[1] according to http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Rights-Current-Debates-Directio...

The assumption here is that simply because a being is conscious, it is therefore special. Let's take away that assumption, and then work forwards. Of what significance is consciousness?

But 'slaughtering' misses the point. Nature is constant slaughter. Despite what we think of nature as being a cuddly, friendly thing, the animals in nature are locked in a literally deadly battle. The reasons why herbivores generally startle so easily is because if they don't, they die, and die horribly. We think it's cute, but it's literally there to keep them alive.

The issue isn't 'slaughtering' as far as I can see - since that is an exceptionally natural state for an animal - it's how the animals are treated up until they're slaughtered.

Not to mention that if we're talking about sheer numbers of organisms, the ones that are slaughtered for actual consumptions are a drop in the ocean compared to all the animals that are slaughtered in farming. Mice plague? Hell, just normal mice, no plague? You rarely hear the vegetarian protestors complaining about the huge numbers of rodents killed in farming. It increases in magnitude as you go down, too (snails etc, and increase again for insects). I think it's funny that above we have a complaint about 'not eating the cute rabbit', yet no-one champions the rights of vermin, despite them dying in far greater numbers. Generally no-one cares about them, because they die 'over there' and don't end up in line of sight.

So yeah, treat meat animals humanely, that's a tenable goal, but 'stop the slaughter'? It requires wilfully turning a blind eye.

Personally I have no problem with humans eating meat, in my view it's part of our nature, but I do have a problem with raising them in battery farms and people kicking their pets etc.

This. Times a thousand.

Paul Graham's article "Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas" has this quote, which I love:

"One of my tricks for generating startup ideas is to imagine the ways in which we'll seem backward to future generations. And I'm pretty sure that to people 50 or 100 years in the future, it will seem barbaric that people in our era waited till they had symptoms to be diagnosed with conditions like heart disease and cancer."

When I look to the future and imagine what will seem backwards, two of the big things in my mind are what PG mentions and what you mention.

This is typical human hypocrisy at work.

The worst thing I find is the "I'll eat a sausage but I couldn't possibly eat a cute bunny wabbit". The sausage in its natural form is capable of being a valuable and loyal human companion.

I haven't eaten meat since I was at university in the distant past after I got addicted to a combination of ramen noodles, mushrooms and home made pepper sauce. The ethical dilemma made it hard to go back to eating meat so I didn't bother.

Regarding tastiness, Indian vegetarian food (particular aloo, gobi is far tastier than anything with meat in and you can grow ALL the ingredients yourself if you want without having to shovel a single turd.

> Regarding tastiness, Indian vegetarian food (particular aloo, gobi is far tastier than anything with meat in and you can grow ALL the ingredients yourself if you want without having to shovel a single turd.

In your opinion.

Firstly, the problem I have with the hypocrisy is independent to a diet choice so the statement about the path is invalid.

Secondly, everything is subjective so your argument is moot (as is mine).

The worst thing I find is the "I'll eat a sausage but I couldn't possibly eat a cute bunny wabbit". The sausage in its natural form is capable of being a valuable and loyal human companion.

"Those who like sausage and respect the law should inquire into the making of neither."

Little kids are cute and cuddly, so killing (and eating) anything cute and cuddly ought to be at least somewhat distasteful. If you recognize that logically this association doesn't make sense, you can either desensitize yourself or take advantage of your natural tendency to "out of sight, out of mind" and deliberately not think about what that venison steak looked like before it was a steak.

This isn't about kindness and cruelty, this is about awareness. As long as we perceive other living beings as The Other, we're not truly aware -- we can't empathize, we can't be compassionate, we can't be a complete human being. Condemning people for barbarism is a subtler form of separation, of saying "those people are not us." But they are, just as we're growing as a species and society to be aware of non-human awareness.

Isn't that what biologists call symbiosis?

The sad part is, we've also made species extinct just because they weren't tasty. Dodos for instance. Taste bad, so we just killed them for fun. Then they went extinct.

If you want to start treating animals with the same sanctity as humans, you need to watch out. Countries that use the death penalty should be executing all the carnivores for mass murder.

And what does "the way we treat animals" mean anyway? Plenty of pets are doted on and loved to bits. Plenty of wild animals are left alone, ignored, or even unknown. Plenty of animals are treated inhumanely. Overgeneralisations are an enemy to progress.

I do agree though, and this is why I've been a vegetarian for 10 years now.

I'd add to the people replying to this comment, about US citizens' responsibility, they have more responsibility than the average North Korean citizen, but not much. From what I understand, challenging the status quo in the USA is pretty difficult!

People who have power over the actions taken are responsible, pretty much the person itself and also the higher chain of command for the said person who commits whatever act to be held responsible for.

1. Those elected officials are not elected by everyone - in the case of GWB's first term (which many probably think of in this military context) it wasn't even a majority that elected him.

2. Those that do elect officials have a very small choice (lets say 2-3 people who could practically be elected). Further, I'd argue that most only vote on a few key issues, while the elected official has dominion over a vast number of issues.

I don't hold citizens as not at all responsible, but I think its at least fair to argue (in the above context) that the elected officials bear more responsibility - and blame - than the everyday citizen.

I would also disagree with politicians controlling the military -- perhaps the people in charge do have political power too, but I would argue that the political power and power over the military are rather indirect, it's not the same entity controlling the two, there are multiple people and entities with indirect relationships.

I am not responsible for an act you do with the knife I sold you last week, unless I did it in consent of you commiting the act. My parents aren't responsible for the acts I do.

Only when there's power, there's responsibility. Taxpayer does not have power over military, hence why taxpayer has no responsibility.

I don't eat or kill other humans, not just because I know they would dislike it, but because if we didn't all generally keep to that rule of not doing so, I run a higher risk of being eaten or killed myself. It's a behavioural contract, not some innate universal rule that suffering is bad.

For me, the question of what to eat is solely one of sustainability. Under that line of reasoning, veganism is better than vegetarianism which is approximately equivalent to eating no red meat, which are both better than eating red meat. How sentient the animal is doesn't factor into the decision.