Is it okay for vegans to eat oysters?

[Busty St Clare]

Ants and termites are pretty low on the evolutionary table and being mostly scavengers, are pretty low on the food chain too (or the pointy end, depending how you view it). However they are smart enough to live in societies with millions of individuals who all work together with zero crime rate and a thriving underground dance scene. I have eaten sugar ants if you really must know.

 

[TheDeceased]

Ants are not at all intelligent. In fact studies indicate that they (and most other insects) are incapable of individual thought. They have complex societies, but work as a single entity - a colony. Although the colony is capable of achieving great things, it is not a result of individual intelligence but rather organization.

When ants are walking in a line, they are not following the ant in front of them, they are reacting to a chemical trail left by the other ants. If that trail is interrupted they cannot think their way past the situation. They become like a severed limb. Without the rest of the colony, they are nothing. Except the colony has a million limbs just like it. Killing a single ant, or a hundred ants, does absolutely nothing to the colony.

The ant itself is not intelligent.

I have eaten sugar ants if you really must know.

If I really must know? Um, when did I ask if you'd eaten ants?

I don't blame you for eating dolphin, because clearly you didn't know it was endangered and illegal to eat. But that doesn't make it right.

Fur on the other hand... what kind of fur do you wear?

^That is what I asked you, not whether or not you ear ants, if you want to continue the discussion.

I have no problem with anyone eating insects of any kind. Nor do I have a problem with anyone eating practically anything, as long as it's not at the top of the food chain/ endangered.

Eat what you want, just not dolphins/tigers/etc. Cause that is really wrong.

 

[TheDeceased]

Ants and termites are pretty low on the evolutionary table

Note: Micro-organisms are at the top of the evolutionary ladder. The animal kingdom exists almost entirely underneath the micro-organism families. Spiders and ants are highly evolved but they haven't developed a high level of consciousness because they never required one. Some species like the cockroach or the alligator have reached the pinnacle of their evolution. They don't need to adapt. They have remained practically unchanged for millions of years. That doesn't mean they are intelligent. Evolution and the evolution of consciousness do not go hand in hand.

When I've been referring to evolution I meant the evolution of our consciousness. That probably wasn't clear at points throughout the thread in retrospect. I thought it was implied.

 

[Busty St Clare]

Well you know what thought did, he thought his arse was on fire and put water on it to put it out

If I really must know? Um, when did I ask if you'd eaten ants?

I don't blame you for eating dolphin, because clearly you didn't know it was endangered and illegal to eat. But that doesn't make it right.

Fur on the other hand... what kind of fur do you wear?

^That is what I asked you, not whether or not you ear ants, if you want to continue the discussion.

I have no problem with anyone eating insects of any kind. Nor do I have a problem with anyone eating practically anything, as long as it's not at the top of the food chain/ endangered.

Eat what you want, just not dolphins/tigers/etc. Cause that is really wrong.

I worked and lived in Aboriginal communities and legally ate dolphin, large sea turtles and all manner of food essential to survival for over 40 000 years. I guess we are only including anglo saxon evolution that requires us to eat soy grains and beans (which by the way never evolved to exist on the Australian continent).

I wear possum fur, a blight of a creature that somehow was introduced into New Zealand a hundred years ago and has exploded to a population of 60 million. Evolution decided that no mammals other than a few small bats existed in my home country until man arrived 500 yr ago. Birds and lizards were the pointy end of the food pyramid for millions of years. Despite being cute and cuddly (with an unbelievably soft fur) these parasites destroy native fauna and flora with no natural predators. Today they are public enemy number one with even Greenpeace advocating their eradication. Ethically and morally I am actually doing my homeland a service by driving the local fur trade, and you will find very few locals who would disagree with me.

 

[TheDeceased]

It shouldn't be legal for Aboriginal communities to kill dolphins. It isn't essential for their survival at all. Although you could argue that because these communities were primitive before settlers arrived, they didn't know the impact of killing that particular species. Like the early Portuguese settlers in Mauritius who very rapidly slaughtered all the dodo birds and single handedly caused an extinction. I this occurred today, somebody would step in and intervene. Somehow because the aboriginal communities of Australia/ New Zealand are far more primitive, we don't intervene. I did some quick reading and I couldn't find a single piece of information to support the idea that these communities require dolphin meat for survival any more than the Portuguese required dodo meat. Please provide a link to prove otherwise.

Regarding fur: fair enough. Possums are indeed a problem in New Zealand. Most fur trades include killing/farming (in usually horrible conditions) relatively endangered and very cute species. But possums are a wild pest, so yeah. That's not an issue.

