Is there knowledge here, or heavy-handed emotional manipulation?
I'd attack a water buffalo with a fork and eat his brains out raw if I were starving enough, but I don't know if I'd want to keep videos of it around on YouTube.
Thanks for the heads-up. I love emotionally-powerful messages, just not simple-minded manipulative ones. Sounds like it might be a good flick.
> Is there knowledge here, or heavy-handed emotional manipulation?
Elements of both, sure. There's a lot of truth in there, but there's also a number of events that occur in the minority but presented as common. (Not to say it's not uncommon, but not necessarily common either). As in: I'm Australian, but the movie is very US American-centric. Not all of it applies 1:1 to my life, but there's a lot that comes close and hits far too close to home. So even with that, I had a lot of hard questions to ask myself after seeing it. (Spoiler: I've been vegan pretty much since then.)
I'd say for all of the movies out there in this niche, it's probably the best of them, but ymmv.
My personal feelings are that mankind needs to evolve a new common morality of how to deal with animals.
But -- and this is a big caveat -- that might take 20-80 years. We'll at least need to be able to generate laboratory animal protein first, and many questions involving animals will only have compromises for answers. Unfortunately for many who remain upset about animal welfare, humans are an intricate part of the ecosystem of Earth. As much as we would like to live in a vacuum, we're at the top of the food chain and the rest of the planet exists to feed and sustain us (at least in a functional sense)
There's also a tendency with artists to confuse "things I can get really upset about" with art. So, frankly, we have a lot of stupid and shallow-minded folks who self-stimulate by getting upset over all kinds of stuff. There are a lot of people making a really good living staying in a state of outrage -- and they tend to want to bring the rest of us along with them. Not healthy for a media consumer.
By no means am I implying that this film or these film-makers fit that pattern. I haven't watched it. I'm simply stating the nature of modern art as I currently understand it. Ranting, emotional manipulation, and groupthink wins out over thoughtful reflection every time.
And, also frankly, as much as we like to be self-centered about these things, there's really nothing much to say that man is all that special in the big scheme of things. Having us treat the rest of the animal kingdom poorly, burn lots of fossil fuels, change the acidity of the ocean, and pollute the air? It may be no more unnatural across the universe than a lion eating a gazelle. In fact, to a civilization advanced just a few thousand years ahead of us, none of this would even be a blip on the radar of things they'd be concerned about. It'd be like trying to lecture a cow not to eat grass. We tend to be very narrow-minded, even when we're trying explicitly not to be.
I don't think it takes a complex morality to figure out that animals shouldn't be subjected to concentration camp-like conditions. Eating meat is natural and will never stop, unless resources are so scarce that it has to, but that doesn't mean that meat has to be cultivated with careless cruelty, which is more or less what's currently going on. And yes, we are a cosmic blip destined to become extinct, but that doesn't morally absolve us from trying to minimize suffering through reasonable measures.
I've seen it some months ago and I would lean to the manipulation side.
There are a lot of heavy-handed comparisons (e.g. to the holocaust) and things like that just to get their point across.
I agree that the imagery is powerful and will most likely haunt a lot of people for days or weeks, but the narration bothered me at a number of points during the documentary
I saw this a few years ago.. it turned my stomach, but I'm glad I saw it. Maybe I should watch it again. The disconnect between things we buy/do and what goes into them can be so huge, and it's so easy to get lulled back to sleep.
I have no idea what this is doing on HN, but if you can stand it, do watch it. You might be sad/angry after you did, or have nightmares, or become veg(etari)an. It is not pleasant and will not leave you cold. If you already are depressed because of the season or something, bookmark it for later maybe.
Species kill and eat other species in order to survive, but the way we have automated the killing so that we have a total disconnect from the awareness of what we are actually eating is very distressing.
Humans did kill and eat other species to survive. At this point, Americans eat far more animals than needed solely for survival - often so much as to be unhealthy - and it is quite possible to survive and thrive without consuming animals.
It's part of a general trend as civilization progresses to specialize away from activities somebody else can handle. I didn't build my house, weave my clothes, can my vegetables, smith my tools or anything else. I also don't grow my own food plants and raise any livestock.
But I agree that everybody should have some education about all these things so we understand where it all comes from.
It's not even the automation of killing that's the primary concern in my optinion... it's more how animals are treated before being killed, in conditions often worse than Nazi concentration camps.
When was the last time you killed another animal in order to survive? The thing is, historical methods of survival are no longer relevant to modern humans. We do not ride horses across country, we fly in giant machines that we have built. Why? Because they are more efficient. The same goes with a plant based diet at this point in time. We can survive on a 100% plant based diet, while doing much less damage to the earth, and much less harm and suffering to the animals we share the earth with. Currently 56 billion land animals and 1-3 trillion sea creatures are being killed annually to feed 7 billion people. This is completely disgusting.
Oh come on, really? Contrasting caged animals with jews in concentration camps? Meat consumption equals holocaust? People feeding on meat equal Hitler?
I can see the point animal rights activists are tring to make, but the hypocrisy of this movie was already making me sick when I watched it the first time a couple years back.
First Colonialism and Hitler scenes starting at 3:08. What do these two have to do with the consumption of animals? The intention is obviously "hey look it's the basically same".
They compare the way we treat animals in the farm with the concentration camps. No with meat consumption, meat consumption is not bad at all. Animals can be treated in a good way.
Have you seen "Baraka"? When it shows people living like sardines, and chicken being put on conveyor belts having their beaks singed off.. how equal do things have to be so they can be compared? Yes, the Nazis were clearly different in their hatred and their torture. Yet when I see chicken in darkness and tiny cages, I do get a similar vibe, that is, some of what appals me about concentration camps, is also present there. Sentient beings suffering in cages for the supposed benefit of others. One is apathic, the other hateful, one is towards animals, the other towards humans ( = the animal we most closely identify with), but otherwise..?
Take this statement for example:
"[..] if one is in touch with one's own unconscious reality, I think one would have to admit that in all of us there is a piece of Eichmann, and if you ask why, on what basis do I say this, then I would ask you wether you have lost your appetite when you read that in India people were starving, or wether you have gone on eating. As soon as you have not lost your appetite, when you knew other people were starving, then your heart has hardened, and in principle, you have done the same which Eichmann did."
