ATTN: Vegetarians
 

Why?

I know you're probably really tired of answering this question, but I'm curious. There are so many different justifications.

Do you need a justification? I don't know.

Personally, I can't think of a good reason. I recently read an article by Roger Scruton about why people are vegetarians. Had to do with the lack of piety surrounding meat-eating in the modern world. People no longer say thanks to the animal (like Native Americans in the movies) after killing them. People no longer engage in the kind of community rituals (even just sittinng around the table with family) that used to surround meat-eating. They just stuff Big Macs down their gullet while sitting alone in their car. So, vegetarians are supplanting artificial restrictions in order to satisfy this urge for reverence. Is this bullshit? Makes more sense to me than, "I just don't like the taste of meat."

Thoughts?

My ex-girlfriend's mom is a vegetarian because of how they killed the animals. They really cherish their pets like family, and I think that it just created a very sympathetic view towards animals.

Personally, the only reason I would consider it is for health reasons. But there are very healthy ways to eat meat. And I can't pass up Del Taco anyway.

Yawn.
Everyone has his or her own reasons.
It's a goddamned personal choice.
I'm vegan.
I don't give two shits what anyone else wants to eat.
I just found eating meat to be unneccessary for my survival, not great for my health, gross, etc. I live in a time in history and a place in the world where this is an easy and perfectly convenient way to live. If I lived in a different location in the world or another time in history, this would not be feasible. As it is, I can do it and I like it. That's it.

Yeah, paramount is your health. You can eat glass and shards of twisted metal, for all its worth, but you'd end up with very perforated internal organs. So, if it doesn't kill you, eat it!

Savage Clone:

This is exactly what I'm getting at: the irritation that people have when asked about this. It's a fairly large life decision, yet the real reason for it is somehow not on the tip of the tongue; it's there but hard to explain and this leads to frustration. And you're too smart to stick with one of the standard responses bcause you realize they don't make sense.

This isn't neccesarily how I feel--I'm just throwing out this idea that was in the article I read. I think it's pretty interesting.

The slaughterhouse is probably the biggest reason. I don't know if I would like to see anything treated in that way, certainly not any living thing. It's too destructive and disgusting and doesn't fit right with how I view the world or would like too. But then to kill at all... It's sort of a strange position we're put in where saying we're meant to eat meat is just as absurd as saying we're not meant to. There's also the issue of corruption in the whole industry, but that really extends to the food industry in general...though some things like the hormones, antibiotics, and mad cow are particularly horrific. I guess I stopped trying to convert people a while ago...I always liked change I could make in just a choice rather than having to become part of a movement. I'm not sure how much you can really do besides making people aware of basic slaughterhouse conditions or getting them to think about things anyway... It's almost more of a philosophical question, so it's difficult to argue.

Yeah, I think that demanding humane (whatever that means to you) treatment in slaughterhouses would go along way in making people feel more comfortable eating meat.

In the article that sparked this, Scruton talks about slaughterhouses and makes some facile comments about the treatment of anmials. I think he kind of passes over this argument. Personally, I don't really know much about conditions for animals. I assume that many are treated well, while some aren't. The treatment of animals as just commercial products is a little sickening, I agree. We should have more reverance for them and take better care of them, and then eat them......This is basically what he's saying.

For the record, this Scruton guy can be sort of an ass. His conservative viewpoint on lots of things tends towards the ridiculous and curmudgeonly. I have a book by him on the aesthetics of music and his comments on pop-rock music are some of the silliest I've ever read.

The article I read is called "A Carnivore’s Credo" and I read it in the May Harper's Magazine.

I don't really mind when people ask me, sometimes it's annoying when people ask it over and over or when they act all weirded out about it for whatever reason.
I don't eat it because I don't feel the need to. I love animals and the thought of eating one now makes me want to throw up, the same way others might feel when asked to eat another person. Hahah I dunno.

The family of a friend of mine owns some chicken houses and some cattle. I used to hang out there and my friend would have to go in the chicken houses and pick up the dead ones every day. A few died every day. Conditions in chicken houses don't really bother me, but I admit that the expensive free-range organicly fed ones taste better. Maybe one day they'll just grow chicken meat in vats.

