Quote:
Originally Posted by Bilbo1967
Just so the record is straight - I feel no guilt whatsoever about eating meat. My only beef (geddit  ) is with people who seem to want to insist that their choice of life-style is somehow more moral than anybody elses. |
And I wasn't referring to you specifically-- again, just to set the record straight.
But is it possible to evaluate a lifestyle in terms of morality? Many people do, often for reasons I have more trouble following than this one. It all depends on what you consider "moral" behavior: some culturally accepted standard like a particular interpretation of the Bible or Koran; Mill's idea that we should strive for the greatest good for the greatest number (do we count animals?); Kant's notion of universalizability (to be moral, it should be ok if everyone does it); the Buddhist notion of compassion for all things; etc.
If our definition of morality is simply "I'm not hurting anyone else," we need to consider what consequences of our actions may, in fact, be hurting someone else. Meat production produces a
lot of pollution, far more than vegetable food production. (Remember, you have to include the pollution and other environmental impacts of the vegetables fed to the meat animals, too.) People live near those sources of pollution, and are impacted by them. Raising meat animals also uses resources that could raise larger portions of vegetable foods, and while to a certain extent hunger is a political problem (we have lots of food that just doesn't get to the people who need it), even if these political distributions could be solved, we could not sustain a meat-heavy diet for our current population. Does that mean those of us who have access to a "richer" diet should "deprive" ourselves? Does it mean we should feel an extra bit of gratitude that we are fortunate enough to have the choice of whether to be a vegetarian or not? I think these are things worth thinking about.