jasonk wrote:I am not persuaded that I am being controlled through advertisement propaganda.
Then it's your choice to eat meat instead of vegetables, and it's the wrong choice because it's causing more harm.
You can't control other people, you can only control you.
If you can choose between A and B, where action B results in more harm (regardless of who else is doing what), and you choose B, then you are doing wrong.
jasonk wrote:And just like buying products made from slavery in 1700 didn't make one evil, buying meat to eat doesn't make one evil today.
Bullshit, of course it did.
A. The coat on your left is made from cotton picked by free men. It costs $5
B. The coat on your right is made from cotton picked by slaves. It costs $5
The coats are of equal quality; they will both keep you warm.
If you choose B instead of A, you are making an immoral choice.
Regardless of what anybody else does, you are supporting slavery over freedom.
The reason the government had to step in and end slavery is because consumers were not responsible enough to do it themselves -- because too many consumers were selfish, and like you, imagined their hands clean. They were not as well educated in ethics and economics as modern people, and didn't have the internet to learn from each other like you have.
One of the many results of this was the civil war, and all of that blood was on the hands of those complacent consumers too.
IF and ONLY IF there was no choice (there was only B, no A available), then could you excuse yourself, because morality is an artifact of choice --
your choice -- stop blaming other people.
As long as your choice has an effect on the world, the positive or negative value of that effect defines the morality of that choice.
jasonk wrote:
I don't think that this is evil though. Consider my point about the restaurant. If the owner of a restaurant is an evil racist, me eating at the restaurant does not make me racist or evil. The actual evil being done is the racism. Likewise the actual evil being done is the killing of animals.
You completely fail to understand consequentialism.
The consequences of an act make it good or evil.
Racism in itself is not evil unless the person is doing harmful deeds (because racism tends to cause harmful deeds we see it as evil, but in itself, if it does nothing, it is impotent).
IF that restaurant owner was going to do the same amount of evil whether you patronized the restaurant or not (maybe he has another income source, or is just wealthy), then it wouldn't matter if you went to the restaurant.
BUT if that restaurant owner relied on the income from the restaurant to fund his evil deeds, and you knew this, then of course you would be morally wrong to patronize the restaurant and provide him income.
UNLESS there was no other restaurant available (and no other source of food).
A choice that results in more harm in the world is that choice which is morally wrong.
Patronizing that restaurant, thus giving the evil manager more money to do evil with, would be wrong if you could patronize another non-evil restaurant, thus depriving the evil person of resources to do evil with. The goal is that the consequences of your action reduce the amount of harm in the world, not increase it.
Right now, you complacently indulge in actions that increase harm, and then you just blame others.
jasonk wrote:
If it is wrong to kill animals, then clearly killing animals is wrong. It doesn't matter if you are getting paid to do it. It doesn't matter if there is someone else who will do it. A murderer is still a murderer even if they are getting paid and even if there would have been someone else willing to do it.
No one is holding a gun to the vegan's head saying, 'kill these animals.' The vegan is not a slave. The vegan is killing the animals of his own free will. Clearly this wrong.
Your intuition is wrong, or you have no coherent concept of rational ethics. You seem to be stuck in a religious concept of sinful acts that impart uncleanliness upon doing them. That's not how morality works.
It is NOT wrong to kill as an
action. Nothing in itself as an action is inherently wrong, only comparative consequences. It is wrong through your choices to cause an increase in harm compared to not taking it (crudely).
You are presented with the choice: A. Eat meat B. Don't eat meat
You choose A, and this causes an increase in harm in the world compared to B.
A vegan at a slaughterhouse is presented with A. Work at the slaughterhouse B. Work somewhere else (if lucky enough to have a choice)
If he or she chooses A, it will NOT increase the harm in the world. This action is morally neutral.
For the slaughterhouse worker, the animal would still be bred and killed whether he or she was there or not.
For you, the animal will only be bred and killed if you purchased his or her predecessor.
Your choice is increasing the harm in the world. The worker's choice is not.
