the moral hand and veganism

[Wilikon]

This guy was a vegetarian and protector of animal rights:



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1) Hitler was not an ethical vegetarian, and not even a vegetarian.
2) He also did not protect the rights of jews, so he was not consistent in protecting animal rights. (jews belong to the species Homo sapiens, who belong to the class of mammals, who belong to the kingdom of animals)
3) It is true that some other nazi's had some sympathies with non-human animal rights, but they were not consistent either.
4) Hitler was against the rape of Arian women. So some ideas of Hitler were good, and the fact that Hitler had those ideas is not evidence that those ideas are less reliable. Rape of Arian women is wrong, even if Hitler was right on this point.   

What about the rape of non Aryan women?

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[Stijn]

3 questions for you:


- Can I still use my animals as working beasts to grow my tasty veggies?

https://i.imgur.com/TqQmQL0.jpg

probably not; it is too close to slavery

- Are veganism and feminism inseparable concepts?

http://veganfeminist.blogspot.com/2012/07/applying-feminism-to-veganism-why.html

both can be derived from the moral hand. There are strong analogies between using someone's muscle tissue against his will and using someone's vagina against her will, between thinking that someone else (a pig) has less moral status and thinking that someone else (a woman) has less moral status, between antispeciesist veganism and antisexist feminism

- Vitamix or Blentec?

https://i.imgur.com/jJIbRDT.jpg

dammit, tough one... How many seconds do I have left?






[/quote]

[Stijn]

This guy was a vegetarian and protector of animal rights:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Adolf_Hitler-1933.jpg

</thread>

1) Hitler was not an ethical vegetarian, and not even a vegetarian.
2) He also did not protect the rights of jews, so he was not consistent in protecting animal rights. (jews belong to the species Homo sapiens, who belong to the class of mammals, who belong to the kingdom of animals)
3) It is true that some other nazi's had some sympathies with non-human animal rights, but they were not consistent either.
4) Hitler was against the rape of Arian women. So some ideas of Hitler were good, and the fact that Hitler had those ideas is not evidence that those ideas are less reliable. Rape of Arian women is wrong, even if Hitler was right on this point.   

What about the rape of non Aryan women?

Hitler condoned the rape of jews in concentration camps (although there were antimiscegenation laws, so you had to kill the jewish girl afterwards)

[Stijn]

my ethical system says that it is not permissible for chimpanzees to eat meat, because they can survive without meat.

So the next step is to enforce your values on chimps? Give them the gift of your morality? Maybe first send Torquemada to find out why they have evil intent so you can purge it better?

well, why should the chimp be allowed to enforce his values on others, on his victims, his prey? By killing a colobus monkey, a chimpanzee enforces his values in a very brutal, lethal way. Why should that be permissible? Why should the interests of the chimp count more than the interests of the monkey? When I protect the monkey by preventing that chimpanzee from hunting, I do not kill the chimp, so my enforcement is much less violent than what the chimp intended to do. What would you prefer: being enforced not to kill someone else, or being enforced to sacrifice yourself?

My first choice is to remove the enforcer and that is one of the very few circumstances in which killing can be justified sometimes.

but you evaded the question. You could not choose to remove the enforcer. In the case of the chimp, there is always enforcement: either the chimp enforces the monkey to sacrifice himself, or either I enforce the chimp to stop hunting the monkey. Removing the chimp means that the problem does not even pose itself. Removing me would not remove the enforcement of the monkey.

[Stijn]

You are ignoring the fact that beings learn and evolve. Would you 'enforce' a baby not to throw up food on the carpet?

yes, everyone would 'enforce' that baby in the sense that everyone will interfere in such a way that the baby does not throw up on the carpet. We enforce our values on the natural behavior of the baby.

