Eating meat is good

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.

Molecules dont experience or interpret.
The only people who believe that are panpsychics and Ecmandu.

Physics is not a logic system. Logic is a binary system that forms tree pathways, sometimes looping back to other nodes.
That is why physics simulations are inaccurate of reality, because they are rendered using logic systems, and actual physics is not a logic system (logic is a binary pathway system and reality is a fluid infinitude spectrum.)

Emotions are physical sensations, different flavors of stresses. In order for a rock to experience emotions it needs to have experience within it, which it doesn’t.

No that means choosing. Valuing is the emotion that influences whether or not something is chosen. I incorporate something if it is valuable. Valuing is not the verb of me incorporating it, valuing is the verb of me feeling the emotion that I should incorporate it (or not incorporate it.)

No. We did not select ourselves to be born, nor did we value ourselves before we were born, for instance, and neither did stars.

A rock cannot self value because it does not have a brain and so is therefore incapable of subjective interpretation
Panpsychism is woo of the highest order and I am surprised to see anyone on a philosophy forum taking it seriously

“Filtering” would be a better word for the inanimate and also applies to the animate, mind, psyche, and society. Natural anentropic filtering causes duration of being. That which filters in that which positively affects its anentropic state and also filters out that which negatively affects its anentropic state maintains and endures.

I used the word “shelter”, but “filter” would probably have been less ambiguous.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JypDrw4CHhw[/youtube]

And that is largely why people eat meat in the first place. I agree that the trend should be changed, but only by the right means. And that isn’t likely to happen.

Why?

Because a human society must put human value on top of the value hierarchy. That is what it means to be rational as a human society. It would make no sense for a society of beings to elevate as highest something else other than themselves and their own good – such a society would simply degrade for lack of self-valuing consistency.

This is the historical struggle of human societies: they are attempting to learn how to posit humanity itself, its goods and its needs and its values, as the highest value. “Society” doesn’t mean anything except this.

We eat, as all life eats. You are free to choose to eat meat or not, that is up to you, since we are omnivores. Or you can subsist entirely on Soylent if you prefer. But meat is very good for us, it nourishes us deeply. Both in body and in mind. Countering this for the sake of some weird morality of “eating life is bad!” makes no sense, because you are required to eat life in order to… live. Even plants have existence, life, self-value. It comes down to how you are able to value some other lifeform: in what ways does it present itself to you to be valued by you? I have asked here in this topic in what greater ways does a cow present itself to us to be valued other than as our meal? So far I have not received any answers to what question, which is not surprising since I do not think there are any answers to be found. As I said, if you value a specific cow as a pet for some specific reason, then you will not want to eat it, and that’s just fine. But the cow on my plate was not my pet, was not my friend and did not present itself to be valued by me in any way other than to nourish me with its meat. That sounds harsh, sure, but that is how it works.

All life dies, and is ultimately eaten… by other life. It is not a question of some silly moralizing of “it is bad that life must die!”. Only cowards and religious moralists would feel that way. Anyone who feels this strong aversion to eating meat is a coward and/or a religious moralist. And cowardice and religious morality are stupid (un-philosophical). But most people cannot handle working with multiple levels of value and ranking them into a hierarchy, they can only make determinations in black and white, namely if one value is upheld then others must be rejected; this is the only way they are able to assert a single value, because they cannot deal with the contradictions between differing values-systems. And then they must find and follow a mere morality to stabilize this weakness of theirs into something livable, as a mode of life over time.

I fully acknowledge my respect for animal life, including for cows. Animals are alive, they self-value, they are sentient, they have thoughts and feelings. They do not want to suffer and die. These are all true statements. But what is forgotten is that there are no universal values, every value flows from a self-valuing, from a being itself who posits values to and for itself, in terms of itself. Religious moralists believe in universal values, therefore they are black and white thinkers who must state as Kant tried to do that if a value is good then it must be absolute-universal, and from this follows how they must reject any value that is at odds with whatever they think of as the universal value. In most cases the supposed universal value is “life is good” or “suffering/death is bad”; this is the position from which vegetarians and vegans come, although it is funny how they do not count plant life as being alive or as being able to suffer.

What do you think happens to a cell when it is damaged? It reacts. It tries to repair itself if possible, and if not possible then its components are violently torn apart and reconstituted by other cells – the cell dies. Every cell, including plant cells, acts to remain alive and structurally stable. Why do you think cells have cell walls that are configured to only allow certain molecules in while rejecting others? Why do you think cells pump out their waste products? Oxygen is a waste product of plant cells. CO2 is a waste product of animal cells.

All values exist only because a specific being produces them, values them. No value exists in a vacuum without the valuer. So the only question is: what is your value, and why? If you feel emotionally damaged and fragile enough to be so bothered by the concept of eating meat, then your value will be as a vegetarian or vegan. That’s perfectly fine, as your valuing. But such a valuing is by no means universal. It is not my own valuing, nor that of countless other humans not even to speak of all the carnivorous animals in nature who live only because they eat meat.

The problem is that to some, the most influential, you are no more than a “cow” yourself. In fact, the word “you” came from the word “ewe”, meaning one of the sheep. That is why the word “you” has no plural. But the point is that if devouring a cow is perfectly fine, then there can be no objection to devouring ewe.

