Sorry for you Desert Girl... It seems that you only read what approves your ideas and likings. This is desert indeed. You show me that vegan or not, humans are doomed anyway, not willing to become better humans.

Keep rockin'. Cheers.

For Mike:

"Nonhuman animals are suffering and dying under human exploitative actions at unfathomable rates." - True. Also the whole planet becomes a victim.

"Humans do NOT need to kill nonhuman animals in order to live." - Well... Our present brain apparently evolved the way it did after hundreds of thousands of years of consuming meat. Vegan, are you willing to go (in hundreds of thousands of years) to a ape-like state? Personally I wouldn't mind. For this planet would be better anyway.

"There is no substantial evidence that plants have interests or can suffer." - Ok. There is no substantial evidence that you have a soul. So... Why did you watch Earthlings? Why should we not kill animals? Why should your neighbour not kill you just for fun?

"More plants die when we choose to raise and consume animals than when we eat the plants, themselves." - Debatable, but I would accept your argument. The core of the problem is our brain which is too hungry for pleasure. Pleasure of eating things, pleasure of everything. This need for comfort and pleasure will drive us into a wall, not what we meat - vegetables or animals.

"The Earth is losing its ability to sustain an ecosystem that supports most current life (especially mammals) as a direct result of our misuse." - debatable but I would accept the argument.

"Veganism is a direct monetary protest against this misuse. Veganism requires fewer net deaths." - It is an ok movement. Not part of it, but I respect it as long as vegan humans do not consider themselves better humans, if they are really not.

"your defeatist, doomsday beliefs" - not defetist, but realist.

What bothered me in Earthlings was the humiliation and total disregard for live in general. I would be 100% for a legislation harsh punishing such treatment of animals. But take good care!!! This behavior is inside all of us!!! It is part of the garbage of being human today!!! Vegan or not, you are missing the point. Not progress, but balance is to be looked after. Not pleasure of living, but continuous quest and awe.

Do you have weeds in your courtyard? If a fly enters your room, what do you do? What if you see a rat? What trees and how many are near your home? Is it a natural environment, or one decided by humans? These are the signs of you being as human as other people. Dictatorial, basically a master predator, bullying the nature to do it our way.

If you would go to Tibet or Buthan, or if you would stay with a tribe in a jungle, in time would you like to help them make things better for themselves? Or will you just blend in? If you would try to change the smallest thing, for their benefit, you will destroy them. You will be no different than the communists or any other tiranny. That style of living is the only sustainable one for humans in the long run, but everybody else runs from their harsh "backward" way of living and understanding the universe.

I am not a defetist. But my beliefs differ from yours. My solution is this: go small, go modest, go balanced. Appreciate any form of life and the geography of earth as living gods, because it helps you to be a better human on and for this earth. To see life as a rational mechanism will bring us and the whole earth down our knees. Let nature be present into your life, flow with it. Embrace it. Live in small self-sustained communities. Vegan or not, do these things if you want humans to exist in the next 100.000 years on this earth. If not, do whatever else you want. It won't count anyway. Earth will feel good without humans.

Cheers!

Ah. Your argument makes sense, Scott. You're saying that giving birth to a child causes THAT CHILD suffering, because, in your opinion, to live is to suffer. I'm with you now.

This is a slippery slope fallacy, though.

Your disdain for the human race should be reserved for another thread, because people misinterpret that as a reason to remain omnivorous.

Mike

Sigh.

Hopefully someone else will pop in and help, here, because I'm exhausted from the red herrings and other fallacies.

The human brain argument is bizarre and terribly consequentialist. You've used the ends to justify the means and then jazzed it up with a threat regarding "devolution".

Try as you might to avoid the most obvious topic, I will continue to frame my arguments this way:

We know that nonhuman animals exploited through farming practices suffer and die for the purposes of human pleasure. We know this. To choose to support this practice is to promote and support immeasurable amounts of suffering for people, planet, and nonhumans. This is not debatable. It's just ignorable.

