Humans are considered higher species because of our innate ability to decipher right from wrong, therefore some consider that enough of a plausible argument for the consumption of animals. Nonetheless, if the possession of an adequate conscience [assuming that conscience is, in its simplest sense, the ability to determine right from wrong] makes you human, what accounts for sociopaths? If these people, however human they may seem, lack a conscience, then do they become merely animals? Is their humanity stripped of them and instead they are simply wolves in sheep’s clothing? An animal with smooth skin and more advanced skills, but an animal nonetheless. Point being that if one is consuming animals, with no concrete concern for their suffrage because of the animal’s lack of moral reasoning, where does the cannibalism fall? When will the day come when we’re chopping up the Jeffrey Dahmers for our stew, Ted Bundy becomes a midnight snack, and people start downing a few una-bombers for desert?
Blake said,
June 19, 2008 @ 8:58 pm
the greater majority of the world lives a “carnivorous” life style because that’s the way that
humans have been for 100’s of 1,000’s of etc… etc… years.
We were hunters and gatherers. Then we evolved a bit, but still continued to hunt, and gather.
Now’a days, the desire for meat and the like is so common and almost… Automatic that it’s not really
even looked at as a problem by anyone other than the select few who choose to stop and question it.
Yes… In the wider view of things it is inhumane to raise, slaughter and butcher an animal.
That is, if anything, obvious.
I’m sure if the masses were brought to the slaughter houses and told to hit the switch themselves,
or sling the blade with their own two hands that they’d be listless, and unable to do it.
Am I excusing the act of eating meat by the convenience of the meat packing industry…
Not necessarily, but in a way… Yes.
As is, there’s nothing morally reprehensible about eating a steak. Or enjoying chicken fingers
for lunch.
It’s the barbaric, “human” way of doing things.
If being a vegetarian were easy, tasty and as healthy as just getting your vitamins from meats and the like…
I’m sure more people would do it.
But until lettuce and cabbage start offering up 100 grams of protein, and all the vitamins and minerals
of a piece of fish, or a T-Bone…
I don’t see the greater good of people changing their opinions, or eating habits for that matter.
As for eating humans… Yucky. lol