h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

maybe 'tosh' came over a little strong. I'm dreadfully embarassed .

I've still not succeded in kicking off a proper debate on animal rights, though. It's a challenging area. The question 'Why human rights and not animal?' is a difficult one.

It didn't come across as harsh to me. I know your line on the "every life is sacred" bit is similar to mine. I find myself responding to the word "sacred" (a concept which I also think is tosh), and not the idea behind the word the other person is trying to get across- which is usually "worthwhile" or "valuable", which I agree with wholeheartedly.

We both know there *are* people out there who follow a hard-lined "every life is sacred" line of thinking, all the way to outright veneration. I've known people who thought trees and rocks communicated with them telepathically, for pete's sake! That's as loopy as believing in gods and fairies, IMO.

Animal rights debates are difficult to get into, for sure, when you don't have flakey new-age tosh to fall back on for your starting point. Seriously, though, it's a debate I'd like to see. I tried it once, with Della, in one of the anti-abortion rant threads. I observed that most of the "every life is sacred" anti-choice folks were unabashed carnivores, and wondered out loud why it's okay to slaughter a living, breathing creature with feelings and thought processes (no matter how primitive), but not remove the possibility of a *potential* life.

The only answer I got was that affection for animals is a middle-class luxury. Which I found insulting on one hand- I don't think respect is ever a luxury- but a good thing on the other- it was nice being promoted up to middle class. It's always good to be upwardly mobile!

Sorry for the long ramble. I'll be getting myself to work now. I've got hours of work waiting for me, and more coming in, I'm sure.

PS- Even if we disagreed and I thought you were a bit harsh, I could deal. I'm not so one-dimensional as to define my entire sense of self based on what other people think of me.

>>The only answer I got was that affection for animals is a middle-class luxury.

Actually...there's a degree of truth in that!

Perhaps, if we're speaking about owning pets. I wasn't referring to "affection", per se, merely that I don't eat animals because I assume they'd like to be alive as much as I do.

Granted, a prowling tiger would make short work of me and wouldn't give a rat's @$$ how *I* felt about the whole thing... but that's where humanity and/or humanism come in, isn't it?

One thing that I find interesting is that, in our cultures, vegetarianism is almost exclusively a middle class phenomenon. Tofu is darned expensive! In the UK, the poor subsist on low-quality meat products. This is especially true in Scotland, which has some of the poorest health in Europe. And its the middle classes that can afford the organic, free-range, ethically-produced meat too.

Then, in the third world, people have a largely vegetarian diet. That's why Indian and Mexican food is good for the likes of you and me. (Same with Italian - the southern Italians used to be dirt poor). But, of course, all those people aspire to meat and will readily slaughter a goat for a special celebration, or go shoot some endangered species of monkey.

'If God didn't mean us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?'

Also:

>>...... but that's where humanity and/or humanism come in, isn't it?

I'm not sure. Are vegetarians, de facto, more humane than carnivores?

I have a certain sympathy for the view that a mark of a civilisation is how well it treats its animals. The same goes for the way it treats, for example, its criminals (I'm trying to remember Oscar Wilde's line on this, from The Ballad of Reading Gaol). At the extreme end there are the likes of Ghandi who would hold that meat eating is incompatible with civilisation. I'm not wholly sure I would agree (and Ghandi also had pseudo-scientific views about the bad karma you get from eating dead stuff). But certainly living in a well-ordered civilisation gives us the luxury to be able to make choices about how much harm we want to do animals. Few would go as far as the Jains who wear masks over their faces in case they swallow a fly (and, in some cases, won't take medicines that kill off bacteria).

Another interesting point...animal welfare groups often have links with social work. Animal abuse can be an indicator of child abuse.

>One thing that I find interesting is that, in our cultures, vegetarianism is almost exclusively a middle class phenomenon. Tofu is darned expensive!<

Well, tofu is actually cheaper where I shop than meat would be. But it is true that most of the poorer people do subsit on inexpensive meat stuff. And highly processed veg, which no vegetarian could survive on for very long, I'm afraid. The stuff at the Aldi (cheap discount grocer, all generic product) has more sodium in it than veg.

>I'm not sure. Are vegetarians, de facto, more humane than carnivores?<

De facto, no. When my cat eats a centipede, he's not doing it to be inhumane. Not even if he plays with it first. Truth be told, on some level, if it moves, it's a plaything, when it stops moving, it's food. So to speak.

>But certainly living in a well-ordered civilisation gives us the luxury to be able to make choices about how much harm we want to do animals<

Good point. I don't begrudge people their choices, either. And my point of contention in the conversation with Della et. al. I mentioned was that some people have decided that animal lives are insignificant, certain other human lives are insignificant, but lives which do not exist yet are sacrosanct, and use "sanctity of life" as their argument, which to me doesn't make much sense. But I digress.

>Another interesting point...animal welfare groups often have links with social work. Animal abuse can be an indicator of child abuse<

And abusing animals often develops into the abuse of not only children, but other adults. It's because disregard for life can sweep across the board in such a fashion, that I think regard for life should extend beyond a narrower definition. Am I making any sense?

