hi all!
At 6:12 PM 9/14/96 +1000, Libby wrote:
>I see both plants and animals as part of our environment, don't see taking
>animal life as more of a problem than killing plants, and would be prepared
>to butcher my own poultry (e.g) for meat, if I was in a position to keep
>some. In fact one of my priorities should I ever have my own house would
>be to raise poultry humanely so that I wouldn't have to rely on what I
>believe to be a disgusting industry to get eggs and poultry meat.
a few of the environmental ethics journals have explored this concept in
some amount of depth. it seems to me (this is me) that the justification
behind vegetarianism or veganism is on a moral level - we shouldn't hurt
animals. yet, morality and rights are solely anthropocentric constructs.
another thing i do not understand is how plant life is treated as the 'meat
of the 90's' nobody thinks about it, its a salad. yeah. they used to say
that about animals too. they're just animals, we're their predators, we
can eat them. some people feel that eating meat is alright if it is done
in a hunting/gathering type of method. the justification is simple - if we
hunt and gather, we do deconstruct the artificial dichotomy between humans
and ecology. and it is the ecology. the word environment necessarily
constructs that dualism - as an environment is generally (and semantically)
viewed as a surrounding in contrast to the self. warwick fox explains it
better than i can:
"Instead of seeking to maintain these dicstinctions, this approach
attempts to foster a greater awareness of the intimate and manifold
relationships that exist between what we conventionall designate as
environment. It attempts, in other words, to foster the development=
of
an ecological rather than environmental consciousness."
back off of the tangent, the point made by many environmental ethicists is
that agricultural practices in general alienate us from the ecosystem which
gives us life. moreover, Martin explains that "to produce food on a
strictly human-oriented economy, rather than on an economy that is animal
and plant oriented, one must first imagine these other beings out of the
realm of shared personhood with humankind...the domestication of these
other beings into an endlessly productive role for human consumption
requires an image...of nonself." the hunting and gathering is done at
walmart (where they have now not only combined rampant capitalism and
industrial rhetoric [ie buy american, walmart for illinois, etc] but tons
of technology. they have computers on the shopping carts now. i suppose
tech is another issue entirely. however, it all comes back to what all of
this means for us and for our mother earth. for earth, it means that
humans increasingly try to use technology and piecemeal efforts to
effectively put a band-aid over a bullethole. where our entire value
system is in desperate need of rethinking, even our "environmental"
movements are being constructed within a dualist framework. many
environmental ethicists are recreating a "doomed attempt to establish unity
within the inadequate modernist world view."
southern illinois
--
"ad hom0i0nem (h=C4m2=F5-nRm1, -n=F5m) adj.
Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason:
Debaters should avoid ad hominem arguments that question their opponents'
motives. [Latin ad, to + hominem, accusative of hom=C5, man.] -ad hom2i0nem1
adv.
"
american heritage dictionary..
