Thursday, February 05, 2009
I actually have something to blog about for once
Firstly, I want to start off with a long rant because that is who I am and that is what I've done well for as long as I can remember. I remember using rants to get attention and/or get my point across--with the occasional profanity to aid my cause, of course.
But before I go on some rants, I feel it's necessary for me to share some thoughts that I've learned today. I am now convinced that it entirely depends on how well one constructs an argument and not so much one's viewpoints, specifically, that determines how valuable that person's opinion is. Before I always understood that it mostly depended on a person's argument, but if their viewpoints were strange, they couldn't be taken seriously.
My dispatcher today provided some excellent explanations for certain things that I never really accepted. For one, he used to be a hunting guide which meant he'd help hunters find animals to kill.
Now normally, I'd hate to hear about animals being killed and what not; however, upon asked the ethical purposes behind his job or, simply put, the killing of these animals (grizzlies, black bears, caribou, etc...), it was how he approached the topic and how he delivered his ideas. There wasn't any proverbial bullshit being spewed. He looked at both sides of the story and gave his opinion based on that.
He basically mentioned that we kill and eat animals for survival. Most of us just eat the animals, but we take no part in the killing of it. Does it make it any less justified in what we do as opposed to what is being done by others? In a sense, perhaps; however, if you look at it realistically, animals are being killed to satiate our hunger.
Hunters don't go out just to kill animals for the sheer pleasure of doing so (not the ones in BC); they have to acquire a specific license and go through an entire set of procedures to get everything sorted out properly. Then they can't wound the animal before killing it. They have to kill it in one shot or, if unsuccessful in getting a clear shot, they have to let it go. They cannot leave the animal to rot in the woods after being killed; they have to take it out and either eat/sell the meat or give it away to the salvation army. And there are plenty of regulations surrounding which animals can be killed in which areas and the number of animals in those specified areas in which they are killed.
I am sure this sounds rather abject to be reading about a grizzly bear who causes no harm to human beings, to be killed by redneck (they seem so any anyways) scum, but hear me out. Here we have animals that are essentially in the adult stages of their lives that have lived in the wild and enjoyed their freedom their whole lives. It's probably not too many years from now that they die anyways, what difference does it really make if hunters come along and take the bear for its meat and fur? If other animals were to come along and kill the grizzly and do the same (minus the fur), we'd have no reason to object. Similar principle except we don't need the bear's meat to survive; instead we have our meat come from slaughter houses from encaged establishments where many never see the light of day. Just killed and processed for our nourishment. We don't find this so abject when we (some people) indulge in a BicMac or sirloin steak for satiation, so why should we be so morally oppressed to licensed hunting.
I am not trying to suggest that anyone who reads this blog (like 4 of you) is or isn't against it, but I used to be consistently under the impression that it was wrong but had no substance to prove my argument. And because I couldn't argue it (or perhaps didn't want to) I just kept to my ideas and didn't care about the other side of the story.
I bring this up because I remember Mohsin making a similar claim one time. He and his father had once killed a goat by themselves, instead of buying goat meat, to save money and I found that to be really wrong. I now realize that the problem was Mohsin and his inability to argue his point effectively. He could not produce logical claims to substantiate his argument and never looked at the other side of the story. Hence even if he had a good idea, it meant nothing since it could not be strengthened with insight and logic sans bias.
That goes to show that it's not about the claim, but the support and proof that determines ones stance on an issue. I mean, it seemed kinda obvious, but now it's crystal fucking clear.
I wanted to rant on some shit that pissed me off earlier today, but I'll wait until my next post to do that.
But before I go on some rants, I feel it's necessary for me to share some thoughts that I've learned today. I am now convinced that it entirely depends on how well one constructs an argument and not so much one's viewpoints, specifically, that determines how valuable that person's opinion is. Before I always understood that it mostly depended on a person's argument, but if their viewpoints were strange, they couldn't be taken seriously.
My dispatcher today provided some excellent explanations for certain things that I never really accepted. For one, he used to be a hunting guide which meant he'd help hunters find animals to kill.
Now normally, I'd hate to hear about animals being killed and what not; however, upon asked the ethical purposes behind his job or, simply put, the killing of these animals (grizzlies, black bears, caribou, etc...), it was how he approached the topic and how he delivered his ideas. There wasn't any proverbial bullshit being spewed. He looked at both sides of the story and gave his opinion based on that.
He basically mentioned that we kill and eat animals for survival. Most of us just eat the animals, but we take no part in the killing of it. Does it make it any less justified in what we do as opposed to what is being done by others? In a sense, perhaps; however, if you look at it realistically, animals are being killed to satiate our hunger.
Hunters don't go out just to kill animals for the sheer pleasure of doing so (not the ones in BC); they have to acquire a specific license and go through an entire set of procedures to get everything sorted out properly. Then they can't wound the animal before killing it. They have to kill it in one shot or, if unsuccessful in getting a clear shot, they have to let it go. They cannot leave the animal to rot in the woods after being killed; they have to take it out and either eat/sell the meat or give it away to the salvation army. And there are plenty of regulations surrounding which animals can be killed in which areas and the number of animals in those specified areas in which they are killed.