His cattle seemed pretty happy. They roamed around, there were plenty of shade tress and little creeks on their land. They took good care of them--helped the babies get born and got doctors for the sick cows. They even had names for many of them, but they never got sad when some were taken away to slaughterhouses.

I'm completely the same as Savage Clone. I am currently a vegetarian but school let's out in 4 days and I will become a full on vegan. I just got bored with eating meat.

I rarely eat meat products and when I have the resources for becoming a vegetarian I plan to be one. my reasoning is to just become healthier. The fat content is outstanding and its nutrition is small in comparison to other foods. Meat has never appealed to me and I always found it so primitive to devour a chicken bone or piece of meat....

i initially stopped eating meat because when my girlfriend moved in with me it became easier to cook one veggie friendly dish, rather than cook a meaty one for me and a veggie/seafood one for her. at this point, though, i don't eat meat anymore because i feel healthier and i enjoy not being as heavy as i used to be.

it's just the taste, and i want to be healthier.

Do any of you guys buy that bit about "piety" and "reverence" and whatnot?

Since I'm not a vegetarian, I don't know whether he's full of shit or makes a good point. But it seems like a pretty convincing way to fill in the gaps as far as explaining why people decide to become vegetarians while only having vague reasons for doing so. However, the idea that one can see into the motivations of a huge group of people that you aren't a part of is pretty presumptuous and more than a little pretentious.

yeah, i'll second (seventh?) the health citation. the only essential nutrient endemic to meat products is b12, and that can be found in any multivitamin. any other nutrient (notably protein) can be found in other sources such as cheese, beans, soy, etc. there are a number of medical organizations that recommend a vegetarian diet on the grounds that it helps one to reduce weight (admittedly i am a tad underweight -- 5'8" and around 135# -- but no matter).

also the longer i go as a vegetarian the more averse i am to anything surrounding meat products. i occasionally have to spray air freshener around any such product that has been cooked by my mom (much to her enragement, for whatever reason). i dunno, it just seems such a primordial diet -- i've always imagined that any advanced alien civilization that came here to visit would find our practice of systematically raising and killing animals for food somewhat unsettling (barring their own carnivorous physiological requirements).

finally, i never really liked meat anyway . . . i could deal with it before i changed over but it was certainly not the absolute favorite part of my diet by any means.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I choose lots of meat (especially beef and chicken) in my diet. There's no way I could take the vegetarian path. However, vegan diets (once again...my opinion) are just fucking ridiculous. (cow) Skim Milk is just as good for you as the soy variant. I'm not into animal torture or anything, but cry over the fallen soldiers before you devote yourself to Barbarosa the horse (foreign or domestic..they're still human).

Yes I eat cow I am not proud........

Pork is bad...mmmkay?

Does she still like chicken? Most kids do...and it's one of the healthier meats if the right cut is selected and it is cooked properly.

We've sort of got a culture, in America anyway, of self-deprivation mixed with self-indulgence, and even at times self-indulgent self-deprivation. So I think some do it because they want to deprive themselves of something, or maybe just want something to do. But I think one major reason a lot of people don't really want to talk about it is because it's viewed as a sort of moral pretentiousness, and you find meat-eaters will automatically feel challenged by it, or at the least awkward. I never really tell people unless they ask, even when offered food I usually just say no thanks. It's not that I don't want to get into a discussion about it, but that it's hard to have one where at least one of the persons doesn't go straight to the defensive, and I can see from either side why one would. It's difficult to have a balanced discussion, if such a thing exists.

Here's a sort of comic example of what I mean:






I guess what I'm saying is I think Scruton's theory, as I understand it, has some validity but it also seems to dismiss the notion that anyone could possibly have legitimate ethical concerns. People do it for all sorts of reasons, especially now that all the health information is coming out on meat, but I think it's at least reasonable to suggest that the mind of a human could feel uncomfortable about it, with its capacity for empathy, whether one agrees or not. It sounds like he's suggesting it's a sort of strange religious need, he says people have a need for animals to be treated with reverence, rather than respect. There are many that use vegetarianism as a boycott--that is, don't see eating meat as fundamentally wrong, but that our way of killing the animals is. I myself would probably never go back to eating meat, but at the same time there are some other animals that are obviously carnivorous, and I can't say with certainty that eating meat is wrong. It's just a choice I've made based on how I feel, as I suppose most decisions are. I don't know, like all theories that try to explain a very complex issue in some form of vague psychoanalysis, there's some truth in what he says, but it doesn't really hold up as a rule.