Absolutely, if you read about starving people and don't stop eating, that must be much the same as planning and executing a racially motivated campaign of genocide!
I don't think it's offensive. I think it's ridiculous, and no, not the same in principle at all.
Except that both you and he say in principle it is the same as what Eichmann did, and I disagree, vehemently, because it's ridiculous to compare the actions of Eichmann to whether or not someone loses their appetite when they hear of hunger in the world.
One is deliberate genocide, the other is an arbitrary demand that you lose your appetite in sympathy.
--edit-- What I do find offensive is your childish posting of links to the wikipedia page on analogies.
> There is little difference there, stopping eating would be a natural consequence of losing your appetite.
No, it is the difference between eating with joy and eating because you're hungry, and also the difference between getting the point and completely missing it.
> it's ridiculous to compare the actions of Eichmann to whether or not someone loses their appetite when they hear of hunger in the world
Are you even familiar with Eichmann? Your statements ("deliberate Genocide") make it clear you're simply not getting the point Fromm is making. Eichmann "just" followed his orders, he lacked empathy, but he didn't so much care about genocide as about being a good bureaucrat. To go from "Eichmann" to "Nazi" and from there to any aspect of the Nazis you equate them with, instead of going by what Fromm means in context, is such a waste of time. You're offended over your own strawman.
If you heat something by 0.5 degrees celsius, or 500000000 degrees, is the same, "in principle". Of course, one is hardly noticeable, while the other explodes the solar system or something... that's why analogies are hard to follow sometimes. If there wasn't something you could point to and claim "Preposterous! There is a difference!", there would be no way to make an analogy in the first place.
> What I do find offensive is your childish posting of links to the wikipedia page on analogies.
Childish? You said he said it's "the same", so I felt it was warranted.
>> No, it is the difference between eating with joy and eating because you're hungry, and also the difference between getting the point and completely missing it.
So whether you eat on with no appetite or stop eating is the difference between whether you're as bad as a genocidal nazi or not?
The distinction is trivial and beside the point.
>> Are you even familiar with Eichmann? Your statements ("deliberate Genocide") make it clear you're simply not getting the point Fromm is making. Eichmann "just" followed his orders, he lacked empathy, but he didn't so much care about genocide as about being a good bureaucrat. To go from "Eichmann" to "Nazi" and from there to any aspect of the Nazis you equate them with, instead of going by what Fromm means in context, is such a waste of time. You're offended over your own strawman.
Eichmann was directly involved in shipping tens or hundreds of thousands of Jewish people to Auschwitz. I'm not sure what's not Nazi or genocidal about that. Either way I didn't say I was offended, I said the comparison was hyperbolic to the point of the ridiculous.
>> If you heat something by 0.5 degrees celsius, or 500000000 degrees, is the same, "in principle".
You have not demonstrated that keeping your appetite and committing genocide start from the same principle, which you would need to do for your analogy to hold here. It's not a simple matter of degree. The first is a demand that someone show empathy in a specific way, which may or may not hold for all people. The second is one of the worst crimes against humanity we can think of. There is a difference in nature, motivation and scale here, not simply scale.
>> Of course, one is hardly noticeable, while the other explodes the solar system or something... that's why analogies are hard to follow sometimes.
The analogy isn't hard to follow, it's nonsense.
>> If there wasn't something you could point to and claim "Preposterous! There is a difference!", there would be no way to make an analogy in the first place.
But I can point to all parts of it, and say none of it is anything like what you're trying to compare it to.
>> Childish? You said he said it's "the same", so I felt it was warranted.
No, I said "much the same", not "the same". If we're going to play this game then maybe you should work on your reading comprehension before you decide to be condescending.
> Eichmann was directly involved in shipping tens or hundreds of thousands of Jewish people to Auschwitz. I'm not sure what's not Nazi or genocidal about that.
He would have shipped tens of hundreds of refugees out of Germany if he had happened to be a bureaucrat for the allies and if that had been his job. But where did I say that's not genocidal or Nazi? I said that's not the point of why Fromm is making the comparison - lack of empathy is. He doesn't mean if we don't loose our appetite when others starve, we grow round glasses and and clothes from the 40s, and many other things. He doesn't mean we will start putting people in box cars. To ridicule my supposed lack of reading comprehension considering this whole string of completely useless attacks on strawmen, is kinda rich.
I don't know if you clicked the link, but he goes on to say:
I don't think, that if we are really in touch with the inner reality of ourselves, that there is any crime, or perhaps any virtue, which we cannot discover in ourselves. We shut ourselves [off] from the awareness of our inner reality, we project the evil to our opponents and enemies, and believe that the good is in ourselves; indidivually, nationally, and group-wise in general.
Your reaction that Eichmann is completely beyond the pale of any comparison is kinda fitting.
> It's not a simple matter of degree. The first is a demand that someone show empathy in a specific way, which may or may not hold for all people. The second is one of the worst crimes against humanity we can think of.
The second is also "not showing empathy in a specific way". And no, I do not want to play games.
> There is a difference in nature, motivation and scale here, not simply scale.
I acknowledged that before. But that doesn't change the fact that it consists of many aspects, one of them lack of empathy.
>> He would have shipped tens of hundreds of refugees out of Germany if he had happened to be a bureaucrat for the allies and if that had been his job.
1. So he said. Others thought differently - "When considering the sentence, the judges concluded that he had not merely been following orders, but believed in the Nazi cause wholeheartedly and had been a key perpetrator of the genocide."
2. Somewhat irrelevant. He committed genocide, if he hadn't had the opportunity he may not have done. So what?
>> But where did I say that's not genocidal or Nazi?
>> "Your statements ("deliberate Genocide") make it clear you're simply not getting the point Fromm is making."
>> "To go from "Eichmann" to "Nazi" and from there to any aspect of the Nazis you equate them with, instead of going by what Fromm means in context, is such a waste of time."
You're saying it's not right to say he was a Nazi, and not right to go from there to calling him genocidal simply because of that. I'm not calling him genocidal because of that, I'm doing it because of his actions.
And to be very clear, I understand entirely the point Fromm is making (lack of empathy is the root of Eichmann's actions and if you don't lose your appetite when reading about hunger you lack empathy, this puts you on the same spectrum as Eichmann). I understand and I disagree, vehemently.
