Argh, when did 'cos' become the replacement for 'because'? You write so well otherwise, so why do you use this?hahaha
You might say "well one vegetarian can't fix the problem, so why do you bother being a vegetarian?" but it's a terrible fallacy that far too many people use.Is it really a fallacy? This is perhaps worth a whole other discussion but fact is that all people who take part in such a collective have something personal to gain from it. Even those who volunteer and get nothing in return still have internal motivation for their work. To consciously perform actions that do not gain you any personal benefit is to stray from human nature, which is per definition pathological.
I got a friend who was a vegetarian for about ten years. Then, one day he decided to start eating meat again and nowadays he eats way more meat than any of my friends and he loves every second of it. What I'm trying to say here is that all people of the world will never suddenly decide to stop eating meat, but if you chose not to and it makes you feel better then good for you. That's what it's all about, what you think is good for you and just you.
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I really dislike people who think they can "convert" me even though they know I don't care. These are the worst kind of people.
Why do you bring up your friend deciding to eat meat again like it's any kind of argument for anything? So the guy decided he was gonna eat meat again. I don't understand why, but it could have been anything. It doesn't mean ALL VEGETARIANISM WILL EVENTUALLY FAIL FWHA HA HA HA....You humans, why do you even try?
that wasn't what he was even implying? your whole argument is dumb jamie. there's no need for us to do a lot of things. just because we could survive as a species without eating another drop of meat has nothing to do with anything.
What I'm trying to say here is that all people of the world will never suddenly decide to stop eating meat, but if you chose not to and it makes you feel better then good for you.
except there's large numbers of species that would die otherwise? deer for example. around here they pay people to go out and kill deer (and donate the meat to the poor) because if they didn't there would be deer corpses everywhere from starvation.
You just blew up your own topic, by the way. This was about activism and now it's about whether eating meat is ethical.
this is a dodge and you know it. subsistence and game hunting accounts for like .01%.
I don't want to eat honey cause it makes the bees feel bad
GaZZwa, a smoking vegan? I don't want to eat honey cause it makes the bees feel bad, but yeah, I'll support the tobacco industry any day of the week, just call me!
Well, if you want to hold a demonstration, alright, suits me though I'll think you a bit naive, but freeing hens or something like that is just plain stupid. It hurts the hens, it hurts the farmer, it probably doesn't make anyone eat more beans, it makes all the sensible activists look bad as well and if you're like all the others, you're probably do it in the dark with a mask on, in which case it's not even civil disobedience, it's just vandalism.
the point is there are entire species of animals (some domesticated, some not) that rely on humans to gobble them up in order to maintain a reasonable population
And yeah I don't see a good argument for eating meat here yet.
I'm already regretting my post. I like to post in provocative manner to get things going but now that I'm reading the replies that came while I was writing, this topic absolutely didn't need that.
it's probably cheaper to eat vegetarian actually...
also, jamie, even if you don't respect the choices of meat-eaters, you should probably try to just accept that people eat meat. i mean... otherwise you'll just go around hating like 98 percent of people you meat.
you don't have to buy like $8 soy burgers, you could buy a can of chick peas which is a tonne of protein for like... 60 cents.
And yeah I don't see a good argument for eating meat here yet.
oh also, when I was in Berlin I met the people who run this um, organisation (?):I read somewhere that these guys are from denmark actually
www.fuckforforest.com
i laughed at first but then stopped because they were really very very serious. environmental porn activism is definitely the way to go. save the environment and have some sex. it's a win-win situation.
also at least around here fresh fruits and vegetables are really expensive. you can get lunchmeat for like $0.99 a pack thoughThat's because of the 10000% profit margin supermarkets have on vegetables. Even then they're still usually pretty cheap! Here they are, at least. (Apparently the EU is going to pass some measure that will reduce the gigantic profit margins they make.)
question for meat-eaters: would you eat a dog?I'd probably eat a dog if it was offered but I'd have a lot of trouble with it because I'd be imagining my dogs. To someone without pets that might seem odd like why wouldn't I imagine a babby lamb when I'm mopping up some mint sauce but I think of my dogs as Almost-People. They're members of my family.
if no, what is the difference between dog and other animals?
question for meat-eaters: would you eat a dog?
if no, what is the difference between dog and other animals?