I just have no desire to eat internal organs, it's a simple as that. I'm happy for other people to eat meat, and I'm happy to cook it for them, but I don't want to eat it myself.

Firstly, let me say that I stopped eating 'meat' in 1984 (I was 13) and I have to say I found it really quite easy to stick to. Once I'd started I was surprised by how little I wanted meat, so in my experience it was the worrying over the decision to start that was awkward rather than the practicalities of it once I'd begun.

It's a big and correct decision to make in my opinion. It's a moral choice, and those are the best choices to make.

As for being questioned: it's not so much that I get annoyed at being asked why, it's more the general offensiveness and/or stupidity of some of the people who ask. Three examples:

1. They start to rattle off as many possible things as they can to 'catch you out', ie dumb questions about shoes and belts and beer and this and that. They are desperate to convince themselves and you that being veggie isn't the moral choice, yet they expect you to be morally infallible if you are veggie.
2. You get offered things like chicken and fish, because people are just too f****** dumb to understand that fish and chickens are animals.
3. They mention that Hitler was veggie, as if that means anything at all. Them: 'Hey, did you know Hitler was a veggie, just like you?'
Me: 'Yes, and he was also a tw*t, just like you.'

You'll hear that vegetarians always push their opinions in people's faces, but in fact it is generally the opposite that is true. I've never attacked someons for being a general meat eater (although I certainly have for eating veal, of course!), but I myself have been verbaly attacked on several occaisions for being veggie. A lot of people are for some reason intimidated by others' moral choices to the point of aggressiveness, and this is becoming both more common and more extreme.

I'm vegetarian formainly moral reasons; I believe that life should be guided by morals, and that vegetarianism is a big moral choice. Anyone who cares about my reasons can have a few:

I detest the cruel nature of modern farming (and slaughtering), that amounts to little more than torture. It also produces dreadful quality meat, but that wasn't a big part of my choice. That people make a living, or even become very rich from this form of extreme cruelty is sickening, to be quite honest.

I come from one of the richest countries on earth. I have never - absolutely never - been so hungry that something else has had to die to fill my stomach. There is no reason to inflict stress, fear, pain and suffering on a living creature just so that I can eat.

Some foods, like veal and sharks fin soup, go beyond even basic ideas of cruelty and are just a sign of a barbaric attitude.

Social conditioning is not necessarily a good thing - sometimes questioning and challenging that conditioning is the right thing to do.

We could feed a lot more people by using land for crops than we do by using it for grazing. Why are people across the world starving? Another by-product, of course, is that large area of rainforest are destroye to rise cows for McDonalds.
I also just don't want to eat bits of dead animal. Why on earth would I?

There are other reasons, of course.

When I weigh up the evidence/morals/whatever, the truth is that I can see little reason to eat 'meat', especially in today's economy where vegetarianism is no more expensive a lifestyle choice than 'meat' eating.

Sure, some of it tastes nice (I think - I can't really remember), but the only real reason I can see to eat 'meat' is conditioning. That's just not enough, for me, to overcome the moral (and health) advantages.

The article I was talking about was actually presented at Princeton recently accompanied by an article by Peter Singer called "Can Eating Animals Be Justified?" Singer basically presented the argument that you just did, Hip Priest.

Look at Wednesday, November 9th, 4:30 PM:
http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/05/1107/calendar.shtml



I'd like to read his article, I'll see if I can find it online.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/arc...ws/13730.shtml

From Wikipedia about Peter Singer:

