• artificialset [she/her, fae/faer]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    45
    ·
    1 year ago

    So the meat industry is basically a giant concentration camp of suffering, but im unsure if the suffering outweighs all the workers it employs, or evsn ths fact that they taste good.

    it’s okay that sentient beings suffer because you think they taste good. you must realise how genuinely fucked up that thought is, right? what gives you any right to decide your favourite treat is more important than a life? animals feel pain. they have wants that aren’t purely instinctual. their right to autonomy is more important than your desire for treats or a paycheck for workers - paycheck that comes at a heavy price, mind you. a job that requires mass killing has negative psychological and sometimes even physical effects on people.

    at the end of the day, we’re leftists because we believe that pushing suffering on the innocent is wrong. pigs, cows, chickens have done nothing to deserve death. buying their corpses to eat is completely out of step with the values communists and anarchists claim to hold.

    • CarbonScored [any]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      My leftism is about better human social organisation for every human’s benefit and reduced suffering. Beyond the practicality of ensuring a sustainable planetary ecosystem, it has nothing to do with other animals.

      • SixSidedUrsine [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        36
        ·
        1 year ago

        “My leftism has nothing to do with empathy or recognizing the suffering of others, it has only to do with benefiting those that I deem enough “like me” to be worth my consideration! Leftism is all about making things better for me and my kind! No, that’s not reactionary! I’m not a chud! I’m a leftist, really!”

        • CarbonScored [any]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Feel free to go and busy yourself making the world better for rocks or something? You draw your own line at making the world better for things that sufficiently ‘like you’, too. I deem humans sufficiently ‘like me’, and there are plenty practical reasons for encompassing all humans in a just world, too. You just deem animals also sufficiently ‘like you’, but I don’t personally see sufficient reasoning to extend that far.

          • artificialset [she/her, fae/faer]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            25
            ·
            1 year ago

            you really need to self crit and think about why you think beings only like you deserve safety and freedom from oppression. that really is so incompatible with everything we talk about here

            • MattsAlt [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              23
              ·
              1 year ago

              “Oppression and subjugation of a living thing is fine so long as it can’t speak to me and tell me it doesn’t like it. Extra points if it’s tasty!”

              • 1simpletailer@startrek.website
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                13
                ·
                1 year ago

                There is actually adequate scientific evidence that many animals have a much greater awareness and emotional intelligence then we often attribute to them, this includes most if not all of our domesticated animals. You could argue that the act of meat eating isn’t in itself amoral, but the mass suffering facilitated by the conditions within the meat industry certainly is. Not to mention the conditions it subjects its workers to. There is no ethical industrialized meat consumption.

                • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]@hexbear.net
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  5
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Not to mention the conditions it subjects its workers to. There is no ethical industrialized meat consumption.

                  yes, the labor conditions are something that harms people, especially in slaughterhouses.

                • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]@hexbear.net
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  idk, what does “feel” mean? the ones with nervous systems and appropriate receptors probably have a stimulus response. do they have an experiential self that sits in that stimulus and dwells on it like people? do they have opinions about pain?

                  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    9
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 year ago

                    Because no life should ever have been born and no life should ever be born after this according to you, all sorts of cruelty and suffering and unnecessary death and environmental devastation are okay if you get le epic bacon and big car go vroom vroom. This is a tenable leftist position. marx-joker

              • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                8
                ·
                1 year ago

                pure idealism

                Says the ideologically pure antinatalistic clown that declared that all life that has been should never have been and that everyone alive today should not exist because they didn’t sign a consent waiver before being born and that no future life should be born either, all while trying to justify “fuck you got mine don’t tell me what to doooooooooooo” takes on everything from speed limits to dae le epic bacon. 🤡

              • Maoo [none/use name]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                6
                ·
                1 year ago

                Recognizing the capacity of animals to understand and suffer is basic science, not idealism. People with pets understand this and we know they should protect the health and well-being of the animals they keep. In fact, they often support laws requiring that pets are treated well enough.

                But the moment it’s a designated food animal, this goes out the window and brains shut off.

                So anyways are you gonna eat dogs and cats or are you an “idealist”?

          • SixSidedUrsine [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            8
            ·
            1 year ago

            It has nothing to do with where I personally draw the line, asshole. It has everything to do with the scientifically established reality about who is capable of suffering. Rocks can’t. Cows, pigs, etc. can. Just because your sphere of empathy is arbitrarily drawn to reinforce what’s convenient for you doesn’t mean that by necessity everyone else is so shallow, cruel, and morally inconsistent.

      • seeking_perhaps [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        35
        ·
        1 year ago

        Animal agriculture is a disgustingly exploitive industry with awful environmental practices. Even if you only care about the human side of it you should want it to end.

      • artificialset [she/her, fae/faer]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        32
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        if your empathy and concern for suffering ends at humans, i don’t think you’re a proper leftist and you should take your belief in autonomy and freedom from oppression to it’s logical conclusion (animal liberation)

    • toomanyjoints69@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I agree that the suffering of the innocent is wrong, but thats not why im a leftist. Maybe thats why this is so important to you and not as much me? Im a leftist because i like helping people and it gives me a justification to use that isnt religion. I do feel how you do about a specific type of suffering - I strongly hate anyone who pushes people to the margins of society and social situations, so ive always wanted to be friends with homeless people and trans people. If animals could suffer that way then id care more. The worst part about the animal holocaust is how alone and alienated they must be from a “happy life”. Their murder doesnt really phase me the same way starving people really dont. I also believe strongly in advocating for collective self interest because its effective. When you combine that with my love of authority and being dominated by people who deserve the authority it is why im a communist.

      Not really related, but my time on a farm has actually given me a strong hatred of chickens. They kill eachother for fun, even when treated veey well with a coop thats too big for them. Cows and pigs are nice.

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        1 year ago

        ok when are we embracing antinatalism?

        “Until and unless a magic post-birth consent machine can be invented, no one should ever have been born and no one should ever be born in the future. Also, DAE le epic bacon and speeding car go vroom vroom don’t tell me what to dooooooooooooooooo” morshupls

          • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            10
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            I get that you believe that no human life (and all life on the planet) can attain your arbitrary standard of ideological purity, and therefore you believe billions (and all life itself both in the past and in the future) should not exist, but that’s clownish navel-gazing to me with a deeply anti-life core to it.

            All things considered, I’m glad I am alive. I wouldn’t have wanted some clown like you preventing me from even having the choice to make that after-the-fact decision to like being alive, all because of your own ideology purity crusade. hypersus

            EDIT: And all of this from a sanctimoniously ideological purist that also preaches extraordinarily selfish “big car go vroom vroom don’t tell me what to doooooooo” takes in other threads. 🤡