To really hammer this home, your very first post about Fromm quoted - "As soon as you have not lost your appetite, when you knew other people were starving, then your heart has hardened, and in principle, you have done the same which Eichmann did." Eichmann organised and supervised genocide. This is not simple lack of empathy, and neither does keeping your appetite demonstrate a total lack of empathy. The argument is wrong at both ends.
>> I said that's not the point of why Fromm is making the comparison - lack of empathy is.
And if you think lack of empathy was all Eichmann had going then you're pretty delusional, IMHO.
>> He doesn't mean if we don't loose our appetite when others starve, we grow round glasses and and clothes from the 40s, and many other things. He doesn't mean we will start putting people in box cars.
Then why make the comparison? It's hyperbolic in the extreme and basically a Godwin violation.
>> To ridicule my supposed lack of reading comprehension considering this whole string of completely useless attacks on strawmen, is kinda rich.
You misread something and childishly posted a link to the definition of analogy as if I might never have heard of it. I'm sorry I shot back at you, I hope you didn't find it too offensive.
>> Your reaction that Eichmann is completely beyond the pale of any comparison is kinda fitting.
No, not really. Eichmann's crime is substantially different from a simple lack of empathy, as I've said many times now, he was actively involved in some of the worst evil we know of. It may well be that many/all people are capable of this level of evil. However that still doesn't mean that failing to respond in a simplistic, set way to an empathic situation is anything like organising the deaths of hundreds of thousands of jewish people. It's not the same principle, it's not the same root to the action, and I fundamentally disagree that a lack of empathy and a set of orders was the driver behind Eichmann's actions. And yes, I am familiar with Milgram.
>> The second is also "not showing empathy in a specific way". And no, I do not want to play games.
It's a lot more than that.
>> I acknowledged that before. But that doesn't change the fact that it consists of many aspects, one of them lack of empathy.
But if that's only one aspect, the analogy is about as useful as saying "You know who ...
So, is the "contrasting" rationally wrong, or merely politically incorrect?
The whole point of anti-speciesism is that humans shouldn't be put on a pedestal. So, in effect, you're arguing that an anti-speciesist movie is wrong because it's anti-speciesist.
What hypocrisy? 6 million jews were killed during the holocaust. Meanwhile 56 billion land animals are being raised in similar conditions and slaughtered every single year. That is approximately 6 million every single hour. This is far worse than the holocaust, and it's all for the trivial reason that meat tastes good.
I love meat, it's an important and delicious part of the human omnivorous diet.
That being said, I wouldn't object to the periods wasted on home economics in middle school being turned into a "sources of food" education class that included trips to farms, food processors, factories, sausage-makers and slaughterhouses. It should be on par with "sex education" in terms of parental consent, but should be a necessary and important part of every child's education. It should include information on nutrition, vitamin and mineral sources, discussions on food chain contamination and concentrations of heavy metals and contaminants in the upper ends of the food chain and what that means (and why we as a species tend not to eat animals like apex hunters). Oddball foods that kids wouldn't normally eat at home like yeast paste, soy products and seaweed/kelp/sea vegetables should be included.
I grew up pretty rural in my teens so a class like this would have been a bit superfluous -- there's a cattle farm not 10 minutes from my parent's house. Growing up around farms, you get to know the birth-to-dinner plate process for food stock animals pretty quick. Many of my neighbors were too poor to buy meat, but filled a couple chest freezers every year with meat during deer season. It's not unusual to see a deer being processed in somebody's yard where I grew up. Deer are very good eating.
But before that I was a city kid (until my parents fled to the boondocks), and had I finished growing up in the city, would have needed an education like this to understand better what I'm eating and why.
I wouldn't even object to two films being shown as part of the curriculum, industry standard humane practices for food stock animal handling, and PETA style shock videos of unethical and deplorable conditions...leaving it open for the students to reach their own conclusions about what it means and what to do about it.
This is a class on agriculture in our local high schools. They teach exactly what you list. But it's elective. It was very instructive for my daughter and she gave up hotdogs as a result. (She gave them up because of the "random junk" ingredients.)
> economics in middle school being turned into a "sources of food" education class that included trips to farms
As someone who grown up on farms, I would be quite worried in how such trips would work. The difference between a small farm (< 50 animals), is day and night. I could also easy see how kids without good guidance could imagine a sterile environment to be a "good farm", while a well kept farm to be "bad" because it has stray of hay laying on the floor.
To take a more specific example, a chicken population of 6, 30, and 300 is each radical different in design.
Your argument skips over some very important subtleties that the film elaborates on. In fact, there is little in your argument to disagree with.
The bigger issue is about the widespread view of animals by the public. Most people don't know what kinds of techniques are used by factory farms, animal trainers, etc., so it's not possible to really think rationally when dipping your McNuggets in barbecue sauce about the situation you are consenting to.
Just as war is sterilized for public consumption ("smart" bombs, etc.) animal abuse in entertainment and food production is hidden from view and stories about the farm down the street are substituted for reality.
The fact that the landing page immediately suggests going vegan is a turn-off for me.
I'm all for the humane treatment of animals, and I'll gladly pay several times more for my meat and eat considerably less off it. In fact I think most of the mass meat production methods should be completely outlawed.
However, I'm not going to sit through another manipulative propaganda film from the anti-meat lobby. I'm happy being an omnivore, thankyouverymuch, and I have no problem with animals being killed for food or clothing.
>However, I'm not going to sit through another manipulative propaganda film from the anti-meat lobby.
Yes, the billion dollar tofu-industry has created this propaganda film.
>I'm happy being an omnivore, thankyouverymuch, and I have no problem with animals being killed for food or clothing.
Is your argument that you don't want to watch a movie because you don't agree with it before hand? I recommend you to reconsider the function of documentary films.
>manipulative propaganda film from the anti-meat lobby
You seem to have a real emotional problem with the idea of vegans existing. Why does that cause you so much distress that you make up bizarre nonsense like a "anti-meat lobby"?
This is an excellent documentary but I'm surprised on how many people simply don't get the point.
This documentary is not about being vegan, is about give the animals a decent live and improve the way we treat them. Also talks about speciesism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism comparing it to racism.