The belief that is it a particular brand of behavior which is inherently magically immoral regardless of consequence is not a rational one: it's essentially a religious mentality.
For a freegan, it is morally fine to eat meat from a dumpster, because it will not cause an increase in harm to the world.
jasonk wrote:
This argument makes no sense when compared to the hitman analogy given earlier. The hitman is getting paid to do a job, therefore he is innocent? Think about the hitman's children and family? These are not good arguments.
I already explained the differences to the hitman analogy in another post.
Hitmen are very few and far between. If one hitman will not take the hit, there is no guarantee the person ordering the hit will find another. More hitmen also meaningfully drive the price of a hit down, and market their services (getting people who may not have ordered a hit to do so).
Animal agriculture is legal, and there will always be people who have no choice but to perform in the industry, and if there aren't it can be fully automated and done with machines instead.
jasonk wrote:I'm not persuaded by this idea. What do you call a person who repairs your plumbing? A plumber. What do you call a person who does your accounting? An accountant. What do you call a person who drives a bus? A bus driver. What do you call a person who does evil? An evil doer.
What a load of twisted rhetoric. You may not realize how disgusting that is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVco8t-R8KU
You sound just like Kirk Cameron.
No, a person who has told one lie ever is not just a liar, full stop.
A person who stole something once is not just a thief, period.
A person who repairs plumbing is not just a plumber -- this is a human being, who may be a father, a brother, a son, a birdhouse builder in his spare time. We are not our professions, and we are not defined by any single act or behavior.
People are complicated. We all do good and bad things. We're not all "evil doers", but we all do evil sometimes -- that doesn't innately make us bad people. We're also all doers of good. We are not irrevocably damned by the Christian god for doing a single bad action. In any sensible, rational morality we are a sum of our actions, and with a consideration for our circumstances.
jasonk wrote:This is what I mean when I say a person is evil. The person is an evil doer. People who eat meat are evil doers. People who buy products from sweatshops are evil doers. People who contribute to global warming are evil doers.
You're constructing deceptive rhetoric, and it's disgusting. Stop defining people in extremes by one action.
jasonk wrote:I'm saying that maybe eating meat does not make one an evil doer, just like contributing to global warming does not make one an evil doer. I think you do harm to the cause by portraying anyone who eats meat as a worker of evil.
I didn't say they are evildoers, but they are people who do some evil things. They probably also do good things. You can not judge a whole by a part. All you're doing here is insulting all of us by creating a straw man.
Just because we correctly identify certain choices as unethical does not mean we are condemning everybody who makes those choices as pure evil.
jasonk wrote:Well I'm not entirely persuaded that what I'm doing is evil, so I wouldn't say that I know I do wrong.
This is because you're trying very hard to rationalize it. But you know what? If you even thought it might be wrong, you would stop doing it until you were sure.
Let's say you see an old shoe box in the road, it says "kittens" on the side. It might be empty, or it might have kittens in it.
Assuming this small box poses no threat to your car, do you swerve to avoid it, or do you run over it?
You don't know for sure if has kittens in it; maybe it's empty.
If you are unconvinced but AT LEAST open minded, and think it could be wrong, then stop eating meat for now, and continue this conversation. If you even might possibly be wrong, you should not be taking the needless risk of doing evil.
Eating vegetarian is healthier anyway: you have nothing to lose.
The numbers on animal deaths account for variously sized animals; chickens increase it significantly.
If people ate pigs and cows only, the numbers would be smaller.
jasonk wrote:I'm just trying to be realistic. The transition away from slavery was a multi-generational change. If precedent serves, then we can probably expect the same with this change.
People here went vegan in a single generation. It's pretty realistic for YOU to do it now. You don't have control over what the world does; it may take generations to transition entirely, but you can be part of that transition today.
If you had slaves, would you be one of the first on board to free them, or remembered by history as a stubborn slave owner whose grandchildren had to finally free the descendants of your slaves?
