Fucking hell, now you’re comparing slaves to animals? Seek help
Comment on "Being vegan is unnatural"
bearboiblake@pawb.social 3 weeks agoIf you believe that animals should have rights like humans do, then animals can be raped. If slavery was still legal, would you write “it’s pretty fucked up to equate slave husbandry with rape”? Just because we have historically done something, that doesn’t mean that what we’re doing is in any way moral.
Devadander@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
bearboiblake@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
I am, the comparison is extremely apt. An entire group of thinking, feeling, sentient, living creatures, exploited for profit. We look down on them as being beneath us, and a culture that normalizes beating, raping and killing them. Living beings, treated as property. They are slaves. Lots of people like to believe that if they had lived during slavery, they would have been against it. This is the modern equivelent.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Dude we did not eat slaves the fuck
arrow74@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Wow, comparing actual human slavery to cattle production. That’s certainly a take
goedel@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
If you believe that animals should have rights like humans do
no one believes that. not even vegans
stickly@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Animals can have rights and be protected from unnecessary cruelty without anthropomophizing them and granting full human rights. You’re equating full, sapient humans with a species specifically bred for a base purpose without higher levels of thought and expression.
I don’t even think that statement is anthropocentric hubris. If ultra-advanced aliens showed up tomorrow and started domesticating humans for food or some other purpose, I would have the default expectation of them having the same or similar morals. Maybe we’d get access to decent healthcare and good libraries before we went to the slaughterhouse.
Cows get more rights than trees or crops because they have an ability to express pain and convey emotion. They don’t have the same rights as humans because they could never give a passionate argument for suffrage to a jury.
And to be clear: there are plenty of real, tangible reasons to end animal husbandry and make everyone vegan without even touching philosophy.
bearboiblake@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Your ancestors, probably
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Kind of racist to suggest that slaves were a different species
bearboiblake@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
That’s exactly how people justified slavery in the past, and it is how the person I replied to justified their argument. That’s my entire point. It’s the same argument.
Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
That’s the point
stickly@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This is a ludicrous argument. If you truly believe that all animals have the same rights then the only internally consistent conclusion is the virtual extermination of the human species.
Life is a zero sum game. Something lives by consuming something else or displacing it for access to limited resources. Optimizing for the minimum harm to earth’s ecosystem is always going to be the end of agriculture, housing, hunting, industry and basically everything other human institution. We’re the most insidious invasive species ever and the world would be healthier without us mucking around.
So unless you’re stumping for that, don’t pretend to have the moral high ground. If you are, stop wasting your time shaming people and skip right to culling them.
ageedizzle@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
Bro would rather exterminate all humans than admit that he should just go vegan
bearboiblake@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
I advocate for humanity to live in harmony and balance with our environment, that is why I am anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist as well as vegan. Our history is plagued with exploitation, that can’t be denied, but I am trying to change it and you are arguing that it cannot be changed and that we shouldn’t even try.
Humanity’s relationship with animals and nature has historically been exploitative but it doesn’t need to be that way.
We have vastly increased our ability to produce food. There are ample resources available on the planet for all of us to share and live in abundance. Human greed and selfishness is rewarded by our society.
I reject your argument that life is a zero-sum game. My happiness does not need to come at the expense of another’s unhappiness. We can all work together to create a better future for all living things on our planet.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
True, but no one gives a shit when the consumed life is a plant.
People say the “plants feel pain” thing rhetorically, but it isn’t a serious argument. And if they were somehow actually being serious, then this would actually strengthen the case to only consume plants due the efficiency of doing so vs consuming animal products.
merdaverse@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I can’t believe you said this with a straight face. This is the depths of depravity and mental gymnastics that a non vegan philosophical position leads to. I’m also sure that if this actually happened, you would throw your logic in the trash, where it belongs, and you would fight for the liberation of the slaughtered race.
Do you want to extend the argument to a person who is in a permanent comatose state? By your definition, they are without “higher levels of thought and expression”. Is it cool to eat them?
stickly@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If the advanced aliens had the control over us that we exert over animals then I wouldn’t have a choice. And whether I fight or not isn’t relevant to their choice to farm me. If anything it’s in their best interest to keep me healthy and content until I’m harvested.
Your coma example is laughable. They’re a human. A medical procedure (even if we don’t have the technology to perform it) could return them to normal function. Turning a cow into a human-like creature is a different discussion altogether, it would be a transformation at such a fundamental level that we might as well be discussing artificial personhood instead of the ethics of diet.
If we invented a procedure that could make corn moo would it no longer be vegan?
merdaverse@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
You keep avoiding the moral implications here because you know the argument is bs. If some groups of people mass bred and slaughtered monkeys or dogs on an industrial scale would you not care, because they don’t have a choice? It would be the same as your example, without the alien hypotheticals.
The disconnect between the logical, robotical analysis in the first case and the childish, optimistic look here really just highlights the compartmentalization you have to go through for a “coherent” position.