Eating meat is good

We eat meat because that is how we value these animals that we eat. How else am I supposed to value a cow, other than as my meal? A cow is a sentient living being, and I respect that, but that respect does not immediately translate into valuing. And a cow does not exactly present itself as a repository of potential values to me, other than as my meal.

It would be impossible to expand the spheres of our valuing to include the whole world, this is why we care more about people we know than people we do not know, and this is perfectly rational to do. It is simply a limit in how we are made, how valuing works. And consciousness is based on valuing. We actually are able to care about what/who we actually… care about. It’s basic stuff, but many people do not even understand this.

Analytic, positivistic, and utilitarian “philosophies” are braincancers that do not even understand these most basic facts. They would pretend that it is “moral” to value everything equally, or at least value everything highly regardless of whether or not that thing actually is valuable to us in that way. How is a cow valuable to us? As our meal, as a means to survival as our sustenance and health. There is really no other way that a cow is meaningfully valuable to us. So why would we value a cow more than as our meal?

Values are ordered into hierarchies. It is irrational to ignore a higher-order value for a lesser-order value. If cows were able to be valued by us on a higher level than as our meal, then we would value them like that. But they aren’t. So the fact that the cow is alive and doesn’t want to die and doesn’t want to suffer isn’t much relevant to us, even though we know those are highly relevant to the cow.

We do not eat our pets because our pets are able to be valued by us on much higher, more derivative levels than simply as our meal. Pets give us more, therefore we do not eat them… therefore we do not want to eat them and are even repelled by the thought. Killing and eating something you care about would be irrational. This also goes for other people, of course. Well some of them anyway.

Let’s say there is a certain cow that I happen to care about for some reason, maybe it was given to me by someone I care about as a gift, or I raised it as a baby cow and have some sentimental attachment to it, like it were my pet. In that case it would be rational for me to refrain from eating it. I might choose not to eat it because I value it in other, greater ways than simply as my meal. But a cow that I have no attachment to I am only able to value as my meal. Unless someone is able to point out a way that cows present themselves to us as able to be valued more highly than this.

A steak on my plate is a pretty high value.

Also, we are mammals and must consume other life sufficient to rebuild our mammal bodies. Life needs to consume enough of what it already is so that it can reconstitute itself and not die. That’s how life works, that’s what life is. Eating meat is a great way for us to consume enough of what we already are (muscle and vitamins for example) so that we don’t die. And eating meat tastes really good and feels good physically, emotionally and mentally, so long as the meat is good quality.

You can value a cow as more than a meal. So…I mean…that kind it fucks up your whole premise.

I suppose that’s how it turns out when one grounds his whole worldview on subjective valuing - V"O" at its best.

Eating meat is disgusting.

I wanted to work at a slaughterhouse, to vent my frustrations of society without going to prison. But the act of eating meat is uncivilized and disgusting. It is consuming mangled flesh. I wouldn’t expect anyone to understand unless they are of a higher class of person. Such, I wouldn’t expect a dog to understand. But only someone of a higher class of aesthetics would understand. The only meat that is not disgusting to eat is salmon, it is for a refined and civilized person. The type of person that eats at Whole Foods and shuns McDonalds. The non-degenerate person, of higher caste and heavenly taste.

I realize that working at a slaughterhouse would send my soul to a lower caste, and possibly hell. But since my soul is already suffering, I may simply submerge myself in the waters of damnation, surrendering to the tears of my crimes.

Anthony Hopkins, who played a cannibal, is actually a vegetarian in real life.

An example of the high class lifestyle:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o474oCwnjlU[/youtube]

How?

What way can I value a cow more than I value it as my meal?

In an empathetic way, of valuing the cows feelings even though they are not your feelings, but believing that the cows feelings are valuable to the cow and that the cow has feelings (to begin with.)

I understand the aesthetic that sees eating meat as disgusting. But there are other aesthetics, and the one you espouse is by no means the most “noble” or “refined”. In many ways it is pretentious and superficial for how small it actually is. Why do you think I included in my OP the fact that analytics, positivists and utilitarians are unable to understand the importance of value-selecting according to the hierarchies of value by which we actually do exist?

An example of a noble and refined aesthetic other than the one you describe:

I also noticed that you didn’t bother trying to counter or refute any of the points I made. So I’ll accept that you cannot do so. But I’m happy to see you asserting you value standards here.

I already understand that the cow has feelings and that it values those feelings and its life. If I saw a cow suffering I would feel empathy for it. But those values are lower than the value of the cow nourishing me.

