Memes @lemmy.ml

1y ago

I'm tired of the inequality

worldpolitics: It's shitposting all the way down! @lemmy.world

12 0

364 comments

Agreed, if a bear can eat a person why can't I eat a person?!
- Not sure if this is about carnivores or big, hairy gays, but hey, whatever suits you.
- I mean, you can... just don't let law enforcement find out.
- Ask Jeffrey Dahmer.

OP will be real dangerous when he learns fish also don't ask for consent.
- They don't? I've been wasting my time.

Nobody is saying that fish are moral agents that can empathise with other beings. That doesn't man that they're not moral subjects; the ability to understand that one is causing harm is not a prerequisite for the ability to suffer oneself. I think everyone knows this intuitively, but it does feel good to have our less moral habits be justified by memes that we would otherwise find to be illogical.
- You are right, but I believe putting a cease to life is not inherently bad. If we could kill animals without letting them feel anything, that wouldn't really be bad.
  
  I mean sure, but the animal agriculture industry is typically inhumane and cruel to animals while they're still alive, because it's more profitable that way. Minimising the suffering they feel when they die is not going to do much really.
  
  Ethical consideration has to extend to more than just painless death to be worth a damn. I can't walk into an infant ward and painlessly murder infants in their sleep for a reason.
  
  This is why we should be killing pigs with nitrogen, rather than CO2. CO2 is how a mammal determines it is suffocating, meanwhile the air is mostly made up of nitrogen so we ignore it. However, it's precisely this which makes it dangerous to humans working nearby (also the fact that CO2 is heavier than air so you can have open pits), and it's ruled too expensive to do it humanely.
  
  And if someone did that to you?
- By eating vegetables you are doing harm anyway, they are living organisms after all.
  
  Even if we grant that plant "pain" is 100% morally equivalent to the pain of other beings (it isn't, and you don't earnestly believe that), we still have to eat them as a matter of biology, since humans aren't producers and must consume nutrients from other life. It's the same reason we can't pass moral judgment on a carnivore like a lion for eating a Zebra.
  
  Common mistake, but plants are not moral subjects. If you harm any animal, even an insect, it will respond in ways that you or I would; fleeing, retaliating, or generally just panicking. I think you already understand that plants do not (although they do have biochemical adaptations to sense and respond to stress).
  
  Other people have pointed out the differences between plants and most animals, but it's also worth noting that livestock need to eat plants. Because energy is wasted between each stage in a food chain, an omnivorous diet likely kills more plants anyway.

Something needs to die for you to survive, what and how much is up to your individual tolerance for input/output ratio.
Death and suffering is a natural state of being in nature. I can reduce it, but I still need to survive.
I hate fishing. I don't need to fish in my current station. If I did, I would fish.
- Exactly. Pretty common misconception about vegan ideology. Vegans don't think people in developing nations have a moral imperative to change their ways because they don't have an alternative.
  I don't need to eat meat, so I don't.
  
  I genuinely wasn't aware of this. Have never heard that argument made.
  So their position is basically that as soon as you have a sufficiently developed supply chain to buy refrigerated lab-grown or fake meat and get it home before it smells like a rotten protein shake, that's what you should do? But until that happens, killing animals is ok?
- Yup that’s why I still buy clothes from sweatshops with kids working in them.
  In all seriousness you’re right, but I believe people have a much lower tolerance than they think they do, but they just avoid thinking about it
  
  Ignorance is bliss, you're absolutely right.
- In my experience I need to kill 1 large cow every 2 years to personally survive. That's good, because that's about my personal limit for how long I'm happy to have a cow in my freezer without charging it rent.
  I need to kill an absolutely obscene number of avocados, tomatoes and other fruits and vegetable too otherwise that cow will not last me 2 years. Those are the screams that truly bother me. The daily cries of my vegetables going to slaughter.
  
  You see, I'm not even sure if you're:
  a fanatic vegan
  a fanatic meat eater
  just a troll
  Gotta applaud you for that

By this logic, is it fair game to eat people who eat animals?
- Only humans that eat other humans.
  
  Why can't i eat humans who are "OH YEAH ya'll dawg i shot A BEAR YEAH!!" and then didn't eat it?

You consider humans superior in intellect and ability compared to all other animals yet can't grasp the fact that some humans have chosen to use said superior intellect and ability to avoid killing other animals?
- You consider humans superior in intellect and ability compared to all other animals
  Does he?
  
  Isn't that usually the argument that anti-vegans use? That we're the top predator due to our intelligence and technology and therefore we have an intrinsic right to the lives of other animals?

How come fish can eat their own offspring but we can't do the same to ours?
- Have you ever tried eating a baby? No?
  
  Don't knock it until you've tried it.

Fish eating fish doesn't lead to ecological disturbance. Humans have put multiple species on the verge of extinction.
- Humans have put multiple species on the verge of extinction.
  That is a slight understatement:
  The Holocene extinction is mainly caused by human activities. [...] the current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth.
  
  We've had some help though, i think i read that something like 1/3 of all human caused extinctions are because we keep bringing cats with us wherever we go, and letting them roam free in ecosystems that didn't have any equivalent predator, leading to stories like this https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/03/25/species-extinct/
  
  Hold on, the link you posted says 10 to 100 times more than the natural background extinction rate. That's very far from "any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of the Earth.

