this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025
360 points (85.0% liked)
Perry Bible Fellowship
650 readers
69 users here now
This is a community dedicated to the webcomic known as the Perry Bible Fellowship, created by Nicholas Gurewitch.
https://www.patreon.com/perryfellow
New comics posted whenever they're posted to the site (rarer nowadays but still ongoing). Old comics posted every day until we're caught up
founded 5 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You can't ethically take a life. A tiger has no choice whereas a human does.
I have so many arguments against this I don’t even know were to start, so I’ll keep it simple: you need to abandon anthropocentrism.
Humans are animals and not particularly special or even intelligent ones. (Intelligence being defined as the ability to solve problems and learn from them) Our “intelligence” is actually just cumulative generationally passed knowledge. It is not clear that humans are indeed more rational than a tiger or that tigers or non human animals in general lack rationality, except only in the way in which a human would define rationality which cannot be a universal claim.
I'm not op and I'm an omnivore and i have to tell you, your reply is ... not a good response to what op said. It's full of strawmen arguments and nonsense. You seem to be arguing that humans can't choose to be vegetarians? And you veer way off into nowhere arguing about what you think intelligence is? I dunno, for someone who said they have a ton of arguments, you sure picked a bunch of bad ones
I believe they are saying you can't place a universal standard of behaviour or ethics onto the multitude of human animals that live on the earth
Even if that's what they're saying, that isn't a meaningful argument against what op said.
It is possible for a human to live a long and healthy life without eating meat.
It is not possible for a tiger to live a long and healthy life without eating meat. (without human intervention)
Nobody invoked intelligence or rationality. You have misread and now you are just confusing things.
To keep it simple: A tiger's life depends on killing other animals. A human being can live to a record-setting age and never kill another animal. The tiger has no choice but to be violent to vulnerable individuals, but when a human does it, the lack of necessity makes it cruelty and abuse. When a human does have such a necessity, the math works out differently, but in the context of the comic strip, the subject had no necessity to kill those vulnerable individuals.
All life is supported by displacing or ending others. Even if you don't view plants as ethically problematic, the agricultural practices to feed civilisation, by definition, must upset the natural ecological balance and harm animals.
The reason a vegan doesn't feel upset about eating produce is the degree of removal from the animal harm. They don't see the deforestation or destruction of wetlands or the damage done by pesticides or in fertilizer production. It's no different than an omnivore not feeling guilt when a butcher kills an animal (even if they wouldn't do it themselves).
This harm has always happened since we developed coordinated agrarian societies. The most ethical stance is that humans should return to their natural ecological niche, hunter-gatherers with minimal reliance on agriculture.
However, veganism isn't possible in such a society. The ability to supplement the human diet with plant based alternatives at scale requires disruptive agriculture. Thus strict veganism* in this lens is inherently self defeating.
*The vegan concept of harm reduction isn't impacted here, there are still lots of reasons to go plant based
Well you certainly made a case for your own level of intelligence. At least word salad is vegan.
I think this is fundamentally true (although it has issues when it scales down to insects and below that requires an arbitrary line to be drawn) but I'm not convinced that being absolute about it is useful in harm reduction.
It's objectively better that someone looks to buy meat from a farm that cares about the welfare of its animals than one that maximizes profit at the cost of the wellbeing and happiness of the animal.
Naturally it's better still if they reduce or stop their meat consumption, but making it black-and-white can potentially result in a worse outcome by setting the bar higher than the consumer is willing to jump.
So what is your solution for when a species is getting over populated and destroying an ecosystem? Is it not more ethical to kill some and preserve the ecosystem for the rest of the wildlife in that area?
Why'd the overpopulation happen?
Not enough or no natural predators usually.
And why did that happen?
Could be any number of valid reasons that have nothing to do with eating meat. For example, human safety. Unless you're arguing for a dismantling of civilization due to its natural encroachment, I don't know where you're going with this.
I didn't ask how these situations could have been prevented. That ship has sailed. I wish we hadn't caused it to be this way, but here we are. Now the two options are to kill them back down to sustainable numbers, or allow them to destroy the ecosystem thereby condemning themselves and a host of other animals as well.
I'm not a hunter myself, and I personally probably don't have what it takes to kill an animal even in these circumstances, but I also can't provide a better solution. So I'm not going to shame people for hunting when it both provides food for them as well as brings balance to an ecosystem.
I will, however, shame them if it is done purely for sport and against non problem animals. I hope those folks that go to Africa and hunt elephants and lions and shit get eaten. Slowly.
How about a third option:
Reintroduce predators that were native to that ecosystem.
If the rampant species has flourished for some time without predators, then they might be less agile in avoiding them, leading to better outcomes.