Should you feel guilty for eating meat?
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I'm not about to ask maggots if they feel guilty when they feed on corpses. Sure, it's different, we have a choice. We can choose not to eat meat. But... Why give a fuck? Animals kill each other all the time, all we do is making it taste nice with sauce and stuff.
Man... I could sure go for a steak now...
But I'm not gonna call a vegetarian or a vegan wrong, either. If you feel bad for eating meat, stop eating it. Simple as that. If you don't, eat some more of it because that shit is delicious!
Man... I could sure go for a steak now...
But I'm not gonna call a vegetarian or a vegan wrong, either. If you feel bad for eating meat, stop eating it. Simple as that. If you don't, eat some more of it because that shit is delicious!
1. vegetables are alive too, the fact that we can't properly percieve their level of life doesn't change anything, so in a way (to me, at least), killing an animal to eat its meat is roughly the same as "killing" a plant to eat it.
2. It's how nature works, human body needs meat for proper nutrition, back in the day when nutritional additives (or how do you call all those multivitamin and mineral tablets and shit) didn't exist, you wouldn't be able to survive purely on plant food.
3. I've never ever killed any animal I ate. Yes, offcourse, as a little boy, I've killed hundreds of flies and probably thounsands of ants and shit, and today I still kill insects if they're stupid and stubborn and return to my room after I throw them out of the window, but I've never ever killed anything bigger than that, and I don't plan to. All the meat I eat was killed by someone else who has it as their job, and it would be killed anyways, I can't change that. If it wasn't me who bought and eaten it, it would be someone else, but the animal would still be killed, because it was raised for that purpose. So I see no reason to feel guilty or responsible for death of the animal just because of the fact that it's me who got to eat its meat.
Which means triple "no, I don't think you should feel guilty. It would be a legitimate feeling if there was an alternate way to satiate yourself without harming anything live, and you chose to not use it. But there is not, because that's just how the nature works."
2. It's how nature works, human body needs meat for proper nutrition, back in the day when nutritional additives (or how do you call all those multivitamin and mineral tablets and shit) didn't exist, you wouldn't be able to survive purely on plant food.
3. I've never ever killed any animal I ate. Yes, offcourse, as a little boy, I've killed hundreds of flies and probably thounsands of ants and shit, and today I still kill insects if they're stupid and stubborn and return to my room after I throw them out of the window, but I've never ever killed anything bigger than that, and I don't plan to. All the meat I eat was killed by someone else who has it as their job, and it would be killed anyways, I can't change that. If it wasn't me who bought and eaten it, it would be someone else, but the animal would still be killed, because it was raised for that purpose. So I see no reason to feel guilty or responsible for death of the animal just because of the fact that it's me who got to eat its meat.
Which means triple "no, I don't think you should feel guilty. It would be a legitimate feeling if there was an alternate way to satiate yourself without harming anything live, and you chose to not use it. But there is not, because that's just how the nature works."
I personally don't agree with eating meat but it's not for me or anyone else here to say whether you "should" feel guilty.
All the same, the fucking idiocy of the arguments in these types of threads never ceases to amaze me. Let me provide an example:
"I don't give a fuck about animals"- Good for you!
"BUT WAT ABOUT PLANTS THEY HAVE FEELINGS"- You are a fucking idiot.
All the same, the fucking idiocy of the arguments in these types of threads never ceases to amaze me. Let me provide an example:
"I don't give a fuck about animals"- Good for you!
"BUT WAT ABOUT PLANTS THEY HAVE FEELINGS"- You are a fucking idiot.
Uh I kinda feel a little dickish for pointing this out, but plants are living creatures too. Meat eater or not, in order to sustain yourself in this universe you must consume living organisms. Plants just don't have the complex nervous system to express the damage being done to them.s28 said:
Second point is that meat eaters exist for a reason. If all fauna on this planet were plant eaters, most of the flora on this planet would go extinct due to over-consumption, as a result killing off most animals too (which I think most would agree is not the better option). Meat eaters evolved because the food sources on this planet cannot sufficiently support all creatures on this planet. Carnivores A) aren't taking up that allocation and B) keep the herbivore numbers in check, thereby ensuring the ecosystem stays in balance. It might not be the friendliest way to eat, but don't discount the millions of years of life in which carnivores existed due to a bit of squeamishness.
