The culture changes when we speak up. So I think it’s important to do so.
I think bclintonk answered that very well in #434. Cows and chickens are not an endangered species and they are not being slaughtered so that some millionaire, who can easily afford to put endless amounts of food on his table (including meat), can have food to get through until the next hunting season. And while I’m sure there are some perverts out there, I doubt very highly that those who slaughter cows and chickens are taking pictures of themselves with them after they’ve killed them and posted them for the entire world to see because it makes their certain private part feel bigger.
Jimmy Johns owner is quite the piece of work. Oppressive noncompete agreements. Wage theft accusations. Killing elephants. Good to know so I can choose to never spend money in his restaurants.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/13/jimmy-johns-non-compete_n_5978180.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/11/jimmy-johns-wage-theft_n_5669565.html
The thing about boycotts is, for me, I never expect my money I spend or don’t spend in a place to make or break a business. But I can go to sleep at night knowing that my money is not supporting a habit or belief I feel is unethical or immoral. When I know better, I do better. I can’t be right 100% of the time, but when something like this is pointed out to me, I change my spending habits. I realize for every time I withhold money for something, someone else agrees with that person and deliberately spends their money there.
For all I care, this dentist can open up his practice tomorrow and get back to work, but if I lived near him, he’d never see a dime of my money.
The Jimmy Johns thing is hard for me; I don’t eat a lot of fast food, and they have a product that I’ve enjoyed over the years. But I could never walk into another store again (well, I will once, to let the management know why I won’t be giving them my business anymore), knowing what I do now. Hobby Lobby was easy because I had other equally viable options for where to spend my money (well, and I always thought their customer service sucked anyway). But I don’t pretend for a second that my boycotting alone is going to hurt their business.
This is a completely arbitrary, classist distinction. The animal who lived in the wild had a natural, most likely happy existence. The domesticated cows and chickens were probably tortured and miserable. If they both get eaten, which method of production is more morally respectable? I pick the wild animal; if his body parts are eaten and used, I couldn’t care less how rich the slaughterer was, or what the slaughterer’s mental state was.
People who own dogs should do some hard thinking of their own. Perhaps the owners of purebreds who put collars on them should convince me why the decision to own them, collar them, and keep them subservient is a moral act.
Peter Singer?
“People who own dogs should do some hard thinking of their own. Perhaps the owners of purebreds who put collars on them should convince me why the decision to own them, collar them, and keep them subservient is a moral act.”
Wait a minute, our dogs are subservient to us? Somebody had better inform my girls that, because it is clear that they think it’s the other way around!
Except for the part about “threats,” I don’t mind. I’m kind of used to it by now. Heck, my own mother (God rest her soul) used to harangue me all the time about moral issues, or what she perceived to be moral issues, right up until the time she passed away a couple of years ago. I still hear her voice inside my head. I sometimes like to think of it as “my conscience,” but deep down I know it’s really Mom. I used to go to church every Sunday and the Padre would pound a set of moral precepts into me, threatening fire and brimstone if I didn’t fall in line. I no longer go to that church–didn’t much care for the fire and brimstone part–but now a different Padre pounds on a somewhat different set of moral issues, and I sit there and take it. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, but I’m not opposed to hearing a good moral argument. The Archbishop tells me I should oppose same-sex marriage and work to de-fund Planned Parenthood, and the Pope tells me I shouldn’t be too judgmental or too hung up on narrow issues of church dogma and instead should help the poor and work to stop climate change; they may not technically be in disagreement but there certainly is a tension there, a huge difference in emphasis, but both are making moral arguments. As are the people arguing for marriage equality, and for women’s rights to control their own bodies, including the reproductive parts.
The civil rights movement was a great moral crusade, as was, earlier, the movement to abolish slavery, and the struggle to win equal property rights and equal voting rights for women. In my childhood, many thought the Cold War contest with the Soviet Union was a great moral struggle against “godless Communism.” Others thought Joe McCarthy had crossed the bounds of morality with his baseless accusations and bullying of witnesses; the famous line “have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” was clearly calculated to publicly shame a powerful U.S. Senator.
