• testfactor@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    Are you a vegan by chance?

    I feel like that’s the next big moral shift. People lionize dogs and cats, and harming one makes you literally Hitler. But there’s not a lick of difference between a dog and a cow.

    I think that an objective ethicist would absolutely say veganism is the only moral choice, and that anyone who isn’t a vegan is knowingly participating in unimaginable cruelty.

    But in our current context, only a small fraction of people care. Including a lot of people who look down on people of the past for not being as amazingly moral as they are.

    • spookex@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      I mean, in the end an animal is an animal. I have had cats and dogs and don’t really like to see them hurt because (in the West) there is no purpose for their existence besides being pets.

      Cows and livestock, on the other hand, only exist for food and we keep breeding them for that.

      At the same time, is don’t really see a problem with the cultures that eat cats and dogs, in the end, it’s all just animals and it doesn’t matter if I think that some of them look cuter than others

      • Jack@lemmy.ca
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        5 hours ago

        Many animals are smarter than severely mentally-disabled humans, yet we don’t torture and eat severely mentally-disabled humans. So it’s not about intelligence. It’s obviously also not about being able to feel pain, because animals can feel pain.

        Do you agree with “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to you”?

        If yes, would you be okay with genetically modified people who are much smarter and crueler than you, treating you like factory farmers and fishermen treat animals? 1-3 trillion fish are enslaved in torturous factory-farm conditions every year, and together with fishermen torture about 2-6 trillion fish to death annually, usually by slow asphyxiation. Hundreds of billions of land-animals (mostly chickens) are enslaved in torturous conditions every year and slaughtered. About 1% of chickens are boiled alive because it would cost more money to make sure the machines that kill them don’t miss that 1%. Dairy cows are repeatedly put on rape racks to be artificially inseminated, because they only give milk after delivering a calf. The calves are removed from their mothers, because the farmers don’t want the calves to drink the milk. Would you like to be kept your entire life in torturous conditions? Be tortured to death? You and/or your female family repeatedly artificially inseminated and made to give birth, then have the babies taken away so you and/or your female family’s milk can be harvested, eventually killed for hamburger when not yielding enough milk to make a profit?

          • Jack@lemmy.ca
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            38 minutes ago

            The reason many people say it’s OK to be complicit in factory farming animals, but not humans, is because humans are smarter: “they’re just animals”. Pointing out that factory farmed animals are smarter than severely mentally-disabled humans, shows it’s clearly not about intelligence. Speciesism is therefor similar to racism and sexism.

            What’s important is whether they can feel pain or not, not intelligence.

            Pointing out the lie isn’t gross. What is gross is torturing 3-6 trillion fish to death every year, and enslaving 1-3 trillion animals in torturous conditions every year.

            Dominion, Land of hope and glory, Earthlings

    • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
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      20 hours ago

      Yes, I agree. In about a century folks will look back on modern humans as irredeemable monsters. And they would be right! This is an objective fact, and downvotes don’t change normative reality. More’s the pity.

      • Soulg@ani.social
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        16 hours ago

        I only see this happening if lab grown meat takes off in a really big way. Which I’m in favor of, but with how it’s been going I’m not so sure.

        • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
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          13 hours ago

          Assuming civilization (i.e., democracy) survives, it will happen. Democracy is almost ineluctable in promulgating moral progress. That’s one of the chief reasons that it’s under such sustained attack. Can’t have the poor and ignorant learning right from wrong.