Columbia students’ taste for red meat. (Spec)
The FDNY’s big, strong muscles. (Gothamist)
David Paterson’s power obsession. (NY Daily News)
By
Bwog Staff on
Feb 21, 2010 
27 Comments
Columbia students’ taste for red meat. (Spec)
The FDNY’s big, strong muscles. (Gothamist)
David Paterson’s power obsession. (NY Daily News)
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27 Comments
@i hate vegetarians going to their houses for dinner is awful.
@chikinroolz True dat son
@Anonymous “But they miss the crucial point that humans possess the ability to recognize what suffering is and its ethical importance.”
No, honey, you do. There is a very rich and complex debate concerning the grounding of our duties towards animals (see, for example, not just Peter Singer and Tom Regan, but also Elizabeth Anderson, Martha Nussbaum, and James Rachels), but all parties to the current debate concede that, however construed, it seems very strange to create an artificial “moral community” to whom rights are due for the basic fact of being able to recognize the concept of a right, the notable problem with this argument being that, stemming as it does from the social contract view of society, it ignores all those members of society to whom we generally agree that rights are due and yet who could not possibly be party to any contract (children, those in comas, the old, and so forth). There is, moreover, further agreement concerning animal rights and suffering: if we agree that John’s right that I not hit him stems directly from the fact that it would cause him pain, and if we agree (as stated above) that there is no “moral community” we can designate (except artificially) the members of which may possess rights—i.e. for whom pain would somehow be construed to be more morally salient—then it is remarkable to argue that the suffering of any animal, human or non-human, does not guarantee it the same right against one who would hurt it not to hurt it. That does not mean that utilitarian concerns—Peter Singer’s “interests”—are the grounding of all moral duties to each other and to non-human animals, but this point about pain and suffering is one sufficiently basic that utilitarians, deontologists, and Aristotelians can alike find it convincing. It is thus not my ability to “recognize suffering”—by which I take it the author means to understand the intentional causing of suffering to be a moral wrong—that guarantees me a right that I not suffer; rather, it is this very ability *to* suffer that guarantees me such a right. The point is not “tired and insipid”: it’s basic.
The moral of the story: think a little before you broach a topic.
@Since when did vegetarianism become a hip/hipster thing to do?
@Anonymous yeah, isn’t it hip to have your own personal meat locker full of raw shit now? there was some nyt article about it
@DJ PHALLUZ PHALLIC GIRTH FTW!
@Carnivore I’m not against eating meat but I found this article to be cringe-worthy, mostly because it makes no sense. Or maybe it does, but I was just so distracted by the classic “I’m trying really hard to not write like a freshman and am therefore writing exactly like a freshman” tone (please save phrases like “intrinsic moral excellences” for your uni-writing lens paper, thanks) that I failed to see any sort of convincing argument, never mind frivolous things like evidence or data.
I probably would have had more respect for him if he had just said “I eat meat because it’s delicious and because fuck you.”
@JJ He got a reaction because he posted his own opinion, and wasn’t trying to win everyone over. This is an opinion piece remember? If you disagree with the author, you disagree. You don’t blindly say that he was “shitty and just plain wrong.”
@Anonymous uh oh, the self righteous hipsters are beginning to cluster searching for an iphone app to rebuttal with. unfortunately there is no app for that.
@at least the writer got a reaction, which is more than other Spec articles on the Bwog can claim.
@He got a reaction because everyone called him out on how shitty and just plain wrong his arguments were. If thats the kind of reaction you value then yes, at least he got a reaction
@totally true.
@Anonymous There are two types of people in the world: those with phallic girth and those without phallic girth. Clearly all the haters fall under the latter. Hooray for Chipotle!
@Anonymous i agree, clearly. i think it was an intentionally humorous article. lighten up, people.
@clearly everyone that just posted is a bitter vegetarian
@Erroneous Erroneous!! There are completely legitimate and compelling arguments to eat a lot less meat than what the average american currently consumes, and his arguments completely missed or misrepresented them.
@snap into a slim jim OOOOOH YEAH
@I am really curious to know what criteria were used to judge that article as being worthy of being published. I thought spec was supposed to have some standards
@Anonymous They probably just wanted more page views
@standards? hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
@don't forget keeping the meat industry afloat is an “intrinsic moral excellence”???
and I think this quote speaks for itself:
‘Cattle, for example, are dependent on humans for survival. If they were rational beings with communication skills they would be screaming at humans, ‘keep eating hamburgers.'”
@oh and it’s hilarious that Peter ends the article saying we’ve “transcended the prejudices” of sexism when he begins it by stating his belief that vegetarianism is “an excuse for self-conscious female teenagers to construct their daily diets around celery and carrots.”
@Agreed that spec article was atrocious.
” In areas of the world where the land is not arable, for example, people subsist on an animal-based diet. Should humans starve to death instead of harvesting animals? An extreme vegetarian might think so. Would a sane human not inflict suffering on their own species for selfish betterment?”
Increased meat consumption is causing famines as more and more arable land goes towards growing crops to feed livestock rather than feeding humans.
@also I don’t really think those “areas of the world where the land is not arable” apply to the animal cruelty arguments vegetarians lob against businesses like the American Beef industry. last i checked, nomads in the gobi desert weren’t exactly practicing the castration and caging techniques of the American West.
@seas kid exactly. and there are cultures who have no possibility of a locally grown vegetarian diet – like nomads and inuits. is their consumption of meat unethical?
@Anonymous I agree. The ethical treatment of animals is not the only reason people go vegetarian by the way. The health benefits of a vegetarian/vegan diet are exponential, as is the energy and precious natural resources saved. I’ve been vegetarian (vegan most of the time) for 10 months now, and it is the best lifestyle decision I have ever made. http://www.goveg.com/environment.asp http://www.goveg.com/healthConcerns.asp
@the spec article on vegetarianism reads like its research was done by Sarah Palin.