One thing that is puzzling me for some time is why vegetarians think it's more moral/nice/whatever to eat plants and not animals. They too are living creatures and most of the times you are killing a being in order to consume it for your personal gain. I'll skip the analogy between fruits and their mamal equivelant, but you get the idea..
Thing is, survival is a really competitive process and unless you want to get off sooner, you have to take things away from other organisms, human or otherwise. We, as a civilisation, may have raised it to a more noble, according to our perception, level but fundamentally it's still the same.
Ethos is mostly the refined version of pack rules evolved to make sure an individual doesn't hurt the well being of the group. It's a human fabrication.
With that said I agree with the author's view, try to do as much good as you possibly can, while realising that just by living you are causing harm to someone/something else.
Ah, but consider the apple. The purpose of an apple is to get eaten so that the seeds get geographically distributed. The apple is ready to fall--else it won't taste good--so you are not killing it. This is true for most all fruits.
If it weren't for cows and pigs and chickens being so tasty, they would probably not be so ubiquitous, because then humans would not have reasons to breed them en masse.
By this logic, I say we start eating endangered species, creating a market demand and thus an economic reason to breed them.
Good idea, but it's already been thought of - L Neil Smith had Eagleburgers in one of his North American Confederacy novels - developed by a conservationist specifically to encourage the breeding of eagles.
Once you reach Level 5 Vegan, you can exist only on sand and twigs (that have fallen naturally). Level 7 Vegans can exist on only air (but they still consume oxygen from it).
One thing that is puzzling me for some time is why
vegetarians think it's more moral/nice/whatever to eat
plants and not animals
If you acknowledge that animals are sentient (and it's not hard if you've had pets), then it's interesting to look at the meat on your plate and them compare it to the animal that's your friend that's lying down next to you. If you're eating pig there's a good chance that the animal you're eating had potential to be even smarter than the dog. That's weird. That we choose some animals to slaughter for what is really a minor convenience (being able to eat meat) yet we make equivalent animals a close friend. It's similar to this idea that we can at the same time be good neighbours yet be happily gassing/bombing/napalming populations a little further off just because we don't know them.
A problem with meat in the modern world is that it's all packaged when you get it and this makes the relationship impersonal. It's good to ask before every meal involving meat, "if I had to make the decision to kill this in order to eat it, would I do it?"
It becomes a sliding scale thing and you pick a position. Does it ruin my day if I step on an ant on the way to work in the morning? Do I write poems to the death of flies? No. At the same time, I've cut the majority of meat out of my diet.
It's a human fabrication.
True, but you're papering over something. I doubt you live a life comparable to the guy in _A Clockwork Orange_. I doubt that you walk away from restaurants when you're in a foreign city and have zero change of being caught. Your own conduct is evidence that you agree that not all fabrications are equivalent. Obviously you have principles yourself. You can break the cycle you criticise of ethos being pack oriented by choosing to live by a value system that extends beyond the human pack.
try to do as much good as you possibly can
The circumstances in which meat is created is a horror. Cutting down on the amount of meat you eat is a fast way to reduce your footprint. I think pigs, chickens, lamb and cage eggs are the worst, and have found no impact on my life by eliminating these altogether apart from inadvertently eating things with those eggs in.
"As with many white people activities, being vegan/vegetarian enables them to feel as though they are helping the environment AND it gives them a sweet way to feel superior to others. For further evidence, note how the vegetarian world has increasing levels of extemism (no meat, no dairy, no eggs, no fish, nothing that has been cooked, etc)."
Thing is, survival is a really competitive process and unless you want to get off sooner, you have to take things away from other organisms, human or otherwise. We, as a civilisation, may have raised it to a more noble, according to our perception, level but fundamentally it's still the same. Ethos is mostly the refined version of pack rules evolved to make sure an individual doesn't hurt the well being of the group. It's a human fabrication.
With that said I agree with the author's view, try to do as much good as you possibly can, while realising that just by living you are causing harm to someone/something else.