If you want to enforce a creature not to eat because you do not understand how their diet fits into some longer term picture, then you are taking food from a stranger, a hostile act that can merit death in nature.

in the case of the chimp we were talking about killing someone for food that was not necessary for survival. If it was necessary for survival, to avoid death, then we have to use the ring finger which says that the animal is allowed to eat whatever is necessary for survival. Then we have the situation of the lion eating the zebra.

If you want to try to be more civilized and try to convince the monkey not to kill for food, my suggestion would be first to master that skill in your own life, then in the lives of those who share your language and would not need 'enforcement' to agree with you, then maybe consider trying to force yourself on monkeys.

that sounds obvious. But it is not merely about convincing someone. We did not convince the baby not to throw up on the carpet. Yet, we interfered in its behavior with the goal that the baby doesn't throw up on the carpet.

[username18333]

. . .

yes, they act with conscious intention. No instinct. (although they don't ethically reflect on their actions, whereas I do)
But with or without conscious intention is not relevant here, unless it is related to "being above nature", but I don't see how.

Are black holes ethical?

[T]hey are amoral[.]

Yet, they are merely an expression of some of the most fundamental elements of this universe (e.g., mass, momentum, gravitation, and magnetism).

Username you are probably the most intellectually capable among us in this crowd but your silliness minimizing the awareness of a chimp cost you a shitload of IQ points. You have been reduced from " shit, he's quick" to "a mile wide, an inch deep". Come back when you are older.

(Red colorization mine.)

I debate upon the goban. In light of that, was this post a gote one?

It will be a while before I figure that out. I play go well enough to lose and read the book Shibumi a few decades ago but the applicability of the game to life strategies is a few steps past me.

In which case, you have known it only as a game (i.e., too well).

[Stijn]

You are ignoring the fact that beings learn and evolve. Would you 'enforce' a baby not to throw up food on the carpet?

yes, everyone would 'enforce' that baby in the sense that everyone will interfere in such a way that the baby does not throw up on the carpet. We enforce our values on the natural behavior of the baby.
 

Are you going to prevent the baby from eating where there is a carpet? In other words are you going to change the babies behavior around a carpet, or your behavior when a carpet is present?

changing his behavior might be more difficult than changing his position away from the carpet. In any way, my behavior towards the baby is different when a carpet is present: I can move the baby away, or the carpet. And when instead of a baby we have an older child, I can try to directly change its behavior.

If you want to enforce a creature not to eat because you do not understand how their diet fits into some longer term picture, then you are taking food from a stranger, a hostile act that can merit death in nature.

in the case of a chimp we were talking about killing someone for food that was not necessary for survival. If it was necessary for survival, to avoid death, then we have to use the ring finger which says that the animal is allowed to eat whatever is necessary for survival. Then we have the situation of the lion eating the zebra.

Life is not only about survival. No one survives life so if it were about survival everyone fails. A chimp has his or her path in life. You are saying you have some superior path that justifies eviscerating the chimp's path and making it a branch of your path. Violence, including eating animals, should be discouraged, I agree with that. But your method makes no sense.

if everyone fails at survival, then how come there still is biodiversity? Look at the ring finger principle: it is about the conservation of biodiversity. So with survival I meant that biodiversity does not get lost. Or you can say: it is survival of a population instead of an individual.
Yes, the chimp has his own path in life, and yes we should respect his path. But we should do it consistently! We should respect everyone's path, without arbitrary exceptions. You forgot someone: the hunted colobus monkey. Why did you not say that this monkey has his own path in life? Why is the chimp allowed to kill the monkey? With hunting and killing the monkey, the lifepath of the monkey is very drastically changed, you agree? But with preventing the chimp from hunting the monkey, the lifepath of the chimp is changed only a little bit.
You are saying you have some superior path that justifies making the chimps path much more superior than the monkey's path.

If you want to try to be more civilized and try to convince the monkey not to kill for food, my suggestion would be first to master that skill in your own life, then in the lives of those who share your language and would not need 'enforcement' to agree with you, then maybe consider trying to force yourself on monkeys.

that sounds obvious. But it is not merely about convincing someone. We did not convince the baby not to throw up on the carpet. Yet, we interfered in its behavior with the goal that the baby doesn't throw up on the carpet.