"
Animal Liberation (originally published in 1975, second edition 1990, third edition 2002) was a major formative influence on the modern animal rights movement. Although Singer rejects rights as a moral ideal independent from his utilitarianism based on interests, he accepts rights as derived from utilitarian principles, particularly the principle of minimizing suffering. (Compare his fellow utilitarian John Stuart Mill, whose defense of the rights of the individual in On Liberty is introduced with the qualification, "It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right as a thing independent of utility"). Singer allows that animal rights are not exactly the same as human rights, writing in Animal Liberation that "[T]here are obviously important differences between human and other animals, and these differences must give rise to some differences in the rights that each have." So, for example an animal does not have the right to a good education as this is meaningless to them, just as a man does not have the right to an abortion. But he is no more skeptical of animal rights than of the rights of women, beginning Animal Liberation by defending just such a comparison against Mary Wollstonecraft's 18th-century critic Thomas Taylor, who argued that if Wollstonecraft's reasoning in defense of women's rights were correct, then "brutes" would have rights too. Taylor thought he had revealed a reductio ad absurdum of Wollstonecraft's view; Singer regards it as a sound logical implication. Taylor's modus tollens is Singer's modus ponens.
In Animal Liberation, Singer argues against what he calls speciesism: discrimination on the grounds that a being belongs to a certain species. He holds the interests of all beings capable of suffering to be worthy of equal consideration, and that giving lesser consideration to beings based on their having wings or fur is no more justified than discrimination based on skin color. In particular, he argues that while animals show lower intelligence than the average human, many severely retarded humans show equally diminished mental capacity, and intelligence therefore does not provide a basis for providing nonhuman animals any less consideration than such retarded humans. He concludes that the use of animals for food is unjustifiable because it creates unnecessary suffering, and considers veganism the most fully justifiable diet. Singer also condemns most vivisection, though he believes a few animal experiments may be acceptable if the benefit (in terms of improved medical treatment, etc.) outweighs the harm done to the animals used. Due to the subjectivity of the term "benefit", controversy exists about this and other utilitarian views. But he is clear enough that humans of comparable sentience should also be candidates for any animal experimentation that passes the benefit test. So a monkey and a human infant would be equally available for the experiment, from a moral point of view, other things being equal. If performing the experiment on the infant isn't justifiable, then Singer believes that the experiment shouldn't happen at all -- instead, the researchers should pursue their goals using computer simulations or other methods. Acceptable vivisection would be weakly "speciesist" insofar as it passes over human candidates for non-human subjects, but arguably species membership in such cases would be a legitimate tie-breaking consideration."

It sounds interesting. I've found Peter Singer's home page (I assume it's the same one!) - I might modify this quote of his for my signiature:

My work is based on the assumption that clarity and consistency in our moral thinking is likely, in the long run, to lead us to hold better views on ethical issues.

There's a list of articles on that site. They all sound pretty intersting.

Thanks for the wiki.

That's him.

Some relevant articles from Peter Singer's home page

Factory Farming - A Moral Issue.

Animal Rights - The Right To Protest (another subject very dear to my heart).

There should be no Room for Cruelty to Livestock.

These articles look really interesting. Guess what I'll be doing in work today!

(there are other related articles etc on his site, and many on other subjects that look equally interesting).

If anyone has read this far and still cares, he appears to be a part of this overall webthing: utilitarian.net.

Scruton's argument's fallicious - although the atheist doesn't give thanks for their food, the Christian does with Grace, the Muslim eating Halal pays for someone else to do the killing and thanks, and then gives thanks twice, likewise the Kosher eating Jew. I forget the dietary requirements/ ceremonies of Hindus and Buddhists, I know Sikhs have plenty of prayers for any number of occasions.

What you (via Scruton) say is true for atheists, certainly, but I think you're talking about one kind of person from one part of the world - worldwide this is not the case.

Regarding the piety, I suspect a lot of veggies - by no means all, just a vocal minority - are pious by account of their supplanting religion with a 'moral code'. I don't think its the ceremony of food, I think its a wider malaise of searching for faith without believing in any of the major religions - and I think this is a similar reasoning to the constant fetishising of Eastern religion within the 'conscious hippy' types. As it happens, I think Buddhism is a religion which is no better or worse than any other.

I like meat. Meat is something I like a great deal. I don't particularly care what anyone else eats, that's their deal. But I do enjoy shouting at sanctimonious twats.

I'd feed Stella Macartney a sandwich with a dead rat in it .I dont mind
people's eating habits unless they become fascistic about it.

hello again.

Glice: I basically agree with the bits I've edited out, and I kappreciate that you've stressed that your argument doesn't appply to all vegetarians, but I'd just like to say a few things.

Morals don't have to supercede or replace religion. They can exist alongside religion, and can exist without religion. They do not neccessarily indicate any desire for 'faith' or faith substitute, they can just be the natural result of waning to be a good person.

