If you're not willing to do LJ support...

[avram]

You’ve probably seen this argument: If you’re not willing to personally kill and butcher an animal, you shouldn’t eat meat.


If you’re not willing to personally do construction work, you shouldn’t live in a building.

If you’re not willing to personally tailor cloth, you shouldn’t wear clothing.

If you’re not willing to personally grind your own pigments, you shouldn’t paint.

If you’re not willing to personally write an OS kernel from scratch, you shouldn’t use a computer.

If you’re not willing to personally sing in public, you shouldn’t listen to songs.

If you’re not willing to personally bear/father a child, you shouldn’t adopt.

If you’re not willing to personally break CO₂ down into carbon and oxygen, you shouldn’t breathe.

Comments

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Willingness != Ability

I understand the butchery example as meaning that I ought to be willing to face the unpleasant aspects of a thing I use, regardless of my capacity to actually recreate, service, or otherwise contribute to its furtherance. (I also believe that I should learn at least basic maintenance of all tools, but that's not the central point. And yes, I do know about the cost in blood of so many of the large constructions -- like bridges and mass transit -- that I use.)

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

You are Robert A. Heinlein AICMFP.

[avram]

I am the train you did not catch! You are the spaces waiting to be filled!

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

What redaxe said. Not that I agree with the sentiment, since I am a squeamish meat eater, but the first four and the last are things I'd be perfectly willing to do, I'd just suck at them. (Gimme those molecules! Where's my hammer?)

The adoption one just doesn't work at all, because the moral objection to fathering a child is that there are too many children who need homes already, so adopting in that case is helping solve the problem, not taking advantage of someone else's willingness to get their hands dirty.

The music one is the most exact parallel (I'm not willing to take the pain, but I'm willing to take the pleasure from other people's pain) except that presumably those who are willing to sing in public don't think it *is* pain.

I think a more exact analogy might be "if you're not willing to let people smoke in your home, you shouldn't make money by selling cigarettes." The idea is, if you find the concept so distasteful, you shouldn't benefit from it being done on your behalf. This presumes that the reason you're not willing to do it is that you find it distasteful, and that that distaste is rooted in an emotional sense that killing is wrong -- that it is, in essence, a moral issue even if you don't call it by that name -- as opposed to that you're weak or uncoordinated or allergic to farm animals. What they're saying is that hiring an assasin is the same, morally, as pulling the trigger yourself.

I agree. If killing animals is wrong, every cow that went into every hamberger I've ever eaten is my responsiblity. However, I believe something can be upsetting to me without being morally wrong, and I further believe that it is only good sense, in a specialized society, to delegate such jobs to those who aren't upset by it.

Other examples of this include firing the incompetant or dishonest, restraining the mentally ill, and punishing the guilty. I am not tempermentally suited to the causing of pain to the unwilling, no matter how compelling the reason, but that doesn't mean I don't recognize that sometimes the reason is sufficiently compelling.

Mer

[avram]

The adoption one just doesn't work at all, because the moral objection to fathering a child is that there are too many children who need homes already, so adopting in that case is helping solve the problem, not taking advantage of someone else's willingness to get their hands dirty.

Do you know how many cows and chickens there are in the world? What would we do with them all if we didn’t kill them for food (or leather or feathers, etc.)? By eating them, you’re helping solve the problem....

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

That doesn't work either, since they're bred to be killed. If they weren't being deliberately created in order to be eaten, the number of cows and chickens would drop dramatically.

Actually, arguably we're solving the problem of extinction. Domesticated food animals don't get driven out of their niche.

[batyatoon]

However, I believe something can be upsetting to me without being morally wrong

Do you have any idea how much better the world would be if everybody understood this concept?
...oh, wait. Yeah, I suspect you do.

That said, I do think you shouldn't eat meat if you're not prepared to acknowledge, as non-abstractly as you can, that the meat comes from animals who are killed and butchered and turned into food. The best way to acknowledge that is to do the deed yourself, or at least to witness it being done.
Because the alternative allows for an extraordinarily unhealthy worldview that doesn't want to think about the fact that beef comes from cows, which is closely related to the worldview that doesn't want to think about the fact that babies (of all types of animal) come from sex.

"Doing it yourself" isn't the important part. The important part is understanding at a gut level that it's being done, and why.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Omelas.

[meowse.livejournal.com]

*quiet applause*

At least I'm not the only one who loves that story.

[batyatoon]

Now CUT THAT OUT.

[avram]

In my experience, this isn’t actually a problem. I’ve never yet met anyone who’s denied that meat comes from animals.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Aw, come on. There's a world of difference between factual awareness that "beef comes from cows" (but only by way of shrink-wrapped plastic trays in the supermarket refrigerator case), and grasping the corporeal presence of a Real Live Cow whose body is being turned to your sustenance.

