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The Table Comes First Adam Gopnik pg 144...(T)he act of animal slaughter is essentially cruel: no living thing wants anything but life, on pretty much any terms it can get, and to execute inarticulate and helpless animals for our pleasure because they can't speak, organize or struggle is finally as cruel as executing babies would be because they cant speak, or struggle. That we enjoy eating them is neither here nor there; we might enjoy eating babies or chimps if we tried them, too. The attempt to justify murder by insisting that the soon to be dead dont know that they will die, or that they die without pain, is no better, the argument goes, and finally no different in moral kind, than the attempt by the SS to anesthetize or justify their own atrocities by insisting that they were being so kind to the jews by telling them that they were going to the showers...
OK, I have sorta heard this argument before but not stated so well. I dont agree on the grounds that other species are not humans and we have as our first responsibility our own best interests, and that species kill eat other species all the time, why should we consider this a problem? Eating our own babies is a whole nother thing entirely, that is not relevant here, as this is about eating other species. This also invalidates the catchy emotionally charged NAZI argument, though we do have to not that I have not ever heard that the NAZI's claimed that this was the reason they did the showers, my information is that they did it to make the job easier, those who dont know that they are going to die are easier to manage which is why they did it and I never heard them claim otherwise so this needs to be documented.
I am interested if anyone is convinced by the argument that Gopnik lays out, or can expand upon it.
Note: He does not claim that he believes it, he claims to be restating the argument that others have given him.
tyvm
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