The difference is that the fish needs to eat the other fish. We don't need ANY animal products. So every killed animal suffered and lost their life for 10min of taste for us that we didn't need. Being vegan is so easy in 2023.
- taste
  what about vitamins? proteins and other nutrients
  like omega 3 fatty acid majorly found in fishes
  
  There are plenty of plant sources of Omega 3. Flax seeds, walnuts, soybeans, and canola oil all have decent amounts of omega 3 in them. As for protein, legumes generally have a bunch.
  Really, the only thing a vegan needs to supplement is B12, but even that gets added to a bunch of stuff like breakfast cereals and plant milks if you consume those.
  
  You can take them as supplements. It's the same for your body. Oh and you are already doing that, because they give supplements to the animals they raise and kill, we are just eliminating the middleman.
  
  Whataboutism

I’m not on either side of the argument, but would guess a good argument would be that fish need to eat other fish in order to survive as it’s their only source of food. We don’t. Provenly.
- What's wrong with fish eating plastics we dump in the waters. Are they anti plastic or something?????
  /S
  
  That's right! Oil spill is full of calories! Why don't they just slurp it up so they can contain a lot of fish oil!
- We still need to eat someone
  
  Are you sure?
  
  Eat yourself then.
- A person does not need to eat meat.
  People absolutely do need to eat meat, specifically cooked meat in order to be intelligent. It's what made cavemen smarter than other animals. Also the recent rise in average height and IQ from good nutrition is in part directly related to cheap meat from factory farming.
  
  We needed to eat meat to get to this point. We can stop now.
  
  Got any sources?
  
  You are absolutely 100% wrong on this. And so wrong that it’s hilarious. Please don’t reproduce.
  
  According to that logic, Inuit people should be able to outsmart all of us - but they don't seem to be smarter or dumber than the rest of the human population.

As far as value goes, I don't particularly value my own life or that of a fish. I do value the suffering of both while living though, as in I want to minimise that as much as possible.
- ... wait, so you're saying is if someone painlessly murdered you in your sleep it'd be okay?
  
  I'll take two
  
  Yes please
  
  You're not gonna get the answer you expect asking this question here lol
  
  I'd be placing a thank you letter in advance.
  Don't get me wrong, in general I'm not a cynical person and have most things one would wish for. I just don't think life is worth anything in itself and being alive is just a chance of experiencing or producing needless suffering. The (incredible) good feelings don't make up for all the bad ones that exist.
  If someone where to kill me, I'd be glad it's over. While being alive I'd feel bad for my loved ones of course, but if I'm dead I wouldn't be able to feel that. I know that is kind of selfish, so I would try not not to kill myself as I have too much responsibilities, but if I'm just being honest, one can dream.

Buy a man eat fish, he day, teach fish man, to a lifetime
- Build a man a campfire and he's warm for the night; set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life
  
  GNU Terry Pratchett.
- Buy a man? That sounds like human trafficking dude. 🤨

sigh Came from reddit to lemmy, still see stupid af carnist memes like this. Don't know if it's a win or what for the fediverse
- I'm sorry, but I laughed at carnist. Lighten up.
  
  Relax, I'm a carnist/flexitarian. There's nothing wrong with attributing a name to non-vegans/non-vegetarians. The world isn't divided into vegans/vegetarians and so called 'normal people'. It's just as normal to not eat meat in some parts of the world.
  
  Yeah, the preferred term is bloodmouth
  
  https://carnism.org/carnism/
  you lighten up on the animal exploitation maybe?
- Since im on a pure carnivore diet for health reasons. The phrase carnist sounds so metal. Thanks for a new term to call myself
  
  Out of curiosity what illness do you have that makes you unable to eat plants

I have never understood this logic. If a lion eats a zebra, there's nothing wrong with it, but when a human eats a cow, they're a horrible person. (also I know that not all vegans think like this)
I personally believe there's nothing inherently wrong with eating meat, and instead the problem is how we treat the animals we eat and that we eat way too much meat, taking it for granted.
- We are intelligent and capable of considering the idea that an animal may not want to die, and we have it within our means to survive without meat, or with much less meat than we currently consume.
  Animals who are being lead to slaughter have been observed to panic and try to flee. They do not want to die. What right do we have to take the life of an animal that wants to live as much as any other person? We are capable of considering this question. Animals are not. That's the difference.
  Even as a carnivore you would not eat a freshly born baby straight out of the mother's womb, whereas any other predator would see it as an easy meal. There IS a moral implication in taking life.
  
  We can only afford to question this because we are in a utopia of sorts compared to just a few hundred years ago. We are capable of understanding that there are philosophical, moral, and ethical dilemmas to eating meat in 2023. However, if the world went to shit and say an electrical storm wiped out all electronics on Earth, we would not even hesitate to eat meat in as little as a few months in.
- I agree with your second paragraph, but the appeal to nature is not a good argument and routinely gets exposed as such in debates on the ethics of meat consumption. There are very clear differences between a lion and a human.
  
