Some backlog from the comments on a post about human valuations, dated end March/early April. I went on holiday with the cock, and it was really getting ridiculous, so I didn't continue the thread. I trust that readers will be able to draw their own conclusions, obviating the need for further comments on my part:

ceci: Maybe you would care to comment on the paragraph?

I'm pretty sure that the way we wipe out life, (animal, human or plant) is not the way Nature intended it to be. We can see objectively that burning so much fossil fuel has impacted our world negatively. Environment ethics is a very well-explored topic, and doesn't use hazy logic, unlike religion.

Me: Why do people always like to posit false dichotomies?

The paragraph was an invective against eco-fundamentalists like PETA and ALF.

And fossil fuel burning -> our world is impacted negatively -> we are impacted negatively.

ceci: U and ur "false dichotomies".

The state of environmental degradation today is a result of the "wishes of the majority of people" ; "eco-fundamentalists" like PETA are merely trying to reduce the damage rather than bring about a new world order. To put it this way, humans are imposing their will on 99% of the world's species, and we lack a conscience. Pretending the problem doesn't exist doesn't make you an moderate.


Since when does not speaking the same languages as a different community or population provide justification for annihilating it?

We don’t have to speak the same language to see that animals have goals like propagating themselves and surviving. We humans have magnificent goals, like building nuclear weapons and accumulating cash (and in the process abandoning all human ethics), but that doesn’t mean that we take precedence over animals.

Animals have rights too, plain and simple. Any literature that attempts to elegantly suggest that humans are free to exploit and rape the earth are simply “Easy speeches that comfort cruel men”.

Me: Once again, you prove my point. One does not have to choose between joining PETA and calling for the destruction of nature and the Earth a la Captain Planet villains. Only idiots would view the choice in those terms.

PETA pays for the defence of murderers, and you claim they are trying to reduce damage? PETA has nothing to do with environmental degradation - it's about posturing, looking cool and not eating meat; everyone going vegetarian would do very little to reverse the "state of environmental degradation".

"If I do not go vegetarian, I'm going to go shoot Bald Eagles in the Rockies!!!"

ceci: Oh what rubbish, i'm not going to go into the impact of meat eating on our environment, but if you would care to surf around or even look around you, you'll find that the unethical treatment of farm animals breeds diseases which threaten to become the biggest problems of our time.

Human beings are myopic self interested creatures, and the occasional pie in the face is needed to remind people that doing things like electrocuting 20 foxes for one fur coat is ridiculous.

Few people view actions purely based on merits, and that's why we have religion do tell us that if we don't do this and that, we'll bear the consequence in the afterlife. How would you go about telling teens to chop down fewer trees or kill fewer animals? Simply by telling them that this helps preserve our earth for our later generations? Most people just don't think that way.

As for idiots who say that they'll eat 3 animals for every one animal a vegetarian spares, by all means, because cetaris paribus, eating more meat hastens a person's demise.


when you have snooty rich women convinced they look good wearing the epidermial growths of dead animals, what else is there to do but tell kids that it's cool to be at least aware that this fur coat was created at a living thing's expense?