motivated as everyone else, the process is just a bit more self correcting over time. If interpretations are not reenforcing popular ideas they tend not to be taken seriously until evidence is overwhelming.
Look I believe in you and remember goodness isn’t a place you reach it’s a path you walk. If you stray a little that’s no reason to stop trying. Everyone has bad days when we don’t behave to standards that we want to, the important thing is that we keep trying and do better next time.
1 - everyone dies 2 - I assume without evidence that death is generally unpleasant and painful 3 - I assume without evidence animals don’t have complex internal worlds and desires for things like freedom or long life 4 - I assume the lives animals lead in farms is good 5 - I am a naive utiliarian and see no issues with mere addition/the repugnant conclusion 6 - a quick death does not count negatively in a utiliarian sensw C - therefore we should breed as many animals as we can, kill them whenever convenient as long as they are not old, and this makes the world better.
I do not see how 1 through 3 connect to 4 through 6. And 4 through 6 is just the repugnant conclusion.
That is not a chain of reasoning, would you mind trying again. Step by step please.
edit: most charitable read (they blocked me?)
The most charitable read I can see is
1 - everyone dies 2 - I assume without evidence that death is generally unpleasant and painful 3 - I assume without evidence animals don’t have complex internal worlds and desires for things like freedom or long life 4 - I assume the lives animals lead in farms is good 5 - I am a naive utiliarian and see no issues with mere addition/the repugnant conclusion 6 - a quick death does not count negatively in a utiliarian sensw C - therefore we should breed as many animals as we can, kill them whenever convenient as long as they are not old, and this makes the world better.
I do not see how 1 through 3 connect to 4 through 6. And 4 through 6 is just the repugnant conclusion.
I always find this kind of thought process fascinating because I’m also australian and as aussies we use much more than our fair share of resources in this planet. We pollute excessively, drive cars that are much too large, have excessively large homes and use ridiculous amounts of energy. I don’t belong in our ecosystem, my ancestors were brought over by the english same as the bunnies, cats and foxes. Well half the line anyway, the other half is a more recent transplant from post war Poland.
So uhhh I’m pretty sure I’m fucking terrible for the environment, and odds are you are too. Here’s the sticky point though: I actually don’t want to die. I would be pretty fucking upset if you told me I had to get culled to preserve ecosystem balance and prevent “overhousing” of bushland or whatever. Now the way I see it, any right I might have to exist unmolested is predicated on the notion that sentient beings’ desire to live matters, that while I’m not free to do whatever I like and have some responsibility to try and mitigate the harm to others I cause by being alive I am allowed to be alive.
So I’d ask you: why is it OK to shoot kangaroos but not humans? Why are we special? I think I have a life a little more complex than a kangaroo but I’m just guessing and that’s scary anyway because some humans might have more complex lives than me, and some less (e.g. the very young, old, or people with brain injuries) and that seems like a fucked up to all hell calculus to start doing. The kangaroos seem to want to keep being alive, I mean they eat, drink, run away when people start shooting them (the few that jump in front of traffic might be suicidal I’ll pay that but we can’t know).
Also like, those kangaroos are a way lower ecological load than idk all the animal ag we have and we actually have a way to reduce that load without murder. We can just stop breeding them! A plant based agriculture would be much less hard on the land which would allow us a lot more time to find some other way to manage populations, the same compassion we extend to ourselves! Maybe we could teach them about birth control, or less flippantly maybe we could reduce fertility somehow.
Shit maybe the only way for the next little while is killing but that doesn’t mean each death is ethical. They didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just doing a mass murder to avoid a complete murder and tbh if we think we’re being reasonable we ought to be completely comfortable applying the same reasoning to ourselves and I see absolutely nobody signing up eagerly to be population controlled.
It’s actually pretty easy to. you probably wont have a great time if you try eat meatsm based dishes without the meat because they’ll taste lacking and be unbalanced.
Almost all poverty food around the world historically is vegan or at least vegetarian though so there’s huge variety to choose from. In chinese food there’s Buddhist influenced food like: thewoksoflife.com/buddhas-delight-lo-han-jai/, lots of African food is vegetarian or vegan (Ethiopian is stand out here), much south Indian food is and a lot of the stuff with yogurt can be made with soy yoghurt (easy to diy if you like) or cashew cream and a sour note, mexican dishes are easily adaptable too.
Then there are some other hacks like black bean paste and breadcrumbs pressed into patties just works as something you can fry and chuck on a burger (add a few spices to taste), TVP will sub for mince in many saucy dishes where it can absorb the flavour.
You’ll have fun, it’s an adventure that will teach you so much about how food works around the world!
Also you can start immediately by just ordering a vegan option every time you eat out. You don’t have to worry about having the skills or ingredients to do that.
You bookmark my profile, show up randomly to just say nice things to me like this so I feel less like I’m begging into a void (￣▽￣)ノ <3
For real though thanks for the kind words. Because controversy generates engagement saying anything against eating meat gets you inundated with replies, like 1 in 40 of which seem remotely good faith.
I am not sure how you ethically kill someone who doesn’t want to die.
On principle I don’t object to scavenging, I find it repulsive but just like how if you ate your parents when they died nobody would be hurt per se collecting road kill or something is not unusually cruel. Just creepy and gross given the lack of necessity.
But chickens are bred, the excess are killed young, chickens themselves have been selected for some pretty nasty traits in favour of making them more useful to us. Their ancestors live much longer, lay 10x fewer eggs, and don’t grow oversized straining their skeletons. It’s like pugs and stuff, we’ve bred in pain. I doubt your grandmother would give them medical care and comfort aimed at optimising their lives and happiness and only eating them after natural passing.
It’s like when people try to say “oh but such and such a slavery was better than this other slavery” or something. Like ok it’s probably true idk Roman house slaves had better lives than medieval Russian serfs but it doesn’t fundamentally change how unjust the social relation was and how unnecessary that injustice was.