HI Stephanie -
You ask:
Is it possible for anyone to hold a different point of view and that be valid?
Validity only requires that a conclusion find its premise.
Validity requires only
you and
your support. Validity is circular logic, like feelings; 'i' and 'my feelings' and 'my feelings' are me' in AF parlance.
However, as you state your actual freedom from the human condition, then why is 'you' using circular validity based entirely on self?
Please help me to understand your claim of 9/22/10, 3:30 p.m.: from what human condition(s) is(are) you free?
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You continue in the abortion vein, writing,
It may not be possible to arrive at who is "cruel" or "not cruel" in that case.
Please see the definition I set out for cruelty previously.
When you see that your actions are excruciating to another being
, and you are free to stop your actions with no adverse condition taken on by yourself, do you stop? If you do not stop, cruelty continues, and who is cruel, A or B?
In your full paragraph, you both
--- try to make a scenario of vague causality (the relativity of "'who' would be right?") into an absolute law of vague causality (the eternal relativity of 'who' would be right ever?)
Perhaps you hope to avoid any association of cruelty with your convenience ('convenience' from your earlier post), by asserting that sometimes one just can't find a perp, a 'who'. That is true sometimes, but that does not mean it is true all of the time. Sometimes there is an obvious 'who' inflicting cruelty
-- try to assert the fallibility of finding the actual 'who' who is responsible on the basis of a lack of absolutism (i.e., absolute law, non-relativity)
does the absence of an absolute law binding phenomena mean phenomena are absolutely separate? For example, relativity has yet to reconciled with quantum mechanics by an absolute law, yet they both apparently existent.
And you yet maintain your relative preferences for various hierarchies of mammal life absolutely.
On what are human preferences based if not a self?
On what is your actual freedom from the human condition based if you have preferences and a self?
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Does your actual freedom eliminate harm to others or just harm to you?
What harm does AF claim to eliminate, in being 'harmless'.
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You write:
And, as I alluded to in my previous post, while I do not relish the idea of animals suffering, I do see a difference between a cow and a human child. If two of them were caught in a river and about to drown, I'd save the child.
What gives rise to this assumed behaviour?
Are preferences biases? Can biases arise without a self?
What is your actual freedom when you prefer?
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Yes, I asked:
"May an AF person lean on their conveniences and ignore the cruelty they directly chose for others?"
and I continued:
"Because human history is replete with abuses perpetuated by the more-powerful leaning upon their conveniences at the expense of others' well-being, it is a reasonable basis for asking whether AF merits perpetuation more or less than other power-with-convenience ideologies."
and you follow with
Again, you make the leap here from "convenience" to "cruelty they directly chose for others," which suggests that for *everyone* there is a causal link between meat consumption and "directly choosing to be cruel to others." I am suggesting otherwise.
Where do I call your choice convenient? This is your statement. Where do I say 'meat consumption'? This is your creation. Why do you disown your words and try to adhere them to me?
It is also you suggesting
'that for *everyone* there is a causal link between meat consumption and 'directly choosing to be cruel to others'.
Where do I say "*everyone*"? "Everyone" is entirely your creation.
My query goes out to AF persons and its aspirants, the actualists.
Why do you disown your words and try to adhere them to "katy"?
[In your first post you dismiss the death of 'smaller creatures' and assign your conclusion to me. Why does size matter to you? I raise insects in my home, and before that I still did not have this bias. Why do you dismiss, then assign your choice to me?]
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you continue:
One could argue, and some do, that simply living in the United States and paying taxes here perpetuates a brutal government that has its origins in the genocide of other people, many of whom it continues to marginalize and exploit, while at the same time denying people the right to marry and serve openly in the military because of their sexual orientation.
Certainly.
However, this thread right here is about slaughter-systemed animals as food for AF persons and aspirants, because actually free people refer to eating less and being harmless, free of feelings.
If you want to start a thread about the above and your AF-state you will find me an avid reader. I hope you do start this thread. The above certainly invokes an american human condition.
Yet, you are choosing to form a link, right here, between slaughter systemizing non-human animals and 'a brutal government that has its origins in the genocide of other people..."
Why do you make this link? You wrote previously of righteous indignation and later in this post of morality - creations of your own mind, neither of which were in this thread without you.