We know that vegan choices end our support of these practices. Together, these vegan choices can stop these practices altogether.

So where does making nonvegan choices put you in your world view? You can't stop all suffering so supporting more suffering is ok? We're all going to die anyway so what does it matter? We should just pay some form of hollow and contradictory respect?

Help me understand how you justify your animal consumption with your belief system, but be prepared to have your belief system challenged. There have been plenty of belief systems that have justified murder and torture in the past. Many exist today. Help me see how yours is any less flawed.

Mike

Cold Ash wrote:

QUOTE:
What bothered me in Earthlings was the humiliation and total disregard for live in general. I would be 100% for a legislation harsh punishing such treatment of animals. But take good care!!! This behavior is inside all of us!!! It is part of the garbage of being human today!!! Vegan or not, you are missing the point. Not progress, but balance is to be looked after. Not pleasure of living, but continuous quest and awe.

Bottom line is you're advocating the welfarist position.

The abolitionist response, which in my opinion is irrefutable, is that it's a practical impossibility to use animals in large quantities for human benefit without exploiting and torturing them. What you call "humiliation" is really just your perception of how a human would react if they were treated with the cold, cruel, callous, despicable barbarity and savagery that farmed animals are subjected to on a constant, never-ending basis. I don't think it's likely that the animals experience humiliation. What they experience is fear, pain, and suffering.

Only under the most unique, extraordinary circumstances would it be possible for even a single human to use animal products such as chickens' eggs and cows' milk without violating the interests of those animals. Chickens typically eat their own unfertilized eggs when left alone, and mother cows don't produce milk unless they're nursing a baby calf who has not been weaned prematurely and arbitrarily by their human "owners."

Once you begin the institutionalized process by which animal products are generated for economic consumption as much as they're generated for mass human physical consumption, the animals become nothing more than objectified disposable commodities, and will inevitably be subjected to what you refer to as "humiliation."

Take a look at this article and tell me what you think. http://www.ojaipost.com/2009/08/_i_understand_why_4h_kids_shou_1.shtml

Did you read this paragraph from one of my previous posts?

Scott wrote:

QUOTE:
You say you have a problem with collective society's disrespect for life in general. The only way that's going to change is if society starts respecting life enough to not treat living beings as commodities. It's the cruel, callous barbarity that causes the disrespect you oppose, but as long as human beings continue to unnecessarily use animals as commodities when vegan alternatives exist, the savagery that is humanity will never be eradicated. The moral baseline is veganism. There is no alternative. Welfarism, which is what you're ultimately driving at, is not a viable solution. I suggest you read as many blog entries on abolitionistapproach.com as you possibly can. The disrespect for life you oppose can all be traced back to one root cause - the status of animals as property under the law.

Did you read any entries on abolitionistapproach.com like I suggested? You can't talk about the evolution of the human brain and use that to justify the use of animals while touting the welfarist position, because the welfarism simply does not work. In fact, it does much more harm than good, because it creates the illusion that if you donate money to large, self-sufficient organizations that have become institutions unto themselves, such as peTa and HSUS, and only buy "happy" meat, all the problems will be solved for you. BULLSHIT. Veganism is the single most effective form of activism anyone can do.

Cold Ash wrote:

QUOTE:
You show me that vegan or not, humans are doomed anyway, not willing to become better humans.

To the contrary, she's one of the few exceptions that proves the rule, because she has already become a better human. Have you?

Cold Ash wrote:

QUOTE:
"Veganism is a direct monetary protest against this misuse. Veganism requires fewer net deaths." - It is an ok movement. Not part of it, but I respect it as long as vegan humans do not consider themselves better humans, if they are really not.

Hmmmmm, let's see, I can be a cruel, cold-hearted savage and actively participate in the barbaric exploitation, abuse, and torture of sentient beings whose moral worth is equal to or greater than that of humans, or I can be part of the 1% of the human world that is civilized and compassionate. Which do you think would allow me to "consider myself a better human?"