Ethical vegan- It's what's for dinner

This guy is my new favorite post-human.

LATELY more people have begun to express an interest in where the meat they eat comes from and how it was raised. Were the animals humanely treated? Did they have a good quality of life before the death that turned them into someone’s dinner?

Actually, I tend to be more concerned with trolling the meat department looking for the choicest bits, closest to their expiration date because then they will be marked down and I can buy and gnaw on them.

None of these questions, however, make any consideration of whether it is wrong to kill animals for human consumption.

And even when people ask this question, they almost always find a variety of resourceful answers that purport to justify the killing and consumption of animals in the name of human welfare. 

Like they are tasty and allow us to stay alive and healthy. It is much weirder to consider the idea that we ought to rebel against behavior validated planet-wide by people and critters.

Strict ethical vegans, of which I am one, are customarily excoriated for equating our society’s treatment of animals with mass murder.

Well unless you are willing to play animal cop and start serving warrants to the lions of the Serengheti, it is pretty hypocritical and douche-like to single us out.

Many people soothe their consciences by purchasing only free-range fowl and eggs, blissfully ignorant that “free range” has very little if any practical significance. Chickens may be labeled free-range even if they’ve never been outside or seen a speck of daylight in their entire lives. And that Thanksgiving turkey? Even if it is raised “free range,” it still lives a life of pain and confinement that ends with the butcher’s knife.

If it makes you feel any better, I have whacked quite a few critters myself, chickens, turkeys, pheasants, grouse, deer, and even a couple of hogs. Mmmmm bacon.

How can intelligent people who purport to be deeply concerned with animal welfare and respectful of life turn a blind eye to such practices? And how can people continue to eat meat when they become aware that nearly 53 billion land animals are slaughtered every year for human consumption?

I'm curious if you have the stats for the number of critters killed by other critters for their own consumption? As I mentioned, that is done quite viciously while the prey critter gets to bear witness as the predators chew large chunks of living meat off it's bones.

The simple answer is that most people just don’t care about the lives or fortunes of animals. If they did care, they would learn as much as possible about the ways in which our society systematically abuses animals, and they would make what is at once a very simple and a very difficult choice: to forswear the consumption of animal products of all kinds.

Yeah well no buddy, you have made a totally weak case for abandoning our own animality in favor of some pussified, ideological wankitude. We are born to eat critters and they taste good. You have fixated on the farming of them to make this more convenient. Do you really think if we asked the Serengheti lions they would turn this method down?

Lion: "OK so you build a fence and then feed the gazelles grass, and then whenever you get hungry you just go in and grab one for lunch?

Human: "Yes"

Lion: "I'm in"

The easy part of this consists in seeing clearly what ethics requires and then just plain doing it. The difficult part: You just haven’t lived until you’ve tried to function as a strict vegan in a meat-crazed society.

Meat-crazed? C'mon now. We are the normal ones. It's you tofu-scarfing, bean sprout-nibbling dorks, trying to pretend we were born at the bottom of the food chain who are off your teats.

What were once the most straightforward activities become a constant ordeal. You might think that it’s as simple as just removing meat, eggs and dairy products from your diet, but it goes a lot deeper than that.

To be a really strict vegan is to strive to avoid all animal products, and this includes materials like leather, silk and wool, as well as a panoply of cosmetics and medications.
To go down this road is to stare headlong into an abyss that, to paraphrase Nietzsche, will ultimately stare back at you.

Tell Nietzsche I said hey, and feel free to turn yourself into a prey animal. But I'm gonna have a chat with the Serengheti lions and the rest of the predator class and tell them you belong on the menu. Free range, organic, compassionate,  twit, low in fat, but chock full of anti-depressants and self-loathing. I'll pass but I bet the lions love it.

This same NY Times has a headline "Becoming the Alpha dog in your own house" about gaining dominance over your own kids. FFS, these people are not even the same species as us.

posted by Uncle Jimbo at 09:36 PM

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