• enkers@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    For me, it wasn’t a global event, but a personal one. I had a conversation on reddit with a Texan piano teacher who had the fantasy of murdering and eating people. Her view was that if it was OK to kill any sentient beings, as there was no legitimate reason to draw a line between farmed animals and people. She argued her point well, and I couldn’t come up with a counterargument that didn’t also imply we shouldn’t eat animals.

    It was a bizzare conversation, but it made me really reconsider my personal morals, and totally changed the path of my life.

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      pretty trivial counterpoint though: there are plenty of sentient animals that aren’t even remotely sapient, and animals like chickens frankly rather deserve to be eaten as they are quite terrible creatures who will blithely peck their flockmates to a slow and miserable death.

      • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Chickens tend to get along OK if you don’t cram them in where they have no room to move. They actually make for quite affectionate companions if socialized properly. Nurture plays a huge role in animal behavior as well, and usually animals (including humans) simply tend to lash out when their needs aren’t being met.

        If you spend some time looking into modern animal cognition research, you’ll notice the line around sapience is a very blurry one, with many animals routinely demonstrating that they are capable of complex spatial reasoning, theory of mind, and other traits we used to think only humans were capable of.

        Also, you’ll find plenty of humans are quite terrible creatures as well. That doesn’t mean we can treat them indiscriminately. The capacity to suffer only requires sentience.

        Anyways, I didn’t come here to argue. Just to share my experience.

    • MTK@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s funny that people can’t see this point, sometimes even when told to their faces. Logically, putting belief aside, you are either okay with some sort of cannibalism, murder and rape, or you should turn vegan.

      • SpiderShoeCult@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        That’s a bit extreme, murder an cannibalism I can understand the connection with, but rape? I might be missing something but I’m pretty sure nobody forces intercourse on animals destined for consumption.

        As for murder and cannibalism, there have been historical instances where that was the case when they ran out of food (low-hanging fruit). I would wager that given a grave enough scenario, people will be grilling up Neighbour Bob to stay alive. Zombie apocalypse time might just mean long pork’s on the menu.

        • MTK@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Look, extreme situations are not our day to day. i wouldn’t judge someone who murdered in self defense for example.

          As for rape, did you ever think about how we have so many cows, chickens, pigs, etc?

          If you want to eat a cow today you need to murder her, but if you want to eat a cow tomorrow too, you first need to breed her, and nobody is waiting for nature so they either make a bull rape them or more commonly, they jack a bull off, take the semen and insert it into the female cow (not in a pleasent way, not that there is one)

          So yeah, rape is an even bigger part than murder in the meat industry.