Again, if you interfered in the babies behavior blindly, by force, you did nothing good.[/quote]
my sister has a baby, and she puts the baby in a chair at the table so that he cannot throw up on the carpet. My sister used force to lift the baby up and put him in the chair. I don't know what you mean with interfering blindly. But are you suggesting that this interference did nothing good?

 

What you suggest is to physically prevent monkeys from eating animals. Why don't you describe to what lengths you might go. It is certainly good to give monkeys a respect for life, and encourage nonviolence that way. Also okay to arm their potential victims so the price of a meal is clear. But how far are you thinking to go? Would you be willing to limit their habitat so they would not have contact with potential living food? Put on shock collars to zap them when the brain part associated with meat lights up?

good idea :-)
we can go as far as a teacher or policeman go when they see a child attacking another child. Perhaps in the kindergarten they are interested in this shock collar that zaps a child when the brain part associated with agression lights up. And yes, let's arm the other children. Cool :-)

[username18333]

Nietzsche’s philosophy contemplates the meaning of values and their significance to human existence. Given that no absolute values exist, in Nietzsche’s worldview, the evolution of values on earth must be measured by some other means. How then shall they be understood? The existence of a value presupposes a value-positing perspective, and values are created by human beings (and perhaps other value-positing agents) as aids for survival and growth. Because values are important for the well being of the human animal, because belief in them is essential to our existence, we oftentimes prefer to forget that values are our own creations and to live through them as if they were absolute. For these reasons, social institutions enforcing adherence to inherited values are permitted to create self-serving economies of power, so long as individuals living through them are thereby made more secure and their possibilities for life enhanced. Nevertheless, from time to time the values we inherit are deemed no longer suitable and the continued enforcement of them no longer stands in the service of life. To maintain allegiance to such values, even when they no longer seem practicable, turns what once served the advantage to individuals to a disadvantage, and what was once the prudent deployment of values into a life denying abuse of power. When this happens the human being must reactivate its creative, value-positing capacities and construct new values.

Why must one’s survival mechanisms be construed as anything but? (How is it that one can debate something so arbitrary as ethics?)

[Decentradical]

Disregarding the preferences of sentient beings is my definition of sociopathy. It may not be a clinical label but rather a collective failing in empathy towards the weaker groups in our society.

[BitMos]

...

Do you have a plan to defend your values against those that think you are nuts, and a perfect slave for their flock? Do you rule out the usage of violence against your enemies in defense and in preemptive way? just asking, I didn't read it, for disclaimer... but in short are you like the sheep ready to be fleeced, or more like a nasty continually mutating resistant virus whose enemy are gonna die in utter suffering meanwhile being used to further the spread?

V

[Decentradical]

Disregarding the preferences of sentient beings is my definition of sociopathy. It may not be a clinical label but rather a collective failing in empathy towards the weaker groups in our society.

You are ahead of things.

The conversation has not yet defined sentient beings nor which among them might have superiority.

To sum things up so far, all we know is that English speaking bipeds are determining the fate of obscure monkey species.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't quite follow that tangent. I'm not really sure anyone does.

[username18333]

Disregarding the preferences of sentient beings is my definition of sociopathy. It may not be a clinical label but rather a collective failing in empathy towards the weaker groups in our society.

Your condemnation of “sociopathy” satisfies my definition of “morality” (i.e., it is conducive of unreasoned [perhaps, even, unreasonable] “self-preservation” [i.e., the preservation of some self]).

[username18333]

. . .

Disregarding the preferences of sentient beings is my definition of sociopathy. It may not be a clinical label but rather a collective failing in empathy towards the weaker groups in our society.

Your condemnation of “sociopathy” satisfies my definition of “morality” (i.e., it is conducive of unreasoned [perhaps, even, unreasonable] “self-preservation” [i.e., the preservation of some self]).