These arguments aren't sound! They seem kind of common sense sound but if you actually think about the reasoning behind them, it all falls to bits. I have work early so I cannot really spend a long time on this tonight so I'm just saying for the moment.:fogetbackflip:
dependent on us eating them? Nah, that crap will work itself out. If there's too many of a species then they'll dwindle down to a sustainable number naturally pretty quickly without us lending a helping hand, and yeah that's a waste of a potential food source for some folks but how about we grow some extra crops instead of the deer meat. This deer issue is a fringe case anyway, what about all the farm animals that get slaughtered in inefficient and brutal ways after having lived miserable lives in cages and stalls.
And I said already the there's no reason to eat meat part is just the baseline for the argument, all the rest of the stuff is built on top of it like the whole ridiculous cruelty issue which none of you seem to care about even though it's a pretty big deal and if you think otherwise then I don't really care what else you've got to say about it.
Is it really better to let animals dwindle down by dying of starvation instead of eating them
This deer issue is a fringe case anyway, what about all the farm animals that get slaughtered in inefficient and brutal ways after having lived miserable lives in cages and stalls.who cares about the feelings of farm animals? Not me.
at this point, yes.
how so?
*completely ignores the fact that many animal species are dependent (or domesticated!) on humans eating them to maintain a survivable population*This is true but I'm anti-domestication.
wow dok that was a pretty good post!Thank you. I wrote a paper for my anthropology class on domestication/the agricultural revolution and how it fucked up the world (and got a 97% on it btw). It sucks. I don't know how to go about un-domesticating the world :( Obviously if we just stopped everything than that would lead to extremely bad consequences. One problem we have is that every year we increase food production. Population increase is an almost direct relation to food production. More food = more people. Maybe stop increasing food production. I'm not saying stop food production, just keep it at an equilibrium. We need to start relying more on the millions of things in the wild rather than things on the shelves (at least in my opinion). Hence why I go eat dandelions and shite.
also what do you mean by anti-domestication? how would you go about un-domesticating cow/sheep/pigs/horses/whatever?
okay well you can't just stop increasing food production when population increases as well. you realize this, right?Food shortages wouldn't happen if we didn't have domestication :)
a lot of the shit you say is very obvious. everyone knows it would be better to rely on local production instead of massive factory farms, and to eat from grass fed animals and not animals drugged on up steroids, but the problem is how to actually achieve this without a worldwide famine caused by food shortages.
neither of that is true. population is tied to economic status, it has nothing to do with the availability of food. in fact, poorer families tend to have more children than wealthy ones, regardless of the availability of food.http://panearth.org/panearth/HumanPopulationNumbers.pdf
domestication has nothing to do with food shortages.
you are such a goddamn ludditeSo lol
they have decreased leisure times, but more sex and less physical activity. also i would STRONGLY argue that the problems the aborigines are facing are a result of colonialism rather than agricultural advancesBut colonialism is a result of agriculture??
question for meat-eaters: would you eat a dog?This is a dumb argument. Just because we eat meat doesn't mean cultural standards don't apply to us. This is the exact same argument some christians make against atheists when they accuse them of having no ethics.
if no, what is the difference between dog and other animals?
But colonialism is a result of agriculture??So is the rest of civilization. Are you a primitivist who romanticizes hunter-gatherer societies or something?
I'm not saying their lives were perfect but they didn't have all of these problems that we do today.Some of the problems they faced instead included being a bunch of tribes of illiterate naked idiots with stupid shit like witch doctors
So is the rest of civilization. Are you a primitivist who romanticizes hunter-gatherer societies or something?A while ago he was indeed raving over some anarcho-primitivist book in which a talking gorilla explains the mysteries of life to the reader. He said back then that he doesn't actually subscribe to that viewpoint, but who knows?
But colonialism is a result of agriculture??
For one, people who practiced traditional ways of getting food had a lot more leisure time than agriculturalist.No, they didn't. You're plain wrong here. The only way humans were able to save enough time to build our modern societies was through delegation. Food gathering, being one of the most time-consuming tasks of all, became a lot easier after the invention of agriculture. There are two reasons for this: it became easier to delegate the task of food production to specific people, thus increasing the overall efficiency, and agriculture itself is a more scalable method of obtaining food than gathering.
Domestication caused a huge increase in population. Look at population figures:Yeah, which is why if we all were to start gathering instead of growing crops, we'd only be able to support about 10% of the humans that are alive today. This is a great argument you make FOR agriculture.
http://www.biology.iupui.edu/biocourses/n100/images/39popgrowth.gif
Look when population drastically increased...at the onset of domestication.
