Hunting vs. Farming, which is more moral?

[Egiam]

This thread is not about the morality of eating meat. It is about the difference between hunting meat, or farming meat.

Hunting:
-Animals live freely
-Animals are fit
-Animals eat natural diet
-Chance of wounding animal that gets away
-Painful death possible
-Not Kosher
-Animal might be responseable for young ones
-Hunter's destroy wilderness peace
-Irresponseable hunters waste meat, ignore regulations, litter, get drunk, start forest fires... etc.

Farming:
-Animals die painlessly
-The animals do not have to fight for life/live in ease
-Animals are sometimes abused, live in cramped, dirty spaces
-Animals do not live naturally
-Animals often do not eat their natural diet
-Kosher


At this point, I consider responseable hunting to be a more moral way to get meat.

What are your thoughts on this?

[skywalker]

This thread is not about the morality of eating meat. It is about the difference between hunting meat, or farming meat.

Hunting:
-Animals live freely
-Animals are fit
-Animals eat natural diet
-Chance of wounding animal that gets away
-Painful death possible
-Not Kosher
-Animal might be responseable for young ones
-Hunter's destroy wilderness peace
-Irresponseable hunters waste meat, ignore regulations, litter, get drunk, start forest fires... etc.

Hunters destroy the peace of wilderness far less than farms... At least there still is a wilderness to hunt in, instead of a farm, factory, parking lot, etc.


Farming:
-Animals die painlessly
-The animals do not have to fight for life/live in ease
-Animals are sometimes abused, live in cramped, dirty spaces
-Animals do not live naturally
-Animals often do not eat their natural diet
-Kosher

Farmed animals don't always die painlessly. You might be told that they do, but there are often times that they aren't.

Every space on a farm is more cramped than an animal would have "in the wild."

Technically most farmed animals are not kosher, because they've not been killed in accordance with the laws. There is a specific way that kosher butchers kill animals to ensure as painless a death as possible (see previous point about the slaughterhouse not being painless). Basically, if you're going to quibble this much about kosher-ness of various forms of meat, unless it's been butchered by a kosher butcher under strict procedures, farmed meat is no more kosher than hunted meat.

[Maximum Zersk]

And it is possible to have hunted meat kosher/halal/whatever. I should know, I've had some.

[Rutskarn]

I dunno. I don't see it as much of a moral issue, personally.

My current perspective, and one that I would research much further before putting it meaningfully into practice, is that (most) animals are not sapient. Thus, while they feel things and have emotions, there is no consciousness to process these emotions.

If this is correct, then it ultimately doesn't matter what "lower" animals feel, any more than it matters that metal rusts and jelly goes wiggly when you shake it. It's a response, but there's no "person" having the response.

Again, this is just a theory, and I'd sure as hell put a lot more research into it before I hunted or went into factory farming. And I'm not likely to beat a dog, either--there's an instinctive pity for it, there's no reason to do so, and if it turns out that I'm wrong, my actions are unforgivable.

[Telonius]

Assuming we'd still want to consume the same amount and type of meat as before...

We'd need to release an awful lot of cows and pigs into the wild if we were intending to hunt them. This could crowd out a lot of native species.

[GenPol]

With hunting, you are at least giving the animals a fighting chance.

Well, mostly at least, depends on how you hunt. For instance, going in with handcrafted bows and arrows is probably more fair than RPGs from helicopters...

Hunting also fits into the cycle of nature. Chances are you're not the only one who wants to hunt that rabbit (birds of prey, big cats, etc.)

I think I'd have to vote for hunting, but I don't think that farming is overly evil, or even unnecessary. But if you hunt the way that the Native Americans did, for instance, and not waste any part of the body, hunting is probably more ethical.

EDIT: I do agree with the post above, however.

[Ormagoden]

Survival > method of meat production.

That being said, this isn't the stone age. We don't have to hunt for our food. I love meat, I also love animals. I think animals should be treated humanely while in our care.

I also notice you left out some additional cons of farming meat.

Such as

-destruction of the air quality
-destruction of soil quality
-high consumption of water vs farming plants
-loss of genetic diversity

[RS14]

I personally don't eat farmed meat. I'll probably hunt sometime, but don't have the ability to do so currently.

I submit that any animal in the wild will probably die in an unpleasant manner--either of disease, starvation, exposure, or hunting. Dying by gunshot does not seem bad in comparison to many of the other possibilities, or even in comparison to hunting by other predators. I'd much rather be shot than bitten to death.

[Jack Squat]

.. more fair than RPGs from helicopters...

I need to go hunting with some people you know apparently :smallwink:

As to the topic, it really depends on who's doing what. In hunting you can kill the animal so that they drop instantly and (probably) feel very little pain. You can also shoot an animal in the leg and chase it down for a mile before it dies, exhausted. The former is moral, the latter isn't.

There are less clear-cut lines in farming than in hunting because farmers are running a business, they aren't in it for the good of the animals. If a farmer/company takes reasonable steps towards minimizing the discomfort of animals while still being able to effectively run a business, I'd say they're just as moral as the hunter who only kills for food and goes out of his way for clean kills.

[JonestheSpy]

I dunno. I don't see it as much of a moral issue, personally.

My current perspective, and one that I would research much further before putting it meaningfully into practice, is that (most) animals are not sapient. Thus, while they feel things and have emotions, there is no consciousness to process these emotions.


Animals definitely have consciousness, even if it isn't at the level of human sapience (with a couple of possible exceptions). They are certainly capable of a wide range of emotions and have the mental ability to process them, at least as much as a very young human child.