Though if you really feel bad about eating them, I've got two bits of advice for you if you wish to continue being an omnivore:
1)Buy free-range or equivalent. Those animals get to live a "normal" life (all things considered), and their deaths are done in the most humane way possible. They don't suffer in any way, and they get to live their life cycle out properly.
2)Thank your food. I know that saying grace is an old-fashioned thing to do, but in this context it's thanking the creature for feeding you and your family. With that, its death stops being a tragic end, but becomes part of the circle of life, it's essence fueling further generations, giving (at least in a philosophical sense) it's energy a form of immortality through the great cycle. It's death is still harsh, but it is not longer cruel.
I live by a certain creed: If it's already dead, there is no point letting the meat go to waste. Should the day come that people stop slaughtering animals, I'll happily switch to other forms of food.
See, I would have trouble killing an animal myself just for the sake of eating meat, unless survival ever became an issue. So I have less guilt about eating meat.
However, I was not raised in a society that prohibits consuming meat, but yours is a unique situation. I see no reason why you should feel guilty about eating meat in a country that has it already available. If you are having second thoughts, however, you may stop.
My suggestion: Research the history behind why your country prohibits eating meat and see if it matches your feelings, then make a decision.
See, I would have trouble killing an animal myself just for the sake of eating meat, unless survival ever became an issue. So I have less guilt about eating meat.
However, I was not raised in a society that prohibits consuming meat, but yours is a unique situation. I see no reason why you should feel guilty about eating meat in a country that has it already available. If you are having second thoughts, however, you may stop.
My suggestion: Research the history behind why your country prohibits eating meat and see if it matches your feelings, then make a decision.
I'll be honest, I haven't read the whole thread up to this point, but I wanted to make a couple of points that didn't seem like they'd been made already:
(1) Whether we do, in fact, eat a lot of meat has no bearing at all on whether we ought to feel guilty about it. Similarly with arguments about whether we are 'naturally' disposed to eating meat - the fact that something is natural, or generally or universally the case, can never be used to determine whether it is a morally good or bad thing. Same with the 'the animals have been bred for slaughter' line - what they are in no way determines, by itself, the way they should be treated. Finally the variant that says 'other animals eat meat, no problem there!' True, but we don't think that animals are morally responsible for much, so why should we bring them into this? Animals do an awful lot of things I wouldn't. Philosophy students will be familiar with the idiom 'an is doesn't imply an ought' - it's called the Naturalistic Fallacy and it's never going away.
(2) Another irrelevance is the health issue. We don't have to eat meat - maybe we can also be healthy without eating vegetables but again that's irrelevant. We can be perfectly healthy as herbivores, omnnivores or carnivores so no option involves an imperative to our own survival or flourishing. Breathing, we ought to do, because if we don't we'll die. Meat? No obligation either way.
(3) Since it only makes sense to feel guilty if you think you've done something wrong I take it that whether you ought to feel guilty hinges on whether eating meat is morally permissible or not. The only valid arguments I can see in favour of eating meat are the following:
(a) Animals are not morally relevant (or some fact about animals makes them morally irrelevant).
Animals don't suffer in the right way, don't think like we do, aren't intelligent, aren't a part of the moral world etc. These arguments are, I think, pretty much the only ones that work. Except that they involve some pretty unpleasant commitments. Say, for instance, that eating meat was acceptable because animals are of inferior intelligence. If that was true then you would have to be prepared to admit that it was also acceptable to eat (and farm!) humans with comparably inferior intelligence. The same argument applies across the board with (a) type examples, and I really don't find the result that appealing.
(b) The amount of pleasure to be had from eating meat outweighs the suffering of the animals involved.
So, arguments of the form 'animals don't suffer much when they die', or '(certain) animals don't feel pain like we do'. As regards the first, I don't think it works simply because the act of killing and eating an animal denies that animal a future life. You're not just giving it a moment's pain while it dies, but you're denying it the possibility of the pleasure of its next so many hundred meals, mates, whatever. If their pleasure feels anything like ours, or valuable like ours is, then there's no way that the tastiness of a meal outweighs the tastiness of a hundred.
(b*) An interesting variant of this is "if we didn't eat them, they'd all die anyway". I see what it's trying to do, but us getting at least some pleasure from what will in any case be a horrible situation (having to let the vast majority of our livestock die) really doesn't work as an argument. When bad shit happens we do not think it's appropriate to find pleasure in it, especially if that leads to more of it happening!
