Well… Raping is wrong, right? Say there is this guy, he doesn’t always rape, just sometimes when he’s in the mood. But not always. Should we applaud this flexi-rapist for doing something aweful a little less?
Life consumes other life to live. Humans have evolved to eat meat, we are living beings, a part of this planet just like a lion or hawk.
The lives we must take to live, whether they are plant, animal, or both, were not decided by us but by nature. Killing and eating to live is the only moral reason one has to harm another living being. This is not nice, it’s just nature. Does the wild boar chased to it’s death by a tiger not suffer a cruel death? Does that make the tiger evil?
Animal Agriculture and Massive Human Populations
Our modern animal agriculture industry is what’s wrong, it is disgusting and evil and treats conscious beings as objects indifferent to their suffering. But feeding 8 billion people can only be accomplished using an industrial food industry.
The answer is not trying to turn 8 billion people into vegans, that is simply not going to happen. Rather, we should be striving to reduce our numbers and change culture to respect animals and their sacrifice for our food.
One of the more effective ways to do that are to eat like a “flexitarian” and reduce the amount of dependence on the animal agriculture industry. The other key way to reduce animal suffering is not something an individual has control over – to have a human population that is not grotesquely oversized for the environment.
Our species has no entitlement to grow to maximum size and kill other beings to support this unnecessary growth. The Haber-Bosch process effectively caused human eutrophication, an imbalance, and like the overgrown algae causing fish kills in lakes, our numbers are causing the unnecessary death of a great many species in our environment and will lead to ecological failure if not taken care of. The solution to eutrophication in a lake is stop the overflow of nutrients.
While it’s possible in modern times for a person to live on a vegan diet, it’s not a normal, not healthy without significant effort and education, or more moral.
There will never be a time when no humans eat meat. Therefore, we should strive to reduce the suffering required to sustain our own life. Eating flexitarian is a highly practical way to do this. If an individual is willing to sacrifice their health and/or work to gain the knowledge required to be healthy without consuming animals at all (i.e. be vegan) then good for them, but this cannot be expected to occur globally.
There’s one big flaw in your logic; humans don’t need to eat meat. It’s just a cultural thing, tastebuds. So whatever your justifications are they are for pleasure. So all there’s left to say is that I hope that you are entertained by all the unnecessary suffering. The propaganda hit you good!
There’s one big flaw in your logic; humans don’t need to eat meat
We can survive and with significant effort and education some can even thrive without meat in modern times with B12 supplementation. What you might be able to do as a wealthy American or similar cannot be expected of the rest of the world.
did you notice the “or simiar” part? That meant if you’re from somewhere where you’re wealthy enough to by vitamin supplements and do stuff like use the internet to post to Lemmy you’re way ahead of much of the world who do not have access to these things.
Is this actually news? Seems old to me, thanks OP though for bringing it up again.
The term flexitarian is new to me anyway. Happy this concept is getting more press anyway
Well… Raping is wrong, right? Say there is this guy, he doesn’t always rape, just sometimes when he’s in the mood. But not always. Should we applaud this flexi-rapist for doing something aweful a little less?
Eating meat is not inherently wrong, raping is.
Life consumes other life to live. Humans have evolved to eat meat, we are living beings, a part of this planet just like a lion or hawk.
The lives we must take to live, whether they are plant, animal, or both, were not decided by us but by nature. Killing and eating to live is the only moral reason one has to harm another living being. This is not nice, it’s just nature. Does the wild boar chased to it’s death by a tiger not suffer a cruel death? Does that make the tiger evil?
Animal Agriculture and Massive Human Populations
Our modern animal agriculture industry is what’s wrong, it is disgusting and evil and treats conscious beings as objects indifferent to their suffering. But feeding 8 billion people can only be accomplished using an industrial food industry.
The answer is not trying to turn 8 billion people into vegans, that is simply not going to happen. Rather, we should be striving to reduce our numbers and change culture to respect animals and their sacrifice for our food.
One of the more effective ways to do that are to eat like a “flexitarian” and reduce the amount of dependence on the animal agriculture industry. The other key way to reduce animal suffering is not something an individual has control over – to have a human population that is not grotesquely oversized for the environment.
Our species has no entitlement to grow to maximum size and kill other beings to support this unnecessary growth. The Haber-Bosch process effectively caused human eutrophication, an imbalance, and like the overgrown algae causing fish kills in lakes, our numbers are causing the unnecessary death of a great many species in our environment and will lead to ecological failure if not taken care of. The solution to eutrophication in a lake is stop the overflow of nutrients.
While it’s possible in modern times for a person to live on a vegan diet, it’s not a normal, not healthy without significant effort and education, or more moral.
There will never be a time when no humans eat meat. Therefore, we should strive to reduce the suffering required to sustain our own life. Eating flexitarian is a highly practical way to do this. If an individual is willing to sacrifice their health and/or work to gain the knowledge required to be healthy without consuming animals at all (i.e. be vegan) then good for them, but this cannot be expected to occur globally.
There’s one big flaw in your logic; humans don’t need to eat meat. It’s just a cultural thing, tastebuds. So whatever your justifications are they are for pleasure. So all there’s left to say is that I hope that you are entertained by all the unnecessary suffering. The propaganda hit you good!
We can survive and with significant effort and education some can even thrive without meat in modern times with B12 supplementation. What you might be able to do as a wealthy American or similar cannot be expected of the rest of the world.
I’m from a third world country you goon.
did you notice the “or simiar” part? That meant if you’re from somewhere where you’re wealthy enough to by vitamin supplements and do stuff like use the internet to post to Lemmy you’re way ahead of much of the world who do not have access to these things.
…
it’s pretty crazy that no one in this thread has mentioned that going vegan would have a larger impact.
I am vegan and I would say that but it would result in a big circle jerk as always of “hurr durr bacon”.