Yes, you are. It's quite a long way from the idea of animals having 'rights', isn't it?

Yes, it was Aldi I was thinking of! A German chain, actually, as is Lidl (do you have them too?) where I buy my CD-Rs. The rich areas have Sainsbury's and Tescos (and, in southern England, the mega-foodie Waitrose). Amongst the windswept urban wastelands it's either a schlep to Aldi or Lidl or the over-priced corner convenience store.

I am fortunate to have a healthy/gourmet food shop about 1 1/2 miles from the house- approximately a 10-minute bus ride- which specializes in private-label (unbranded, primarily) goods at a cost similar to the "regular" chain groceries. Then again, I live in a slightly more affluent area than the urban wasteland. But Aldi is crap.

Dunno as that animals have "rights". I'd say no, they don't. That's why they need people like us, who do have rights, to make humane choices to their benefit, I think.

>>That's why they need people like us, who do have rights, to make humane choices to their benefit, I think.

Let's explore this a little, then. We have an obligation to to things to benefit, say, zebras and wildebeests. Well, then! Clearly we have a moral obligation to stop lions attacking them!

Or what?

Vegetarian cat food is an 'interesting' topic, too.

>Let's explore this a little, then. We have an obligation to to things to benefit, say, zebras and wildebeests. Well, then! Clearly we have a moral obligation to stop lions attacking them!<

Ooh, you little brat!

My personal opinion- and that is exactly what it is, so I'm not necessarily convinced I'm "right"- is that we are under obligation to treat animals humanely, and disrupt their natural state as little as possible while still seeing to our own needs. It's a delicate balance, and I'm not entirely sure where my limits are. I mean, I don't want to see the Artic Wildlife Refuge dessimated in order to get a few gallons of oil. But I also am not prepared to live in a tree house without heat or running water, if you catch my drift?

As for vegetarian cat food, I don't do it. While I do use an indoor formula which has some vegetable stuff in it, as well as meat byproducts, for the fiber (prevents hairballs and stuff), I would never force a natural carnivore to subsist on a veggie diet. Dogs, I'm told, can do it, because they're omnivores. But cats can't get the nutrition they need from vegetarian foods. And I don't try to force my vegetarian habits on other (though K is happy eating meat only when we eat out, order in, or visit family- and I have no problem with him doing so) people, leastwise my cat.

But I see your point. It's hard to know where responsibility and acting humanely stops and natural selection takes over.

>> I'm not necessarily convinced I'm "right"-

That's good. I don't tend to get on with people who are convinced that they are right.

>>we are under obligation to treat animals humanely, and disrupt their natural state as little as possible while still seeing to our own needs

So...did we have a moral obligation to stop Hutus killing Tutsis?

>So...did we have a moral obligation to stop Hutus killing Tutsis?<

IMO, yes. Did we? No. We got ourselves out of the way and let the Hutus have at it. Why? I've read some stuff on the subject, I've seen "Hotel Rwanda", and I've tried to filter out what little info I got through the US news at the time. I don't know *why* we didn't stop them, although to the best of my knowledge, there aren't any major suppliers of crude oil in Rwanda? Honestly, I don't know how we pick our battles. I only know how I pick mine. And all I have to go on is "how would I feel?" or "what would I want people to do for me, if I were in this situation?"

I guess that's how I feel about animals. Lions eat wildebeast. If lions didn't eat wildebeast, there'd be too many wildebeast and they'd all starve. But if I let natural selection run its course in my case, I'd have been dead years ago, y'know?

When those massive hurricanes pummeled the Gulf Coast, I felt that we all owed it to both the humans and the animals who were trapped there, to help get them to safety. When we domesticate animals and/or raise them as pets, I think we are epsecially obligated to treat them humanely and care for them as best we can.

Good grief, am I going on and on, or what?

OK. Lions killing zebra...let 'em get on with it. People killing people...no.

The difference is....?

(This is what's called a Socratic Dialogue )

Ah, Business Class air travel is soooo sweet! Free internet access. Free drink and nibbles (Biiiiiig G n T !). Catering voucher (because their sub-minimum wage food supplietrs have been on strike for months), which can be traded in for Christmas kids' sweeties....

btw - my answer: A society in which we accept the killing of people falls down. This does not apply to the killing of animals: animal slaughter *within reasonable limits* does not spill over into human slaughter: there is an empathy gap.

This is my argument against capital punishment also. Only brutal societies will tolerate it.

>animal slaughter *within reasonable limits* does not spill over into human slaughter: there is an empathy gap<

I agree. Although I'm sure opinions vary widely as to what "reasonable limits" are. I'm not keen on the idea of torturing, or neglecting, or overcrowding, an animal prior to eating it. The zebra the lion eats hasn't spent its life chained in a tiny pen, fed things which make it sick, and so on and so forth. If I make sense. It's the same reason I won't use products by companies that engage in vivisection WHEN I have another option.

I think animal *torture* often spills over into human *torture* though. It's the cruelty, the inhumanity, I have an issue with.

It's also one of the reasons I'm against capital punishment. (That and the fact that I'd rather see a guilty man kept in prison, at the taxpayers' expense, than an innocent man put to death.)