I am sure this sounds rather abject to be reading about a grizzly bear who causes no harm to human beings, to be killed by redneck (they seem so any anyways) scum, but hear me out. Here we have animals that are essentially in the adult stages of their lives that have lived in the wild and enjoyed their freedom their whole lives. It's probably not too many years from now that they die anyways, what difference does it really make if hunters come along and take the bear for its meat and fur? If other animals were to come along and kill the grizzly and do the same (minus the fur), we'd have no reason to object. Similar principle except we don't need the bear's meat to survive; instead we have our meat come from slaughter houses from encaged establishments where many never see the light of day. Just killed and processed for our nourishment. We don't find this so abject when we (some people) indulge in a BicMac or sirloin steak for satiation, so why should we be so morally oppressed to licensed hunting.
I am not trying to suggest that anyone who reads this blog (like 4 of you) is or isn't against it, but I used to be consistently under the impression that it was wrong but had no substance to prove my argument. And because I couldn't argue it (or perhaps didn't want to) I just kept to my ideas and didn't care about the other side of the story.
I bring this up because I remember Mohsin making a similar claim one time. He and his father had once killed a goat by themselves, instead of buying goat meat, to save money and I found that to be really wrong. I now realize that the problem was Mohsin and his inability to argue his point effectively. He could not produce logical claims to substantiate his argument and never looked at the other side of the story. Hence even if he had a good idea, it meant nothing since it could not be strengthened with insight and logic sans bias.
That goes to show that it's not about the claim, but the support and proof that determines ones stance on an issue. I mean, it seemed kinda obvious, but now it's crystal fucking clear.
I wanted to rant on some shit that pissed me off earlier today, but I'll wait until my next post to do that.
Comments:
The ethics of hunting is an interesting issue because of the hypocrisy non-vegetarians like me run into when trying to draw that line. The way I see it, even carnivores like me can try to minimize the number of animals killed for the cause of sustaining human life. If every time a hunter killed an animal and ate it, one fewer animal is sacrificed into the meat processing industry, then I'd have a hard time arguing with recreational hunting. But I doubt that meat processing responds very quickly (if at all) to increases in hunting, and so you have the same number of animals killed for the market, plus the animals hunted for recreational purposes. Which isn't ideal, and I'm not sure if the dispatcher said anything about that?
As for the argument that ordering a Big Mac is somehow "sinning" less than personally taking a rifle to a cow/pig, I think that's bull and utter aristocratic tripe (sorry, I couldn't resist). The more conscious you are about where your food comes from and "who" it was before it died, the more respect you have for it, and the less likely you will waste it. There are people who regard the cultures that hang roasted pigs in the restaurant window, that eat and celebrate all strange but edible parts of a chicken, that honour each bear hunted, as barbaric, heartless savages. But they're not the ones that invented freaking Big Macs and the mass production of meat. Seeing the pig's head, the chicken heart and liver, these are visual reminders that your meat wasn't picked off of a tree. Western food tries to strongly disassociate the eater from the hunter, the hunting process, and the hunted. It's no wonder there is such waste. I can't think of a time when I've eaten a steak and thought of the cow. The steak is not something we can 'humanize', whereas seeing the head, the heart, etc., the danger is that you'll relate to what you're eating and want less of it, thereby decreasing the profits of the meat processing industry.
I will gladly trade a system where the cost of a steak dinner is $10/lb for one where the cost of it is seeing your dad slaughter the cow in your barn. I bet you anything we will realize how little meat we need to survive once we are forced to interact with our food when it's alive.
And don't get me started on meat eaters who will endlessly defend the right of a just-fertilized egg against morning-after pills or contraceptive "murders". I'm not going to touch the issue of abortion, but until you turn vegetarian, you can't possibly make a sound argument against birth control without sounding ridiculously homo-sapien-centric. The definition of when a human life begins may be up for debate, but I'm pretty sure the debate over whether full grown cows are alive was settled awhile back.
As for the argument that ordering a Big Mac is somehow "sinning" less than personally taking a rifle to a cow/pig, I think that's bull and utter aristocratic tripe (sorry, I couldn't resist). The more conscious you are about where your food comes from and "who" it was before it died, the more respect you have for it, and the less likely you will waste it. There are people who regard the cultures that hang roasted pigs in the restaurant window, that eat and celebrate all strange but edible parts of a chicken, that honour each bear hunted, as barbaric, heartless savages. But they're not the ones that invented freaking Big Macs and the mass production of meat. Seeing the pig's head, the chicken heart and liver, these are visual reminders that your meat wasn't picked off of a tree. Western food tries to strongly disassociate the eater from the hunter, the hunting process, and the hunted. It's no wonder there is such waste. I can't think of a time when I've eaten a steak and thought of the cow. The steak is not something we can 'humanize', whereas seeing the head, the heart, etc., the danger is that you'll relate to what you're eating and want less of it, thereby decreasing the profits of the meat processing industry.
I will gladly trade a system where the cost of a steak dinner is $10/lb for one where the cost of it is seeing your dad slaughter the cow in your barn. I bet you anything we will realize how little meat we need to survive once we are forced to interact with our food when it's alive.
And don't get me started on meat eaters who will endlessly defend the right of a just-fertilized egg against morning-after pills or contraceptive "murders". I'm not going to touch the issue of abortion, but until you turn vegetarian, you can't possibly make a sound argument against birth control without sounding ridiculously homo-sapien-centric. The definition of when a human life begins may be up for debate, but I'm pretty sure the debate over whether full grown cows are alive was settled awhile back.
My dispatcher didn't mention anything about how it would affect the wholesale production of meat in the markets; however, I think we can safely presume that it probably won't make a difference at all.
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