As far as the original topic, I think there's no way of producing food that could be more immoral than our standard practices in factory-farming animals, for reasons mentioned above and just the flat-out horrible conditions animals are subjected to when alive - and their deaths aren't necessarily painless at all.

Now there are lots of better ways to raise animals, but they all involve meat being more expensive and there just being less of it, as to raise animals decently they need more room than the factory farmers that provide for our current amount of consumption can give them. I think it's worth it.

As for hunting, the only animal I'd really feel ok about killing are wild pigs. In the U.S. they are a very destructive invasive species - actually descended from domestic pigs gone feral - and actually can be quite dangerous, so it even things out even if you're not relying on a bow and arrow. Hunting pigs in America is not just "less immoral" but actively positive, unless you're against eating all meat.

[Rutskarn]

Animals definitely have consciousness, even if it isn't at the level of human sapience (with a couple of possible exceptions). They are certainly capable of a wide range of emotions and have the mental ability to process them, at least as much as a very young human child.

I'd have to see some sources on this, as it doesn't jive with the research I'm operating on. This is an issue I'm prepared to give great consideration.

[Jack Squat]

As for hunting, the only animal I'd really feel ok about killing are wild pigs. In the U.S. they are a very destructive invasive species - actually descended from domestic pigs gone feral - and actually can be quite dangerous, so it even things out even if you're not relying on a bow and arrow. Hunting pigs in America is not just "less immoral" but actively positive, unless you're against eating all meat.

I could be wrong, but I think it goes beyond just being descended from captive pigs, who I believe start to grow tusks if in the wild for more than a month - so a feral hog could have once been domesticated.

[Cubey]

Hunting could never sustain populations as large as what we currently have. There's a lot more humans and a lot less wild territories (so less wild animals too) than 500 or even 200 years ago.

Also, note that while farm animals usually don't live very happy lives, wild ones aren't all sunshine and flowers either. Their lives are full of constant awareness and fear. They have to be wary of predators, and constantly compete with others of the same species for food, mates and territory. Many wild animals suffer deaths as grizzly as if they were butchered at a very inhumane slaughterhouse.

Compare this to farms, where animals live without the fear of predators and starvation, their two biggest enemies in the wild. Some farms have inhumane conditions of overcrowding, terrible hygiene or maybe even a disease or two - and that's horrible. But a farm with humane conditions is definitely a better environment for an animal than the wilds, even if its death to sustain humans is inevitable.

[SDF]

Kosher killing can still cause the animal an agonizing death worse than many factory farm techniques. You basically slice it's throat till it bleeds out.


Well, mostly at least, depends on how you hunt. For instance, going in with handcrafted bows and arrows is probably more fair than RPGs from helicopters...

Imagine how much cooler the Oregon Trail game would have been if that's how we did it!

[JonestheSpy]

I'd have to see some sources on this, as it doesn't jive with the research I'm operating on. This is an issue I'm prepared to give great consideration.

Well, my main source is my personal experience plus the experience of people I know who have spent a lot of time with animals, including my wife who grew up on farm that also ran cattle. It doesn't take much time to observe animals experiencing fear, loneliness, affection, anger, and other emotions, both in the wild and domestically.

A particularly good book about the subject is When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy, which discusses both animals themselves and the biases inherent in so many academic studies of animals' intelligence and emotional lives.

Personally, I think that a lot of the charges of anhropomorphic projection that occur when one talks of animals having emotions and consciousness come from not wanting to admit that we are animals ourselves, and have a lot more in common with other mammals than we feel comfortable thinking about.

Also, let's not forget that here's a huge range of intelligence in other species. Almost everyone agrees that domestic turkeys are really really dumb, whereas octopi regularly freak out those who study them by just how smart they are.



I could be wrong, but I think it goes beyond just being descended from captive pigs, who I believe start to grow tusks if in the wild for more than a month - so a feral hog could have once been domesticated.

I read soewhere that it takes three generations out of captivity for feral pig to become indistinguishable from pigs that had no domestic ancestors at all, but I don't know if that's completely accurate. Either way, feral pegs are dangerous and ecologically destructive as all heck.

[Elystan]

First thing I thought of when I saw the title was comparing the morality of living in hunter gatherer groups to developing agriculture and laying the foundations for civilisation. The demand for meat is too vast to simply hunt, and species would be wiped out in the blink of an eye.

[JonestheSpy]

First thing I thought of when I saw the title was comparing the morality of living in hunter gatherer groups to developing agriculture and laying the foundations for civilisation. The demand for meat is too vast to simply hunt, and species would be wiped out in the blink of an eye.

Well, that's completely true, but I think we're talking about a more individual level here.

[shadow_archmagi]

I'd have to see some sources on this, as it doesn't jive with the research I'm operating on. This is an issue I'm prepared to give great consideration.

Personally, I believe that there is no magical dividing line between sapience and nonsapience. It's all a matter of degrees, much as there is no strict line between my gaming computer and my gameboy color.

Random Animal Thoughts (Sources not Cited):

1. Ravens will grab tough-to-crack nuts and drop them on roads, and then wait for a car to drive and crush it.

2. While many animals fail to understand mirrors (Everyone knows of someone's pet who treated their reflection as a rival) not all do. Pigs, for example, comprehend how mirrors work (so if you have a delicious meal around the corner, and a mirror there, the pig will see the meal in the mirror and know to rush around the corner to get to the food. Or, if you put a mark on a monkey's head, and then show it a mirror, it will touch the spot on its head.)