(c) My freedom to eat meat outweighs the suffering of the animals involved.
Freedom is important, so we might think that banning meat would be an intolerable intrusion, but we know that freedom to do something doesn't mean there might not be a very good reason why you shouldn't. I'm free to sit at home all day arguing on the internet, for instance...
So, should you feel guilty? That's a pretty interesting question. My instinct would be to say yes - if you eat meat, and eating meat is a moral transgression, then guilt is appropriate. For the reasons above, I just don't think there are any good arguments against the position that eating meat is immoral. Maybe you think there aren't any good arguments in favour of vegetarianism either, but then I ask you why take the chance? If you thought there was a pretty even chance that what you were doing was immoral, and it was so easy to not do it, would you risk it? That's pretty much your choice.
Another interesting question is whether those who don't feel guilty are doing something wrong. Here I think it's more debatable. I don't think there can be anything wrong with not feeling guilt, even when it is appropriate, just because feeling guilty isn't a voluntary action. There might, however, be something wrong with not being the kind of person who felt appropriate guilt, if you were capable of changing that.
Tl;Dr - Most arguments in favour of eating meat are either false or fallacious.
(1) Whether we do, in fact, eat a lot of meat has no bearing at all on whether we ought to feel guilty about it. Similarly with arguments about whether we are 'naturally' disposed to eating meat - the fact that something is natural, or generally or universally the case, can never be used to determine whether it is a morally good or bad thing. Same with the 'the animals have been bred for slaughter' line - what they are in no way determines, by itself, the way they should be treated. Finally the variant that says 'other animals eat meat, no problem there!' True, but we don't think that animals are morally responsible for much, so why should we bring them into this? Animals do an awful lot of things I wouldn't. Philosophy students will be familiar with the idiom 'an is doesn't imply an ought' - it's called the Naturalistic Fallacy and it's never going away.
(2) Another irrelevance is the health issue. We don't have to eat meat - maybe we can also be healthy without eating vegetables but again that's irrelevant. We can be perfectly healthy as herbivores, omnnivores or carnivores so no option involves an imperative to our own survival or flourishing. Breathing, we ought to do, because if we don't we'll die. Meat? No obligation either way.
(3) Since it only makes sense to feel guilty if you think you've done something wrong I take it that whether you ought to feel guilty hinges on whether eating meat is morally permissible or not. The only valid arguments I can see in favour of eating meat are the following:
(a) Animals are not morally relevant (or some fact about animals makes them morally irrelevant).
Animals don't suffer in the right way, don't think like we do, aren't intelligent, aren't a part of the moral world etc. These arguments are, I think, pretty much the only ones that work. Except that they involve some pretty unpleasant commitments. Say, for instance, that eating meat was acceptable because animals are of inferior intelligence. If that was true then you would have to be prepared to admit that it was also acceptable to eat (and farm!) humans with comparably inferior intelligence. The same argument applies across the board with (a) type examples, and I really don't find the result that appealing.
(b) The amount of pleasure to be had from eating meat outweighs the suffering of the animals involved.
So, arguments of the form 'animals don't suffer much when they die', or '(certain) animals don't feel pain like we do'. As regards the first, I don't think it works simply because the act of killing and eating an animal denies that animal a future life. You're not just giving it a moment's pain while it dies, but you're denying it the possibility of the pleasure of its next so many hundred meals, mates, whatever. If their pleasure feels anything like ours, or valuable like ours is, then there's no way that the tastiness of a meal outweighs the tastiness of a hundred.
(b*) An interesting variant of this is "if we didn't eat them, they'd all die anyway". I see what it's trying to do, but us getting at least some pleasure from what will in any case be a horrible situation (having to let the vast majority of our livestock die) really doesn't work as an argument. When bad shit happens we do not think it's appropriate to find pleasure in it, especially if that leads to more of it happening!
(c) My freedom to eat meat outweighs the suffering of the animals involved.
Freedom is important, so we might think that banning meat would be an intolerable intrusion, but we know that freedom to do something doesn't mean there might not be a very good reason why you shouldn't. I'm free to sit at home all day arguing on the internet, for instance...