I made this point earlier, and it's true that there are vegetarians who are just as bad, but in my experience (and that of others) I have to say that it is often the 'meat' eater who displays the signs of dogmatic close-mindedness. It is often the meat eater who will become abusive, forceful, scornful and oblivious to the rights of others (the 'fascistic' attitude that porkmarras rightfuly mentions).

Glice: Good points.

Scruton's argument isn't really about saying prayers as much as it's about a general attitude. I think that many Christians fall into his category of people that need to "re-moralize their eating habits." How many Christians actually say grace while eating a burger in the car on the way to work? He's not really aiming his argument only at athiests. He thinks that most Christians just aren't being good enough Christians if being a Christian means following his subscribed attitude towards animals.

And, yes I think he's aiming his arguments at the western world. I mean, he derives a lot of his ideas from the ancients: his idea of ethics and so on. I suppose this is a flaw in his reasoning.

I was just interested in what vegetarians thought of his explanations. Of course, if I don't explain them very well, then I can't expect good responses....

BTW, I disagree with both Scruton and Singer on lots of issues. Both are good examples of people who have pushed certain ideas well past the point at which they become useless.

One thing that bugs me about crazy(as opposed to sensible) animal lovers is when someone has a pet and they start talking to them and seriously think that the pet understands what they say.I love animals as much as the next person ,and for this reason alone i respect them and LET THEM BE animals.Most cats fall in love with me BECAUSE I FEED THEM and not because they give a particular toss about what i have to say.And that is fine with me.

I have insomnia.

This derives from the safe knowledge that domesticated animals understand the general tone of what you're saying (and of your physical behaviour), rather than the words themselves. What I mean is, if you shout aggressively at a cat, it'll back off, whereas if you speak softly and nicely it'll hang round you. It's similar as talking to babies, I suppose.

Yeah i get your point but it doesn't work like that when folks start thinking that their cat has magic powers or something like that.Wether we like it or not,pets would be much happier without the company of human beings.It's just our mental superiority to animals that makes us assume otherwise.

Y'irie?

I necessarily take an entirely different line to you on the religion/ morals thing - I agree with your points in so far as they are articulate and well placed, but my religious leanings and understanding prohibit me agreeing entirely. Nonetheless, as we've said before, forums aren't the right place for these kind of discussions, so it's probably best to put that debate to one side, wouldn't you agree?

Noumenal: I met Scruton, and he was a total cunt. I don't care if he's the best philosopher who ever walked the earth (which he's not), I vehemently and irrationally disagree with him because he's a cockbag and I am full of meat-induced hate for him.

Likewise Singer, but that's more because he's got an absolutely revolting face. I don't claim to be rational, I never have and I never will.

Hahaha, that figures. He wrote a terrible opera called "Violet." He also wrote a pretty terrible book about Wagner (OK, I haven't read it, but I can tell by the title) and like I posted earlier, his book on the aesthetics of music has some HILARIOUS commentary on rock music. What he says about REM is particularly funny. I'll look it up tomorrow. He comes off as a real jackass old fart.

But, even though he's a "cockbag', he can sometimes concoct snotty and somewhat convincing arguments that are fun to use as shit-sticks, right? The inspiration for thread, for example.

ZING! Fair enough indeed.

Has anyone written a book on Wagner that wasn't rubbish though? I've read a few, and they're always arse. Or perhaps I don't have the refined sensiblity to appreciate Wagner books, which is strange given that I am somewhat of a leper in my appreciation of his music.

Books about Wagner I've read all or some of:

Wagner and Philosophy by Bryan Magee is OK. A nice read at least.

The Tragic and the Ecstatic : The Musical Revolution of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde by Eric Thomas Cafe wasn't very good. Typical Wagner stuff.

Prelude and Transfiguration from Tristan and Isolde is a Norton Critical Score and is excellent. It has a lot of the best writings and analyses of Tristan.

Romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners "Tristan" by Ernst Kurth hasn't been completely translated into English, but the parts I've read are fascinating. I wrote a paper on Kurth's analysis of the Prelude this past semester.

My Life is a good autobiography, but I've only read bits.

Anyway, who really cares about Wagner anyway? Anti-semite.