Again, you're excusing your inaction by appealing to what other people do. You can only control your own actions. Stop blaming others and take personal responsibility for the choices you make.
jasonk wrote:So a step in the right direction is not a good thing?
It's an improvement on consequence. The idea of getting "points" for something like not raping people is rather absurd, as is the idea of punishing somebody for not spending every waking moment doing charity.
jasonk wrote:
If I feel undeniable urges to commit evil acts, wouldn't you say it would be good for me to get some therapy?
If so, then only because the urge was irresistible -- you did not have a choice but to do evil things. That became your default. Like somebody with a brain tumor who becomes uncontrollably violent because of it.
This is not the case for you now. You make the choice every day (or every shopping trip, and every time you go out to eat) to buy meat. It's not an uncontrollable urge. It's very possible for you to not do it.
Do you want somebody to give you a prize for not being a mass murderer or serial rapist?
Abstaining from the choice to do a BAD action (like buying meat) is distinct from making the choice to do a GOOD action (like donating to charity).
Neutral is more like you doing nothing at all, or not existing.
Right now, you are doing harm. You are doing a bad action. We are asking you to stop that.
jasonk wrote:
Ok, so I am actually working class as well. I drive a forklift on the night-shift for a company.
Driving a forklift is a pretty skilled job. You speak English. You can read, you can write, you have the necessary certifications to operate heavy machinery. You are privileged in a field where you are in relatively high demand.
You don't realize how lucky you are.
Try being a migrant worker from Mexico.
jasonk wrote:
It seems to me that these people could transition out of those jobs into new ones relatively easily, at least where I live. I live in the midwest, where farming is at its peak.
You live in a privileged area for your kind of work, and you have a privileged background. You also over-estimate the number of jobs available in these areas. You think a worker with little qualification and poor English could just get most of these jobs? There's a lot of competition for these. It can take months to find a new job, or longer. If you apply for a job and you're not the most qualified applicant, it doesn't matter how many jobs you apply to, you won't get it.
People aren't sticking around in slaughter houses for fun.
jasonk wrote:
Sure, but so would shifting the huge economic force of animal production to plant only farming. At the end of the day we are both in the same boat as it were.
I don't know what that quip is supposed to mean.
We already grow plant foods to feed animals -- in fact, we grow MORE food to feed animals than it would take to feed humans.
The corn and soy fed to animals, fed directly to humans (after some processing) would feed far more people. This is basic thermodynamics.
jasonk wrote:
I, myself, am definitely not the ultimate cause as there are billions of people who eat meat.
You share the responsibility with them. Claiming you're blameless because other people do it too, you might as well go out and gang rape somebody to death -- there are other people doing it too, so you're totally innocent, right?
You're all the ultimate end of that chain of supply and demand, who have the ultimate choice in action which really affects total harm outcome. You're the ones choosing meat over vegetable foods. You're the ones ultimately causing more suffering because of your choices.
If any one of them -- you, for instance -- stops doing it, it won't all end, but it will all be reduced slightly. The same is not the case for a slaughterhouse worker who quits.
jasonk wrote:
I'll bring up this analogy again because I think it's poignant. Slavery didn't end because people refused to buy products made by slaves. Slavery ended in the British Empire with the government buying all the slaves and then making slavery illegal, and slavery ended in the USA with a civil war.
That didn't make it right for people to buy the products of slavery if they had viable alternatives, and it doesn't mean it should end by government intervention or war.
Do you want another civil war? Is that what you're aiming for here? Do you think that's a good thing?
Economic pressure is how slavery should have been ended; if the economic power of the plantation owners was decreased by those who were against slavery actually acting in accordance with their values, those owners would have switched over to free labor on their own, and then government could have followed peacefully, banning slavery once no serious economic interests supported it anymore.
We've seen pretty much this work with fur already, where the industry has been hampered by low demand.
Or do you think you can be anti-fur and buy and wear fur coats all of the time too?