The documentary shows crude images, but this is how it is. Closing the eyes to the reality won't make it better.
In my opinion realizing that speciesism is wrong directly leads to veganism. I do think that it's import that point out that veganism is a mere side-product of anti-speciesism.
According to Wikipedia: "Speciesism involves the assignment of different values, rights, or special consideration to individuals solely on the basis of their species membership."
A non-speciesist who kills other animals to eat them would be a priori okay with killing humans to eating them.
In what way is Speciesism connected with canibalism by any species?
But regardless, eating humans is unhealthy and thus contrary to evolution. Its the same reason why animals that live for a long time (~100) rarely have many enemies, especially if they are omnivores. Evolutionary, it is better to eat meat that do not had years to build up on heavy metals and toxins.
So to put it to a simple point, regardless of the morality with cannibalism, humans would still not eat other humans. There is no -ism needed to explain why we do not eat sulfur, or drink mercury.
It's speciesist to treat them in a callous and reckless way, because they are considered less worthy of respect and care than humans.
Primitive hunters seem to have respected their prey... just because they killed and ate them didn't mean they considered themselves above them. And from such hybris results shameful behaviour.
I think there is a large transitional zone between veganism and, well, non-veganism. I don't see anything wrong with my neighbour's hobby chicken farm (of 4) for example. It's the industrialized setting, designed to be opaque to its consumers, that one should be opposed to.
I think the world would be a hugely better place if everyone would only eat animals from neighbours' hobby farms. That said, it's a slippery slope in practise. Usually people who argue using these special circumstances then continue to argue that "local farms" are magically ethical, because they're non-factory farms. Then in real life these people actually eat non-local meat and factory farmed meat.
The point of non-speciesism is that it's not automatically ethical to eat animals even if they're not in horrendous factory farms. You're still treating non-humans in a separate ethical category.
An additional point to make is that even if something appears ethical, it often is not. Usually hobby farm chickens are sourced from unethical places, for example. Of course there's no point in talking about this particular hobby chicken farm because nobody else knows anything about it.
I reject the very idea that omnivorous diet is in any way or form connected with speciesism.
As humans, we have the ability (through not uniquely) to consider the acts we do in a third-party perspective. We can think about the consequences of our actions, and how our actions will effect nature. We can think rational about fishing, hunting, and even keeping a healthy sized population of farm animals. One can respect animals while at the same time making sure that a population of fast breeding animals are kept to a size which is healthy.
>I reject the very idea that omnivorous diet is in any way or form connected with speciesism.
It can be. If a person assigns different values depending on the species, that person is speciesist. And obviously that person's diet is affected by speciesism or lack of it.
Wikipedia: "Speciesism involves the assignment of different values, rights, or special consideration to individuals solely on the basis of their species membership."
I wonder where non-speciesits turn into speciesists --- rats in their bedroom? Insects? Bacteria? Viruses? Prions? Fungi?
The line can be drawn somewhat arbitrarily. If I fight bacteria with antibiotics, why not fight mosquitoes? Or rats?
I'm sure slave owners in the South used the same slippery logic: "If we let black people free, what's next? Women with voting rights?! I can't whip my boy when he acts up?!"
Change is hard, but if you're genuinely confused, simply follow what the great mindhacker Gautama Buddha taught: compassion for all and without judgement.
I wish I could agree with your thoughtful argument. The problem is that the site makes it seem as though becoming a Vegan is the only way to solve this problem (I most certainly agree that there is a problem here). Therefore this is once again going to fall on deaf ears because some simply can't resist pushing a pet agenda. They should have left off the whole vegan concept or added home range.
We are biologically hardcoded to eat both meat and vegetables. The problem is not what our diet is: rather how we go about fulfilling such a massive demand due to our inability to curb our breeding habits.
Becoming a vegan only partially solves the problem (partially = swathes of the Amazon forest being chopped down for vegetable farming). The other solution is only purchasing home range (which I always do unless it's absolutely not available) - but that had the problem of where the animals would be farmed (probably the Amazon too).
Cut down enough of the Amazon and guess what happens, not only do you stress the wildlife as you displace them but you also rapidly cause extinctions.
The problem is lack of self control, not our diet.
"due to our inability to curb our breeding habits."
Reminder: We have curbed our breeding habits. Industrialized societies now generally face more pressing underpopulation problems than overpopulation problems, and the global population is now predicted to peak within this century, then start going back down.
You may wish they had been curbed at a lower number, you may still be concerned that we may still pass a carrying capacity before we quite peak, but a fashionably misanthropic "woe, woe, we just keep breeding forever" is not currently a valid concern based on facts.
The site is not the official site of those who made the documentary by the looks of it. The official site is http://earthlings.com/. So discounting the film because someone promoting it advocates veganism is probably misguided.
At for environmental impact, a meat diet is generally more environmentally expensive than a vegetable diet. Animals either directly eat vegetables or indirectly (eating other animals that eat other animals that eat vegetables, etc.). Through the life of the animal it's burning the calories from the vegetables. Eat the vegetable calories directly and you're not eating them through an animal conduit that consumed much of them while existing.
That's a nonstarter for me and makes me want to avoid this film.
Speciesism is a perfectly reasonable position. Assigning the exact same values and rights to cockroaches/jellyfish/ants as we do to humans is ludicrous. Any number of moral thought experiments should immediately demonstrate how absurd that would be (e.g. would you refuse to sacrifice 2 ants to save 1 human?).
> Any number of moral thought experiments should immediately demonstrate how absurd that would be (e.g. would you refuse to sacrifice 2 ants to save 1 human?).
Ahh, but don't stop there. Make such though experiments with humans (Would you sacrifice one 80 year old to save two 40 year olds? Would you sacrifice 3 illiterate children to save one wunderkind? Is a person you know worth 1.3 or rather 2.7 people you don't know?) quickly shows that those are equally absurd, so the absurdity in one case proves nothing.
Just because you've chosen silly numbers doesn't mean those are absurd. Moral thought experiments are useful for understanding what value people tend to place on human life.
See, even with your trolling questions, most people would have a queasy feeling in their stomach when considering sacrificing a human being.