3. Monkeys shown a video of their mother acting terrified of a snake and then exposed to a snake were distinctly more terrified of it than ones that were simply exposed with no prologue.

4. An experiment was partially conducted involving distributing small metal tokens and teaching chimps that the tokens could be exchanged for one of a variety delicious foods. The monkeys reacted much as people would; many of them had a favorite food they would purchase more often, and if the researchers changed the amount of food given out (2 cubes of jello rather than 3, for example) then the chimps bought less of that.

Ultimately it was aborted because the owners of the chimps were in the habit of renting them out to a variety of customers and stated that they feared that once the chimps learned to use currency, it would make them too "different" to be used for most experiments.

[RS14]

Hunting could never sustain populations as large as what we currently have. There's a lot more humans and a lot less wild territories (so less wild animals too) than 500 or even 200 years ago.

Meat isn't necessary to sustain our populations, and farm-raised animals are an inefficient way to feed people.


Also, note that while farm animals usually don't live very happy lives, wild ones aren't all sunshine and flowers either. Their lives are full of constant awareness and fear. They have to be wary of predators, and constantly compete with others of the same species for food, mates and territory. Many wild animals suffer deaths as grizzly as if they were butchered at a very inhumane slaughterhouse.

Compare this to farms, where animals live without the fear of predators and starvation, their two biggest enemies in the wild. Some farms have inhumane conditions of overcrowding, terrible hygiene or maybe even a disease or two - and that's horrible. But a farm with humane conditions is definitely a better environment for an animal than the wilds, even if its death to sustain humans is inevitable.

The difference is that we aren't really responsible for wild animals. If they die horribly, so be it. We were not involved. We are, at least in my mind, obligated to provide humane conditions to the animals that we farm. What one individually considers to be humane will vary; personally my standards in that matter are quite strict.

Besides, if the wilderness is so bad, is that really an argument against hunting? As I argued above, death by gunshot is not all that bad. Even a shot that wounds the animal is not likely to be significantly worse than any number of other natural ways they could die.

[Shadow of the Sun]

I don't give a flying flip about the moral issues at the moment, but it's an accepted anthropological fact: hunter gatherers have much less illness and a much healthier diet.

To play devils advocate, should we be looking at how the animals feel compared to how the humans are doing?

[Rutskarn]

Well, my main source is my personal experience plus the experience of people I know who have spent a lot of time with animals, including my wife who grew up on farm that also ran cattle. It doesn't take much time to observe animals experiencing fear, loneliness, affection, anger, and other emotions, both in the wild and domestically.


I'm not arguing that animals don't have, and display, emotions, but that doesn't make them sapient. Sims have emotions, but I don't feel guilty about killing one.

The question is whether or not they're sapient.

[RS14]

It's an accepted anthropological fact: hunter gatherers have much less illness and a much healthier diet.

In comparison to whom? Farmers?

I haven't studied anthropology; can you provide a citation for this?

[FoE]

Oh yeah, this ain't a loaded topic.

[JonestheSpy]

I don't give a flying flip about the moral issues at the moment, but it's an accepted anthropological fact: hunter gatherers have much less illness and a much healthier diet.


Depends very very much on which groups of hunters vs which groups of farmers you're comparing.

It is, however, an absolutely undeniable fact that farming supports far greater populations than hunting and gathering over the same amount of territory.


I'm not arguing that animals don't have, and display, emotions, but that doesn't make them sapient. Sims have emotions, but I don't feel guilty about killing one.

The question is whether or not they're sapient.

Wow, umm... no, sims don't have emotions. They are little computer programs designed to simulate emotion. They are as incapable of emotion as your email program, or a smiling Barbie doll for that matter.

As for sapience, it's a spectrum, as folks have already said, not a clear yes/no equation. But if you're including little computer game features in your calculations, i think your whole system probably needs to be recalibrated.

[Player_Zero]

Hunting for sport is the problem, not hunting for food.

[SDF]

Sport hunting is used as population control as part of environmental sustainability efforts.

[Egiam]

Many people argue that we could not sustain our massive population with hunted meat. I don't agree with this because it is possible in this day and age to live a healthy life without meat at all. One could essentially be mostly vegetarian (like many others), and eat meat that they hunt.

Heck... I might do that after college.


Oh yeah, this ain't a loaded topic.
At least participate a little! Even if you do think that the result has been predetermined, you might take the time to share something interesting on the topic.

[Thajocoth]

They're both 100% moral, assuming it's for food. In the case of hunting, I add a stipulation that the animal isn't threatened, endangered or extinct.

LESS moral would be to decide we don't need those animals, so we don't care for any, and we build malls in all the places they could live...

There's a reason the animals we eat aren't the ones we wipe out. Eat meat to preserve the species of the animal involved!

Not that I really eat much meat myself... I'll occasionally have a McDonald's Double Cheeseburger (only cheese & ketchup), but aside from that I don't really participate in my own views on this matter.


...than RPGs from helicopters...

I'm imagining a helicopter dropping a D&D player's handbook onto the head of a bison to knock it out. I know an RPG is some kinda weapon, but every time it's used I always imagine roleplaying games.

[Kuma Da]

Another thing to consider is that, while hunting is commercialized to an extent, it is not nearly as dauntingly commercial as modern farming. The potential for profit with hunting is either a) sell the deer you bring down, or b) sell goods and services to the hunter. The potential for profit with mass farming, on the other hand, is colossal. There's no messing about in the woods looking for prey or marketing specialized tools to a small segment of the total population. Everyone needs to eat. That's a potential market of everyone ever, and goods can be produced for that market with a minimum of effort.

