Killing Animals.

[Jacqueline]

People kill animals for different reasons. Some for 'experience', for their meat, and others just because they hate animals. What is your opinion on killing animals?

[Matt]

Nutritional value. Tadaaa!

[sabelmouse]

i'd like to put that inyo perspective. we are omnivores , very adaptable, and we have adapted to many different diets depending on climate and availability.
obviously poor people always always get the short stw, but leaving that aside, different climates and geological situations call for different diets.
we don't need meat to survive nor is a vegetarian diet always the best.
having said that most people in the west, not all, as there are still pockets of awefull poverty, eat to much and defenitly to much meat eggs and dairy. for their own health, the sustainability of the planet and the well being of farmed animals.
there is a world of difference between hunting for food or killing your 1 hog or heifer a year for meat and factory farming.
as so often the problem is scale and our tendency to go over the top.
as for hunting for " fun " or to feel closer to nature that is somrthing very distastefull to me.

[Matt]

Yes, we are omnivores and there are quite a bit of things in meat that is much more difficult to come across in plant foods (which is the major reason why I am not a vegetarian). I generally eat meat once a day, while all other meals are nothing but plant foods, red meat at most twice a week, generally it's just white meat and fish.

As far as your remarks about hunting, I don't think it really matters what you think about those people's activities. I'll be happy to tell everyone I know that hunts (a total of two people) not to when animals start voting and contributing more to society than their bodies as food. When that happens, I'll stop eating meat all together, and probably have a huge moral dilemma in which I'll feel so ashamed over my meat eating days that I'll beg forgiveness to those animals. Of course, that would probably change when they started eating one another to sustain themselves... Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent.

[sabelmouse]

humans don't contribute more than animals. all they do is for their own benefit and a lot of it is ultimatly destructive to themselves, the planet and the other animals.

votimg is hardly that hard and not everybody does it anyway.

however i sugest you find out some non voters and eat them.

[Matt]

"all they do is for their own benefit and a lot of it is ultimatly destructive to themselves, the planet and the other animals."

Gandhi.

"humans don't contribute more than animals."

To society? Are you kidding me?

"votimg is hardly that hard"

Yet they don't have the capacity to do it, which was part of my point.

[sabelmouse]

what do humans do for the planet other than destroy it?

what is society. a group of humans some of whom benefit more than others.

ganhdi. one of those rare human beings not just concerned with himself.
trying to make up for all the stupid, destructive, selfish, ruthless, ideotc things people do.

we are animals among animals on one planet and we use our supirior brainpower mainly for ill.

by that token we ought to be wiped out.

why would your capacity to vote be a measure of your right to live, or to be free from torture, what about disabled people? severly mentally disabled people?

[Leviathan]

Oh now you're getting into philosophy. It's obvious that humanity is like a virus because we deplete the natural resources and slowly kill the life of whatever area we are in. But that is just a fact of humanity. You can go ahead and kill yourself, since that will save the planet and make things better, but I plan on surviving and eating as much meat as I feel like. Since we're "stupid, destructive, selfish, ruthless, and ideotic, let's continue eating meat and 'destroying' the earth. It's not like we're Gandhi and we know any better.

[Chris]

I think that was a fact of humanity, but I think that the evolution of thought and philosophy has driven us to self-sustainability- i.e.- replace what we take from nature.

That said, we still haven't evolved past war, apparently, so you might be onto something yet...

[sabelmouse]

why kill ourselves, why not just behave sensibly?

[Matt]

@ Chris

I don't think we will evolve past war until everyone sees everyone else not as "everyone else" but as "us". I think if the entire world population was Buddhist this would be fairly easy.

[Matt]

"what do humans do for the planet other than destroy it?"

To be honest, I'm not too concerned with the ultimate end of the earth. Just like all things it's time will come when the end of it's life is reached and then it will be a dead planet like Mars, either way. What I'm concerned with is being able to come up with the technology we need so that we do not have to rely on Earth and we can spread out into the Universe. I'm more concerned with the survival of our species than the survival of Earth, because Earth won't survive for the rest of infinity, while our species has a chance.

"what is society. a group of humans some of whom benefit more than others."

Society is a group of humans. Period. The only reason why some benefit more than others is because we haven't worked out all of the kinks yet.

"ganhdi. one of those rare human beings not just concerned with himself.
trying to make up for all the stupid, destructive, selfish, ruthless, ideotc things people do."

There's more of them than you would give credit. Do you know what bodhichitta is?

"we are animals among animals on one planet and we use our supirior brainpower mainly for ill."

Is that the case or is it just that the illness sticks out more than the benign?

"why would your capacity to vote be a measure of your right to live, or to be free from torture, what about disabled people? severly mentally disabled people?"

Even severely mentally handicapped people are more intelligent than most animals. The capacity to vote shows that they can contribute to the society. The society's government is to protect that society. Why would that society need to outlaw the killing of animals instead of outlaw the killing of endangered animals?

[sabelmouse]

this is about the outlawing of excessive and need less killing.

you put humans above every other living thing because we are more intelligent?
i say that gives us more responsibility to behave decently, not the right to do what we want.