[noumenal]

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?

[acousticrock87]

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.

[Savage Clone]

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.

[alyasa]

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!

[noumenal]

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.

[blots]

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.

[noumenal]

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.

[EMMAh]

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.

[noumenal]

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.

[HaydenAsche]

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.

[finding nobody]

http://www.oldeenglish.org/steven.html

[m^a(t)h]

Originally Posted by noumenal

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?

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....

[val-holla-ing]

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.

[schizophrenicroom]

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

[noumenal]

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.

[qprogeny79]

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.

[Neongod]

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).

[krastian]

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

[Neongod]

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.

[blots]

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.