Consider the Australian Aborigines. Obviously they don't live like they used to, and they have suffered for it. Aborigine aged 20 to 40 are 10 times more likely to die than the regular Australian population. The life expectancy for them all together is 10 to 20 times lower. Up to 70% of Aboriginal school children have scabies. Suicide rates and drug abuse are really high as well. That's fucked up in my opinion.Again, is this an argument you're trying to make or are you just listing miscellaneous facts? When you mention these things, do you have any particular causal link in mind or do you presume us to be satisfied with there being a correlation? What you just said applies to most minorities in Western society: they're worse off than the majority. I don't really know what else to say at this point because you're making these strange arguments without saying what it is you even stand for.
http://student.bmj.com/issues/05/11/life/432.php
So is the rest of civilization. Are you a primitivist who romanticizes hunter-gatherer societies or something?
Some of the problems they faced instead included being a bunch of tribes of illiterate naked idiots with stupid shit like witch doctors
No, they didn't. You're plain wrong here. The only way humans were able to save enough time to build our modern societies was through delegation. Food gathering, being one of the most time-consuming tasks of all, became a lot easier after the invention of agriculture. There are two reasons for this: it became easier to delegate the task of food production to specific people, thus increasing the overall efficiency, and agriculture itself is a more scalable method of obtaining food than gathering.Yes they did?
I don't really get why you'd try to make this argument anyway, as it's agriculture that gave us the ability to move beyond the simpleton lives all other animals have.I'd rather live a simple life than a life full of work?
Yeah, which is why if we all were to start gathering instead of growing crops, we'd only be able to support about 10% of the humans that are alive today. This is a great argument you make FOR agriculture.But if humans never started mass agriculture the population wouldn't have gotten so big...but yeah I understand your point.
Again, is this an argument you're trying to make or are you just listing miscellaneous facts? When you mention these things, do you have any particular causal link in mind or do you presume us to be satisfied with there being a correlation? What you just said applies to most minorities in Western society: they're worse off than the majority. I don't really know what else to say at this point because you're making these strange arguments without saying what it is you even stand for.My link is that mass agriculuture produced a huge spike in population increase, which caused peoples to become crowded so they had to move, they moved to all areas of the globe taking agriculture with them, thus forcing other indigenous socieities to change their way of life which has had horrible effects.
I remember somewhere Dok was romanticizing some specific hunter-gatherer group and when I looked them up I found out that they frequently settled any and all arguments by just killing whoever offended them and a large number of the younger members fled to nearby cities in order to NOT DIE. But hey, they don't have farms!I don't remember which one this was??? It was probably a horticulturist group (not hunter-gatherer) because most hunter-gatherer groups that have disputes with other groups just up and leave, whereas horticulturists practise agriculture (not depend on it), so they settle in the same place for a couple of years and wouldn't just up and leave.
you're absolutely full of shit if you honestly think agriculture takes more time than hunter-gatherers. for one, agriculture is seasonal, so at least two seasons out of the year you're not planting or harvesting ANYTHING.Everything I've read says hunter-gatherers worked less to survive. All the anthropology shit I've read...my teacher...etc all say this? It is seasonal...meaning when you aren't doing the work someone else is doing it for you and having it shipped to you.
agriculture typically provides enough of a surplus for lasting the other two seasons (usually winter and spring) so you don't have to do any harvesting.
you're just wrong! the reason why agriculture led to MODERN SOCIETY IN GENERAL is because it provided for more leasure time so people actually had time to sit down and figure out little things such as READING AND WRITING, and ALL TECHNOLOGY
Everything I've read says hunter-gatherers worked less to survive. All the anthropology shit I've read...my teacher...etc all say this? It is seasonal...meaning when you aren't doing the work someone else is doing it for you and having it shipped to you.nah it's seasonal meaning when you aren't doing the work you have a bunch of pickled, jarred or otherwise preserved shit from the fall, plus meat, milk, eggs and grain (which is still work.... soooo much work to get tho)
http://www.life.uiuc.edu/ib/454/lecture6.htmlThis article has no citations and actually doesn't even appear to be an article at all, so I'm going to ignore it completely if you don't mind.