Sociopathy even psychopathy are only useful to the group, as BitMos kind of suggests too. Maybe that is the overall problem with Stijn's intent, which seems to be to serve the group under the facade of helping individuals.

Individuals can do no wrong, they can only make mistakes and learn.

Groups can do no good. They can only make mistakes and they cannot learn. And when an individual is possessed by a group even he or she does not learn until the group is disbanded.

So my final input into this circular thread is that Stijn should help individual monkeys, save them from chimps. But should not form a religion, a society, a force etc to make other people save the monkeys in that way.

(Red colorization mine.)

Where there is heterarchy, there is reason. Where there is hierarchy, there is treason.

[BADecker]

. . .

Disregarding the preferences of sentient beings is my definition of sociopathy. It may not be a clinical label but rather a collective failing in empathy towards the weaker groups in our society.

Your condemnation of “sociopathy” satisfies my definition of “morality” (i.e., it is conducive of unreasoned [perhaps, even, unreasonable] “self-preservation” [i.e., the preservation of some self]).

Sociopathy even psychopathy are only useful to the group, as BitMos kind of suggests too. Maybe that is the overall problem with Stijn's intent, which seems to be to serve the group under the facade of helping individuals.

Individuals can do no wrong, they can only make mistakes and learn.

Groups can do no good. They can only make mistakes and they cannot learn. And when an individual is possessed by a group even he or she does not learn until the group is disbanded.

So my final input into this circular thread is that Stijn should help individual monkeys, save them from chimps. But should not form a religion, a society, a force etc to make other people save the monkeys in that way.

(Red colorization mine.)

Where there is heterarchy, there is reason. Where there is hierarchy, there is treason.

Not to contradict, nor to argue, but rather to question, what about this.

Say there is a land without government, and with reasonable people. The land is not populous, but it is fertile. The people are farmers, with their own families. They are friendly with each other. Now and again they work together on projects, like helping their grown children or neighbor's children to put up a barn, a small group working together. Perhaps they do the harvesting in groups, friends, offering a helping hand.

Among these farmers are the 5% that are a little prone to laziness and fraud on their neighbors in whatever ways they can get away with. A few of these are downright thieves. The thieves literally break into their neighbor's barns and steal produce. They rustle cattle and sheep, animals that the owners have not set aside for community purposes; after all, don't we get to keep a little of what we work for for ourselves without giving all of it over to community?

Some of the thieves get killed breaking and entering. They become afraid. So they form a loose government, a gang, for mutual protection. The good folk form a government to protect themselves from the gang.

The smarter thieves and "crooks" weasel their way into the government and start directing it so that they can covertly do their thieving from a supposedly moral ground. Soon the government is worse than the gang, which the government workers hire to help with their covert thieving.

This is the way it happens. Sometimes sneaky crooks go into lands simply to start such a government among the people, so that they can eventually rape and plunder from a "good" standpoint.

The governments of the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and others have built into them the way for the common people to overcome the government on individual grounds. That is, the individual person can by government, defeat just about every government action in court that is against the people. The only reason this isn't done is because the people have forgotten (been trained out of) how to do it.

We need government. Even if we don't, there will always be people who think that we do. As far as the countries I listed above, learn what you have been missing at http://1215.org/ and http://www.youtube.com/user/765736/videos?view=0&live_view=500&flow=grid&sort=da.

What does anyone think (yes, this should be in the government thread, but it seemed an appropriate response for this post)?

[username18333]

. . .

Among these farmers are the 5% that are a little prone to laziness and fraud on their neighbors in whatever ways they can get away with. A few of these are downright thieves. The thieves literally break into their neighbor's barns and steal produce. They rustle cattle and sheep, animals that the owners have not set aside for community purposes; after all, don't we get to keep a little of what we work for for ourselves without giving all of it over to community?

Some of the thieves get killed breaking and entering. They become afraid. So they form a loose government, a gang, for mutual protection. The good folk form a government to protect themselves from the gang.