So, should you feel guilty? That's a pretty interesting question. My instinct would be to say yes - if you eat meat, and eating meat is a moral transgression, then guilt is appropriate. For the reasons above, I just don't think there are any good arguments against the position that eating meat is immoral. Maybe you think there aren't any good arguments in favour of vegetarianism either, but then I ask you why take the chance? If you thought there was a pretty even chance that what you were doing was immoral, and it was so easy to not do it, would you risk it? That's pretty much your choice.
Another interesting question is whether those who don't feel guilty are doing something wrong. Here I think it's more debatable. I don't think there can be anything wrong with not feeling guilt, even when it is appropriate, just because feeling guilty isn't a voluntary action. There might, however, be something wrong with not being the kind of person who felt appropriate guilt, if you were capable of changing that.
Tl;Dr - Most arguments in favour of eating meat are either false or fallacious.
I love all these dumb lazy excuses.
"It's already dead, so don't let it go to waste!" The whole entire reason most animals are farmed and killed is to feed dumb people like you your fatburgers.
"plants are life too, so screw it, I'll kill anything." Okay, that one is not so much lazy as just dumb. We're talking downright stupid R-tard dumb. If you think plants are on par with animals you are a complete idiot and may wish to update your facebook page to reflect this.
There's nothing significant about plants that indicate Sapient life or even sets them apart from the next plant of the same species. When you kill a plant, you don't erase a unique personality or anything capable of thoughts or feelings. All the damage that can ever be done to a plant can be completely and totally reversed by planting another of the same stupid plant.
"It's already dead, so don't let it go to waste!" The whole entire reason most animals are farmed and killed is to feed dumb people like you your fatburgers.
"plants are life too, so screw it, I'll kill anything." Okay, that one is not so much lazy as just dumb. We're talking downright stupid R-tard dumb. If you think plants are on par with animals you are a complete idiot and may wish to update your facebook page to reflect this.
There's nothing significant about plants that indicate Sapient life or even sets them apart from the next plant of the same species. When you kill a plant, you don't erase a unique personality or anything capable of thoughts or feelings. All the damage that can ever be done to a plant can be completely and totally reversed by planting another of the same stupid plant.
There are many health benefits to eating meat, specifically the protein that our bodies need. Yes you can get it from plants if you really wanted to, but it's not quite the same. The entire topic is very nuanced and the road to the personal choice of becoming a vegan or vegetarian is long.
My personal feeling is that it comes down to your moral belief and since morals are subjective, most arguments on either side tend to fall into any one of the conjecture, opinion or personal experience categories. This creates a holy hell amount of banter on the topic.
My personal feeling is that it comes down to your moral belief and since morals are subjective, most arguments on either side tend to fall into any one of the conjecture, opinion or personal experience categories. This creates a holy hell amount of banter on the topic.
Practically, there is no difference. The only difference is how it tastes and feels going down.Skratt said:
Are morals obviously subjective? Not going to bring Godwin into this, but if I murder someone, are you really prepared to say that it's up to me to decide whether what I did what ethical or not?Skratt said:
Nice to call people silly for doing nothing but disagreeing with you.Res Plus said:
For the record, your view of animal cognition has been out of date for centuries, and none of your arguments are remotely close to sound (see my above). Yes, we anthropomorphise things, what does this prove one way or the other? Animals don't have personalities? Worms perhaps, but have you ever owned a dog? And why is killing an animal rectified by breeding another one? Because animals are a lesser form of life, I guess you'd say. What on earth is that assertion based on? And you say there's no dividing line a vegetarian can make between animals and plants - how about a nervous system?Res Plus said:You don't know that animals are capable of thoughts of feelings, you just assume they are because the ones you like (you know the lovely, fluffy ones) cause a natural anthropomorphism in your brain: you don't act on instinct so you assume animals don't either. There is even less evidence for animals having a distinct personality, that requires a fairly detailed memory, you just think one emerges when you spend a long time with an animal and the athropomorphism hits overdrive.
Contrary to your statement, you can reverse killing an animal by creating another, it's called animal husbandry (thanks Civilization, now I get plus one health in my city and a useful tile to work for leather), and it's the main reason you have free time to sit about sneering at people on the interweb.
People eat animals because they are a lesser life form, basically. Why do you reckon you are so unimpeachably moral and clever for drawing the lesser life form line a bit lower? Under animals but above plants? If you are this ultra clever, second coming animal eco-Jesus you seem to believe you are why not save the plants too, man, they are even less equipped to save themselves?
