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There's a difference between enslaving people, treating people as inferior because of race or gender or preference for partners, and something we're biologically "designed" for (I use the term design loosely here). We evolved as omnivores and meat has always been part of the human diet where it was available. We need certain nutrients that are only found in meat. That artificial supplements have been developed doesn't change the fact that we are naturally a meat eating species and our brains are wired to want it. If you choose to not eat meat that's fine. But judging others for eating it is wrong and not going to go over well. Eating chicken or beef is not on the same level as racism. Sorry, it isn't and someone needs to say that.
Nope. Let's start with the BS answer that there are certain nutrients that you can only get from meat. B12 is the only one where there's an argument, and meat eaters already get theirs from a supplement. The VAST majority of B12 is produced by bacteria which, historically, most humans have gotten from the ingestion of dirt or bugs. It's fed in massive quantities to animals, so that meat eaters get it as an indirect supplement to their diet. Our entire food industry is laden with vitamin and mineral additives to compensate for the fact that we now eat a diet so far out of proportion to what we were evolved to eat. How would it be so horrible to readjust the system to supplement a plant based diet - which, btw, would take far less supplementation? Medical anthropology shows that we evolved to eat PRIMARILY plant matter with small bits of OCCASIONAL meat, but now we have a totally opposite paradigm, and people like you call it natural.
Also, as to "natural"? I'm in healthcare. If you're past your mid 30's? You're unnatural. If the majority of your kids made it past their first year and your wife has made it past more than two childbirths? They're unnatural. Should we cut out that nonsense too? We modify the state of things constantly in order to create a more humane world. Virtually nothing about your life is natural. How is preventing suffering in other creatures so untenable to you? How is participating in a diet and lifestyle, which is better for the planet, better for your health, and infinitely better in terms of the moral treatment of other beings so objectionable to you?
As to the BS about some natural wiring about the desire to eat meat, show me the proof. In the history of mankind, most humans have lead a mostly vegan lifestyle - and somehow they lived. Meat is a luxury, and luxury doesn't describe the history of human existence. It's only in the past 150 years that common meat ingestion has been redefined as normal. Even today, VAST numbers of people are vegetation or vegan (especially in India), and even in China, where meat consumption is a status symbol (much like here), the government is reversing the tide of that because they know that it's HUGELY unsustainable if we're to continue living on this planet.
Other than those minor details, your arguments are spot on.
Btw, I'm not some ideologue. I deal in facts. It is an indisputable fact that we got to this level of brain development through the ingestion of other beings (though, again, as an occasional supplement, not at all as a regular portion). It's incredibly efficient. I could talk about that from the angle of the development of your teeth, or the length of your intestinal tract, or the resource intensive nature of your CNS, but the past doesn't justify the present or the future. This is obvious ethically, but seeing that we absolutely don't need it anymore, there is no justification. The fact that you feel entitled? Garbage. The fact that you feel superior? Garbage. The Nazis felt entitled and superior. The colonialists felt entitled and superior. Every group which crushed another group without care or regard felt entitled and superior. The way you "feel" is snowflake sophistry. Once again, if some other species did to you and your family what you do to other animals just because they can? If you're cool with that, we have another discussion. But if you would paint them as monsters, as barbarous a-holes who had an infinite number of cruelty free options at their discretion but chose to go with killing you off, in cruel fashion, just because they could? You're done. The hammer has fallen. Even Judge Judy would see how transparent your case is.
Grand Rapids summary is: Hipster/college town/techie core city of 200K people surrounded by relatively conservative suburbia. Housing costs significantly higher than they were five years ago, but it's still possible to hit a pretty sweet spot in terms of cost of living/quality of life. Core metro area is about a million people and you're 30-60 minutes from Lake Michigan and some pretty large chunks of state and federal public land.
Thanks. There seems to be a big influx of retirees driving prices up, correct? I was maybe thinking of living 3o minutes outside the city. I wouldn't be working every day (if at all), so the commute is not the issue. But how is society? The thing I have against VT is that it's not like anyplace I've ever seen. It's totally decentralized. Most places in the US, or even Europe, have a city center, or a few regional ones, where people come together. Not VT. MQT, for example, has a very specific center where everyone from even 40 minutes away comes to shop and such. People get to know each other at the grocery store, or the hockey rink. I assume that GR follows this pattern too, but can you live on secluded acreage and still have access to society there?
As to the whole hunting question, given your locality, I don't even really have to look it up. You're not in an isolated part of the US. Hunting is dying, it is not only objectionable to "the educated classes" but is also such to newer generations, etc, so it is almost by definition falling away if GR is a growing community. The only places where hunting is still culturally "sustainable" are places which embrace the past, and the only places which can sustain that for the next few heartbeats are areas which are geographically remote and hence can participate in an illusion of a separated reality. GR is in the LP where regions are immediately and vigorously competing for a continued existence, they know how salient these questions are, so they cannot kid themselves that such issues are for ivory tower pansies. These same kinds of issues beset the southern states on the US some decades ago, and now most of then are desolate wastelands, wholly dependent on federal funding to keep alive, and were young people leave the minute that they possible can. The fact that GR can't deny that it's in a fight for its life makes me hopeful. It seems to have a working plan, which I've yet to see from MQT. (Even though it still feels like home.)