 

[Busty St Clare]

Link? The cunts are lucky to have elctricity. Put it this way, they sure as hell haven't wiped out a species in 40 000 years (except themselves) so I'd say they know what they are doing. It's not like they have dolphin steaks every day, in fact it was an honour for me to share that meal with them. You say they are more primitive yet niether the Maori nor the Aboriginees have invaded a country or waged war with another country, (you could argue that they did fight themselves but that is trivial compared to Asian or European societies), so who the fuck are you whitey, telling them what they can and can't eat. It isn't a global comodity or an industry that threatens the species so I see it as just as sustainable as being vegan or raising chickens. In fact for an "endangered species", dolphins are doing a pretty good job of surviving where I live. Only a few months ago I saw a pod of 20 dolphins just off my local beach.

 

[TheDeceased]

I didn't mean any offense.

I used the word primitive as a comparison. I don't mean to say they are primitive. I meant in comparison to the Portuguese, they were less developed. And I don't see why that means they should be judged in a different capacity than the Japanese who have 254 times the population of native New Zealand citizens and therefore a proportional number of dolphins to slaughter.

It doesn't make any sense to me why one community should be judged differently, regardless of population or cultural tradition.

I'm not telling people what they can eat. I'm saying I think eating dolphins is wrong, for the reasons I've stated, and I don't see why that should be any different from one race/society to another.

If it is a delicacy, as you've indicated, they obviously don't require it for survival so your "these cunts are lucky to have electricity" comment doesn't make much sense. Right?

 

[TheDeceased]

Put it this way, they sure as hell haven't wiped out a species in 40 000 years (except themselves) so I'd say they know what they are doing.

In pre-human times (up until about 800 years ago) it is believed that around 50 million kiwi existed across New Zealand.

There are a number of extinct species of marsupial, of which only a handful existed when the British invaded Australia. It is impossible to say that Australian Aboriginal communities didn't contribute towards the extinction of any species, as they have hunted various species of wallaby and kangaroo and other animals for thousands of years and a lot of the species are now extinct.

(I do realize by the way that the British wiped out many species and did many terrible things.)

 

[Busty St Clare]

Don't worry I'm not offended. In the South Pacific we use white cunt as a term of endearment. Hell, I'm a white cunt, pakeha, migloo (depending on whose asking )

I was mainly refering to the Aboriginees who are a simple subsistence society for the most part. The Maori on the other hand have a llot more fight in them (they did draw a truce with the English when they got their hands on gunpowder). What are you thoughts on the Haast Eagle. It was the number one predator in New Zealand, hunting the Moa, which were 3 times the size of ostriches, as well as humans. Needless to say they were quickly wiped out. Is it fair to kill an animal that is hunting humans? Or do we allow a few lost civilians to allow a species to continue to exist?

 

[TheDeceased]

Cool, I was worried I offended you. I tend to be a little blunt. I come across worse in type, I think.

No I don't think it's fair to wipe out any species, really, regardless of whether or not they "hunt" humans - which, after a little reading, isn't what actually they did or why they eventually died out. They died out because, like the Portuguese in Mauritius, the early settlers of the souther islands of New Zealand very quickly wiped out the bottom half of their food chain, the Moa. The Haast Eagle died out because it had nothing to eat. I couldn't find anything that made it out to be a threat, let alone any more of a serious threat to humans than grizzly bears, and obviously bears shouldn't be wiped off the face of the planet. If we killed all species that were a physical threat to us, the entire network of food chains would collapse.

Is it fair to kill an animal that is hunting humans? Or do we allow a few lost civilians to allow a species to continue to exist?

Even if an animal was hunting humans, it is not our place to disallow the continuation of any species. We should be about preservation.

I was mainly refering to the Aboriginees who are a simple subsistence society for the most part.

As I said, it is very difficult to deny the Aboriginal contribution to the extinction of various marsupial species. Aboriginal/Maori societies were neolithic when the first modern settlers arrived. They (Australian Aboriginals) had been living in a fairly unchanged, self-sustained state for tens of thousands of years - as you said. But that doesn't mean that they were necessarily more in touch with or more likely to sustain the environment in the long run. They had still developed societies and branched out beyond their natural food chain. Since the ecosystem is delicate, it requires an understanding of the global impact of our actions to avoid negative consequences. So in a sense, although we're not there yet, the further we develop our consciousness about animal rights and the the more we understand the state of the planet, the better off will be. That is, if Aboriginal society was not discovered by settlers and continued to thrive and increase in population, without evolving to a level of society in which environmental studies are being performed and animal rights groups existed, then wouldn't they be potentially causing more harm than some hopeful hypothetical future in which we use our intelligence and technological know-how to sustain the planet rather than destroying it? (Exactly like the dolphin evolving beyond it's survivalist instincts and saving other species?)