But when I ask you to compare the value of ant life to human life, there's no comparison. You wouldn't hesitate. They aren't equal at all.
There is nothing absurd about any of those scenarios. Those are perfectly valid questions, and to answer them might be difficult - that's why it's not at all obvious that 40 year olds are more morally "important" than 80 year olds (for me they obviously aren't). However, to answer the original question is very easy: Human > Rat. Defending the opposite position is absurd, and although some people might feel Human=Rat - it's a fallacy to compare this to "Black human = White human", or to "Jew=Non-Jew".
>Speciesism is a perfectly reasonable position. Assigning the exact same values and rights to cockroaches/jellyfish/ants as we do to humans is ludicrous. Any number of moral thought experiments should immediately demonstrate how absurd that would be (e.g. would you refuse to sacrifice 2 ants to save 1 human?).
You've misunderstood anti-speciesism. Anti-speciesism means that "moral worth" is not determined at all by species. It doesn't mean that all individuals have the same "moral worth". In other words, if we find a new species which is pretty much identical to humans in terms of age, intelligence etc., they should be roughly equal in moral worth to humans even if they're from a different species.
Another key point in non-speciesism is the argument that "it's just an animal". Species shouldn't be used in ethical arguments. Anti-speciesism doesn't mean that intelligence, ability to feel pain, average lifespan and so on have no place in moral discussions. Of course they do. I would sacrifice two ants to save one human if that increase utility (because I happen to be anti-speciesist person who belives in something close to utiliarianism).
Another thought experiment would be comparing a severely mentally disabled child and a chimpanzee of equal intelligence and predicted lifespan. I think it would be as evil to kill and eat the chimpanzee as it would be to kill and eat the child.
My ex was a vegan. She always complained about the mistreatment of animals used for food but never thought twice about how the people were treated who picked all the vegetables she ate.
It's basically slave labor in many cases. Low pay, terrible working conditions, long hours. Imagine crawling through the dirt on your knees for 10 hours a day in the California sun, filling buckets of vegetables for $0.80 a bucket, and if you screw up your boss reports you to immigration?
I have family members who were migrant workers just a single generation ago so it hits a little closer to home than some people. But those vegetables don't make it to the store without any suffering, just like pork chops don't.
I dont know how it is in the USA but in europe we have multiple organizations that make sure Food (Animals or not) is processed in a sustainable way. They offer a signet (?) and when producers want it on their food they have to play by the rules. Ever heard of FairTrade ?
All vegans i know hardly buy any food without a signet like that, knowing that its more expensive. But the race to the bottom in food prices is one of the worst developments that leads to so much misery for animals and humans producing food.
I eat meat maybe about once a week and pay 3 times as much as i would have to, but i am not willing to support this development any further.
I agree that the lives of farm workers is a more pressing issue than animals. But America's general scorn for vegans is not helping either of those situations, and strikes me as self-conscious more than anything.
It's not necessary to choose. I'd add that conditions in prisons are horrible, as are conditions in countries the US applies bombs and sanctions to, and the nations the US supports dictators in.
The point is to rethink your assumptions. Chances are if you tolerate any of these abuses it's b/c you have a blind spot in your otherwise rational view of the world.
>Why don't more people post videos and articles about the mistreatment of migrant farm workers in America?
Lots of people do? Why do you imply that people caring about animals and people caring about people are mutually exclusive?
>My ex was a vegan. She always complained about the mistreatment of animals used for food but never thought twice about how the people were treated who picked all the vegetables she ate.
Do you think twice about how the people were treated who killed all those animals you ate? The meat industry is much worse than what migrant farm workers face. That is why they have to import immigrants from south america to be slaves in the meat industry.
This is one of the most profound, consciousness-altering films I've seen. I'm not vegan. It's one of those films that anyone who aspires to be truly rational ought to watch.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 153 ms ] threadI'd still recommend watching it. Knowledge is power, of course, but in a safe state before tuning into it.
I'd attack a water buffalo with a fork and eat his brains out raw if I were starving enough, but I don't know if I'd want to keep videos of it around on YouTube.
Thanks for the heads-up. I love emotionally-powerful messages, just not simple-minded manipulative ones. Sounds like it might be a good flick.
Elements of both, sure. There's a lot of truth in there, but there's also a number of events that occur in the minority but presented as common. (Not to say it's not uncommon, but not necessarily common either). As in: I'm Australian, but the movie is very US American-centric. Not all of it applies 1:1 to my life, but there's a lot that comes close and hits far too close to home. So even with that, I had a lot of hard questions to ask myself after seeing it. (Spoiler: I've been vegan pretty much since then.)
I'd say for all of the movies out there in this niche, it's probably the best of them, but ymmv.
But -- and this is a big caveat -- that might take 20-80 years. We'll at least need to be able to generate laboratory animal protein first, and many questions involving animals will only have compromises for answers. Unfortunately for many who remain upset about animal welfare, humans are an intricate part of the ecosystem of Earth. As much as we would like to live in a vacuum, we're at the top of the food chain and the rest of the planet exists to feed and sustain us (at least in a functional sense)
There's also a tendency with artists to confuse "things I can get really upset about" with art. So, frankly, we have a lot of stupid and shallow-minded folks who self-stimulate by getting upset over all kinds of stuff. There are a lot of people making a really good living staying in a state of outrage -- and they tend to want to bring the rest of us along with them. Not healthy for a media consumer.
By no means am I implying that this film or these film-makers fit that pattern. I haven't watched it. I'm simply stating the nature of modern art as I currently understand it. Ranting, emotional manipulation, and groupthink wins out over thoughtful reflection every time.
And, also frankly, as much as we like to be self-centered about these things, there's really nothing much to say that man is all that special in the big scheme of things. Having us treat the rest of the animal kingdom poorly, burn lots of fossil fuels, change the acidity of the ocean, and pollute the air? It may be no more unnatural across the universe than a lion eating a gazelle. In fact, to a civilization advanced just a few thousand years ahead of us, none of this would even be a blip on the radar of things they'd be concerned about. It'd be like trying to lecture a cow not to eat grass. We tend to be very narrow-minded, even when we're trying explicitly not to be.