So it can be asked:
Does a marginalized, exploited person remain hypersensitive to 'morality' - perceiving it/invoking it where it was not before - when the rights of 'animals' are defended before the bona fide repentance for and cessation of human genocide, marginalization and exploitation has occurred?
Does a marginalized person have adverse feelings for 'morality' because 'morality' has legitimized institutional, pervasive cruelty against selected human mammals?
Does a marginalized, exploited person resent ideas that are also adopted by apparently non-marginalized and apparently non-exploited persons (or not equivalently, not sufficiently marginalized/exploited persons like the actually marginalized/exploited person perceives) or even ideas adopted by the marginalizers?
Would the marginalized person benefit from ignoring any and all ideas which have support form the marginalizing group?_______
The vegetarian sect of Pythagoreans outcast Hippasis for pointing out the actuality of irrational numbers.
Yet, irrational numbers prevail today.
So the rationalists become irrational themselves. On what basis? Did they need to be 'right' even when wrong?
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So, Stephanie, are you averse to acknowledging the pain of non-human mammals, because first 'the Unites States' must renounce/repent/(other) for its "perpetuation of a brutal government that has its origins in the genocide of other people, many of whom it continues to marginize and exploit, while at the same time denying people the right to marry and serve openly in the military because of their sexual orientation?"
Would that be holding 'innocent' slaughter system animals hostage merely to piss off the marginalizers/non-marginalized?
Would that hostage-taking be based on a feeling and a self?
Regardless of the above, what does it feel like to hold a new calf then pull its whiskered lips off of the teat and milk of its mum in order that there is cheese enough to throw away?And...why do you say the United States continues the above cruelties?
What is the United States doing besides being 12 romanized characters?
You surely know that 12 romanized letters do not continue the aforementioned cruelties.
Individual people make individual choices to deny people, to genocide people, to marginalize and exploit people (to slaughter-systemize animals)
Individual people choose to welcome people, to save each other, to foster each other's best potential.
Which people are 'the United States' right at this very now?
Which non-human mammals are the United States this very now?
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You choose to create an artificial maw between your freely chosen actions and non-human mammals going to the slaughter system to feed your freely chosen actions of convenience (you call them convenient). This is like remoting actual 'bondage' and its overflowing, horrific abuses to a far distantly worded, gentile 'our peculiar institution'.
Well, color me Camp Irrational Number. Your distance from slaughter system is illusory.
How exactly are your conveniences which directly cause the existence of a brutal system and directly cause cruelty to human and non-human mammals via the slaughter system, different from prior justifications of convenience and cruelty?
And for which others is your actual freedom harmless?
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You preference:
I prefer not to eat roadkill largely for reasons of preparation, in the same way that I prefer not to eat chitterlings, which can be bought at the grocery store.
What is the basis for your preference, assumed behaviour?
A self has preferences. An identity has assumed behaviours.
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You conclude:
Katy, it seems to me a moral argument to suggest that eating meat is "hurting a being," the implication of which is that hurting a being = a wrong action. If you do not think "hurting a being" = a wrong action, then this entire conversation is moot. And cruelty is something that is subjective, as my examples above have tried to show, and depends largely on the person doing the defining.
I see no link between being actually free, being harmless, and meat eating
Eating meat is not hurting a being. Eating meat is harmless (unless you choke, or anaphylact*).
Only you suggest a moral argument that eating meat is hurting a being.
Why again do you want your ideas ascribed to 'katy'?
Why do you expand slaughter system to 'eating meat': are you looking for a team?
A giant blond model wore a tee-shirt while dating a football player earlier this year, and the t-shirt wrote, "real girls eat meat". Are you a real girl hoping to recruit Team Meat Consumers as your back up (singers)?
(Which reminds me - totally unrelated - do you know Rev. Billy and the church of stop shopping?)
The thread I started is not about 'meat consumption'; you're free to start one.
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Meat is inanimate. Animals winded through and animals working in the slaughter system are animate, sensate and often brutally hurt and hurting beings.
Have you ever seen the process from start-to-plate?
When you watch a video of this process what feelings go through your body?
Conversely, have you hunted after becoming a good shot with a firearm?
These are direct experiences available for your choosing.
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*Daniel Johnson: i am actually free to use nouns as verbs and verbs like 'arising' more actively than 'giving rise' to. If you manage to get through non-native English writers, you'll probably follow my language. Unless you affectively don't want to.