• Makeshift
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    1 year ago

    Unpopular take: Good people doing bad things does not make the bad things not bad. Yes, purchasing and consuming animal products is a morally bad thing to do. It is not morally neutral.

    So yes, by consuming animal products, you are a worse person than you would be if you were not.

    Your choice is to purchase the bodies of the dead and “respect” the fact they at they were killed by turning them into sewage. Your choice is to financially reward those who bring them into existence for the sole purpose of killing them for your pleasure and the killers’ profit. This is not a morally neutral thing. This is a morally bad thing.

    Personal choice stops being personal when there’s a victim. The victim is the one whose corpse is being ground up in your mouth.

    • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Look, I agree that eating meat is morally bad, I accept that. What most extremist vegetarians need to accept is that there’s people that simple don’t care about animals as much as them, I don’t really care about it just like I don’t really care about some bad things happening in the world, I know that it’s morally wrong, and I’ll push for more options for the people that do care, but I won’t restrict my diet or personally try to fix those things, because I don’t care enough.

      And this sounds quite rude and I look like an ass, I know, but the reality is that there’s a lot of people that think exactly like this. Hell there’s tons of people that thinks like this about actual humans. You won’t convince those people because in the end, it’s their decision and as bad as eating red meat etc is for the body and global warming etc, so are tons of other stuff that people do.

      I really advocate for more vegetarian stuff, I actually enjoy seitan/tofu and dishes with them, but the fact is that I’ll keep consuming meat once in a while, and when you start trying to make every meat consumer your enemy, you also make people from my group, people that actually push for more progress, your enemy, and that’s honestly a bad way to make progress.

      This is going to be a generational progress, there’s way more vegetarian teenagers than 40+ people, and every friend group I frequent on my age range 25-35 has at least someone vegetarian, and businesses naturally will offer more options because if they won’t they’ll lose business.

      Try not making society your enemy, because if you do you will become the enemy of society.

      • MobileTechGuy@lemmy.mlOP
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        1 year ago

        And the angel of the lord came unto me, Snatching me up from my place of slumber, And took me on high and higher still Until we moved to the spaces betwixt the air itself, And he brought me unto a vast farmland of our own Midwest, And as we descended, cries of impending doom rose from the soil; One thousand, nay, a million, voices full of fear, And terror possessed me then, And I begged “Angel of the Lord, what are these tortured screams?”, And the angel said unto me “These are the cries of the carrots, the cries of the carrots! You see, Reverend Maynard, Tomorrow is harvest day, and to them, it is the holocaust!” And I sprang from my slumber, drenched in sweat, Like the tears of one million terrified brothers and roared “Hear me now, I have seen the light! They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers!”

        • TurtlePower@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          This is necessary This is necessary Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on This is necessary This is necessary Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life

    • Milk@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Your opinion isn’t unpopular and you are not oppressed if the media supports you.

      The problem is when the animal suffers. Animals eat other animals all the time and you’re not a killer if you want to eat meat and be healthy.

      If killing animals to eat them is immoral and sadistic even if the animal doesn’t suffer then why you kill fucking plants to eat them? I value animals’ lives and plants’ lives more than human lives but I won’t stop eating just because of that neither will force people or say they’re killers cause they’re eating something that was previously alive.

      • Volfkha@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Animals eat other animals out of necessity to survive. Humans don’t need to consume animal products at all to be healthy.

        If you pay someone to kill and/or torture an animal, mortality wise that is the same as doing it yourself.

        Is this a super hypothetical animal not suffering? Every animal that is any of the following: subjugated, imprisoned, artificially inseminated, branded, murdered, factory farmed, either taken from his/her mother or their offspring taken from them, neglected etc. Suffers. I don’t know how much you know about the farming industry, but the vast majority of farmed animals will suffer horrendously and be killed unkindly, unjustly and will before their natural lifespan. Their lives and murder are a real-life hell. Knocking the animals out before slitting their throats doesn’t always work. Many, many animals end up taking ages to die while being conscious. Many animals are boiled alive because they didn’t get knocked out. But that is just at the point of being murdered… almost all farm animals up to that point will have suffered varying degrees of mental and physical torture.

        I don’t know if you are joking about comparing eating plants being the same as eating animals. A lot of meat eaters do seem to make that argument as if it is genuine, so I’ll respond to it by pasting a part of a book I read recently about it;

        "Firstly and most obviously, it’s important to address the science behind this. A plant lacks a central nervous system, pain receptors and a brain which means that anatomically they don’t have the ability to feel pain.

        If we also consider that the primary reason human and non-human animals feel pain is to alert us that we are in danger or are being hurt and that we need to escape the situation that we are in, a plant cannot move and thus any pain would be inescapable, making life torturous for any plant. Which begs the question, why would plants ever evolve such a horribly debilitating and destructive characteristic, as it goes against the fundamental purpose of evolution?

        If we now view the “plants feel pain argument” from a creationist point of view, why would a benevolent and compassionate God give such a horrible curse to plants? Why would he allow them to suffer so terribly, if it served no purpose for their survival?

        I think part of where the confusion regarding plants and pain comes from is that it is true that they are alive and they conduct various activities at a cellular level, such as tilting to face the sunlight. In fact, plants are capable of doing some truly amazing things, but they do not conduct any activities at a conscious or cognitive level, in essence meaning that plants are not sentient.

