Billzz wrote:
> "Dutch" > wrote in message
> ...
>> "Fred" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>> Dutch wrote:
>>>
>>>> "Fred" > wrote
>>>>> K wrote:
>>>>>> No, killing animals to eat them is not evidence of psychopathology.
>>>>>>
>>>>> Why don't they show it on television?
>>>> Because the process of slaughtering animals is messy and not
>>>> entertaining
>>>> to watch.
>>>>
>>> yes, because it's too horrific.
>>>
>>>> Why don't they give people tours of
>>>>> the abattoirs? Why do people prefer not to see that going on? It's
>>>>> not
>>>>> something that most of us want to think about whether we eat meat or
>>>>> not.
>>>> You obviously don't think much about the death toll behind your own
>>>> consumer choices.
>>>>
>>> It's minimal.
>> You don't know that, that is simply a self-serving assumption.
>>
>>> I do what I can.
>> No you don't, you do what is easy.
>>
>>> Nobody's perfect.
>> Yet you judge others as if you were.
>>
>>>>> Most people would rather go on eating their Big Macs and not think
>>>>> about
>>>>> where it came from or what had to be done to make it. If people had to
>>>>> actually go out and do their own killing, there's be a lot more
>>>>> vegetarians
>>>>> around.
>>>> Because people are lazy and inept. If they had to grow their own, many
>>>> more would simply starve.
>>> True, but that's an unrelated concept.
>> The truth is that people placed in a survival situation learn to fish,
>> hunt and trap small animals as well as find edible plants. The aversion
>> you speak of is not our basic nature, it is a learned domesticality.
>
> This reminds me that the National Geographic channel on DISH network is
> constantly running predator films about lions devouring zebras, alligators
> crunching birds that stick their feet into the water, Orcas smashing seals,
> sharks eating everyone in sight, whales eating krill by the million,
> anacondas squeezing pigs, grizzly bears eating fruits and nuts and the
> occasional human (maybe a fruit or a nut - in one case definitely a nut) and
> ocopussessess unsealing oysters, and eating them raw, without even any
> horseradish.

The so-called "ethical vegetarians" think they have an answer to that.
It's the idea of being a moral agent vs merely being a moral patient.
That is, a gazelle holds "rights" against a moral agent - humans - who
are presumed to know right from wrong; but they are thought to hold no
rights against moral patients, i.e. dumb animals, who have no concept of
right and wrong.

This is clearly nonsense. You have a clear right not to be assaulted by
a lunatic. The form that right takes, and the responsibilities the
right imposes on others, differ from what they would be regarding your
right not to be attacked by a mentally competent person; but the
implication of the right doesn't vary. Someone is supposed to be
responsible for lunatic humans who are moral patients, and if the human
moral patients do something wrong, those responsible are held liable.
But that isn't the case with wild beasts. A lion is always a moral
patient with respect to the gazelle: the lion isn't expected to know
that it is "wrong" to attack gazelles. Yet no one suggests that someone
is morally responsible for the lions, and will be held to account if
they attack gazelles. Clearly, the moral status of the attacker has no
bearing on whether or not the attacked has a "right" not to be attacked
- or more accurately, a right not to be attacked with no potential
consequence for the attacker or the moral agent responsible for the
attacker.

So-called "ethical vegetarians" simply have no coherent way to explain
the higher standard to which they hold humans. In a word, it's
"speciesist".



> It is time to sue Mother Nature! She is responsible for this unacceptable
> behaviour. Just because people say that it is in the nature of a predator
> to hunt (because they cannot farm tofu) does not mean that we have to accept
> this crass lifestyle, that is not in keeping with todays norms and mores and
> other things with words too big for me to spell correctly. We must make up
> some signs and picket these lions, sharks, orcas, whales, grizzleys, and
> even the octopi (bet you thought I didn't know that word. I do, I was just
> running out of pussess.
>
> I'll try to help more, later.
>
>