I agree with Steve.  And I didn't see sarcasm so much as a mischievous sense
of humour.  I cannot help feeling that the AR movement (in its more extreme
forms) is really divorcing itself from the ecological reality on our planet.
Some members of it also needs to chill out a bit.  I am not being dismissive
in suggesting that a long stint living in the country from the land (without
easy access to supermarkets) might increase the understanding of ecology.
Death and life are always playing a game with each other - each one has its
day, and the death of one thing means life to another.  Your waste is
something else's  sustenance.  Nature is functional, not structural.  That
means the death of an individual tree or an individual animal is not
necessarily "bad", especially if carried out in certain ways that recognise
the ecological functions.  Thinking it is "bad" would imply that the
opposite (no death) is "good" (or at least "not-bad").  The REALITY is that
having NO death of trees or animals is VERY BAD, because it destroys
ecological functions.

Environmental ethics should not, in my view, relate to the necessity of
death, but rather on HOW it is done.  Not that act, but the method, the
extent, the degree.  If some concept of respect for all ecological functions
is the "right" thing, then when we do kill (or raise animals or vegetation)
then we ought to do it in a way that respects these functions, and places
humans as a component of the ecological whole.  Saying "no death to animals"
places us as a species outside nature.  I think that is UNETHICAL.  And if
it could be considered an ethic, it is certainly not an ENVIRONMENTAL ethic,
because its premise is an "environment" that doesn't exist.

Bambi was fiction.  Any "environmental" ethic should not be based on that
fiction.