Do you support the fur industry as well as eating meat?
jasonk wrote:
Suppose we were living in the year 1700 and I bought some clothes at the store. Would you say that I am an evil doer because the cotton was picked by a slave? I think not. I'm just a person buying some clothes at the store.
If you had the choice to buy slave picked cotton, and free man picked cotton, then yes: I would say that was an immoral choice. As I already explained, I would not call you an "evil doer" because you have made one evil choice.
jasonk wrote:
So a person's integrity is not compromised by doing a few bad things. Ok.
If you can understand that, why do you persist in this claim that doing one bad thing makes somebody an "evil doer"?
You're obsessed with labeling people either good or bad, and then concluding that all actions a good person does must therefore be good. This is not remotely rational.
jasonk wrote:Ok, so we're talking some sort of utilitarian framework I presume?
No, consequentialism. Utilitarianism doesn't have a monopoly on consequentialism.
jasonk wrote:
So it seems we are borrowing from two moral systems, utilitarianism and deontology.
Not even remotely.
See this thread:
https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... ?f=7&t=785
You're confusing the evaluations of ACTIONS, which are good or bad based on consequences, and core CHARACTER or MOTIVATION, which must be put into the context of that person's abilities.
We can evaluate actions based on consequences, but we can only make claims about a person's intentions if that person was aware of what those consequences would be.
jasonk wrote:
I would actually be interested in learning which countries you are referring to as many developing countries such as India and China have religions which are vegan such as Jainism and Ch'an Buddhism.
This is true in particular in some northern regions and at high elevations where agriculture is difficult. Or very dry or mountainous and rocky areas, where there's only tough grass or moss, and people rely on herding goats or other animals.
There are places where it's hard to find affordable nutritionally adequate non-animal foods.
This is not true of most of China or India, but these are large countries with various regions for which that is true to varying degrees.
jasonk wrote:
Now this is the most interesting bit. I'm struggling with this concept. So someone who doesn't eat meat can be more evil or less good than someone who only eats fish? And this is because of their breadth of transition?
It's because it's not equally easy or culturally supported everywhere. A person who puts in more work to avoid the choices that cause harm is exhibiting a superior character to somebody who has put in very little work at all and would not put in so much work. It is the environment that has caused one to cause more harm in practice, but the intent and motivation to be better is stronger in one person than the other.
This is why it's important to judge actions and the harm they cause independently from personal character.
jasonk wrote:
If one were to go from raping children to only viewing child porn, would that person be less evil or more good than one who goes from watching child porn to deleting and not watching all their child porn?
This really indicates the extreme misunderstanding you have of morality.
Watching child porn is a harmless action: it only becomes harmful if the person acts on it and harms a child, or if the person
purchases child porn, which feeds money into the child porn industry and causes more child porn to be made, harming more children.
So, this analogy is really useless.
jasonk wrote:
The gap from raping children to child porn seems to be one quite larger than the gap between watching child porn and deleting all their child porn.
Well, the latter gap is pretty much zero, since neither are harmful (unless the person is
buying it, or acting to harm children).
But it's not about the gap, it's about the effort the person put in to change.
If you were a priest, and you had it easy molesting children and being protected by the church, and you decided to stop doing that on your own and move away from children (far away) to stop hurting people, then that would be more meaningful than somebody who was arrested for molesting children, and "decided" to stop doing it because he or she was medicated by court order and watched all of the time.
The effect is basically the same, but in one case you have a lot more encouragement to stop, and your drive to harm children was taken away (not that you willed it), and in the other case you have free reign to molest and get away with it, and have your full drive in tact that you resist by choice.
Getting away from the pedophilia comparison, and using one with different comparative outcomes:
Somebody who was raised vegetarian in a part of India where everybody is vegetarian who went out of his or her way to start eating fish sometimes is a much worse person than somebody who is working hard to change and eat less meat but was raised eating meat and lives somewhere everybody eats it and encourages it.
One put in effort to become a worse (more harmful) person compared to before, one put in effort to reduce harm and become a comparatively better (less harmful) person than before.