Obviously no point engaging in one so arrogantly convinced of their own moral and intellectual superiority as you clearly are, so just carry on oh magnificent (yet weirdly hungry even though you just ate) one.
Modern food production is pretty gruesome, battery farms for chickens, slaughter houses that kill animals on an industrial scale etc... Alot of american meat producers lace their animals with anabolic steroids to make the animal get even bigger so you get more meat per animal. This effects chickens in a horrific way to the point that many of them put on so much weight their bones cant support them and they cant walk. There are many reasons that I could think of that would turn me off meat but I'm not going to stop eating it simply because I like it too much.
People are supposed to eat meat, it tastes good for a reason your body is hardwired to like it. Thats the same reason why sugary drinks are so nice, sugar is pretty rare in nature so the human body developed to crave anything sugary. The only thing is now with our ability to manufacture far more food than we've ever had access to heart disease and obesity is becoming a massive problem in the west.
I'm thankful that I dont have to kill animals myself to eat meat. If I had to I would however. I wouldnt take pleasure in the killing mind and I'd try to be as fast as posible to minimise pain to the animal but I'd still do it.
People are supposed to eat meat, it tastes good for a reason your body is hardwired to like it. Thats the same reason why sugary drinks are so nice, sugar is pretty rare in nature so the human body developed to crave anything sugary. The only thing is now with our ability to manufacture far more food than we've ever had access to heart disease and obesity is becoming a massive problem in the west.
I'm thankful that I dont have to kill animals myself to eat meat. If I had to I would however. I wouldnt take pleasure in the killing mind and I'd try to be as fast as posible to minimise pain to the animal but I'd still do it.
I intentionally left the "quite the same" vague. It was lazy I admit, but I was not really willing to get into the semantics and nuances of the differences. I will acquiesce that the health benefits are nearly identical, if not completely identical.Al Baker said:
Yes. Example:Al Baker said:
moral: of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong; ethical: moral attitudes.
Hinduism holds cows to be sacred animals, therefore it is wrong to even harm them, let alone eat them. Christians do not hold cows as sacred and instead believe that ?Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything: Genesis 9-3?, therefore it is not wrong to eat them.
In your example, yes, one human murdering another is bad and that is a fairly universal human moral. However, since you almost brought Godwin into this, I'll also leave him out and reply simply that if a serial killer believed it wrong to kill someone, they would not do it. If that pro-life advocate had believed it was wrong to kill, that doctor would still be alive. If that woman who shot and killed her attacker believed it was wrong to kill, she might be dead herself. In each case the morals are still subjective and unique to the individual. Just because you and I may share the same morals, does not mean that the moral is automatically universal.
I don't feel guilty for eating meat, but I do like to make sure the animals I eat are humanely raised. I do my best to find local, grassfed, freerange, free of chemicals and hormones, etc. meat that was humanely slaughtered. If I'm out at a restaurant or whatever, I don't make a huge deal out of the meat on my plate, but I do my best to find "happy meat" at home.
Captcha: Carbon Footprint
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No. Morals are a human invention, and dictate interactions between humans. Their purpose in any society is to allow people to live together, and cooperate as harmoniously as possible. They are effectively the spoken and unspoken consensus of the group developed over time.
Therefore I can see no way for it to be inherently immoral to eat meat. Eating humans could be immoral, eating other people's animals could be immoral, and certain practices of raising and treating animals could even be immoral.
But animals are not humans and do not have morals: therefore, it cannot be immoral to eat meat.
That's my philosophy anyway, and I have yet to hear anyone convincingly refute it.
Therefore I can see no way for it to be inherently immoral to eat meat. Eating humans could be immoral, eating other people's animals could be immoral, and certain practices of raising and treating animals could even be immoral.
But animals are not humans and do not have morals: therefore, it cannot be immoral to eat meat.
That's my philosophy anyway, and I have yet to hear anyone convincingly refute it.
The way I see it, we don't have enough space on this planet to produce enough farmland to feed our entire population and besides that farmland absolutely destroys the eco-system of the land it's on.
To properly answer your question, no, we shouldn't feel guilty about eating meat.
Sometimes I feel a little bad about my eating habits but then I remember I'm not prey.
To properly answer your question, no, we shouldn't feel guilty about eating meat.
Sometimes I feel a little bad about my eating habits but then I remember I'm not prey.