It's not weird that you like the taste of meat. But being unable to empathize with the sentient animals that we kill so thoughtlessly, and at such a scale, even when you're confronted with that fact in this poetic yet concise fashion is more than a little callous.
Honestly, it's a massive win for cultural progress that we have even made the suffering of people with a different skin color intelligible to most people.
Intelligibility of the suffering of other species will probably take a considerably longer amount of time.
When people proudly proclaim that they simply do not care for the suffering of animals, I wonder if they realize that they sound like the millions of people who were on the wrong side of history.
The circle of moral consideration in the Western world started generally with land-owning white men, then (still generally speaking) widened to include white men without land, then women, non-white people, etc. The circle of moral consideration is slowly starting to cover non-human animals, though it will take hundreds of years before they are truly protected.
The folks who say they do not care about animals join the company of everyone who has historically opposed the widening of that circle, the people who stood against granting basic rights and basic consideration to those who enjoy them today.
I'll agree with the thought of "The folks who say they do not care about animals join the company of everyone who has historically opposed the widening of that circle", I do benefit from the status quo.
That being said, it is a huge proposition to proclaim you're on the right side of history, and that others who aren't should either reconsider or live to regret it. Especially when the change you champion will only happen when those that make money from meat no longer do. I'll sooner bet on the grass turning purple.
> Especially when the change you champion will only happen when those that make money from meat no longer do.
We can all think of a couple historical instances of radical social change which necessitated short-term economic sacrifices and paradigm shifts. Yet, the grass isn't purple.
Maybe the circle will expand to include computers; users and programmers of this century will be seen as the unforgivable oppressors and violators of innocent minds for their own profit and convenience.
I don't see value in pandering to hypothetical future moralists. If they one day resurrect my corpse and torture me for eternity as punishment for eating animals, maybe then I'll care. Best case scenario, this comment may provide the same vacant sense of superiority that quotes from dead racists do for us; worst case, society regresses to bigotry and our current social morality is derided as a failed experiment, and you and I will share a cell in the cybernetic hell the 7th Reich make for resurrected wrong-thinkers.
The fact that you see advocating for the widening of the circle of moral consideration as “pandering not hypothetical future moralists” is an embarrassing self burn.
I don't think it's so simple. I love animals and will sometimes go out of my way to rescue or assist an insect, but I also have an aggressive side and enjoy eating meat. Veganism makes perfect sense to me, but so does predation.
What I mean is that I don't think conflict is due to an inability to appreciate suffering as your first post suggested. It's fully intelligible to most people and in some respects to other animals, but empathy is situational and selective. So I don't think intelligibility is the only factor.
I like to drink tomato juice and pretend it's blood, and eat gumi bears and pretend they're little fetuses, to get all the blood sucking baby eating urges out of my system.
Me too, but I only order lamb when at a sit-down restaurant where I can enjoy it and finish it all. And I default to chicken over red meat because cows are more complex creatures. Delicious though.
I still like chops.