I'd much rather work 2.5 days a week to survive than work 5 days a week 8 hours a day (which I work in the summer).Excellent. That'll give you plenty of time to make a cane. You'll need one for when you get polio, after all, because nobody ever invented the vaccine.
Agcriculture is more scalable of obtaining food to feed the almost 7 billion people, but when you have a group of under 100 hunting and gathering works just fine.Nobody contests this. It's true that hunter-gatherer societies can work under those conditions, and your claim that it takes less time to obtain food is probably true under those circumstances. (This isn't entirely obvious, though, since agriculture yields a much higher output per crop which might offset the time taken to plant them.)
I'd rather live a simple life than a life full of work?Okay, this is getting rather silly. Take a look around you. You've surrounded by walls, a floor and a ceiling. You're typing this on a keyboard, which is connected to a computer, which probably has a monitor too. There's a great likelihood of there being a TV in your vicinity, too. Same for the coffee machine and couch and boiler. Like most people, you probably also have windows made of glass.
My link is that mass agriculuture produced a huge spike in population increase, which caused peoples to become crowded so they had to move, they moved to all areas of the globe taking agriculture with them, thus forcing other indigenous socieities to change their way of life which has had horrible effects.Which indigenous societies? When did this happen? What were these "horrible effects"? Is there any evidence, mineralized or otherwise, that what you claim is what happened, or are you just projecting the hardships of the Australian Aborigines onto every other nameless culture?
Everything I've read says hunter-gatherers worked less to survive. All the anthropology shit I've read...my teacher...etc all say this?Cool, I just searched arXiv.org for "everything Doktormartini read" and found exactly what I was looking for. Thanks a ton.
Yeah but once again if you just want to survive that much work isn't necessary. You don't really understand most of the money we make goes to things they just didn't have in hunter gather societiesThings we don't need?
Everything I've read says hunter-gatherers worked less to survive. All the anthropology shit I've read...my teacher...etc all say this? It is seasonal...meaning when you aren't doing the work someone else is doing it for you and having it shipped to you.
the reason why agriculture led to MODERN SOCIETY IN GENERAL is because it provided for more leasure time so people actually had time to sit down and figure out little things such as READING AND WRITING, and ALL TECHNOLOGY
This article has no citations and actually doesn't even appear to be an article at all, so I'm going to ignore it completely if you don't mind.No citations because it's a university course website. Call the instructors.
Excellent. That'll give you plenty of time to make a cane. You'll need one for when you get polio, after all, because nobody ever invented the vaccine.This is true but infectious diseases are more likely to spread through higher populations and crowds. Maybe the chances of me getting polio are less, but if I did get it I would probably be killed.
Nobody contests this. It's true that hunter-gatherer societies can work under those conditions, and your claim that it takes less time to obtain food is probably true under those circumstances. (This isn't entirely obvious, though, since agriculture yields a much higher output per crop which might offset the time taken to plant them.)It does yield more but they didn't need more because they were doing just fine.
The problem is that mankind was only at such low population levels for a very short time. It was a matter of time before the population would become big enough to be able to commit itself to a more scalable method of obtaining food.Again, population drastically rose because mass agriculture.
So again, I don't really get why you're saying this. It's like you're silently wishing that we were still at the population levels of 100,000 years ago.Industrial civilization is killing the planet. We keep cutting down forests to make room for more agriculture...it is estimated that 100 species go extinct each day. We are depleting natural resources at a super fast rate. What happens when they are gone, what are we going to do? There was a topic awhile ago about the recycling waterfall thing that showed what % of bottles are recycled to what % are not. It's crazy.
Okay, this is getting rather silly. Take a look around you. You've surrounded by walls, a floor and a ceiling. You're typing this on a keyboard, which is connected to a computer, which probably has a monitor too. There's a great likelyhood of there being a TV in your vicinity, too. Same for the coffee machine and couch and boiler. Like most people, you probably also have windows made of glass.These are all things not required for survival. I understand I use them...call me a hypocrite I don't care. Are all environmentalists hypocrites for driving cars and reading books or using computers?
You would have none of these things if agriculture never occurred. They were invented and created by people who didn't have to spend 2 and a half days a week barbecuing dandelions. Those 5 days a week you mention come with the ability to make use of the things that were made possible by that extra time. Remember that by asking to cut your working time in half, you're doing the same for everybody else.
