this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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You'd be surprised how many people don't make the connection that nonhumans aren't just flesh robots. Also a basic syllogism:
Ok, but. I would still eat a dead human pretty readily if they didn't taste like veal, so. Not to mention, my overly-literal ass can confirm from everything I know of every area of medicine and mechanics, we definitely are meat robots, yes. The distance as a consumer helps, but if I had to kill something myself, all it would take is getting hungry enough. An empty stomach knows no morality.
I think you're underestimating how little emphasis most really place on this over making their own survival as simple as possible. Myself and others are not unaware that dying is painful or we'd likely be kept in a room somewhere, and acting otherwise is infantilzing.
Deriving enjoyment from being talked down to is so far from the norm it's a distinct fetish, so it rarely accomplishes more than making the target dig in their heels. It's by far the main reason that every time a vegetarian/vegan is at all vocal, they tend to get laughed out of the room.
Unless they're six, people already know animals suffer and they eat them anyway. It's just what they've always done, they already know it's available and delicious, and it's easier not to change anything more than they absolutely have to.
So make the change simple. The empathy route isn't playing to strengths, here, the way just getting someone to try and hopefully integrate vegetarian meals would.
Horrendous? Yes. Also true. Mostly what people do is suck. If you want someone to do something for you, make it worth their while.
I have no moral problem eating a human or nonhuman if they're already dead. Kinda weird but whatever. The issue comes when you are the one who took their life from them without consent.
We're meat robots worth moral consideration, because we're sentient. If a metal robot was sentient they'd be worth moral consideration as well, since they could experience what was done to them.
We're a social species, i think it's worth voicing dissent. Let them know that what they've been doing should change and that other people think they're doing something terrible. Get them to reflect on it more deeply and see if they're really ok with hurting others for the sake of convenience and taste and if they are, they should know that about themself rather than living in ignorance
But...then wouldn't the activism be directed solely at slaughterhouse workers? Who..obviously won't listen, given they chose to work there, and the only one of them I ever knew still has a special hatred for chickens decades later?
I'm not the one killing anything. Only thing I've ever killed is bugs, and I stopped enjoying that when I hit ten. I still inarguably fund the ones who do. Those who hunt by themselves and do kill tend very much to be poor enough to make hunting a welcome option, which I wouldn't take issue with until they have others available.
This ideally has to range beyond the killing part if it's to reach literally anyone whose financial situation does not depend upon continuing to kill things.
As for other people telling me they think I'm terrible, I get that all the time already, whether I've actually done anything or not. If you're on the internet, stuff like that becomes noise. I don't like me either.
Sorry, i didn't word that well. Funding the killing is still a big ethical issue, and trying to find different jobs for those people is an important thing to do, since there's also a good chance they'd rather not do that if they had better options. For example, iirc ptsd rates are high among slaughterhouse workers
another major funder of animal agriculture is the US government, which is why i support the agricultural fairness alliance which lobbies against unethical farming and in favor of transitioning animal farmers to plant farming https://agriculturefairnessalliance.org/
Which will be difficult since they tend by nature to be the only available work far out in the middle of nowhere. Rural areas are highly resistant to urbanization and in my experience their council members are openly hostile even as their town is visibly breathing its last. I believe you're also right about the PTSD, I'd forgotten about it.
Appreciate the link, I'm..you know. Overall dumb about these things. And also shocked to find the amount they're asking for one single lobbyist — which I think would feel exorbitant to most — is lower midtier for their average salary. I don't really know what I expected.
Yep, and this is where we start getting to the limits of my knowledge and the weeds of politics. Generally speaking i think as a species we have a lot of jobs that don't need to exist or shouldn't exist, and a lot of people who would be left in poverty without them (and many who already are in poverty simply because there are more people than profitable things to do). I think there has got to be some way of meeting everyone's basic needs without a pretty binary choice of working a traditional job or living in poverty, but exactly what that looks like idk. I have some ideas, but they're probably not worth getting into here/now
No problem, and i wouldn't say you're dumb about these things. More accepting of injustice than i'd like maybe, but not dumb. I couldn't find those numbers on their site, how much is it?
Universal basic income, basically, yes. Which would ideally revolutionize a lot, so while I'm drooling over the idea in a perfect world, I'm also banking on something about it being horribly twisted before they ever consent to do something close to that. They'd have more money to put back into the economy than they are, but people scrambling in poverty don't have the energy to take an active interest in the doings of the elite.
Their site lists:
So $120k per year. Googling the current salary of a DC lobbyist gets me anywhere from $56k - $210K. Should have just done that instead, huh. Getting into political arguments with strangers could have been a paid gig.