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OT: What would it take to get you to stop eating meat?
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With the new David Foster Wallace movie coming out, there's been a lot of internet chattering about it and him. I am not very familiar with his work, only having watched the YouTube video of his brilliant graduation speech at Kenyon College. Curious to learn more, I decided to read his well known 2004 essay Consider the Lobster. In it, he doesn't explicitly argue that eating lobster as it is traditionally prepared (as fresh as possible, often boiled alive) is inhumane, but asks the reader to contemplate the possibility and to confront how we ignore the question or justify our behavior. It's a good read if you haven't read it, and not too long. I love meat. I can hardly imagine my life without eating it. And I also happen to love some of the more morally questionable food choices. Lobster is my favorite food, foie gras is also high on the list. And of course, given what I know about the meat industry in the United States, almost all meat options seems rather morally questionable. I've faced these questions in moments of introspection, and I come up with some justifications. The ample suffering that would exist for animals even if humans weren't involved, like being hunted and eaten or, on the other side, starving to death. But usually I just resolve not to think about it any longer and go about my way. In general, I try not to act morally superior to people (although perhaps some on this board will dispute that). Go back to any time in history and you'll find average, seemingly not-evil people who allowed, approved of, or even participated in actions that we now recognize as barbaric. I am not so proud to believe that I could never be seen as one such person centuries from now. In Consider the Lobster, Wallace raises the possibility that eating lobster and other meat could be looked back on in the future like human sacrifices of the Aztecs or Roman gladiator matches. I can certainly imagine such a future. But what would it take to make that future happen, perhaps even in my lifetime? The first possible catalyst that comes to mind is some sort of advancements in understanding animal minds. Imagine if there were developed a way to communicate with animals and we were able to learn someway or another first hand from animals that their suffering was substantial and similar enough to what we understand as human suffering that we couldn't hide behind the fact that we don't really know if lobsters experience pain like we do. Another catalyst could be a replacement for meat, some sort of genetic creation perhaps, that tastes exactly the same as meat but doesn't require killing a sentient being. People are quite suspicious of GMOs and would certainly be suspicious of this, but if it was thoroughly tested and tasted close enough that any difference could be attributed to the now ingrained suggestion that natural is better, I certainly think I would be on board and would stop eating the real thing. Without something like that happening though, I'm afraid I don't have it in me to give it up or even to wrestle hard enough with the moral implications until I either come up with a satisfactory justification or just accept my behavior as immoral. For meat-eaters like me, what's your thoughts? Could some development stop you or are you all in? For those vegetarians or vegans among us, what was it that pushed over the edge, assuming you weren't raised to not eat meat from birth? Note: Let's try not to condemn each other's views. I think we can do it. URL to share (right click and copy)
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08/18/15, 08:18 Edited: 08/18/15, 08:18
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What would it take for me to stop eating meat? I suppose if the doctor told me that one more cheeseburger was going to make me explode, I'd stop.
Really, whether putting Bologna on my sandwich makes me a bad person is not a question that keeps me up at night.
I actually don't eat that much meat. Certainly not every meal. My wife is a great cook and she makes a lot of meat-free meals. We have a pretty decent sized vegetable garden and get a lot of our meals from there. Still, a good steak, a pork chop done just right, fried chicken, sushi, fish tacos, all beef hot dogs, cheeseburgers, oysters on the half shell - I'm not giving that stuff up. |
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@HinphAre you talking about robot assembly? We are still a long way from that. And even if that does happen, that will do nothing to quell the real issue which is that a few people control the means of production like @Jargon mentioned. A few weeks ago I was just reading, or rather watching a documentary about what my countrymen have been going through back home, with one business man getting money loans from the IMF to buy land from the campesinos. If they refuse like they have been doing, they are killed. All to control the fertile land in the aguan valley which is currently being used to plant African palm oil. While that may be lucrative, not enough food is being farmed and people are starving as a result. And of course if the campesinos request a loan from the IMF they are offered ridiculous interests that the aforementioned businessman doesn't have to pay. This shit is ridiculous. This is just one example in the way the US, or rather the same bankers and CEOs that pull the strings on the US government are of course the same people who are fucking with Hondurans, and doing similar things all over the world, like Greece for example, are also the ones screwing us over in the States. The worst part about it is that no one seems to connect the dots. Ok, back to our regularly scheduled programming. |
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