Moral arguments are a pretty basic part of our political and social discourse. And I have no problem with people resorting to shaming and boycotts if they feel strongly about it. I draw the line at threats of physical violence, however; to me, that’s out of bounds for moral reasons, as well as legal ones. On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with the threat of a boycott or some other lawful tactic.
There you go again, Bay. Making moral arguments, just like the rest of us.
LOL. I hear you, bus. We have two little Maltese who are just the same way. They think our job is to cater to their every little whim, which mostly consists of holding them, petting them, giving them belly rubs, feeding them, walking them, or just being in in their presence so they have some human companionship while they nod off for yet another nap. I guess Bay thinks we should have a guilty conscience about those relationships, though it’s hard to imagine our little guys lasting much more than a day if we let them go feral. Some things I’d never do, though. I’d never shoot them, or decapitate them so I could stick their heads up on my wall. Nor can I in a million years imagine actually taking pleasure or pride in such acts.
Well yeah, that was the point. Glad you got it.
Nope. You should have a guilty conscience about imprisoning them in your house, preventing them from roaming outside when it suits them not you, preventing them from finding mates and mating, keeping them leashed and collared, and encouraging breeders to create more animals purely for the enjoyment of humans rich enough to buy purebreds. Shame, shame, shame on you.
It seems to me this gets kind of complicated. We don’t value the lives of animals as we do humans. But we see the lives of some animals as more valuable than the lives of others. Generally we privilege mammals, but we sometimes eat them. I understand protecting endangered species, but don’t understand valuing wild animals or pets over animals we raise for meat. I don’t know whether mammals have a sense of self or souls. If so, I guess all do and should be treated with the same compassion. jmho
I like your thinking, @alh.
I don’t understand making arbitrary value judgments over animals either, alh. I do think wild animals lead better lives than domesticated factory protein sources. I was really just trying to make a point that, if you eat meat or keep an animal imprisoned for your enjoyment, you are probably a hypocrite if you make moral judgments about hunters.
“I agree with you that is a moral distinction. How do you feel about others’ imposing (by shaming or boycotting or threatening) their morals on you? Are you okay with it?”
Shaming or boycotting? Sure. Threatening? That’s another story.
452 - I don't see a moral difference between eating beef or pork from a slaughterhouse or venison from my neighbor. There may be a moral difference in hunting for meat or just for trophies, but I don't think it matters to the animal. Some people believe God gave us the animals to eat. In that case, meat eating is moral. I don't know what I think. I don't think meat eating is necessary for survival these days. It's a choice and a custom. jmho.
What? Are you saying cows are slaughtered for reasons other than food/hide use? We don’t NEED to eat any one particular animal, but they (cows) are killed for food purposes. Are you claiming otherwise?
Quite easy to draw the line because pigs, cows and chickens are NOT BIG GAME. Unless maybe you are an ant. Then they all look big.
Guess who else is into hunting exotic animals?
http://www.wetpaint.com/donald-trump-sons-hunt-exotic-animals-1429779/
Did they get a photo of them bagging the wild tribble on The Donald’s head? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJy7rTzWsAEu9rq.jpg
I don’t know about where you live, but where I live, shelters are filled with animals who are found wondering on the streets, in horrible, horrible health conditions. I follow the stories of these animals as the humans/rescuers spend lots of their resources rescuing them, nursing them back to health and making them happy, unfearful animals again. One of my own daughter’s rescue dogs had some imaging done last fall when she had a serious back problem, and a BB showed up behind her neck on the picture (unrelated to the back problem), very likely from someone who didn’t want a stray dog on their property, and took the situation in their own hands by scaring it off.
When I was growing up in Texas, we had a dog that was allowed to roam the neighborhood freely. By ten years of age, that dog had been basically ripped in half by a bigger dog (I found him one day when my parents were out and had to find a neighbor to drive us to the emergency vet where he was given a 50% chance of living despite surgery). A year or so later, another fight led to a blind eye. A year later, as I was driving home from work one night, I found him splayed out in the middle of the road, dead, hit by a car. That’s what happens when dogs are allowed to roam free. Too many predators, unlike the big game animals… no comparison.