Correct. This is a game of valuing, a competition amongst self-valuing types. If enough humans start valuing in the way you mention, namely devaluing other humans to the point of seeing them as mere cows, then society breaks down. Such has happened many times throughout history, and will certainly happen again. And then other, more stable human values will ultimately reassert themselves, as they always do.

A human that values other humans as cows is exempting itself from the higher ranges in the hierarchy of human values. Do you really think humans will allow themselves to be valued as cows? Cows allow it because they are unable to do otherwise – not so for humans. This is what makes such valuing irrational in the long run.

There is no universal value which states it is bad/wrong/immoral to treat humans as cows. Only our own human self-valuing cam state that, and does state it.

You mean like the superior values such being taught from youth, before anyone has a chance to gain too much influence and see others as merely food and fodder for their pleasure, to not devour conscious beings. It seems that you favor a sense of morality.

If you dont want people to be seen as cows, first society needs to stop acting like a bunch of cows.

And yet, the fact that people continue to act like cows, keep reasserting itself in society.

I don’t just think it, I know it. The evidence is on every day.

I had such a great Tournedos yesterday. Beef is really affordable here, I will fill up my freezer with nice pieces of cow.
UrGod, this approach really gets at the core of valuing as prior to life.

First off, we all die, the Earth kills us all, and then eats us. I don’t know what the fuss about killing cows is about. What, they should all be immortal? Or die of natural causes - are we not the environment that brought forth the cow? Are beef-farmers not the environment of the cow, that births it and kills it?

Were the Comanches not part of the environment that raised bison?
We are just Earth. We kill, digest old forms, and bring forth new forms of Earth.

But in order to safeguard human self valuing it may still be useful as a tool to value other beings formally above the human - this can be an instrument of order, peace. Like sanctifying cows in India, Im sure had some calming effect.

So if we would not eat the cow based on the idea that it exists, and existence is inviolable, than that would negate the cows existence, as it needs to eat grass, and the grass also exists. Playing moral games, you could say we need to eat the cow to compensate for it eating grass. In any case when the Earth kill sus it has back both its cows and its grass, and the minerals that grass so insolently ate, and the energy from the sun that went into it all.

And eventually the Sun will eat the Earth.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
Lets eat to celebrate.
And drink some murdered grapes.

I personally eat only beef, chicken, fish and pork. I would never voluntarily make myself a meal of duck, as I find ducks to be lovely. I don’t eat what I find lovely. I would sooner eat a human than a squirrel, no fucking doubt. I consider squirrels lovelier than the average human. But I would of course never eat family or friends.

I don’t respect of acknowledge “humanity”. Its just a pot of brown resulting from throwing in all colours together indiscriminately. It is a soil from which species of refined and complex valuing are born, as well as a lot of trash that denies its own valuing and thus forms anti-being, which can’t even be eaten as it is sick. We might see eating cows as a form of respect to said cows, if at least we respect our stomachs as well and thus breed the cow in pleasure, massage it, feed it beer like Japanese farmers do to their prime livestock.

Most animals I would not eat, except if I catch them myself. I would never eat a lovely animal that I hadn’t caught with my own hands. I would not be worthy of it by my own aesthetics of life.
lovely is a value judgment, here, it is a function of me.
I don’t mind if others eat duck. I won’t ever favour eating it, thats my code, my ethics, my love.

The Earth is auto-cannibalistic like the Sun is - the Sun consumes itself, that is what causes its being as a fury - the Earth consumes itself, that is what causes its being as a paradise. And it only becomes a hell wherever humans start to pretend there is anything other than this consuming the old and bringing forth the new from the components. When humans proclaim a paradise away from Earth, this should be interpreted as an order to kill and bury them stante pede.

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Oh yeah,
Im not sure how to qualify this.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FOeyLAt2jM[/youtube]

Not sure how to classify eating life as it lives. Your thoughts?

To my knowledge I have never eaten an animal that was still alive. Of course my body eats living microorganisms all the time.

To eat a living animal would seem to be a deliberate attempt to experience the suffering and dying of the animal as part of the meal. I’m not really sure what the value could be in doing that, at least for me. Maybe it’s healthier in some ways, not cooking the animal, like with sushi. Certainly it’s healthier to eat raw vegetables just plucked from the ground rather than cooked. Even more if you put the raw just plucked vegetable in a juicer and drink the juice immediately, while all the plant parts are still so fresh. But I’m not sure this same principle applies to eating animals (I’m not sure that it doesn’t apply, either).

Yes, we are the environment that the cow exists in. It would not exist if not for us. Eating it is a form of respect: “cow, you are good, you are capable of nourishing us, unlike so many other things. Cow, you have definite value to me-- thank you.”

Like natives who would bless and revere the animal they kill and cook.

I would like to end factory farms because they represent a loss of that sort of respect, also because they produce lower quality meat. Without the existence of factory farms, McDonalds would not be possible.

Why don’t we take a break from our psychopathy for a minute and think about this rationally, eh? If I can do it, so can’t you.