I'll reiterate, I think you'll be happier in a larger city like Burlington than in a small town, especially a small remote town. Small towns aren't just big towns with fewer people. There's not much anonymity. You'll be interacting with the same people every day for as long as you're there. If you aren't accepting of them the way they are, hunting and all, it's going to be uncomfortable for you. I can't imagine you're going to be happy in an environment like that.
As far as hunting goes, I think you have a stronger case for farmed animals than for hunting. Farmed animals wouldn't exist if they weren't farmed, so no bad thing would happen to them. Wild animals would still exist. Most likely they would die from starvation, disease, or being the prey of another animal. Any of those fates is no better than being hunted, and probably worse. Nature is beautiful, but it's also cruel.
I'll reiterate, I think you'll be happier in a larger city like Burlington than in a small town, especially a small remote town. Small towns aren't just big towns with fewer people. There's not much anonymity. You'll be interacting with the same people every day for as long as you're there. If you aren't accepting of them the way they are, hunting and all, it's going to be uncomfortable for you. I can't imagine you're going to be happy in an environment like that.
As far as hunting goes, I think you have a stronger case for farmed animals than for hunting. Farmed animals wouldn't exist if they weren't farmed, so no bad thing would happen to them. Wild animals would still exist. Most likely they would die from starvation, disease, or being the prey of another animal. Any of those fates is no better than being hunted, and probably worse. Nature is beautiful, but it's also cruel.
Good luck to you.
Thanks. You seem like a fairly nice person, but I see conclusions rather than reasons about whether I'd like MQT. I usually like to draw my own conclusions. To be an ass about it, I seem to be fairly good at making conclusions, and to make sure that I wasn't fooling myself in that regard, I went to school to learn about the best ways that man has come up with in the last 3,000 years about doing so. (That really is no insult. I have a friend who is the complete opposite of me in every way. I love him dearly. He is really my only family. He has many, many, many points to make about the world which influence my life tremendously. But in terms of adding them all together and making an airtight conclusion? He sucks balls.) Logic is a learned discipline, one not really native to the human condition. And yet? Everyone on the planet thinks that they're logical upon exiting the womb. Christ, I know how to skate, and it's a hell of a lot easier than logical thought. And yet, most people realize that they'e going to end up on their ass without many, many, many hours of disciplined practice.
The fact that most farmed animals wouldn't exist without hunting? That's your argument about why they're OK to abuse and kill? Tell that to slaves. Humans reproduce in an essentially geometric fashion. The number of slaves at the point of outlawing it DWARFED the number which were brought over to this country. Given that, mathematically, the majority of humans which ended up enslaved existed solely because slaves were bred to produce more slaves, does that make the exploitation, torture, and killing of those humans just fine? Or does the fact that they are living, thinking, feeling entities make them a stand-alone being, deserving of judgements on their own merits, not dependent on how they might have come into being? There is a reason why the corollary between human civil rights and "animal" rights doesn't escape the notice of the more educated and grizzled veterans, like the King family. Once you start earnestly thinking about things, the conclusions aren't so easy to ignore, regardless of how much more easy it would be to rest your head at night by doing so.
So how are things in GR? TC is kind of inflated. A friend has a summer house in Petoskey and sings its songs. I'm starting to think of it, in an off hand way. Still northernly but maybe too Yuppie-ish for my taste. I know nothing of GR.
It feels like the summer market is almost over and I have to make a choice. In 2-4 weeks I'll either buy a home that I'm not sure about in VT or try to find a place to rent there and move to MI if I don't like it in a year.
I'm 50. I'm old. My life seems almost over. I would like someone to present me with a sure bet to play out whatever I have left.
GR is pretty much "progressive center," conservative outer burbs as beachmouse mentioned. It does have a central city downtown right on the Grand River that is growing pretty rapidly (construction cranes dot the skyline all over right now).
Many of the burbs around here also have cool little downtown main street shopping/eating areas: Rockford, Grandville, Lowell, Ada, Byron Center, to name a few.
I'm also going to be 50 next year. You're way too hard on yourself. A good friend of mine who runs the local community foundation says that your 50's are your prime years: you're generally more independent, kids are grown if you have them, more financially stable, able to give more of your time to causes, you can start new hobbies/outdoor activities, and on and on.
I think we should ALL move on from the hunting discussion. It's a lightning rod topic around here.
Keep it clean folks. I keep getting messages to shut this down but I don't think that's healthy for the forum. Thank you.