The problem, of course, is that the fat stacks of cash to be had if you're the head of a company like Perdue encourage cost-cutting and corner-cutting. This is where the non-painless slaughter of animals, environmental degradation, and, occasionally, ruin of small businesses comes into play.

[Riffington]

And it is possible to have hunted meat kosher/halal/whatever. I should know, I've had some.

Would that mean trapping rather than shooting?
Or are you just talking about fishing?

[SDF]

The problem, of course, is that the fat stacks of cash to be had if you're the head of a company like Perdue encourage cost-cutting and corner-cutting. This is where the non-painless slaughter of animals, environmental degradation, and, occasionally, ruin of small businesses comes into play.

This is true of nearly all production industries. Which, is why government oversight keeps businesses from doing too much harm to the ecosystem. The food industry is different in that it directly interacts with animals, but the impact stays about the same.

[Maximum Zersk]

Would that mean trapping rather than shooting?
Or are you just talking about fishing?

Shooting. It's possible, but you have to be fast.

EDIT:


Kosher killing can still cause the animal an agonizing death worse than many factory farm techniques. You basically slice it's throat till it bleeds out.

Possibly, but not most of the time. Almost always, the barn loses blood before it can feel the pain.

Unless it's one of those "Kosher" factories, where the animal is tied upside-down.

[THAC0]

Neither is inherently more moral.

However, each can be done in ways that would make it either more or less moral.

Hunting alone cannot sustain a population these days, but IMO there are some serious health issues with current farming practices.

Personally, I prefer to eat meat that I have procured myself, be it by hunting, fishing or farming my own chickens. Heck, the above goes for fruits and veggies too! I'm not yet at a point in my life where I can do entirely that, but we are working on it.

[Trog]

This breaks down into two moral questions:

1) Which choice is more beneficial for humans (i.e. which choice presented here prevents the most suffering of humanity)?

2) Which choice is more beneficial for animals (i.e. which choice presented here prevents the most suffering of the animals in question)?

Let's answer the easiest one first.

Q: Which one is the most beneficial for animals?

A: Neither.
Not eating the animals at all would, in all likelihood, be their choice (assuming they could make one or that a person could make the choice for them, putting themselves in the position of the animal). That said, even if humans didn't exist predators still would so the first choice (hunting) is sort of closest to the natural order of things. As much as livestock would love it if there were no livestock-eating predators in the world that doesn't change the fact that there always will be something higher up on the food chain than they are.

I've stated before that the real trade-off for animals on a farm is trading cramped quarters and a shorter life span for "free" food, shelter, and medical care. Sometimes it's more cruel than that of course.

So choice number one (hunting) is the most moral if we are talking only about the animals themselves, I'd say. Though really this might depend on the quality of care of the animal and the allowed lifespan before they were butchered on a farm versus the conditions in the wild (availability of food, quantity of predators, etc.).

Q: Which one is the most beneficial for humans?

A: Farming. Raising animals as livestock feeds people more efficiently than hunting animals for food. This is why farming has replaced hunting as the primary way the vast majority of humans on earth get their meat. If hunting was more profitable for humans to do we'd all still be hunting for the majority of our food. Clearly, we are not. (EDIT: In some areas of the world the climate might be such that one or the other is not feasable and so the answer may vary in smaller regions but still stands when you look at humanity as a whole.)

The underlying question to both of these is "Are the needs of humans greater in importance to the needs of animals?" Again, mankind has already answered this in deed over the centuries. Clearly we value ourselves over other species. Likely this attitude is prevalent in all species on earth.

[Riffington]

Shooting. It's possible, but you have to be fast.

Not just fast. Olympic-quality.


Possibly, but not most of the time. Almost always, the barn loses blood before it can feel the pain.
It's not a blood loss thing, it's a perfusion thing. The animal loses consciousness immediately, long before blood loss is significant.



tied upside-down.
That doesn't work.

[MethosH]

Isn't this post risking falling into the "real world laws and politics" category? :smallconfused:

I advice caution :smallbiggrin:

[Maximum Zersk]

Not just fast. Olympic-quality.


It's not a blood loss thing, it's a perfusion thing. The animal loses consciousness immediately, long before blood loss is significant.



That doesn't work.

I've had Halal/Kosher hunted meat.

Okay, okay, I don't know much about what happens, fine. :smalltongue:

That's exactly the point. I've heard of factories that tried that.

[Coidzor]

Hmm, hunter-gatherer societies have been considered to be less warlike, as the introduction of agriculture is credited for the ability to have dedication to war arise.

That's the only way for an attempt at a moral distinction to be drawn as far as I've been able to determine.

[Maximum Zersk]

Who certified it? In both cases, you must use a blade without a point, which cuts both jugulars and carotids, along with trachea in a single stroke, without cutting the spinal cord.

This can theoretically be done by an Olympic archer, with an arrow whose head is that knife.


Who certified them? This violates the requirement that the animals be upright or lying down.

It was hunted by a friend of my family's, who also can only eat meat that way.

I don't know if it was true. There were some stories about stuff like that, though, so I don't know.

[Zevox]

I don't really see either as a moral issue, honestly. But of course the amount that I care about animals, particularly those I eat, is next to nothing anyway, so that's coloring my perspective on the matter.

Zevox

[Kneenibble]

Hmm, hunter-gatherer societies have been considered to be less warlike, as the introduction of agriculture is credited for the ability to have dedication to war arise.

