Guilty pleasures or conscious immoral decisions you take?

[Caliga]

foie gras is delicious.  I do find how they produce it to be a bit objectionable, though.

[Sheilbh]

Immoral:  littering.

Sweet Jesus.  Whenever the police go crazy and remove all the bins during a big event I'm always left wondering the streets with pockets full of  rubbish waiting to get home

I always feel guilt about printing.  I'm aware that I consume an absolutely disgusting amount of paper but I can't work purely off a computer screen .

[Razgovory]

The human demand for animal products like meat and milk sustains life for millions of living creatures who, in the absence of such demand, would most likely be rendered extinct or near extinct.

I asked a vegan about this once (who I was dating at the time).  "Where would all the cows go if people stopped eating them?  You can't just have millions of cows wandering the country side".

"You would just run the last cows through the system and not breed anymore".

"so there wouldn't be any cows left outside of zoos and such"

"Yeah I guess".

This idea of destroying a species to alleviate suffering struck me as very strange.  If you equate human being with animals (as many radical animal rights groups do), then this suggests that it is moral to destroy populations of human beings to alleviate the suffering they have.  I think she finished college, and I did not so she probably has an answer to this.  But to me at least, that sounds like a justification for genocide.

[Capetan Mihali]

Immoral:  littering.

Sweet Jesus.  Whenever the police go crazy and remove all the bins during a big event I'm always left wondering the streets with pockets full of  rubbish waiting to get home

I remember exactly when I got the urge... drinking some diet soda in very self-consciously pristine woods and just thinking "I would love to throw this can in this stream."   

In Philadelphia (at least where I lived and worked) it was totally normal.  Waiting for a bus in the center of the city, I watched a grown man throw a whole styrofoam container and soft drink right in front of the bus before boarding it.  I'll also never forget walking behind two women eating chicken and throwing the bones right on the pavement.  And then the container.

Up here, I feel self-conscious about even throwing a cigarette butt in the street and usually make a big deal of putting it out on a trash can and throwing it out.  I was a litter fascist as a youth.  Two of my earliest childhood memories are 1) berating some family friend for chucking gum and cigs on the street and 2) being reprimanded by a stranger for picking up cig butts outside the Natural History Museum when my goal was to deposit them correctly.  I guess she thought I was going to smoke them or eat them or something (as a 3 year old?)...

[Ideologue]

The human demand for animal products like meat and milk sustains life for millions of living creatures who, in the absence of such demand, would most likely be rendered extinct or near extinct.

I asked a vegan about this once (who I was dating at the time).  "Where would all the cows go if people stopped eating them?  You can't just have millions of cows wandering the country side".

"You would just run the last cows through the system and not breed anymore".

"so there wouldn't be any cows left outside of zoos and such"

"Yeah I guess".

This idea of destroying a species to alleviate suffering struck me as very strange.  If you equate human being with animals (as many radical animal rights groups do), then this suggests that it is moral to destroy populations of human beings to alleviate the suffering they have.  I think she finished college, and I did not so she probably has an answer to this.  But to me at least, that sounds like a justification for genocide.

And she would be correct.

Anyway, I don't do many things I consider immoral, at least when I'm sober; my immorality is limited principally to copyright violation and wishing a real rain would come.

[Razgovory]

What would she be correct about exactly?

[Ideologue]

Well, she's basically correct, that it's okay for species to die or to be drastically reduced in number.

[Neil]

Indeed.  But it isn't alright for a human not to eat meat.

[Eddie Teach]

Ide can't have any pudding.

[Ideologue]

But what shall I use to fill the empty spaces?

[Martinus]

The human demand for animal products like meat and milk sustains life for millions of living creatures who, in the absence of such demand, would most likely be rendered extinct or near extinct.

Perhaps I wasn't specific enough. There are situations where humans are justified to eat meat. I just don't see the situation in which I (or you) live to be one of them. And that does not even come close to eating foie gras.

[Habbaku]

Foie gras was good, and I'm glad I ate it, but I don't see myself ever desiring to try it again.  I didn't think of the treatment of the animal in the least when enjoying my meal.   

[Razgovory]

Well, she's basically correct, that it's okay for species to die or to be drastically reduced in number.

Sometimes I think you are loonier then a Canadian dollar.

[Ideologue]

The alternative to extinction or a protected, small population kept for biodiversity, educational, and fallback purposes*, is a slavery program leading to grisly death.  Yeah, sounds like a fucking bargain.  Are you really arguing that carnivorism is sufficiently justified on the basis that a species would cease to exist if we stopped eating it?  Species don't feel pain or fear; only individuals do that.  So who gives a shit about the fate of a "species" in and of itself?

*i.e., a total collapse of civilization or depletion of energy sources requires domestic animal labor to maintain even archaic living standards.

[grumbler]

The alternative to extinction or a protected, small population kept for biodiversity, educational, and fallback purposes*, is a slavery program leading to grisly death.  Yeah, sounds like a fucking bargain.  Are you really arguing that carnivorism is sufficiently justified on the basis that a species would cease to exist if we stopped eating it?  Species don't feel pain or fear; only individuals do that.  So who gives a shit about the fate of a "species" in and of itself?

*i.e., a total collapse of civilization or depletion of energy sources requires domestic animal labor to maintain even archaic living standards.

Raz was making an analogy.  Just like Marti, you know that, when Raz makes an analogy, he is trolling.

(The part about him dating a women should also have tipped you off that the conversation never occurred.  )