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Animals can have rights and be protected from unnecessary cruelty without anthropomophizing them and granting full human rights. You’re equating full, sapient humans with a species specifically bred for a base purpose without higher levels of thought and expression.

I don’t even think that statement is anthropocentric hubris. If ultra-advanced aliens showed up tomorrow and started domesticating humans for food or some other purpose, I would have the default expectation of them having the same or similar morals. Maybe we’d get access to decent healthcare and good libraries before we went to the slaughterhouse.

Cows get more rights than trees or crops because they have an ability to express pain and convey emotion. They don’t have the same rights as humans because they could never give a passionate argument for suffrage to a jury.

And to be clear: there are plenty of real, tangible reasons to end animal husbandry and make everyone vegan without even touching philosophy.

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bearboiblake@pawb.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Slaves can have rights and be protected from unnecessary cruelty without anthropomophizing them and granting full human rights. You’re equating full, sapient humans with a species specifically bred for a base purpose without higher levels of thought and expression.

Your ancestors, probably

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- prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Kind of racist to suggest that slaves were a different species
  
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  - bearboiblake@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That’s exactly how people justified slavery in the past, and it is how the person I replied to justified their argument. That’s my entire point. It’s the same argument.
    
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  - Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That’s the point
    
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- stickly@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This is a ludicrous argument. If you truly believe that all animals have the same rights then the only internally consistent conclusion is the virtual extermination of the human species.
  
  Life is a zero sum game. Something lives by consuming something else or displacing it for access to limited resources. Optimizing for the minimum harm to earth’s ecosystem is always going to be the end of agriculture, housing, hunting, industry and basically everything other human institution. We’re the most insidious invasive species ever and the world would be healthier without us mucking around.
  
  So unless you’re stumping for that, don’t pretend to have the moral high ground. If you are, stop wasting your time shaming people and skip right to culling them.
  
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  - ageedizzle@piefed.ca ⁨18⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    Bro would rather exterminate all humans than admit that he should just go vegan
    
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  - bearboiblake@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I advocate for humanity to live in harmony and balance with our environment, that is why I am anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist as well as vegan. Our history is plagued with exploitation, that can’t be denied, but I am trying to change it and you are arguing that it cannot be changed and that we shouldn’t even try.
    
    Humanity’s relationship with animals and nature has historically been exploitative but it doesn’t need to be that way.
    
    We have vastly increased our ability to produce food. There are ample resources available on the planet for all of us to share and live in abundance. Human greed and selfishness is rewarded by our society.
    
    I reject your argument that life is a zero-sum game. My happiness does not need to come at the expense of another’s unhappiness. We can all work together to create a better future for all living things on our planet.
    
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    stickly@lemmy.world ⁨52⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    
    I reject your argument that life is a zero-sum game
    
    Then you’re a fundamentally blind idealist or just lying to yourself. The absolute bare minimum, purely vegetarian footprint needed to support a human is about 0.2 acres (~800 m²). That’s 0.2 acres of precious arable land that could support dozens of species of plants, insects and animals purely dedicated to one human and their crops. A diverse and thriving array of life traded for one person and a handful of domesticated species.
    
    From there you’re now looking at displacement and damage from housing, water usage, soil degradation, waste disposal, pest control and every other basic necessity. God forbid you get into modern niceties like health care, transportation, education, arts, sciences, etc…
    
    Humans aren’t friendly little forest nymphs, we’re megafauna. Even the most benign and innocuous species of primates (such as lemurs and marmosets) peaked their populations in the high millions. Getting the human population down from 8.3 billion to a sustainable level is a 99%+ reduction. That’s a more complete eradication than any genocide in recorded history, let alone the sheer amount of death and scope of institutional collapse.
    
    That’s just a flat fact of our reality. Either 99% of humans have no right to exist or humans are inherently a higher class of animal. Choose one.
    
    We have vastly increased our ability to produce food. There are ample resources available on the planet for all of us to share and live in abundance.
    
    Uh ooooooh… someone isn’t familiar with how dependent our agriculture is on pesticides, petrochemicals and heavy industry 😬
    
    We (currently) have ample oil and topsoil. Not ample sustainable food. Don’t even get me started on out other niche limits, like our approach to peak mineral supply or pollinator collapse.
    
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