That's the only way for an attempt at a moral distinction to be drawn as far as I've been able to determine.

It enables greater dedication to a lot of other things to arise too, like literacy and music and metallurgy. What it allows is much greater social stratification: instead of all the men in a culture fighting as well as a bunch of other stuff, you have one particular group of men instead, while others pursue other activities. So I'm not sure your determination works.

Beyond that, even as a vegetarian, I'm pretty down with Trog's post. Unless one is quoting Genesis, there's a certain selfish existential quality to discussing the morality of keeping food animals.

But I also resonate with JonestheSpy's sentiments that a person can't really answer this question fully unless they have actual experience with animals domesticated and wild.

[Coidzor]

It enables greater dedication to a lot of other things to arise too, like literacy and music and metallurgy. What it allows is much greater social stratification: instead of all the men in a culture fighting as well as a bunch of other stuff, you have one particular group of men instead, while others pursue other activities. So I'm not sure your determination works.

Indeed. I find the odds of examining the question coming down in favor of the neo-primitivist luddites slim to none, however, I find that there's more moral validity in that question, considering that animals are incapable of moral choices or else we'd look down on dolphins and chimps and other animal-rapists as lacking.

Yes, I just went there.


But I also resonate with JonestheSpy's sentiments that a person can't really answer this question fully unless they have actual experience with animals domesticated and wild.

Indeed, and then you have to get into the thorny issue of having killed or driven off the natural predators (See: North American wolves, bears, and big cats) and thus having taken their places for ourselves.

[Trog]

Hmm, hunter-gatherer societies have been considered to be less warlike, as the introduction of agriculture is credited for the ability to have dedication to war arise.
I disagree with this notion. People fight over limited resources, be it food or what have you.

Say there are two cavemen. One caveman has a banana (or... you know... whatever the hell cavemen ate... Brontosaurus Burgers or something) and there is no other food due to some natural disaster, say. They will fight over who gets that banana. Scale this up to a small tribe fighting with another small tribe over a small quantity of bananas and you have the seeds of a war.

So saying war only happens after you have agriculture doesn't make much sense to me. Since hunter/gatherers would seem to be more likely to encounter shortages of food since they do not grow their own it seems more likely that there would be more reason to fight with one's neighbors over these sorts of things.

Ultimately this all depends on what scale you begin to call a fight a war, really. No clear boundary there.

On a semi-related note to these discussions, I heard the other day an interesting theory about how humans became as intelligent as they are today. The theory is that it was in part due to the human invention of cooking. Since cooking your food (meat, veggies, what-have-you) makes it easier to digest you have to spend less energy in your gut digesting your food and have excess energy to redirect to other areas of your body's development. So as our gut shrank, our brain grew, goes the theory. I dunno, I found that insightful.

[RS14]

I disagree with this notion. People fight over limited resources, be it food or what have you.

Say there are two cavemen. One caveman has a banana (or... you know... whatever the hell cavemen ate... Brontosaurus Burgers or something) and there is no other food due to some natural disaster, say. They will fight over who gets that banana. Scale this up to a small tribe fighting with another small tribe over a small quantity of bananas and you have the seeds of a war.

So saying war only happens after you have agriculture doesn't make much sense to me. Since hunter/gatherers would seem to be more likely to encounter shortages of food since they do not grow their own it seems more likely that there would be more reason to fight with one's neighbors over these sorts of things.


Agriculture permits the development of a professional warlike class. Prior to that, a group can support very few dedicated warriors, as everyone essentially must work to support themselves. Pre-agricultural societies would most likely also tend towards being sparse, and it would thus be difficult for a particular warlike group to reliably find other groups to prey upon.

[Krade]

The first thing I thought of when I saw this thread was 'Ishmael' by Daniel Quinn. It didn't start out on topics he hit on, but it has since turned towards them. Here's the gist of the relevent points (That I can remember) he's made throughout his books:

War is not a natural process found in animals or pre-agricultural humans. Battles? Yes. Not war. War's purpose is domination, elimination or probably a couple other things I can't remember. Skirmishes over food or other resources is natural. Agricultural society has decided, countless times, that a species of animal or even another group of humans needs to be outright eliminated to "protect" their food and resources. Before agriculture, everything was (more or less) balanced. Humans never hunted animals to extinction. That's not even counting plants. This could go on and it has been some time since I read these so I'll just stop this one here.

For the individual, the calories gained for calories spent ratio is way higher for hunter/gatherers than farmers. Farming barely covers the use of calories for the farmer. Hunter/Gathering covers it several times over.

Of course, without agriculture or civilization, we would still be living in tribes with nowhere near the amount of advancement we currently enjoy. In the end, it's all a trade-off. What many people want, often without realising exactly that they want it, is to revert back to something resembling tribalism and hunter/gathering. This notion is ridiculous. What we do need is the next step. We need to move past civilization. It's hard to think about that, I know. Impossible even. That's why we haven't done it yet. The main problem here is that we can only hope that we figure it out before civilization buckles under it's own weight.

-----------

So that's about it, I think. I probably got some of that wrong, but that's what I got. I will add that I have tried explaining the concept of moving past civilization to various teachers (both high school and college) and have been met, each time, with stalwart denial of even the remote possibility of there being somewhere to go after civilization. I find this amusing.

[Shadow of the Sun]

Based on archaeological records, the shift from hunting and gathering to farming is directly related to declining health due to a much less varied diet. Farming's okay, I'm not going to dispute that. But it ain't what we're made to do- we're made to hunt, find food, and such.

