this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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Predators killing prey is part of the natural order; arguing that we're worse for killing for food than any other predators is, is exactly putting us on a pedestal above every other animal. We're not some special beings above everything, where if we kill a sheep, we're somehow better or worse than a wolf doing it is.
It is not the killing for food that is the problem, it is torturing animals and the ecological impact we're causing with it. Mass producing meat, eggs, anything, by tormenting other living creatures without any consideration they're equally living beings, and destroying ecosystems for it, causing the climate to warm faster... and on top of it all - doing it all voluntarily and knowingly! That makes us monstrous on a scale no other animal has reached.
It could be argued predators playing with food is natural as well; is a cat evil for toying with a mouse? is an orca evil for playing with a seal before eating it? It's just the scope we're talking about is so, so much bigger. We're not killing things ourselves; we've pushed the murder factories out of our sight and minds, and casually consume "products" instead of thinking we're eating something valuable; something that deserves respect even when it's dead.
I have no problem with anyone eating an animal if they have not tortured it or taken part in allowing it's torture; and especially not if they're the one that killed it. That's just how it works in this cursed planet, we kill, we eat, we get eaten. I also have no problem with anyone refusing to take part in it, and considering it horrible practice; it is. It's horrendous. Life is horrible, horrible thing full of suffering and decay. If you can choose it is better for the environment and usually for your health to not kill and eat what you killed.
What I do take issue with is acting like humans are not part of the nature. We are part of it all. We're just like a wolf, or a sheep; all living, breathing things, doing beautiful things, doing horrible things. Killing and eating. All the same. You are not above (nor below) every other living animal for what you eat or what you do not, and I'm sick and tired of people pretending to argue we're worse just to put us on a pedestal, while doing nothing to actually stop the torture of animals.
Appeal to nature fallacy.
If you can't transcend your worst instincts and display free will, then you don't deserve to live any better than the animals you eat. You belong in a cage, being fed slop, until all animals are freed. They are not guilty of choosing to be beasts. You are.
Did you not read what I just wrote? By claiming we are worse than any predator just because of killing for food, you are argumenting we're not part of the nature; that we're some special creature. We're not. You call animals beasts; why? What's so beastly about them that we don't have it? Are you not putting them below yourself by differentiating us to have some superior qualities? They're equal to you, to me. Having the ability to make choices that we perceive they can't doesn't give us any more or less value than they have.
Torturing on a mass scale, ignoring animal suffering, thinking we're above them, and destroying the nature while doing it, is our sin, our problem. But we have the right to kill and eat them if any predatory animal has that right too. That doesn't mean we should kill them, and that certainly doesn't mean we should torture them in incomprehensible ways we do right now. Free will is another argument entirely, but our moral concepts don't exist outside human experience. They're as real as we make them to be; but still, I am not arguing about that, I am arguing about the value of living animals and us - because you are using a quote about that as an argument.
I don't know do you really care about nature or animals, but at least stop actively harming their cause by virtue signaling and confirming people's negative feelings about vegans by acting like a prick online. You can just hate humans and say so; this is the internet, you can say whatever and you can get into arguments without having to pretend there's some nobler cause for it. Who am I to judge, when I'm taking part in this discussion as well? It's not like I personally have much love towards humanity either.
Animals have sex with each other, too. Do you have that right? Or do you admit that knowledge comes with responsibilities? One or the other, can't deny them both. And for the record, I do think animal agriculture requires rape, so this ad absurdum isn't coming out of left field.
Of course we have responsibilities; but those are set by us - if I say something is terrible, that too must come from the perspective of human morality, since good and evil are human concepts as well. These things don't exist in nature, but we do. It is completely arrogant of us to think we'd have some sort of privilege to see ourselves separate from nature, or to know what is best for other beings, just because we are capable of what we call morality. We can live by our values and by our responsibilities, but thinking that having those somehow gives us rights over nature or more value than animals, is what has basically led to this twisted system in the first place.
On rape I somewhat disagree; it is not a necessary part of animal agriculture - but it sure as hell is a part of our industrial farming, part of the torture we're doing. And we do have sex with each other all the time just like animals, otherwise humans wouldn't exist. Or are you talking about bestiality? That is usually an abnormality among mammals in general, so that can be used to support the argument that what we're doing and allowing to happen is terrible.