Chris Perley

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask]
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of VeggieBiggs
> Sent: 19 November 1999 04:15
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [RE: [RE: [Re: Animal Rights as Anti-Pleasure]]]
>
>
> Steven,
> I would have bowed out and let the rest speak, until your last sarcastic
> remark. Your arrogance and disdain for animals like chickens is
> palpable.  For
> whatever reason, if you cannot keep them suffering in squalor and
> crowding;
> and slaughter them inhumanely you are unhappy.  You are like a
> spoiled kid who
> won't play if he doesn't get his way, so you take your ball and
> go home.  The
> attempt at humor over the range-raised, hormone-free chicken is
> pointless.  I
> agree that this is a sham, and no vegetarian or animal rights
> activist would
> support such nonsense, since this represents an attempt to palliate
> health-conscious yuppies, not intelligent enough to know that
> such shams do
> not guard against the inherent cruelty, the carcinogens, which
> are higher than
> beef, and the cholesterol and fat which are on a par with beef.  I have
> studied this subject extensively, and weighed both sides of the
> arguement.
> Nine billion sentient beings living in the most horrible
> conditions, and dying
> the most terror-filled deaths is not trivial. People who laugh at their
> suffering I wish could feel just a fraction of the terror, pain and
> hopelessness that one of them feels. "Agreeing with some aspects of animal
> rights" and freely eating factory farmed animals is like agreeing
> with many
> aspects of feminism and raping a woman every now and then.
>
> Peace for All Beings
> Jamey Lee West
>
>
> "Steven Bissell" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Well, I guess that answers my question. According to Jamie it is
> impossible
> to subscribe to any of the AR agenda unless you are a vegetarian.
>
> Anyone else care to comment, I've got to go fix my range raised, hormone
> free, happy as a clam, chicken.
> sb
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask]
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of VeggieBiggs
> Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 1999 9:06 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [RE: [Re: Animal Rights as Anti-Pleasure]]
>
>
> Steven,
> You might make a case if you had said that you hold most of the
> concepts of
> animal liberation but you did not eat meat or hunt.  Even if you said that
> you
> only ate the meat that you hunted I might accept that.  However,
> eating meat
> is so antithecal to animal liberations,(i.e. "animal rights") that I can't
> take that too seriously.  You say you have no ethical problem,
> although you
> realize that you don't need to eat meat to be healthy, and in
> fact could be
> healthier without it, and you must know the horrible autrocities committed
> in
> slaughterhouses and the way these animals are confined and
> transported.  To
> be
> comfortable with your indirect causing of this much suffering,
> makes you an
> opponent of animal rights, and on a level more than the average person
> because
> you seem to be armed with all of the facts.  Hunting may cause less
> suffering
> in terms of that resulting from confinement and transportation, but you do
> this for shear enjoyment, causing certain suffering and death to an animal
> you
> realize runs in terror, and suffers immensely from the bullets.  You
> wouldn't
> hunt human beings nor eat them, mainly because you would be prosecuted.
> There
> surely is negligible difference from the acute terror of a
> fleeing deer and
> the pain of a gunshot wound of a deer, from a human being.  Intellectual
> opponents of animal rights bother me the most because I know that they are
> aware of the cruelty, they know that the cruelty is not necessary, and yet
> they flippantly profess to not care.  I feel that you are immoral, and
> simply
> lack compassion despite your intellect.
>
> Peace for All Beings
> Jamey Lee West
>
> "Steven Bissell" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Jamie, have you ever thought that it is possible to endorse *most* of the
> goals of AR, and *not* be vegetarian? I think you assume that
> AR=Vegetarian
> at times. I, for example, support many, not all mind you, of the AR goals,
> especially as articulated by David Pearson and others on this list. But, I
> hunt and I eat meat. Not a lot mind you, but I still do it and have no
> ethical problems with it at all.
>
> By the way, I was just reading an article about the endangered
> Pacific White
> Abalone. It may be extinct in the next year as they are unable to find any
> in the wild at the moment. The abalone is a monovalve mollusc by the way.
> One of the statements made by the researcher on this was the sadness at
> seeing ". . .a sentient animal" driven to extinction. What do you
> think? Is
> a mollusc sentient? According to Peter Singer and other AR thinkers, they
> are not because they do not have self awareness nor are they capable of
> suffering.
>
> Just some nagging questions.
> Steven
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask]
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of VeggieBiggs
> Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 1999 6:37 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [Re: Animal Rights as Anti-Pleasure]
>
>
> Jim wrote:
> >When Mill refers to "other-regarding" conduct, the "others" have to be
> >other selves--capable of self-reflection and possessing the essential
> >characteristics and capabilities of personhood.  We don't speak of
> >"other-regarding" conduct as applying to, say, bricks.  Bricks are not
> >"others" in the morally relevant sense.  Bricks do not possess a sense of
> >self; nor are bricks persons.  The reason slavery is wrong is because the
> >"other" is a human person, another "self."  Do animals
> >constitute "selves"
> >in this sense?  I doubt it, although I am prepared to accept that the
> >great
> >apes and other primates may come close and thus may warrant special
> >consideration.
>
> Jim,
> You go right past the major point of those who believe in animal
> liberation.
> That is that a brick is not an "other" because it has no brain,
> no feelings
> and no interests whatsoever.  A dog may not be the complex mind that most
> human beings possess, but he or she is a lot closer to a human
> being than he
> or she is to a brick.  By your reasoning morality should be doled out by
> intelligence.  I know a lot of human beings that do not think about
> thinking,
> or think about thinking about thinking. (Or at least when I try
> discuss such
> abstract thoughts, I get blank looks) They pretty much live, but they have
> feelings. They know when they are happy and don't like being sad.  If you
> identified these people, would you kick them out of the club of humanity?
> The
> quality that should define moral consideration is does a being have
> feelings,
> does that being feel pain.  Most people experience the same type
> happinesses
> and sadnesses and angers that any vertebrate would feel.  Like pigs or
> chickens, they love their mothers and like being with them.  How much they
> self-introspect about it is variable, and I believe pretty irrelevant.
> Would
> you give extra moral consideration to someone who constantly thinks about
> himself and his feelings? Thinking about happiness, about pain, about
> suffering isn't as acute as actually experiencing the feelings themselves,
> which all vertebrates and many invertebrates do.
>
> Yet intellectuals like you are willing to deny animals the most basic
> considerations, (you do if you eat chicken or any form of meat, since the
> animals are denied even the most rudimentary considerations for their
> feelings).  If the moral consideration for the kind of mind you
> describe as
> the "essence of humanity" is given a numerical worth of 1.0 then
> surely the
> chimpanzee should be 0.98, (yet a Dr. White makes quite a lot of money
> cutting
> heads off of one and trying to sew them on another), and a pig
> would be 0.9,
> (yet they are batted around in slaughterhouses as if they were baseballs).
> You really need to become more humble Jim.  You view animal liberationists
> with the smug paternalism that a father would his teenage daughter who is
> showing off a fad hair style.  Consider, minds light years above our own,
> such
> as Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, (who by the way
> lived
> well into his eighties without and was strict vegetarian), and Leonardo
> DeVinci, all ethical vegetarians. Have you read Peter Singer? We aren't
> zealous idiots, but we do tend to become vexed when our ideas and our
> movement
> is dismissed as irrational sentiment.
>
> Peace for All Beings
> Jamey Lee West
>
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