If something can only present itself to you to be valued as a victim, for our empathy, that is quite a low standard of value. Unless other standards are also present. Are they, in the cow? How does the cow contribute to your existence, add to your self-valuing? How can you really value the cow standing around in a field? Don’t lie. Tell me. Why is this cow so valuable to you that you would refuse to consume it for your sustenance and pleasure?

Life consumes life. That’s how life works. Feel free to counter or refute that if you want to try. Also, as I already mentioned, it isn’t possible to expand your valuing (or empathy) to the entire world; trying to do so only destroys your ability to actually value. Values are always personal, and empathy comes from our already existing values. We only care about what we… already are about, for reasons entirely beyond the empathy itself.

Look there are people I hate who I have wanted to hurt. But the society we live in, its all like “You punch someone in the face, you are a sick monster who needs to be locked away.”

All I’m saying is why do we live in a society where I get locked away for hurting a human animal, and yet its perfectly acceptable to butcher a cow to death. If its perfectly acceptable to butcher a cow to death then jesus christ allow me to hurt the people I want to hurt without going to prison!

That’s because you are also a person. Societies of any life form exist to establish rules for the protection of that life form itself. A human society must have rules that protect humans. Also, “human” animals are just animals with access to a larger range of possible values, in depths and heights as well as outwardly, than other animals. I actually respect non-human animals more than I respect human animals, in some ways and in certain instances. But the grass that the cow eats also values itself and wants to keep existing, yet the cow slaughters the grass en mass anyway.

Having a nervous system isn’t what makes a life valuable or self-valuing. Having a nervous system just expands the range of access to possible values, of possible “understandings”. But you’re free to stop eating life and waste away as a starving ascetic if you want, if that is your value.

But a human society that placed the value of a cow as equal to or greater than the value of a human would be irrational, just as would a cow society that valued humans as much or more than cows also be irrational. So you see the only real difference is in the capacity for complex valuing to emerge in a group setting of certain rules and limits that exist for the sake of those values. The cow values itself and wants to exist and not feel pain, I understand and respect these facts. Don’t mistake me for some brute.

That would depend. Define what you mean here as valuing it as my meal?

Grass doesn’t value itself nor does it “want”.
A rock doesn’t value itself.
Molecular bonds don’t value themselves.

Yes they do.

Everything that an animal does to value itself is nothing more than a further derivation of exactly what those molecules are doing, namely holding themselves in existence by resisting incoming forces thy would otherwise disintegrate or damage them.

Life is only a more developed and derivative form of non-life. The underlying fundamental self-valuing (selecting, resisting, incorporating based on holding that which oneself is as the standard-value) is the same.

Valuing is not a function of nervous systems. Nervous systems are functions of valuing.

As a sentient being who’s capable of suffering, just like you.

Philosophy, is the art of gaining greater insight and awareness of one’s environment.

Religion, politics, etc. is the art of complicating simple things, hiding the truth, confusing reality, etc.

Value is an emotional feeling. The specific definition of “value” is an emotional feeling of emotional attachment to something. It is valued. Valuable.

Molecular bonds and rocks do not have emotional feelings. Ascribing feelings to them is the art of religion, politics etc, muddying the truth and confusing the issue to create something interesting sounding like poetry. Meno is very good at this art.

We can call two magnets sticking together, that they are “valuing” each other, in order to confuse our brains, and everyone around us, so we can trick them into believing we are smart because the more we talk the more we make them feel confused, reminding them of being around actual smart people who have the same effect on them, but for different reasons, or we can be scientists, philosophers etc. and say they stick together due to magnetic forces.

Inanimate objects with no consciousness cannot self value because that would require a brain which they do not have
Life may have come from non life but that does not mean there are no fundamental distinctions between these states
The idea therefore that inanimate objects can self value is total woo

As I’ve already said, your consciousness including your thoughts, motivations and emotions is simply a much higher order derivative of the very same logic at work in non-living things. If I hit a rock with a hammer and the rock doesn’t break, what happened? The rock diffused the force of the hammer strike throughout its structure and passed that force out beyond itself, in order to maintain its being a rock. The molecules value (interpret, experience) the incoming force according to what those molecules already are; if a molecule can use the force it does, if not then it attempts to resist the force and pass it through and out of itself. What do you think your digestive system is doing? The same thing. What do you think your emotions are doing? The same thing.

Emotions are so complex and philosophically deep that philosophy hasn’t even scratched the surface yet. I am maybe the only one who had pierced that veil, and then only a little ways. For you to talk about emotions would require you to know what they are, which you don’t. And once you understand what they are you see the direct tectonic link between what a rock is doing and what your emotions are doing.

Valuing means selecting, interpreting in order to either incorporate or reject-resist. Literally everything in existence does this, because if it did not then it would not exist.