[quote=“bobepine”]Tycoon,
I’m guessing that what you are asking is if meat eaters are welcome. Like I said, it’s a good question.
A brief answer is that as long as you understand that eating meat perpetuates suffering, and as long as you understand that eventually humans will have to “shift” to better alternative food source, then yes, you are welcome.
[/quote]
Wow, this isn’t the answer I expected at all. I assume you mean that eating meat through mass production farming, and not the eating of meat per se.
In terms of shifting to a better alternative food source, I assume you mean better as in better for animals that are currently in mass production farming.
Keep in mind, that if it weren’t for farming, the chicken and cow would probably have gone extinct by now, and if you think its better than the miserable lives they already live, then I guess so be it.
[quote=“bobepine”]
I don’t know many humans(if any) who do not behave unethically on a regular basis. Just about everything we buy is overly wrapped and it contributes to polluting the earth which in some cases results in human and animal suffering from poor water and poor air quality. From production based waste and pollution all the way down to throwing out your petroleum wrapper.(just one of many examples).[/quote]
Ethically according to your definition of ethics perhaps. But suffering has existed in the world since long before we turned up. In terms of the problems of pollution and waste, I agree that its going to get much worse before it gets much better, but I also think that there will be an environmental revolution within our lifetimes. I believe economics will give rise to a demand for recycling, and I believe science and engineering will create previously unimaginable solutions.
[quote=“bobepine”]
Point is to all this is that, we humans, are the elite at screwing things up for ourselves and for others. That’s what we do best, it seems. The same as a child needs to burn his hand on a hot stove to learn not to touch it again, we need to burn ourselves, so to speak, in order to change our ways. Sad but true. I think humans are only starting to feel the burn from the mass production of animals used for consumption. And sadly, animals are the ones mostly paying a very high price to teach us this lesson in ethics, and respect for other living beings.[/quote]
I’d say that in principle we haven’t really screwed things up for ourselves. It may seem that way, but humans have gone from small sparcely distrubuted populations to the dominant species on the planet and we have more than twice the previous life expectancy.
I guess I don’t have your viewpoint on whether you consider hunting gathering societies as unethical since the animal populations are wild, nor herding populations who don’t use ‘factory farm’ techniques, but rely on a population of domestic animals for their nutrition.
I understand that animals are suffering in factory farms yes. But I don’t think animals in the two prior listed examples above suffered any more than they would have in more ‘natural’ circumstances.
As for the next step? I believe factory farming will, like its predecessors, become uneconomical. Its clear, at least to a few people, that the perfection of meat grown on a petri dish will also probably occur within our lifetime.
So yes, you are welcome as long as you are willing to acknowledge the sad reality that your culinary habits do contribute to human and animal suffering on a massive scale. From there, you only can make your own choices, and the same stands for me.[/quote]
I do acknowledge that my culinary habits contribute to suffering in this world, but its not just cullinary habits. Cows in India suffer immensely and people don’t eat them. They are left to wander around the city half starved in an environment thats not natural for them.
Welcome! 