Absolutely not. You are putting me in your choice of mail boxes -- I live in the one seven doors down. How can being a vegan, and eating living vegetables make a person superior to one who eats meat?
I wasn't referring to superiority, actually. I'm neither vegetarian nor vegan, though I have (actually, as of making that comment to you, since that was the first time I've thought about it in those terms) decided that I will no longer eat pork or porcine-originated products, since I do think that sentient creatures are superior to non-sentient creatures.
I said "any living thing" not "any creature." There is a difference.
Fair enough, I didn't notice that. My mistake.
You are assuming that animals are superior to plants. In your universe that may be a truth. In mine it is not.
Well, if you want me to start ranking things, then yes, I actually would consider [the experiences of] animals to be superior to [the experiences of] plants, because to the best of my knowledge, they are much more expanded. This is the basis for my view that sentience is superior to non-sentience, as well.
We are designed to eat. We eat.
We (and by "we" I mean those who live in similar cultural conditions to me, not "all humans") are also prosperous enough to be able to choose what we eat. This is why I've chosen not to eat anything derived from sentient beings.
By the way. You are not saving a cow's life by not eating meat. If no one ate meat cattle, instead of being a thriving industry with millions of head, cows would be on the endangered species list and you would have to go to a zoo to see one.
I'll substitute "pig" for "cow", since I don't value a cow's life anywhere close to as much as a pig's, and I still eat beef. I'm aware that I'm not actually saving lives by choosing not to eat pork. For me, this is more of a moral choice, rather than an actually causive choice. As for your latter point, that isn't an issue at all to me - if people no longer purposely raised pigs (especially in as vile conditions as they are raised) purely for the purpose of butchering and eating them... I would be happy. A planet where 100 billion humans are being raised by superior aliens solely for the purpose of shortly later killing them is far less desirable (to me) than a planet where 1000 humans are unsupported by the native superior aliens and must fight for survival of their territory.
Interestingly enough exactly that is done every day, day in and day out. People tell their children, "Eat that, there are people starving in other countries will starve because they don't have it -- Yet not one of them sends a bite of that food to those people they just said will starve without it.
Yeah, this is a false cause-and-effect chain, and is silly if people actually believe it. I'm aware that my actions have no direct (and probably not even any indirect) effects. And I can accept that, because that moral action I've chosen is still more desirable than the alternative.
Your mother probably said something similar. Have you told her she should become a better person?
I dunno if my mom actually ever did pull that. If she did once I was old enough to think about it, I probably told her that she was being silly, lol.
You ask me how many foreigners I don't know are worth one of my daughters that I love dearly?
How many is yours worth?
I have no children, and don't plan on having any in the near future, so I'd be willing to bet that anyone with children will tell me that my opinion is worthless. But the (simple) answer to that question is that people are (generally) equally worthy; the reason my daughter would naturally
feel worth more is because worth is a subjective measurement that is easily altered by experience - I certainly value some people in my life more than others because of my experiences with them, and I would assume that there's very little that can be a more involved relationship than with raising a child.
However, eventually you have to get to the point of being able to shut up and multiply. Once you have large enough numbers, say, 1 planet's worth of people (so... 6 billion, give or take?) has to be worth more than even your experiences with your own daughter, to be able to flourish as a species.
Is this what you believe or what you have been taught?
Heh, if anything, I was taught the opposite of much of this. I might certainly be wrong and later change my mind, but to the best of my working knowledge, this is how I choose to organize my life.