The slaughtering of the Moa or the Dodo wouldn't happen today. Animal rights activists would intervene regardless of cultural evolution or tradition. We need to protect our animals, regardless of whether or not we are of Aboriginal descent, Japanese descent or Dutch descent.

An enlightened perspective of animals and endangered species should be shared with the world.

And laws shouldn't discriminate between races.

 

[rickolasnice]

Um. No. Because cats are much smarter than daisies and they have a much longer life expectancy. You completely missed the point there. You got it backwards.

lol so i did

 

[PureLife]

Dolphins are brutally slaughtered in most places they are fished. On top of that they are quickly becoming extinct ( they are obviously already endangered). It's noted that they contain very high concentrations of Mercury, as do most large mammals. So it's not exactly good practice to partake in consuming them.

 

[TheDeceased]

^Thank you.

I was truly amazed how one sized this argument has been in favor of killing endangered species.

 

[delta_9]

^No one has been arguing for the killing of endangered species.

Seems like you're just dying for everyone to agree with you

 

[TheDeceased]

Actually both Busty and L2R (the main contributors aside from me) have been questioning why it is wrong to kill endangered species throughout the thread. I don't care if anyone agrees with me in the end, I just like the challenge of debate. Sometimes I get carried away, particularly when I'm high/withdrawing from something (which is pretty much all the time).

As L2R said earlier, the debate/discussion has helped him to solidify his beliefs.

Me too.

Having thought it out from all angles and fleshed it out in my head (without competition I wouldn't have been motivated to do so) I now know what I feel comfortable eating and what I don't. I'm no longer going to eat red meat/ mammals, cephalopods (octopus/squid), mistreated poultry or animals that could otherwise kick my ass.

I'm not just arguing for the sake of it, I'm working shit out.

 

[hydrochron]

Wow very intresting thread.

What about sardines? There often bait fish, how smart can they be?

 

[TheDeceased]

I'm not sure why I've decided this but I think mammals are more intelligent/ more self-conscious than other animals. I did some reading (admittedly only a couple of hours) on animal intelligence and I created a ranking system based on the information I found.

Fish in general have very limited intelligence, particularly memory and decision making.

But I suspect that I cannot lump all fish together into the one category. I'm not sure which are the intelligent fish. Now I'm going to have to do more investigation.

Re: delta's comment, rather than everyone agreeing with me, I'd prefer to encounter intelligent counter arguments. In fact I'd almost prefer, on some level, for someone to convince me that all meat is wrong, because I feel slightly conflicted about being selective regarding sentient species based on their intelligence. As L2R indicated, it is somewhat akin to valuing intelligent humans over unintelligent humans, which I also tend to do. But I'm not sure if that's fair.

It's difficult for me because, as I said, I have spent a lot of time with people who have various cognitive disabilities, including acquired brain injuries, autism and various learning disabilities.

I think, maybe, it's different for people. Regardless of whether or not a person is intelligent, I value their lives higher than most animal species because we are such a superior race. Even highly disabled people have extraordinary capabilities in comparison to most members of the animal kingdom.

Wow very intresting thread.

Thank you. I'd really prefer it if people stopped criticizing me for being too passionate about the topic and just chose to either contribute or not contribute. I really don't mean any offense and I'm not trying to manipulate people into conforming to my mentality.

All I want is an intelligent, no holds barred, discussion.

-tD

(going to read more about fish/sardines)

 

[L2R]

Actually both Busty and L2R (the main contributors aside from me) have been questioning why it is wrong to kill endangered species throughout the thread.

No, we weren't questioning that at all.

I was questioning the ethical line between animal and vegetable. Actually, if you look back, I was the one who laboured the endangered species point to contradict that ethical line.

I'm not just arguing for the sake of it, I'm working shit out.

No, it actually is the former, if not both. You may not realise it, but delta_9 is correct, mate.

 

[TheDeceased]

Keep denying shit that you've been doing.



After all, it's not all there in black and white.

(Mate.)

Particularly Busty.

I'm not sure what you're denying.

She flat out said that she has and will continue to eat dolphin meat.

You asked me: why would we evolve to the state of being able to eat something if we weren't capable of eating it?

Unless you edit your posts, anyone can scroll back and see that.

So fuck it.

I don't give a shit.

 

[TheDeceased]

again: (in case anyone doesn't want to bother going back through the thread.

I don't eat tigers or dolphins, but i must ask: what establishes that they were not meant to be our food? If the [x] really meant for this, then why are we allowed to be capable of eating them should we choose to?

I wear fur and I'd eat dolphin. I am no monster I just accept that the world involves consumption and recycling of energy.

Actually both Busty and L2R (the main contributors aside from me) have been questioning why it is wrong to kill endangered species throughout the thread.

How have I lied?

These quotes clearly substantiate my statement,

Bitch.