I agree that the imagery is powerful and will most likely haunt a lot of people for days or weeks, but the narration bothered me at a number of points during the documentary
I have no idea what this is doing on HN, but if you can stand it, do watch it. You might be sad/angry after you did, or have nightmares, or become veg(etari)an. It is not pleasant and will not leave you cold. If you already are depressed because of the season or something, bookmark it for later maybe.
They eat far more plants than needed as well. Animals has nothing to do with it.
But I agree that everybody should have some education about all these things so we understand where it all comes from.
I can see the point animal rights activists are tring to make, but the hypocrisy of this movie was already making me sick when I watched it the first time a couple years back.
There's no such affirmations in the documentary. Not even close.
Take this statement for example:
"[..] if one is in touch with one's own unconscious reality, I think one would have to admit that in all of us there is a piece of Eichmann, and if you ask why, on what basis do I say this, then I would ask you wether you have lost your appetite when you read that in India people were starving, or wether you have gone on eating. As soon as you have not lost your appetite, when you knew other people were starving, then your heart has hardened, and in principle, you have done the same which Eichmann did."
-- Erich Fromm ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psVNR51ctdc&t=33m28s )
Do you find this offensive too, or do you agree he has a point? I think the key concept here and elsewhere is "in principle".
Absolutely, if you read about starving people and don't stop eating, that must be much the same as planning and executing a racially motivated campaign of genocide!
I don't think it's offensive. I think it's ridiculous, and no, not the same in principle at all.
> "don't stop eating"
He said "lost your appetite".
> "that must be much the same as"
This might be new for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy
There is little difference there. Stopping eating would be a natural consequence of losing your appetite.
>> This might be new for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy
Except that both you and he say in principle it is the same as what Eichmann did, and I disagree, vehemently, because it's ridiculous to compare the actions of Eichmann to whether or not someone loses their appetite when they hear of hunger in the world.
One is deliberate genocide, the other is an arbitrary demand that you lose your appetite in sympathy.
--edit-- What I do find offensive is your childish posting of links to the wikipedia page on analogies.
No, it is the difference between eating with joy and eating because you're hungry, and also the difference between getting the point and completely missing it.
> it's ridiculous to compare the actions of Eichmann to whether or not someone loses their appetite when they hear of hunger in the world
Are you even familiar with Eichmann? Your statements ("deliberate Genocide") make it clear you're simply not getting the point Fromm is making. Eichmann "just" followed his orders, he lacked empathy, but he didn't so much care about genocide as about being a good bureaucrat. To go from "Eichmann" to "Nazi" and from there to any aspect of the Nazis you equate them with, instead of going by what Fromm means in context, is such a waste of time. You're offended over your own strawman.
If you heat something by 0.5 degrees celsius, or 500000000 degrees, is the same, "in principle". Of course, one is hardly noticeable, while the other explodes the solar system or something... that's why analogies are hard to follow sometimes. If there wasn't something you could point to and claim "Preposterous! There is a difference!", there would be no way to make an analogy in the first place.
> What I do find offensive is your childish posting of links to the wikipedia page on analogies.
Childish? You said he said it's "the same", so I felt it was warranted.
So whether you eat on with no appetite or stop eating is the difference between whether you're as bad as a genocidal nazi or not?
The distinction is trivial and beside the point.
>> Are you even familiar with Eichmann? Your statements ("deliberate Genocide") make it clear you're simply not getting the point Fromm is making. Eichmann "just" followed his orders, he lacked empathy, but he didn't so much care about genocide as about being a good bureaucrat. To go from "Eichmann" to "Nazi" and from there to any aspect of the Nazis you equate them with, instead of going by what Fromm means in context, is such a waste of time. You're offended over your own strawman.
Eichmann was directly involved in shipping tens or hundreds of thousands of Jewish people to Auschwitz. I'm not sure what's not Nazi or genocidal about that. Either way I didn't say I was offended, I said the comparison was hyperbolic to the point of the ridiculous.
>> If you heat something by 0.5 degrees celsius, or 500000000 degrees, is the same, "in principle".
You have not demonstrated that keeping your appetite and committing genocide start from the same principle, which you would need to do for your analogy to hold here. It's not a simple matter of degree. The first is a demand that someone show empathy in a specific way, which may or may not hold for all people. The second is one of the worst crimes against humanity we can think of. There is a difference in nature, motivation and scale here, not simply scale.
>> Of course, one is hardly noticeable, while the other explodes the solar system or something... that's why analogies are hard to follow sometimes.
The analogy isn't hard to follow, it's nonsense.
>> If there wasn't something you could point to and claim "Preposterous! There is a difference!", there would be no way to make an analogy in the first place.
But I can point to all parts of it, and say none of it is anything like what you're trying to compare it to.
>> Childish? You said he said it's "the same", so I felt it was warranted.
No, I said "much the same", not "the same". If we're going to play this game then maybe you should work on your reading comprehension before you decide to be condescending.
He would have shipped tens of hundreds of refugees out of Germany if he had happened to be a bureaucrat for the allies and if that had been his job. But where did I say that's not genocidal or Nazi? I said that's not the point of why Fromm is making the comparison - lack of empathy is. He doesn't mean if we don't loose our appetite when others starve, we grow round glasses and and clothes from the 40s, and many other things. He doesn't mean we will start putting people in box cars. To ridicule my supposed lack of reading comprehension considering this whole string of completely useless attacks on strawmen, is kinda rich.
I don't know if you clicked the link, but he goes on to say:
I don't think, that if we are really in touch with the inner reality of ourselves, that there is any crime, or perhaps any virtue, which we cannot discover in ourselves. We shut ourselves [off] from the awareness of our inner reality, we project the evil to our opponents and enemies, and believe that the good is in ourselves; indidivually, nationally, and group-wise in general.
Your reaction that Eichmann is completely beyond the pale of any comparison is kinda fitting.
> It's not a simple matter of degree. The first is a demand that someone show empathy in a specific way, which may or may not hold for all people. The second is one of the worst crimes against humanity we can think of.
The second is also "not showing empathy in a specific way". And no, I do not want to play games.
> There is a difference in nature, motivation and scale here, not simply scale.
I acknowledged that before. But that doesn't change the fact that it consists of many aspects, one of them lack of empathy.