I've got a paper here pointing out the differences in dietary energy between the palaeo age hunter gatherer and the modern society- and it's a very big gap.

[Serpentine]

This breaks down into two moral questions:

1) Which choice is more beneficial for humans (i.e. which choice presented here prevents the most suffering of humanity)?

2) Which choice is more beneficial for animals (i.e. which choice presented here prevents the most suffering of the animals in question)?There is a third question:
3) Which choice is more beneficial for the environment as a whole?

On the balance, I'd say hunting is the most moral in this regard, but, as with the other two questions, it depends on how it's done. I've gotta study, but for a quick'n'dirty comparison: hunting is more likely to directly drive animals extinct, through eating an animal to death, or removing important prey for another species, or otherwise unbalancing an ecosystem; while farming has a far greater, large-scale and long-lasting impact on the environment, through water diversion and contamination, land clearing, introduction of feral animals, competition with native animals, chemical use, soil structure destruction, "pest" control (e.g. the shooting of wedge-tail eagles for supposedly killing lambs), and so on.

[skywalker]

Not just fast. Olympic-quality.


It's not a blood loss thing, it's a perfusion thing. The animal loses consciousness immediately, long before blood loss is significant.

Theoretically, if you were interested in following the spirit (that the animal not suffer) and not the letter (that you use an unpointed blade in a specific stroke blah blah blah) of the law, I think it would be perfectly acceptable to shoot the animal in the head with a caliber of rifle sufficient to cause immediate loss of consciousness. This is sort of like whether or not you eat corn on Passover, really.


The first thing I thought of when I saw this thread was 'Ishmael' by Daniel Quinn. It didn't start out on topics he hit on, but it has since turned towards them. Here's the gist of the relevent points (That I can remember) he's made throughout his books:

War is not a natural process found in animals or pre-agricultural humans. Battles? Yes. Not war. War's purpose is domination, elimination or probably a couple other things I can't remember. Skirmishes over food or other resources is natural. Agricultural society has decided, countless times, that a species of animal or even another group of humans needs to be outright eliminated to "protect" their food and resources. Before agriculture, everything was (more or less) balanced. Humans never hunted animals to extinction. That's not even counting plants. This could go on and it has been some time since I read these so I'll just stop this one here.

For the individual, the calories gained for calories spent ratio is way higher for hunter/gatherers than farmers. Farming barely covers the use of calories for the farmer. Hunter/Gathering covers it several times over.

Of course, without agriculture or civilization, we would still be living in tribes with nowhere near the amount of advancement we currently enjoy. In the end, it's all a trade-off. What many people want, often without realising exactly that they want it, is to revert back to something resembling tribalism and hunter/gathering. This notion is ridiculous. What we do need is the next step. We need to move past civilization. It's hard to think about that, I know. Impossible even. That's why we haven't done it yet. The main problem here is that we can only hope that we figure it out before civilization buckles under it's own weight.

-----------

So that's about it, I think. I probably got some of that wrong, but that's what I got. I will add that I have tried explaining the concept of moving past civilization to various teachers (both high school and college) and have been met, each time, with stalwart denial of even the remote possibility of there being somewhere to go after civilization. I find this amusing.

Ishmael is an incredibly good book.

However, whether or not war exists among animals seems a bit stickier than you make it out to be. You describe war as being about elimination or domination. I disagree. The difference between "war" and "skirimishes" or "battles" is that war is sustained. A battle or skirmish, in this context, is something that happens one time, and then is forgotten. In other words, I show up at the watering hole at the same time as you, and then we fight over who gets to drink. By contrast, chimps are known to have out and out war, where they have patrols, raiding parties into other tribes' territories, and even specifically attack females with young (analogues to modern day supply trains?!). This speaks, in my opinion, more to a framework of war than "skirmishes." Also, many, many human wars throughout history were fought over territory or resources. We currently don't think of such because in our recent history we've fought mainly total wars over domination or ideals, but we used to go to war over territory often. It's one of the reasons we don't have big wars as often anymore, I wager.

Ishmael probably suffers from having been written years and years ago, before modern research about warring chimps came out.

[Riffington]

Theoretically, if you were interested in following the spirit (that the animal not suffer) and not the letter (that you use an unpointed blade in a specific stroke blah blah blah) of the law, I think it would be perfectly acceptable to shoot the animal in the head with a caliber of rifle sufficient to cause immediate loss of consciousness.

A gunshot from point-blank range with a properly-chosen firearm would be equally humane as kosher slaughter.
(I won't speculate on what the "spirit of the law" is, particularly on this board. I'm just talking about physiology of animals.)
Once you get to hunting with a firearm rather than point-blank slaughter, things change. You now have a decent chance of missing/wounding the animal. On the other hand, you are no longer imprisoning the animal, but letting it live free.

[Rutskarn]

As for sapience, it's a spectrum, as folks have already said, not a clear yes/no equation. But if you're including little computer game features in your calculations, i think your whole system probably needs to be recalibrated.

Hey, come on now. No need to be rude, I'm trying to understand this issue as much as anyone.

Let's look into that comparison a little more. Let's not assume a sim--let's assume, instead, a droid that's programmed to cry whenever you poke him. There's a demonstrable reaction whenever you poke the droid, but that doesn't mean it's a real emotion.

Now, let's say we expanded the simulation to encompass a wide variety of simulated responses. If you hug him, he seems happier, and this persists for a while. If you say mean things to him, he becomes dejected. There can be a network of stimulus responses that approximate human emotions, but that doesn't mean there's a sapience feeling said emotions.