[avram]

OK, let’s grant that such a difference exists. How to you tell, in real life, the difference between people who have the factual awareness and people who grasp the corporeal presence? Have you ever known people in real life who had the first and not the second, and how did you tell? Did you know them well, so that you could verify that this was a real difference, and not just a result of you happening to have a one-minute conversation with them on a day when they’d gotten no sleep the night before or were all stressed out from work and therefore not thinking clearly?

[batyatoon]

"Denied" no, but "tried not to think about"? Oh yeah.

Weird story: I know someone whose friend didn't like thinking of vegetables as plants. No, really. Both botany students, and one of them didn't like looking at broccoli and finding pistils and stamens. Wanted vegetables to be things that come in plastic bags from your grocer's freezer, not things that grew out of the ground and used to be alive.
I don't think anyone will disagree that this is a seriously unhealthy attitude.

Here's a good litmus test: what will you say if asked about it by a very small child? If you tell the truth, easily, without stammering or fidgeting or sidestepping ... and if you don't feel that you're somehow Destroying Innocence by doing it ... you're probably okay.

Otherwise: worry. A lot.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

what will you say if asked about it by a very small child? If you tell the truth, easily, without stammering or fidgeting or sidestepping ... and if you don't feel that you're somehow Destroying Innocence by doing it ... you're probably okay.

Did just that with my own son (who was then four years old). The only problem was finding honest language that was in or near his vocabulary.

What did the botany student eat, if not previously living beings? Dirt?

[batyatoon]

What did the botany student eat, if not previously living beings? Dirt?

No, that's just it. She ate previously living things, just like absolutely everything alive does (except for those that eat currently living things). She just didn't want to think about the fact that they'd once been alive, and was very uncomfortable discussing it.
(Actually I'm not sure if it's the "alive" bit that bothered her. But she was very squicked by her friend pointing out the plant-anatomy of the vegetables they were buying...)

The only problem was finding honest language that was in or near his vocabulary.

Well, there's that of course.

[avram]

So she may have just been squicked at eating plant genitals. (Aiieee! Broccoli penis!)

[camwyn]

You know, I thought about this kind of sentiment for a while some years back, and I thought it might be a good idea - not for everyone, just for me. I'm the only one who can really say whether I'm taking moral responsibility for the origin and nature of what I'm putting into my body, or whether I'm just handwaving it away. I was a bit worried about this, because while I can live vegetarian for decent stretches of time (see my last three years' Lenten fasts for this), I don't much like keeping it up forever and I don't have the knowledge or tools necessary to go out and kill myself a deer. As my family hasn't got cows, the nearest 'meat-bearing' animals to where I live are deer, rabbits, and squirrels; deer are the highest on the list of edibles, I think, but frankly no one in my family would be willing to eat wild-killed venison- so even if I was taking an animal's life as an act of responsibility for other meat that I've eaten, I'd probably be wasting most of the meat. There's a good seventy or eighty pounds of meat on a healthy whitetail doe dropped during hunting season, and even if I stuck it all in the freezer, I expect a large portion of it would be ruined by the time I got through it all, were I the only one to eat it.

And then it occurred to me that I had gone fishing many, many times in my life. I've pulled animals from their homes and brought them into the light to die, and while I haven't killed them myself, I've eaten them afterwards. I haven't butchered the fish I caught myself, but I've cleaned and gutted fishes other people have caught, and I've gone through the process of pulling every single pin-bone from a salmon's back with a pair of tweezers. I've killed pet fish when they were too sick for methylene blue or malachite green to save, and I am not talking about the toilet, either; no, I am talking about putting the fish into a cup of water and setting it into the freezer so that the animal will have a relatively peaceful death, instead of being subjected to the horrors of a municipal sewage system.

I have caught, I have killed, I have butchered, I have cooked. I have seen what it takes to put the meat on my table, and I have taken part in that myself. If there is blood on the hands of meat-eaters, then yes, my hands are bloodied- but I accept that responsibility, and have taken part in the process at every step of the way save perhaps for breeding the animals for meat myself.

Then again, I tend to think that quite a lot of the world would be in better shape if people were more aware of the source of things they take for granted. Food, clothing, shelter, whatever- many people would not take their lives and all they interact with so lightly if they had to properly understand what came to them, just *once*. We're awfully disconnected from the source of nearly everything here in the States, and there are days when I think we could use a good 'how did you think you got where you are now?' slap in the face or three.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go save my work and head home before the snow gets bad. And then I have to go see if I can find some cheap rovings on eBay so I can learn to spin.