. . .

Resignation is a form of enlightenment.

Never resist an evil person; instead, give him your coat.

Within the context of this small, agricultural town, the farmers of the town would farm a singular, massive, highly-efficient farm (or, perhaps, for redundancy, two large farms). As well, “thieves” do not exist without ownership to condemn them, and would merely be some people that came to utilize the resources of the farm.

Now, one may wonder why it is that the farmers would not ban together to augment their own wealth via ownership and the subsequent implementation of money and state. That humanity has already “been there” and “done that” should affirm to them that such a path is ill-advised and prevent its wholesale (and, thus, successful) pursuit, for, ultimately, ownership may only be enforced to one’s benefit if others are willing to enforce it (something that becomes more difficult as fewer retain ownership [that is, remain owners]). (In the instance one enforces ownership oneself, one forgoes an equal measure of production. [The same is true of the enforcement of money to a greater degree and of the enforcement of state to a yet greater one.])

Additionally, not all government constitutes non-optional hierarchy. For example, Great Empire of Earth is an imperial anarchist despotism, which means that there is one endowed with all powers of government (in this case, by the “G.E. Emperor” [G.E. doesn’t have a constitution]) wherewith one may not comply (i.e., compliance with “the Despot” is optional). The optional-ness of compliance with the government is not codified in law, for it is the wish of the G.E. Emperor that it would always be implied (and, therefore, that one could not transgress it for a lack of positive limitations thereupon).

[Balthazar]

- Are veganism and feminism inseparable concepts?

http://veganfeminist.blogspot.com/2012/07/applying-feminism-to-veganism-why.html

I'm ready to bet these things are connected somehow. Howbeit I could be wrong of course.

[username18333]

- Are veganism and feminism inseparable concepts?

http://veganfeminist.blogspot.com/2012/07/applying-feminism-to-veganism-why.html

I'm ready to bet these things are connected somehow. Howbeit I could be wrong of course.

Both pursue a “correction” of nature for motivations wholly subordinate thereto.

[Spendulus]

- Are veganism and feminism inseparable concepts?

http://veganfeminist.blogspot.com/2012/07/applying-feminism-to-veganism-why.html

I'm ready to bet these things are connected somehow. Howbeit I could be wrong of course.

Both pursue a “correction” of nature for motivations wholly subordinate thereto.

Both are happily populated by control freaks.

[Decentradical]

Both concern demographics that used to be seen as inferior beings to be used as a commodity.

We keep adding layers to our ethical awareness. We keep adding minorities. Black people, women, different sexual orientations, different abilities, different social classes, mental deviations and well, there we go, other species. 

Apparently it takes time. We only abolished slavery fairly recently. We're still struggling to curb racism and give equal opportunity to these minorities. Women only just won their right to vote and we're finally starting to see that gay people aren't sick.   
 
These groups are entitled to their rights and considerations.

Every generation ever thought that they were the pinnacle of morality. How arrogant would it be to join their ranks by believing that everything is already settled? Especially considering how abundantly obvious it is that we're directly inflicting a life of torment on billions and billions of animals?

[username18333]

Both concern demographics that used to be seen as inferior beings to be used as a commodity.

We keep adding layers to our ethical awareness. We keep adding minorities. Black people, women, different sexual orientations, different abilities, different social classes, mental deviations and well, there we go, other species.  

Apparently it takes time. We only abolished slavery fairly recently. We're still struggling to curb racism and give equal opportunity to these minorities. Women only just won their right to vote and we're finally starting to see that gay people aren't sick.  
 
These groups are entitled to their rights and considerations.

Every generation ever thought that they were the pinnacle of morality. How arrogant would it be to join their ranks by believing that everything is already settled? Especially considering how abundantly obvious it is that we're directly inflicting a life of torment on billions and billions of animals?

¹⁷ Recompence to no man euill for euill. Prouide things honest in the sight of all men.