  The very clear difference is that you discriminate against humans.
- Arguing that something's okay because it's a natural behaviour is the naturalistic fallacy. The difference is that other species don't have any choice over how they live or even the mental capacity to think about the morality of their actions. Humans that are well-off and don't have medical conditions that clash with veganism do.
  I used to agree with the second paragraph, but watching videos of pigs/cows/chickens being slaughtered changed my mind. Imo their prior treatment doesn't really negate what happens there- and even if it did, I couldn't use ideal farm conditions as a defense when the vast majority of meat I've been eating is raised under less ideal conditions.
  (This isn't calling anyone who eats a burger satan, to be clear. Just trying to say my views in good faith.)
  
  I used to agree with the second paragraph, but watching videos of pigs/cows/chickens being slaughtered changed my mind. Imo their prior treatment doesn't really negate what happens there- and even if it did, I couldn't use ideal farm conditions as a defense when the vast majority of meat I've been eating is raised under less ideal conditions.
  Methods of slaughtering them are terrible and absolutely criminal.
  One good thing PETA has done is raise awareness about how the meat industry treats its animals - I'll give them that, definitely.
  PETA itself is an organization I place in the same category as a cult, though. Their own practices make the sincerity of their intentions almost blatantly questionable.
  
  Moralizing about eating meat is a fallacy as well. You have no qualms with killing bugs or plants. You might even support killing humans in some cases. The thresholds you describe are nothing more than your own subjective, personal comfort level. Every single life form in the universe consumes other life forms in order to survive. The way we treat our food, now that is the real issue.
- the issue is that we're doing it on a massive scale semi-automatically.
  keeping small amount of animals in decent-ish conditions (like on a small farm) and killing some for food/meat is fine.
  keeping thouthands of animals in tiny cages where they basically can't move at all is not.

Can someone explain this template to me?
- I'm afraid that's classified information
  
  SJ Voice: The fuck you mean classified?!? Motherfucker?

This is why I'm a pesca-pescatarian. I only eat fish that eat other fish.
- To be completely serious, thats a bad idea. Predatory fish accumulate lots of mercury and shit in their meat.
  
  To add to this, I've read recommendations from public health orgs to eat no more than two portions of oily fish a week, and minimise consumption of especially high sources like tuna steaks.
  Some consumption is still recommended for omega 3s, though there are algae-based supplements for EPA and DHA as well as the fish ones. Flaxseed and some nuts are great sources of ALA, but afaik its conversion to EPA and DHA isn't great and consuming all three is a good idea.
  (Disclaimer: I am not a nutritionist. Verify things yourself before making dietary changes.)

Because we don't need to

I suppose it was only a matter of time before the vegans vs meat eaters oozed on over from Reddit.
- You mean, people?

You know who’s not talking about the value of a fish’s life? Fish

I learned from Nirvana that it's okay to eat fish, 'cause they don't have any feelings.

Sure, animals eats animals, so I can eat cat too. It's natural.

You can, greg. But with that type of reasoning, you're also just a fish. And this is not a compliment, greg

Everything is good as long as no one messes with THE BEANS!!!

I'm still so pissed they fridged Maria man, fucking bullshit
- She'd been on the sidelines for 11+ years. Fucking disrespectful.

Anyone who grew up in the 90s knows that fish don't have any feelings anyway.
- I grew up in the 90s and I also learned that underwater the fish don't stink.

Test. (Idk if my replies are working.)
- They are!
  
  Cheers. It’s just the one post. Weird.

Robin pls.

It's like you are lost in the backrooms...

The best argument against vegans is always the fact that plants also are living beings. Now if you are gonna create hierarchy of living beings to justify your food consumption, well...
- Cows don’t photosynthesize they eat a shit ton of plants to make a tiny amount of meat so if you really care about plants you would eat the plants directly and skip the middlemen that waste 90% of the plant matter
- Plants aren't sentient though, that's a pretty good reason to put them lower on the hierarchy of living beings that are morally ok to eat. And it's quite likely that fewer plants die for a vegan diet than for a standard diet, as animals need a lot of feed to produce meat, eggs and dairy. Some percentage of the plant protein, fats, and carbs will always be lost along the way when we feed them to animals, so eating those plants directly is more efficient.
  
  Sentience is hard to measure though. Also I had a weird discussion with my neighbour once who argued that in order to kill fewer sentient beings, we should eat the bigger ones as the ratio of meat per sentience was better, so we should really eat whales. Which made it pretty obvious to me that a) he was nuts and b) sentience might not be the best indicator for ethic food consumption.
  /edit That doesn't mean that I oppose the idea that eating plants is better. I'm just arguing against sentience as a good indicator.
- Plants aren't sentient and you need more plants to feed a cow (and then eat the cow) than if you just eat plant-based.
  
  We can't prove plants are sentient. Then again, neither can we prove humans are sentient.
- What do you think they have to feed to the animals? If you believe plants to be important enough, you should go vegan to reduce their suffering. Also, do you get really annoyed at people walking on grass? How about if you see someone kick a dog? I swear, when it comes to the veganism devate, normally sensible people completely lose all sense of logic.

364 comments