Personal Development for Smart People Forums - View Single Post

Jerry K · 11-30-2006, 09:25 PM

This is fun, actually the best conversation I've ever had online.

You've got a lot of good points and food for thought in this one. But I have to say one thing right up front - if Jane Goodall had a choice between saving a gorilla and saving me (or you, or one of your kids, or your wife, or my boyfriend) and she saved the gorilla, I'd find that abominable and probably kill her in a fit of rage. With a heavy heart of course. Although her moral/values might have had her save the gorilla (and I don't know enough about her to know if that's the case) those morals/values would be objectively wrong from the point of view of humanity. I know your point is to say that not everyone looks at the world from a human-centric point of view, but at some point I'd draw the line at how extreme a person dedicated to non-human life forms can be. I don't see the difference between that example and a great scientest digging up cadavers because he ran out of voluntary corpses to experiment on.

I want to clear up a misunderstanding that I've fostered along the way. I'm not suggesting that veganism isn't a noble choice and one that has many benefits for animals, people, and the planet. Nor was I suggesting that vegans should all be out doing humanitarian efforts or there veganism was an empty choice. What we choose to eat, like everything else, is really just one more choice we make each day in the process of creating the continuum of our lives. My issue with humanatarianism vs veganism arises when vegans (or any group) uses an event such as the Holocaust as a shorthand for their cause. The Holocaust killed millions of people for no reason, whereas factory farming kills billions of animals for no reason. To equate the two is to equate animal life with human life, and if you do that with something as monstrous as the Holocaust, doesn't it seem as if you would have the moral imperative to follow your own logic to its natural conculsion and devote your life to stopping modern day Holocausts? Otherwise it's just a convenient shorthand usage of an event that deserves more than to be shorthand for an entirely unrelated issues (yes, I know the animals are in their own Treblinka, but it's their own Treblinka - it's not THE Treblinka). Furthermore, and this is meant to help your cause, trying to convince people of the merits of veganism or even vegetarianism by using the Holocaust as metaphor is 100% counter-productive. It requires that they already believe animal life to be equally deserving of respect as human life, and if they did they wouldn't need convincing. Does that make sense?

I appreciate your re-phrasing the tiger question to having the tiger beaten to death, and you're right there are other consequences that enter that equation. I deliberately didn't phrase it that way, because it is very difficult to make that analogy.

Here's another semi-bad analogy that I'll try to make. Millions of people work in awful, degrading jobs in this country because they cannot find or do antyhing else. Many of them make minimum wage or less and can barely buy food and housing. Advocates for increasing the minimum wage could easily make the argument that these people are forced to work for less than they can live off, and therefore it is Modern Day Slavery. I'm pretty sure that black leaders and many others would come out and say that politicians and advocates have no right equating people working "voluntarily" for cheap wages with people forced to work and endure conditions of slavery. Yet if these people have no choice and no options, is it a form of Slavery?

11-30-2006, 09:25 PM	#64 (permalink)
Jerry K Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: The East Village, NYC Posts: 15	More Joey & Jerry Show This is fun, actually the best conversation I've ever had online. You've got a lot of good points and food for thought in this one. But I have to say one thing right up front - if Jane Goodall had a choice between saving a gorilla and saving me (or you, or one of your kids, or your wife, or my boyfriend) and she saved the gorilla, I'd find that abominable and probably kill her in a fit of rage. With a heavy heart of course. Although her moral/values might have had her save the gorilla (and I don't know enough about her to know if that's the case) those morals/values would be objectively wrong from the point of view of humanity. I know your point is to say that not everyone looks at the world from a human-centric point of view, but at some point I'd draw the line at how extreme a person dedicated to non-human life forms can be. I don't see the difference between that example and a great scientest digging up cadavers because he ran out of voluntary corpses to experiment on. I want to clear up a misunderstanding that I've fostered along the way. I'm not suggesting that veganism isn't a noble choice and one that has many benefits for animals, people, and the planet. Nor was I suggesting that vegans should all be out doing humanitarian efforts or there veganism was an empty choice. What we choose to eat, like everything else, is really just one more choice we make each day in the process of creating the continuum of our lives. My issue with humanatarianism vs veganism arises when vegans (or any group) uses an event such as the Holocaust as a shorthand for their cause. The Holocaust killed millions of people for no reason, whereas factory farming kills billions of animals for no reason. To equate the two is to equate animal life with human life, and if you do that with something as monstrous as the Holocaust, doesn't it seem as if you would have the moral imperative to follow your own logic to its natural conculsion and devote your life to stopping modern day Holocausts? Otherwise it's just a convenient shorthand usage of an event that deserves more than to be shorthand for an entirely unrelated issues (yes, I know the animals are in their own Treblinka, but it's their own Treblinka - it's not THE Treblinka). Furthermore, and this is meant to help your cause, trying to convince people of the merits of veganism or even vegetarianism by using the Holocaust as metaphor is 100% counter-productive. It requires that they already believe animal life to be equally deserving of respect as human life, and if they did they wouldn't need convincing. Does that make sense? I appreciate your re-phrasing the tiger question to having the tiger beaten to death, and you're right there are other consequences that enter that equation. I deliberately didn't phrase it that way, because it is very difficult to make that analogy. Here's another semi-bad analogy that I'll try to make. Millions of people work in awful, degrading jobs in this country because they cannot find or do antyhing else. Many of them make minimum wage or less and can barely buy food and housing. Advocates for increasing the minimum wage could easily make the argument that these people are forced to work for less than they can live off, and therefore it is Modern Day Slavery. I'm pretty sure that black leaders and many others would come out and say that politicians and advocates have no right equating people working "voluntarily" for cheap wages with people forced to work and endure conditions of slavery. Yet if these people have no choice and no options, is it a form of Slavery?