Which indigenous societies? When did this happen? What were these "horrible effects"? Is there any evidence, mineralized or otherwise, that what you claim is what happened, or are you just projecting the hardships of the Australian Aborigines onto every other nameless culture?Most. Almost all indigenous societies are either not around anymore, or do not live their traditional life due to foreigners taking the land.
that's just not the case!Or maybe life was hard so we invented things to make it easier?
there's a reason why technology and society as we know it was invented after we discovered agriculture. it's because agriculture allowed humans to have permanent residences and allowed more leisure time to invent things such as written languages.
Things we don't need?The point is if you WANT to live witnout all these things you "don't need" you can. Nobody is stopping you and if that were the case you would be perfectly able to pay for everything you need working two days a week.
basically every fucking month you guys get trolled into this argument. he's an anarchoprimitivist. his favorite book is about a gorilla telling people to eat plants. i know you should be respectful of all points of view but for fuck's sake ANARCHOPRIMITIVIST.But this is the reason I've been here for years! I don't really care either way about what he thinks but the act of coming up with a logical argument against what he says is a fun thing to do.
Chicken, meet egg.I mostly quoted university websites so if they're wrong then I guess the university sucks lolz
Also I'm not sure if you understand yet, but an article not having any citations means it's not necessarily accepted by meanstream science. If you can't find me an article on a site such as arXive.org that makes the same claims but actually substantiates them, I'm not going to bother trying to refute what is essentially fringe science.
Chicken, meet egg.I looked at arXive.org and I didn't see any anthropology stuff on there.
Also I'm not sure if you understand yet, but an article not having any citations means it's not necessarily accepted by meanstream science. If you can't find me an article on a site such as arXive.org that makes the same claims but actually substantiates them, I'm not going to bother trying to refute what is essentially fringe science.
I mostly quoted university websites so if they're wrong then I guess the university sucks lolzIt's not about that. If what your university talks about is impossible to find in frontier science literature then where did they get the information from?
This is a dumb argument. Just because we eat meat doesn't mean cultural standards don't apply to us. This is the exact same argument some christians make against atheists when they accuse them of having no ethics.
i honestly want to know what the difference is to people. if it's simply SOCIETY ACCEPTS POULTRY CONSUMPTION, BUT NOT DOG, then that is a bad reason imo.Why should food fall outside of the standard ethics rules of society? In that sense, not eating dog is akin to wearing clothes when you go outside. There's nothing inherently dangerous about not wearing clothes--or eating dog meat--but society deems it incorrect, so nobody does it.
You were once like me... what happened...
Why should food fall outside of the standard ethics rules of society? In that sense, not eating dog is akin to wearing clothes when you go outside. There's nothing inherently dangerous about not wearing clothes--or eating dog meat--but society deems it incorrect, so nobody does it.
I still think it's actually entirely the same argument.
you have pet chickens?
Things we don't need?Dok nothing is stopping you from dropping out of school and going into the bush to fend for yourself.
Look at population figures:
http://www.biology.iupui.edu/biocourses/n100/images/39popgrowth.gif
Look when population drastically increased...at the onset of domestication.
it's the opposite arguement, it's like christians who believe shit without questioning it.Christians didn't pick up the argument that atheists are immoral from the bible. They believe it's so because atheists have no rulebook like they do. It's a cultural phenomenon rather than a religious one. (Okay, that part is debatable I guess.)
why would you blindly accept it, just cause it the norm?Usually, yes. That's how culture works.
I'd much rather work 2.5 days a week to survive than work 5 days a week 8 hours a day (which I work in the summer).
The problem with the eating dogs argument is this: most of us agree that there's nothing ethically wrong with eating dogs. "But then why won't you???" is the follow up, but the answer is very simple--we don't want to! A lot of foods are ethical to eat, that doesn't make people desire it. A lot of people think that sushi is gross, but it's not out of any moral issue, it's just that it doesn't appeal to them for one reason or another and they don't want to put it in their stomachs. I have no ethical reason for not eating dogs, I just don't want to eat a dog! Fuck, it probably has more to do with the fact that I'm hesitant to try new foods than the fact that I like dogs. If you like chickens and you don't want to eat them, then you just don't! It has nothing to do with whether or not it's ethically okay for someone to eat chickens, you just don't want to.I think the thing is that you can't actually buy dog-burgers at Mcdonald's. If Mcdonald's knew that no one would complain about them selling burgers made out of homeless dogs, the menu would probably look different from what it does now. Also, what about cats? Would you guys eat a cat?