this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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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.
Necessity is obviously a factor.
Agreed. Once lab-grown/synthetic meat becomes widely available and reasonably-priced, the necessity/demand to keep large farms full of livestock for meat production will take a downturn.
People have been able to “afford to question this” since antiquity - it’s not some modern affectation. You see plenty of instances of people arguing for or outright mandating vegetarian or vegan diets dating back thousands of years. I am not sure if PETA’s specific reasoning (“you shouldn’t eat a fish because the fish would prefer you not do that”) is represented, but you definitely see scholars and rulers in the ancient world arguing for a variety of reasons that people should not kill or eat animals.
Socrates was already criticising it in 450 BCE. Also all Indian religions were championing non-violence as early as mid-1st millennium BCE. This is nothing new nor revolutionary and people were already questioning their actions when "the world was shit" as you put it.
People can strive to become better in any situation.