1. So he said. Others thought differently - "When considering the sentence, the judges concluded that he had not merely been following orders, but believed in the Nazi cause wholeheartedly and had been a key perpetrator of the genocide."
2. Somewhat irrelevant. He committed genocide, if he hadn't had the opportunity he may not have done. So what?
>> But where did I say that's not genocidal or Nazi?
>> "Your statements ("deliberate Genocide") make it clear you're simply not getting the point Fromm is making." >> "To go from "Eichmann" to "Nazi" and from there to any aspect of the Nazis you equate them with, instead of going by what Fromm means in context, is such a waste of time."
You're saying it's not right to say he was a Nazi, and not right to go from there to calling him genocidal simply because of that. I'm not calling him genocidal because of that, I'm doing it because of his actions.
And to be very clear, I understand entirely the point Fromm is making (lack of empathy is the root of Eichmann's actions and if you don't lose your appetite when reading about hunger you lack empathy, this puts you on the same spectrum as Eichmann). I understand and I disagree, vehemently.
To really hammer this home, your very first post about Fromm quoted - "As soon as you have not lost your appetite, when you knew other people were starving, then your heart has hardened, and in principle, you have done the same which Eichmann did." Eichmann organised and supervised genocide. This is not simple lack of empathy, and neither does keeping your appetite demonstrate a total lack of empathy. The argument is wrong at both ends.
>> I said that's not the point of why Fromm is making the comparison - lack of empathy is.
And if you think lack of empathy was all Eichmann had going then you're pretty delusional, IMHO.
>> He doesn't mean if we don't loose our appetite when others starve, we grow round glasses and and clothes from the 40s, and many other things. He doesn't mean we will start putting people in box cars.
Then why make the comparison? It's hyperbolic in the extreme and basically a Godwin violation.
>> To ridicule my supposed lack of reading comprehension considering this whole string of completely useless attacks on strawmen, is kinda rich.
You misread something and childishly posted a link to the definition of analogy as if I might never have heard of it. I'm sorry I shot back at you, I hope you didn't find it too offensive.
>> Your reaction that Eichmann is completely beyond the pale of any comparison is kinda fitting.
No, not really. Eichmann's crime is substantially different from a simple lack of empathy, as I've said many times now, he was actively involved in some of the worst evil we know of. It may well be that many/all people are capable of this level of evil. However that still doesn't mean that failing to respond in a simplistic, set way to an empathic situation is anything like organising the deaths of hundreds of thousands of jewish people. It's not the same principle, it's not the same root to the action, and I fundamentally disagree that a lack of empathy and a set of orders was the driver behind Eichmann's actions. And yes, I am familiar with Milgram.
>> The second is also "not showing empathy in a specific way". And no, I do not want to play games.
It's a lot more than that.
>> I acknowledged that before. But that doesn't change the fact that it consists of many aspects, one of them lack of empathy.
But if that's only one aspect, the analogy is about as useful as saying "You know who ...
The whole point of anti-speciesism is that humans shouldn't be put on a pedestal. So, in effect, you're arguing that an anti-speciesist movie is wrong because it's anti-speciesist.
That being said, I wouldn't object to the periods wasted on home economics in middle school being turned into a "sources of food" education class that included trips to farms, food processors, factories, sausage-makers and slaughterhouses. It should be on par with "sex education" in terms of parental consent, but should be a necessary and important part of every child's education. It should include information on nutrition, vitamin and mineral sources, discussions on food chain contamination and concentrations of heavy metals and contaminants in the upper ends of the food chain and what that means (and why we as a species tend not to eat animals like apex hunters). Oddball foods that kids wouldn't normally eat at home like yeast paste, soy products and seaweed/kelp/sea vegetables should be included.
I grew up pretty rural in my teens so a class like this would have been a bit superfluous -- there's a cattle farm not 10 minutes from my parent's house. Growing up around farms, you get to know the birth-to-dinner plate process for food stock animals pretty quick. Many of my neighbors were too poor to buy meat, but filled a couple chest freezers every year with meat during deer season. It's not unusual to see a deer being processed in somebody's yard where I grew up. Deer are very good eating.
But before that I was a city kid (until my parents fled to the boondocks), and had I finished growing up in the city, would have needed an education like this to understand better what I'm eating and why.
I wouldn't even object to two films being shown as part of the curriculum, industry standard humane practices for food stock animal handling, and PETA style shock videos of unethical and deplorable conditions...leaving it open for the students to reach their own conclusions about what it means and what to do about it.
As someone who grown up on farms, I would be quite worried in how such trips would work. The difference between a small farm (< 50 animals), is day and night. I could also easy see how kids without good guidance could imagine a sterile environment to be a "good farm", while a well kept farm to be "bad" because it has stray of hay laying on the floor.
To take a more specific example, a chicken population of 6, 30, and 300 is each radical different in design.
The bigger issue is about the widespread view of animals by the public. Most people don't know what kinds of techniques are used by factory farms, animal trainers, etc., so it's not possible to really think rationally when dipping your McNuggets in barbecue sauce about the situation you are consenting to.
Just as war is sterilized for public consumption ("smart" bombs, etc.) animal abuse in entertainment and food production is hidden from view and stories about the farm down the street are substituted for reality.
I'm all for the humane treatment of animals, and I'll gladly pay several times more for my meat and eat considerably less off it. In fact I think most of the mass meat production methods should be completely outlawed.
However, I'm not going to sit through another manipulative propaganda film from the anti-meat lobby. I'm happy being an omnivore, thankyouverymuch, and I have no problem with animals being killed for food or clothing.
Without knowing what that entails, that is super easy and kinda meaningless to say though.
Yes, the billion dollar tofu-industry has created this propaganda film.
>I'm happy being an omnivore, thankyouverymuch, and I have no problem with animals being killed for food or clothing.
Is your argument that you don't want to watch a movie because you don't agree with it before hand? I recommend you to reconsider the function of documentary films.
You seem to have a real emotional problem with the idea of vegans existing. Why does that cause you so much distress that you make up bizarre nonsense like a "anti-meat lobby"?
This documentary is not about being vegan, is about give the animals a decent live and improve the way we treat them. Also talks about speciesism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism comparing it to racism.
The documentary shows crude images, but this is how it is. Closing the eyes to the reality won't make it better.