My original position, and one that I am attempting to critically examine, is that animals do not have sapience. By demonstrating that emotions can be demonstrated without a conscious mind behind them, I'm trying to show that emotional displays themselves are not a sign of intelligence. The fact that my example is a machine is irrelevant--organic creatures are much more complicated, yes, but on a basic level they need be nothing more than meat robots trying to accomplish a range of objectives from reproducing to eating. Emotions serve a variety of purposes in fulfilling these objectives by driving certain behaviors and discouraging others. I would argue that without an actual intelligence to process these emotions, they are of no real consequence, any more than the reactions of the droid.

An emotion in a vacuum of consciousness is a tree falling in an empty forest. It affects nobody, because there is no animal consciousness to be affected.

Again, this is just my current position, and I am actively seeking refutation. It's just that demonstrating that animals display emotion is not sufficient counterargument.

[Trog]

Agriculture permits the development of a professional warlike class. Prior to that, a group can support very few dedicated warriors, as everyone essentially must work to support themselves. Pre-agricultural societies would most likely also tend towards being sparse, and it would thus be difficult for a particular warlike group to reliably find other groups to prey upon.

True. But smaller groups are still able to wage a war. My disagreement isn't that there was less wars back then, it is that those people were the "noble savage" stereotype. Which was how I read "hunter-gatherer societies have been considered to be less warlike." So I posit they were just as warlike but had fewer opportunities to wage it. Perhaps this is splitting hairs though.


There is a third question:
3) Which choice is more beneficial for the environment as a whole?

A: Whatever option eliminates the most humans. From what I hear tell humans aren't exactly the greatest at maintaining the delicate balance of nature what with our overpopulation and land management practices and such.

[Riffington]

Certainly, hunter-gatherers were less able to invent writing in order to record their wars:smalltongue:

[Serpentine]

My original position, and one that I am attempting to critically examine, is that animals do not have sapience. By demonstrating that emotions can be demonstrated without a conscious mind behind them, I'm trying to show that emotional displays themselves are not a sign of intelligence. The fact that my example is a machine is irrelevant--organic creatures are much more complicated, yes, but on a basic level they need be nothing more than meat robots trying to accomplish a range of objectives from reproducing to eating. Emotions serve a variety of purposes in fulfilling these objectives by driving certain behaviors and discouraging others. I would argue that without an actual intelligence to process these emotions, they are of no real consequence, any more than the reactions of the droid.

An emotion in a vacuum of consciousness is a tree falling in an empty forest. It affects nobody, because there is no animal consciousness to be affected.The vast majority of research into animal psychology is tending to increase the range of animals that exhibit signs of sapience. The history of defining what "separates man from beast!" is a steady elimination of any real qualifiable difference at all - only in degree, and that often far less than might be expected. While obviously there are fewer confirmed "sapient" animals than supposed "non-sapient", this is because of a lack of research, not a sign that most animals actually are non-sapient.
If you're interested, I recommend looking into an Animal Psychology unit, if you're able to just do a single uni class. One of the best classes I ever did...

In any case, as far as I'm concerned the only relevant factor is whether, and how, an animal can suffer. If it can, that needs to be taken into account - even if it is decided that suffering is inevitable, it must be acknowledged and minimised. Moreover, I believe that the onus of disproving suffering is on those who want to cause the potential suffering - that is, that suffering is possible should be assumed until it is disproven.

A: Whatever option eliminates the most humans. From what I hear tell humans aren't exactly the greatest at maintaining the delicate balance of nature what with our overpopulation and land management practices and such.Although true, that's not very useful. A balance is possible.

[Trog]

Although true, that's not very useful. A balance is possible.
Useful to what or to whom? If you're talking about usefulness to the environment or animals then what I said stands. If you're talking about usefulness to mankind then again I say farming.

In order to sustain ourselves in the most efficient manner possible humans need to reshape the land to grow their crops. There are ways to do so that have less of a negative impact on the environment, of course, but it will lead to shortages in food supply as these greener methods usually produce less product or do so at a greater cost. Which will cause mankind to suffer.

As much as some people may hate corporate farming and fertilizers and such you have to give credit where credit is due and acknowledge that without these advances food might cost a lot more than it does now and there'd likely be a lot less of it for human consumption.

Perhaps as years go by and we realize which practices in particular are bad for the environment (to a degree that it would be bad for humans, most likely, or we wouldn't much care about it as a species, I suspect) they can be phased out and more environmentally friendly practices can be put into place. We do that now but those organic crops cost a lot more than the regular ones and, thus, fewer people purchase them.

Other than that if anyone really, really feels deeply about this subject, any of you, I invite you to start a vegetable garden where you, yourself, can control the method in which the plants are grown. You'll may also get in some rabbit hunting too if you don't fence it off properly. :smalltongue:

[Serpentine]

Useful to what or to whom? If you're talking about usefulness to the environment or animals then what I said stands. If you're talking about usefulness to mankind then again I say farming.In terms of usefulness to a discussion on the practical ethics of food production (note: that line was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as I presume the line it was responding to was). Noone (well...) is ever going to say "the only ethical option is to stop eating at all. Now, everyone stop it! Right now, I say!" So, in terms of practicality, ways in which this impact can be minimised must be examined.
While humans will always have an impact on our environment - I don't think we're capable of not doing so - I do believe that we can, must and will find ways of balancing this impact with what the environment can take.