        I think a really good way of highlighting this to people is to point out that plants react but they don’t respond. A venus fly trap shuts itself on to a fly, not because it is consciously aware that a fly has landed onto it, but because it reacts to the pressure stimuli caused when the fly lands onto it. This is why the venus flytrap will close around anything that triggers this response, including cigarette butts. A cow on the other hand, won’t eat cigarette butts just because someone puts them in their mouth because a cow consciously responds.

        If we move past the science of whether or not plants feel pain and concentrate on the ethics of the excuse, I am doubtful that anyone truly believes that dropping a cauliflower into boiling water and boiling chickens alive (something that often happens in the chicken slaughtering process) is the same thing. Nobody thinks that slicing the neck of a cow is similar to cutting the stems off a broccoli, or castrating a pig is similar to peeling a potato. But say the person you are talking to is determined that plants feel pain like animals do - it takes up to 16 kilograms of plants to create 1 kilogram of animal flesh, meaning vastly more plants are killed in the production of animal products than they are vegan products. On top of this it’s important to note that up to 91% of Amazon rainforest destruction is due to animal agriculture, meaning that millions of trees have been and continues to be destroyed because of our consumption of animal products.

        So if the person you are speaking to truly believes that plants feel pain and are sentient, then remind them that by consuming non-vegan products they are not only causing the suffering of animals but also causing the alleged suffering of huge amounts of plants as well. To be honest, if this excuse comes up I often avoid talking about the science of whether or not plants have the ability to feel pain as sometimes people will say, “but science has only gone so far” and they get stuck with that point. Instead, I often just go straight into talking about the amount of crops killed for animal products, so perhaps try asking: “For the sake of discussion, let’s say plants do feel pain, are you aware that it can take up to 16 kilograms of plants to create 1 kilogram of animal flesh, so vastly more plants are murdered for animal products than they are vegan products?” You could also ask, “If you were driving down the road and a dog jumped out in front of your car, would you swerve onto a bed of flowers to avoid hitting the dog?” - this reinforces in people’s minds that there is morally a difference between non-human animals and plants, as in that situation we would always choose to avoid the dog and instead hit the plants"

        • Milk@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          Plants can feel pain and it’s not a creationist standpoint, they just can’t make a visible reaction but they do transmit very small electric charges in reaction to pain. Plants also can react to other things like sounds and it is sometimes used to make them grow better. Also, they can’t scream but they’re still alive so you’re still murdering them.

          Animals aren’t tortured cause of the simple fact stress makes their meat bad (and it would be a crime and stupid to torture an animal just cause you can) and sometimes nearly not edible and, if you couldn’t notice, people don’t eat bad meat.

          “Lie for youself if you want but not to me.” You can pretend your unhealthy is helping someone but you can’t say to people it is healthy. Vegans face many health issues and are, almost always, very underweight; humans are omnivores and not herbivores. Destroy your body if want but don’t lie to other people and encourage them to do the same.

          • Volfkha@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            I figured you have been trolling from the start but ok… A visible reaction in plants = pain? Just because there is a reaction in something, doesn’t mean it has to be pain. How do you know the reaction isn’t pleasure or you know… just a reaction without a feeling involved?

            Also, I didn’t say that it was just a creationist idea, part of the book passage I pasted covered that incase people try to argue it from that standpoint, but the main focus is the science behind the idea I’m pretty sure the concept of murder covers sentient beings.

            But let’s say for sake of argument they do feel pain, many, many more plants are grown and ‘murdered’, as you put it, to be fed to farm animals than straight to humans. So for the human race to cut down on both animal and plant murder, it would be best to cut out animal farming altogether which would save both trillions of animals and many more trillions of plants from being tortured and murdered. Humans obviously need to eat to survive, so why not go with the way that causes the least suffering both animal and plant wise, if it can’t be cut out completely?

            To quote my favourite philosopher as to why he was vegetarian “cows scream louder than carrots”.

            You may continue to voice your mis/disinformation about veganism being unhealthy, but these days there’s so much proof that being vegan can be healthy, not only healthy but has many health benefits over a meat eating diet including missing out on all kinds of diseases which come from a meaty diet. Biologically speaking it seems humans have most in common with frugivores. I’m thinking most people think we are omnivores simply because we are able to eat both plants and animals. Real omnivores are many times biologically better evolved to have meat in their diet.

            Several of the biggest health organisations in the world have confirmed that a vegan diet is healthy. I don’t know where you get your information from, but it is incredibly faulty.

            • Milk@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 year ago

              Reaction to being damaged ≠ pain? So how can you know animals feel pain if someone damaged them? It may be just pleasure. Absolutely not, nature won’t make plants seek for their doom for whatever reason.

              • Volfkha@sopuli.xyz
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                1 year ago

                If you watch animals reacting to pain, pretty sure most people (including non-human animals) with a brain can recognise the animals are trying to escape the pain. They audibly scream and cry when in pain. They either try to run away or defend themselves. I’m pretty sure there have been countless experiments on animals that prove beyond any doubt that they experience pain very similarly to us human animals.

                We know for a fact that animals have central nervous systems and most people can tell when other sentient beings are in pain because we know how it feels to be in pain ourselves.

                Do you honestly believe plants feel pain? Or is it just some kind of weird tactic to justify continuing to enslave, torture and murder animals?

                I think you mentioned earlier about people using sound to help plants grow; another way to help plants grow is to prune them. I’m not a gardener by any means, but it seems with many plants the more you prune, the stronger and bigger the plant eventually becomes.

                So speaking hypothetically, it’s not outside the realms of possibility that if plants were able to feel for some reason, then maybe it does feel good to be cut shorter so that it can come back bigger, stronger and more capable of surviving than before.