A non-speciesist who kills other animals to eat them would be a priori okay with killing humans to eating them.
But regardless, eating humans is unhealthy and thus contrary to evolution. Its the same reason why animals that live for a long time (~100) rarely have many enemies, especially if they are omnivores. Evolutionary, it is better to eat meat that do not had years to build up on heavy metals and toxins.
So to put it to a simple point, regardless of the morality with cannibalism, humans would still not eat other humans. There is no -ism needed to explain why we do not eat sulfur, or drink mercury.
Primitive hunters seem to have respected their prey... just because they killed and ate them didn't mean they considered themselves above them. And from such hybris results shameful behaviour.
Any source for the claim that "primitive hunters didn't considered themselves above animals"?
As for written history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_status_of_animals_in_the_... might be a start
You can read and understand, right?
The point of non-speciesism is that it's not automatically ethical to eat animals even if they're not in horrendous factory farms. You're still treating non-humans in a separate ethical category.
An additional point to make is that even if something appears ethical, it often is not. Usually hobby farm chickens are sourced from unethical places, for example. Of course there's no point in talking about this particular hobby chicken farm because nobody else knows anything about it.
As humans, we have the ability (through not uniquely) to consider the acts we do in a third-party perspective. We can think about the consequences of our actions, and how our actions will effect nature. We can think rational about fishing, hunting, and even keeping a healthy sized population of farm animals. One can respect animals while at the same time making sure that a population of fast breeding animals are kept to a size which is healthy.
It can be. If a person assigns different values depending on the species, that person is speciesist. And obviously that person's diet is affected by speciesism or lack of it.
Wikipedia: "Speciesism involves the assignment of different values, rights, or special consideration to individuals solely on the basis of their species membership."
Change is hard, but if you're genuinely confused, simply follow what the great mindhacker Gautama Buddha taught: compassion for all and without judgement.
We are biologically hardcoded to eat both meat and vegetables. The problem is not what our diet is: rather how we go about fulfilling such a massive demand due to our inability to curb our breeding habits.
Becoming a vegan only partially solves the problem (partially = swathes of the Amazon forest being chopped down for vegetable farming). The other solution is only purchasing home range (which I always do unless it's absolutely not available) - but that had the problem of where the animals would be farmed (probably the Amazon too).
Cut down enough of the Amazon and guess what happens, not only do you stress the wildlife as you displace them but you also rapidly cause extinctions.
The problem is lack of self control, not our diet.
Reminder: We have curbed our breeding habits. Industrialized societies now generally face more pressing underpopulation problems than overpopulation problems, and the global population is now predicted to peak within this century, then start going back down.
You may wish they had been curbed at a lower number, you may still be concerned that we may still pass a carrying capacity before we quite peak, but a fashionably misanthropic "woe, woe, we just keep breeding forever" is not currently a valid concern based on facts.
At for environmental impact, a meat diet is generally more environmentally expensive than a vegetable diet. Animals either directly eat vegetables or indirectly (eating other animals that eat other animals that eat vegetables, etc.). Through the life of the animal it's burning the calories from the vegetables. Eat the vegetable calories directly and you're not eating them through an animal conduit that consumed much of them while existing.
That's a nonstarter for me and makes me want to avoid this film.
Speciesism is a perfectly reasonable position. Assigning the exact same values and rights to cockroaches/jellyfish/ants as we do to humans is ludicrous. Any number of moral thought experiments should immediately demonstrate how absurd that would be (e.g. would you refuse to sacrifice 2 ants to save 1 human?).
Ahh, but don't stop there. Make such though experiments with humans (Would you sacrifice one 80 year old to save two 40 year olds? Would you sacrifice 3 illiterate children to save one wunderkind? Is a person you know worth 1.3 or rather 2.7 people you don't know?) quickly shows that those are equally absurd, so the absurdity in one case proves nothing.
Just because you've chosen silly numbers doesn't mean those are absurd. Moral thought experiments are useful for understanding what value people tend to place on human life.
See, even with your trolling questions, most people would have a queasy feeling in their stomach when considering sacrificing a human being.
But when I ask you to compare the value of ant life to human life, there's no comparison. You wouldn't hesitate. They aren't equal at all.
You've misunderstood anti-speciesism. Anti-speciesism means that "moral worth" is not determined at all by species. It doesn't mean that all individuals have the same "moral worth". In other words, if we find a new species which is pretty much identical to humans in terms of age, intelligence etc., they should be roughly equal in moral worth to humans even if they're from a different species.
Another key point in non-speciesism is the argument that "it's just an animal". Species shouldn't be used in ethical arguments. Anti-speciesism doesn't mean that intelligence, ability to feel pain, average lifespan and so on have no place in moral discussions. Of course they do. I would sacrifice two ants to save one human if that increase utility (because I happen to be anti-speciesist person who belives in something close to utiliarianism).
Another thought experiment would be comparing a severely mentally disabled child and a chimpanzee of equal intelligence and predicted lifespan. I think it would be as evil to kill and eat the chimpanzee as it would be to kill and eat the child.
http://www.economist.com/node/17722932
My ex was a vegan. She always complained about the mistreatment of animals used for food but never thought twice about how the people were treated who picked all the vegetables she ate.
It's basically slave labor in many cases. Low pay, terrible working conditions, long hours. Imagine crawling through the dirt on your knees for 10 hours a day in the California sun, filling buckets of vegetables for $0.80 a bucket, and if you screw up your boss reports you to immigration?
I have family members who were migrant workers just a single generation ago so it hits a little closer to home than some people. But those vegetables don't make it to the store without any suffering, just like pork chops don't.
I eat meat maybe about once a week and pay 3 times as much as i would have to, but i am not willing to support this development any further.
The point is to rethink your assumptions. Chances are if you tolerate any of these abuses it's b/c you have a blind spot in your otherwise rational view of the world.
Lots of people do? Why do you imply that people caring about animals and people caring about people are mutually exclusive?
>My ex was a vegan. She always complained about the mistreatment of animals used for food but never thought twice about how the people were treated who picked all the vegetables she ate.
Do you think twice about how the people were treated who killed all those animals you ate? The meat industry is much worse than what migrant farm workers face. That is why they have to import immigrants from south america to be slaves in the meat industry.