As much as some people may hate corporate farming and fertilizers and such you have to give credit where credit is due and acknowledge that without these advances food might cost a lot more than it does now and there'd likely be a lot less of it for human consumption.Credit granted (and, moreover, in the context of the thread's topic, without agriculture we almost certainly would never have even come close to the advancement we have now). But that doesn't mean that these practices are still the best ones available to us, in terms of environmental impact, animal ethics, production or economics.

Perhaps as years go by and we realize which practices in particular are bad for the environment (to a degree that it would be bad for humans, most likely, or we wouldn't much care about it as a species, I suspect) they can be phased out and more environmentally friendly practices can be put into place. We do that now but those organic crops cost a lot more than the regular ones and, thus, fewer people purchase them.Of course, the more mainstream and normalised such practices are, and with increased consumer pressure, these costs should, I think, level out and become more on line with other products. I think.

Other than that if anyone really, really feels deeply about this subject, any of you, I invite you to start a vegetable garden where you, yourself, can control the method in which the plants are grown. You'll may also get in some rabbit hunting too if you don't fence it off properly. :smalltongue:I'm trying :sigh: I'll just steal from my sister's, instead...
But yeah, I think one of the greatest changes you can make towards ethical living is to consume locally, either from your own backyard or from local producers whose properties you can go look at for yourself.

[Coidzor]

Nah, but there are people who advocate self-extinction and extermination of those who won't do it willingly. Thankfully they're in quite the minority.

Normalization of luxury items takes time though. Then again, all options that lay before us currently take time.

Hmm. Now I'm reminded of how annoyed I am by the difficulty in setting up a garden around here with the overpopulation of deer that it's illegal to kill, despite the fact that they're pests.

[Trog]

(note: that line was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as I presume the line it was responding to was)
Yes I'm nearly always at least half tongue-in-cheek in this forum. If not full tongue. At the very least the discussion is good natured. *Serpy huggles* :smallbiggrin:

But... well... let me put this another way. Being concerned about the environment is, really, being concerned about the welfare of the living things in that environment... Which brings us back to my two original points, you see, and I don't have a lot to add to that, really.

But that doesn't mean that these practices are still the best ones available to us, in terms of environmental impact, animal ethics, production or economics.
Of course, the more mainstream and normalised such practices are, and with increased consumer pressure, these costs should, I think, level out and become more on line with other products. I think.
Economically and production-wise our current practices are already the best. The free market has seen to that. As to the animal impact, people tend to care less about that than about feeding themselves, as a whole. Not surprisingly, finding ways to be more accommodating for other creature means making sacrifices to do so. Consumer pressure, as you mentioned, can do a lot, so hopefully that continues to be the driving force towards the kinds of changes to farming that you're talking about.

I'm trying :sigh: I'll just steal from my sister's, instead...
But yeah, I think one of the greatest changes you can make towards ethical living is to consume locally, either from your own backyard or from local producers whose properties you can go look at for yourself.
Or supporting your local farmer's markets. :smallsmile: They often have some great products and (thankfully) they are much better at raising any kind of plant than I am. :smallsigh:

[Serpentine]

Or supporting your local farmer's markets. :smallsmile: They often have some great products and (thankfully) they are much better at raising any kind of plant than I am. :smallsigh:That what I meant :smalltongue: I never seem to get around to going to the local fruit market :smallsigh: Which is an extra shame, because their fruit always tastes so much better than supermarket stuff. But there's an even hippier fruit market, just around the corner to that one, but it's quite small, not open very much, and just a little too pretentious.
On the more serious stuff, I'm also talking about potential methods yet to be practically developed that will improve production, costs and sustainability. I believe that there are a number of these currently in development, but I have faith in the ones that have yet to be invented. I think it's inevitable: either we develop these things, or we die out as a species (or at least as a civilisation). Simple as that.
Even with the processes we already have, there's plenty of room in them for improvement in all areas.

[Kneenibble]

One of the neatest hippy practices around is urban small-lot gardening. Basically, a bunch of hippies in this city (and I would guess in many other cities too) rent small bits of land around downtown -- empty lots, the yards of community centres or houses or even parks -- land which would otherwise just lie weedy and unproductive, a whole bunch of small parcels that add up. They use that land to grow vegetables and sell them locally. It really tickles me.

I devote a lot of my small property to vegetables, but the soil is so full of clay, and it's so cold, papa... my harvests are measly.

But I try!

[Egiam]

I devote a lot of my small property to vegetables, but the soil is so full of clay, and it's so cold, papa... my harvests are measly.

But I try!

Same here, until I tried composting. It did the trick for me.

[Rutskarn]

Moreover, I believe that the onus of disproving suffering is on those who want to cause the potential suffering - that is, that suffering is possible should be assumed until it is disproven.

Which is why I don't hunt or hit seals with lead snowshoes, mind.

[Kneenibble]

Same here, until I tried composting. It did the trick for me.

Though I have composted all my household's biodegradable matter for years (food scraps, leaves, grass clippings, weeds, cardboard, cloth, anything), still it all amounts to so very little humus. Composting is great for reducing waste but its product still only amends so much poor soil. You need animal poo or a topsoil transplant for decent dirt anytime soon.

[Solaris]

In comparison to whom? Farmers?

I haven't studied anthropology; can you provide a citation for this?

He meant about a hundred years ago, for those of us in developed countries. If you avoid processed foods and fast food, the modern dietary range is pretty much the healthiest ever. The problem is, of course, avoiding processed and fast foods.