Yeah, you're right. It's all about academia and our isolation from the common folk. It's not at all about numbers or facts. And it's not any way related to ethics. The fact that other animals feel the same pain as you do, isn't the focus here. Nor is the fact that they feel the loss of friends and family members in much the same way as you do. And it's totally irrelevant that the consumption of animal products is the leading cause of water pollution in North America, the leading cause of antibiotic resistant bacteria, the first or second leading cause of global warming (depends on how to you do the math, but global warming isn't real anyway), the leading cause of cross-species viral mutation (AKA, the next plague), the leading cause of deforestation, and basically the leading cause of most of the challenges facing our planet today. None of it matters because those bleeding heart liberals have nothing in their hearts but hate, right? The facts don't matter. All that matters is how you "feel" about it. (And the Trump conservatives have the balls to throw the term "snowflake" around?) If this is the kind of vision that MQT and the UP have to offer, you'll be done in 2-3 decades. Survival of the fittest doesn't mean the survival of the cruelest or most hard hearted, it means the survival of those most adaptable to change.
If humans completely stoped hunting those animals will still die and they will suffer first as they are killed. With hunting, as long as the person is a good hunter the animals usually don't suffer. One quick shot and they die instantly.
Overpopulation is the main reason for those issues you mentioned, along with our overreliance on fossil fuels in America. Lots of people take up lots of space and use lots of resources but bad farming practices such factory farming and monoculture are another major reason. It's not a meat versus non-meat issue but instead the wasteful and illogical way most modern farming is done. Manure lagoons are a factory farm creation. If you're interested in sustainable farming prates that improve soil fertility while feeding lots of people, Gabe Brown and Geoff Lawton videos have good examples and there are many others out there.
Have you heard of Polyface Farm? By using good farming methods a farmer took some marginal soils and turned them into fertile soils and a very productive farm, all the while keeping the bad insect and weed populations down. He happens to be a livestock producer but the trick is that he uses good, sustainable farming practices, unlike those taught in most agricultural colleges and pushed by the agrochemical companies.
Meanwhile I've watched some fields go down in fertility over the years because of bad farming practices and these farmers didn't have a single animal on those fields. Bad farming practices was the reason why.
I've never been a hunter but I do eat meat. I'm also very interested in farming and ecosystems. I've got mixed views about hunting and meat eating as it involves the death of another creature which I don't like, but when the hunting and farming of meat animals is done properly the animals suffer very little or not at all. The same can't be said of a "natural" death.
Last edited by Summer'sBreeze; 07-20-2019 at 10:37 AM..
A lot of the growth in Grand Rapids is actually under-35s who see it as a place where they can actually afford to buy a nice little house that’s close to both job and fun stuff.
Thanks. You seem like a fairly nice person, but I see conclusions rather than reasons about whether I'd like MQT. I usually like to draw my own conclusions. To be an ass about it, I seem to be fairly good at making conclusions, and to make sure that I wasn't fooling myself in that regard, I went to school to learn about the best ways that man has come up with in the last 3,000 years about doing so. (That really is no insult. I have a friend who is the complete opposite of me in every way. I love him dearly. He is really my only family. He has many, many, many points to make about the world which influence my life tremendously. But in terms of adding them all together and making an airtight conclusion? He sucks balls.) Logic is a learned discipline, one not really native to the human condition. And yet? Everyone on the planet thinks that they're logical upon exiting the womb. Christ, I know how to skate, and it's a hell of a lot easier than logical thought. And yet, most people realize that they'e going to end up on their ass without many, many, many hours of disciplined practice.
The fact that most farmed animals wouldn't exist without hunting? That's your argument about why they're OK to abuse and kill? Tell that to slaves. Humans reproduce in an essentially geometric fashion. The number of slaves at the point of outlawing it DWARFED the number which were brought over to this country. Given that, mathematically, the majority of humans which ended up enslaved existed solely because slaves were bred to produce more slaves, does that make the exploitation, torture, and killing of those humans just fine? Or does the fact that they are living, thinking, feeling entities make them a stand-alone being, deserving of judgements on their own merits, not dependent on how they might have come into being? There is a reason why the corollary between human civil rights and "animal" rights doesn't escape the notice of the more educated and grizzled veterans, like the King family. Once you start earnestly thinking about things, the conclusions aren't so easy to ignore, regardless of how much more easy it would be to rest your head at night by doing so.
That thing you heard go flying past your head was the point I was trying to make. Please re-read, you'll see you're off in left field.
A lot of the growth in Grand Rapids is actually under-35s who see it as a place where they can actually afford to buy a nice little house that’s close to both job and fun stuff.
Exactly. I was at Donkey Tacqueria last evening and I was floored by all the young people there and walking around Wealthy St. I don't remember it being like that even 5 years ago when Donkey opened.
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