Comment by rlue | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rlue | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> I’m not going to convince anyone that it isn’t a moral issue anymore than they will convince me that it is.

This is really unfortunate. An anti-vaxxer knows that it’s a question of science, just as a Holocaust denier knows that it’s a question of historical record (even if they lack the scientific/historical literacy to see through the counterfactual narratives they’ve bought into). There’s insurmountable conviction on both sides—but one is right and the other is not (for all practical purposes, as elusive as objective truth is).

To refuse to even consider the moral angle—I’d be tempted to call it bad faith, but I don’t get that impression from you at all. Rather, it seems to be this:

> I take a live and let live approach to the voluntary choices of others precisely because I’m not morally superior, nor do I endeavor to be.

Taken to the extreme, the live-and-let-live / agree-to-disagree philosophy exhorts us to put down difficult questions simply because they are difficult (or seem unactionable), and to simply accept the status quo for what it is. But the moral implications of your actions do not go away simply because you choose not to examine them, or because they were the default configuration presented by the time and place you were born in.

---

You’re right though; I’m not qualified to pass moral judgment on anyone, and that’s not what I mean when I say it’s a moral question. Moral virtue isn’t a contest or a report card.

Am I morally superior to a 19th-century plantation owner? (Were all slaveowners equally bad?) If I were raised in his family, as part of that society, what reason do I have to believe I’d do any different? If the answer is “none”, then why do we study history? and what makes me better than that guy?

It's not within my power to change the way things are. But the willingness to consider that the way things are isn't right might be a start.

I considered the morality of eating meat for a decent portion of my life. The conclusion I came to is such things like ethical vegetarianism is an ethical and intellectual dead end which disregards the nature of the beast, and the beast is the most violent and violently omnivorous apex predator to ever grace the Earth. If there’s a landmass we haven’t walked, it’s because it is literally underwater having been foreclosed upon by some glacier or the Ocean, and we’ve walked some of those lands too once upon a time.

If the way things are isn’t right, then it is besides the point because the way things are is so deeply rooted into our psychology that you can’t change it without violently changing what it means to be human, so you essentially have to have humans become something other than human, and that doesn’t seem like a winning survival strategy in the long term.

When we’re not eating God’s creatures, we’re burning down the forests and fields they live in and pouring concrete over them so we can sleep better at night in little towns and villages and hamlets with other people who participated in the festivities, or at least their ancestors did, or at least they bought the house from someone whose ancestors did etc. We also do it to grow more food, all those plants we’ve selected for over the entire history of agriculture that we’ve deemed to be beneficial to us to keep around? We burned down other species, even to extinction with no regard as to whether the burning mass over yonder was plant or fungus or animal flesh or insect.

I can’t seriously consider ethical vegetarianism or ethical veganism a serious argument for not eating meat because it goes so deeply against the violent nature of humanity that it disregards what we are entirely. Given it is probably the most defining characteristic of Homo sapiens, it is a fairly massive characteristic to overlook.

I can seriously consider reasons for eating less meat that include things like “this meatless dish is delicious”, only you don’t emphasize the meatless bit, or “methane emissions are a pretty serious concern, is there something we can do about that?” or “cows actually use up a large amount of resources that might be better spent on something else.”

I can consider those seriously, I just don’t think they’re winning arguments. But, at least they’re willing to try to work with the nature of the beast rather than against it. People who consider themselves “ethical vegans” can make a better case than starting from a position that eating meat is morally wrong, even if you believe it! It’s okay to believe something like that, I don’t agree with you, but so long as you or someone else isn’t trying to use state force to enforce their belief on me, I think we’ll get along just fine.

I appreciate you taking the time to respond here, especially when your ultimate position is a foregone conclusion. I share your pessimism about the overall trajectory of human progress, and there are parts of me that believe that the destructive patterns of human settlement are themselves an expression of the unique but entirely natural phenomenon that is our species. Finding optimism in spite of these facts is an exercise in mental contradiction.

But I am curious to know what you think: couldn't you have made this same argument about slavery two hundred years ago?

"The conclusion I came to is such things like ethical emancipation is an ethical and intellectual dead end which disregards the nature of the beast, and the beast is the most hierarchical, socially stratified, and conquest-driven species to ever grace the Earth. If there's a people that hasn't been dominated by another, it's because they're so remote as to be beyond the reach of civilized society.

"If the way things are isn't right, then it is besides the point because the way things are is so deeply rooted into our psychology that you can't change it without violently changing what it means to be human..."

Again, I'm not saying you should stop eating meat. I'd like to, but even I haven't. I'm also not saying that I would have asked a 19th-century plantation owner to just give up his slaves voluntarily. But I think the Civil War was the single most defining struggle in the building of our nation's moral character. Would you rather live in the America we have, or in the alternate-universe America where our great-grandparents skirted this question so that they could "live and let live"?

Yeah, you should really have a look at the youtube video I linked to in my sibling comment. What you buy into with your position is the right of strong or the law of the jungle which is something we as humanity have been trying to overcome and shown to be less effective than cooperation.

If you don't buy into this for your own species, why do you cling to this world view in relation to other species? Have you ever considered that the universe is evolving and old practices which have worked at one point can/should be replaced by more effective ones? Just because we had cruel practices at one point, doesn't mean we should hold on to them if we notice that there are better alternatives.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com