09/10/02: Vegetarians
 

If vegetarians really cared about eliminating animals' suffering, then why aren't they arming themselves and attempting to take down farms?

Simply not eating meat seems to me like an incredibly ineffective way to protect the animals. After all, the cow that the burger is made of is <i>already dead!</i> Not eating it isn't going to change the fact that it's already dead. In order to really affect anything, you're going to have to go a little bit higher up the causality chain than that.

In short, since the meat you buy in the store is already dead, not eating it is useless to well-being of the animal. Eat up, vegetarians!

Except that the demand for meat would then go up, and then the farmers would need to raise more animals for slaughter, and then more animals would die.

And maybe there are those that just feel uncomfortable with eating a dead animal. I can certainly understand that, even if I myself have no problem with it.

As far as them arming themselves and going after farms - guns live at farms. They are likely to get their asses blown off, and rightly so.

Not eating meat is the essential action, if that is your belief.

Where do you think vegetables come from? Supermarkets? ;)

I'm not sure that the vegetarians are having any impact at all on meat companies' profits. Those would be some interesting statistics to see, though.

If you ask me, though, it's a matter of conviction. If those were humans being slain, you could be damned sure people would be taking up arms against the murderers. If the vegetarians are saying that animals' lives are worth just as much as humans, then why aren't they living up to their convictions? It might be illegal to kill meat farmers, but law is not morality.

I'm just saying that I don't think they care about the animals' suffering nearly as much as they say they do. Not as much as human suffering, anyway.

Why isn't the essential action directly preventing the murder, as it would be if we found a tribe of cannibals?

Well, yeah, but I didn't feel like looking up a better term. :]

Of course they have an impact. If a vegetarian goes to a restaurant and orders a salad instead of a burger, he just lowered the meat company's potential profits by a few bucks.

Whether it's a significant amount in relation to their total profits is questionable, but they definitely do have an impact.

hitler was a vegetarian.

vegetarians...recyclers...tree huggers...ozone lovers....

nobody has an impact. essentially, the earth goes on without us.

i litter on earth day...just to make a point.

Ergh. Oh well.. I knew it was a ridiculous idea when I thought it up. :) I just thought it would be really cool if I could convince people of it. No dice. Hey, my ideas can't all be gems!

What's good about vegetarianism? This is.
 

IMHO, vegetarian food is a lot easier to swallow than vegetarian philosophy. We, like the other great apes, do not exclusively specialize either in carnivory or herbivory. Either will sustain us, and both together sustain us well. We're a lot better at hunting than the great apes, which is interesting as our muscles are nowhere near as dense and powerful as theirs. [Even more tangentially, that has the interesting effect of making us better swimmers than all the other great apes. Boy are we just stuffed with talent.]

I prefer to eat like a bear, but some are sheep and some are wolves.

you know, i think periodically about how my life would be read if i died unexpectedly. people would note my journals, my email, my shopping lists...they would run through my internet cache and expose my every secret to the public (inasmuch as the public might be interested, i suppose.).

but today is the first time i've wondered: what stories will my thigh bone tell? perhaps my habits...perhaps my temperment...

...perhaps my need to visit jenny craig....?

nature lovers et al
 

each year in norfolk, virginia, a shock-radio station hosts the annual PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) fishing tournament. they gather the Tidewater, VA carnivores and host the event in the water right outside of PETA's building.

there is no end to some peoples' creative rudeness.