Would you like to be eaten?
in [Vegetarian]
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From: Martin Willett on 23 Dec 2005 05:09 What can we do to stop aliens from eating us? How about swearing off from eating meat? There seems to be a common bit of vegetarian propaganda that goes something like ?if you eat animals how can you expect intelligent aliens not to eat you?? Let's think about this for a moment. We detect the sin of hypocrisy, which for our species seems to be the ultimate sin. Eating animals and yet asking not to be eaten ourselves on the grounds that we are sentient animals strikes us as in some way a form of hypocrisy. It probably is. So what? Is hypocrisy the ultimate sin recognized by all sentient lifeforms everywhere? If if it then surely acting like hypocrites would make us less attractive dinner table fare, wouldn't it? We would be less likely to eat a ?sinful? species that ate dung and its own young than one that just ate grass, hung around in fields and went moo. Acting like hypocrites would make us appear less tasty and nutritious. Acting like hypocrites is probably a good survival strategy. Do we eat ?wicked? weasels, hyaenas, snakes and tapeworms in preference to ?noble? animals like deer and salmon? Which species do we refuse to eat on moral grounds? Do we avoid eating all peaceful herbivores? Hardly! In fact if we can see any patterns at all here it is that the more animals an animal eats the less likely it is we will want to eat it ourselves. The only carnivorous species that we eat on a regular basis are fish, animals that some people who call themselves vegetarians even try to redefine as some sort of vegetable. I've news for you veggies, haddock are animals that eat other animals, being cold bloodied, small-eyed and ugly doesn't change anything, fish are not vegetables. If you eat fish you cannot be a vegetarian. We prefer to eat peaceful herbivores, we actively give preference to those animals that eat a 100% pure vegetarian diet of grass. Why do we assume that aliens will prefer to eat old, evil, bitter, twisted and hypocritical animals like us rather than the nice innocent tender baa lambs that we like to eat? It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. Why don't we eat carnivorous animals? There is no reason why we don't eat carnivorous animals apart from the fact that they are too expensive to farm economically. When dogs are raised to be eaten they are not fed on meat, they are given the cheapest food that will do the job, usually grain, vegetables and kitchen scraps, just like pigs. I read in a newspaper recently (or was it The Sun?) about a man who regularly dines off roadkill. He made no distinction between herbivore or carnivore and enjoyed stoats and weasels quite as much as squirrels and badgers. His finest meal was roast labrador, which apparently tastes just like lamb. The only problem with eating carnivores is you have to avoid their livers, which can contain dangerously high concentrations of vitamin A. The higher an animal (and yes fish are animals) is up the food chain the higher the concentration of poisons such as heavy metals the flesh may contain. Certain chemicals such as DDT and PCBs also build up in bodies and accumulate as you go up the food chain, the most effective way of riding them from the body is to breastfeed... If aliens did have a desire to eat people which people would they want to eat? It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to work it out. Or a fully qualified butcher. The best cuts would come from young people raised on a pure Vegan diet, especially if they could be certified as Organic. Aliens would give preference to young hippie and Goth chicks raised on beansprouts, lentils and tofu not McDonalds and KFC. Card-carrying members of PETA would fetch a premium price. If you really want to avoid being eaten by aliens the best thing you can do to ensure they don't fancy the idea of eating you is to eat meat, ideally the meat and offal of diseased, evil, old, poor and hypocritical aliens. Or failing that, sausages. Being a vegetarian is as effective a remedy against hungry aliens as is being a conscientious objector in the face of hordes of Nazis. What does this aliens eating hypocrites argument remind you of? God? Yes, we seem to be very good at inventing fictional entities which can make the evil ones among us feel bad if only we can get them to swallow a line of bull. Are aliens likely to be able to eat us? There is a fair chance that we will actually be poisonous to aliens, and they could be poisonous to us. Elements that are rare on our planet tend to be poisonous to us, for example heavy metals such as lead, uranium, arsenic, cadmium, mercury and so on. They are poisonous largely because we have not evolved to cope with them. There is a reasonable chance that to aliens we will contain unacceptably high levels of elements that they are not able to cope with even if they find our alien proteins and fats attractive. We may be protected by traces of selenium, copper, chromium or zinc which could be absent from their biological systems and so be poisonous to them. Likewise they may have a biological system that requires an element that we cannot tolerate such as arsenic or lead as a nutrient. Perhaps alien children are told to eat up their vegetables because they contain lots of healthy cadmium (essential for healthy tentacles) while they would look on a Whooper, Big Mac or indeed a McHuman with Cheese as loaded with quite deadly levels of poisonous calcium and zinc and enough sodium to kill the Bugblatter Beast of Traal. First published on http://mwillett.org/mind/eat-me.htm posted by the author -- Martin Willett http://mwillett.org
From: ant and dec on 23 Dec 2005 08:39 Martin Willett wrote: > > First published on http://mwillett.org/mind/eat-me.htm > posted by the author > A factually incorrect diatribe attempting to justify the consumption of meat. A troll.
From: Martin Willett on 23 Dec 2005 14:19 ant and dec wrote: > Martin Willett wrote: > >> >> First published on http://mwillett.org/mind/eat-me.htm >> posted by the author >> > > A factually incorrect diatribe attempting to justify the consumption of > meat. > > A troll. How do you make that out? It strikes me you simply haven't got an answer to the points I made. I get accused of many things, writing stuff full of facts is rarely one of them. What was incorrect? Do veg*ns never use the hypocrisy of eating meat and not wanting to be eaten as a claim to a higher moral stance? Do you think I *couldn't* find evidence of such an argument being deployed if I could be arsed to do so? Was I wrong in my analysis that more people eat "noble" salmon and deer than "nasty" hyaenas and tapeworms? In what way did I justify the consumption of meat? I didn't. I simply took apart one of the arguments sometimes used against meat eating and showed it to be rather farcical. I posted this here because I was looking to see if anybody could come up with any good case against me. Of course the original piece was designed to be humorous (do veg*ns do humour?) and was not intended to win any debate. I run a website that tackles dozens of issues, I don't have a single-issue agenda. I've been doing this kind of stuff for six years now and I've never been hounded out of any newsgroup and neither has any newsgroup ever disbanded because they've been blown away by the power of my analysis and rapier-like wit (with the possible exception of alt.religion.christian.amish, but I think they had a few philosophical difficulties before I showed up). I am here to stimulate a conversation, not a conversion. I haven't insulted you so I'd appreciate it if you didn't insult me. If you don't want to engage with me then fine, don't do it. But please don't do other people's thinking for them by hanging a ready-made hate label round my neck. I've just re-read your post. Is "A Troll" your usual signature? I apologize if I misinterpreted the nature of your post. -- Martin Willett http://mwillett.org
From: Dutch on 23 Dec 2005 15:50 "ant and dec" <ant(a)dec.itv.com> wrote > Martin Willett wrote: > >> >> First published on http://mwillett.org/mind/eat-me.htm >> posted by the author >> > > A factually incorrect You mean the part about the aliens? <LOL> > diatribe attempting to justify the consumption of meat. Eating meat doesn't demand justification. > A troll. You didn't actually take it seriously did you??
From: Dave on 24 Dec 2005 08:54
Martin Willett wrote: > ant and dec wrote: > > Martin Willett wrote: > > > >> > >> First published on http://mwillett.org/mind/eat-me.htm > >> posted by the author > >> > > > > A factually incorrect diatribe attempting to justify the consumption of > > meat. > > > > A troll. > > How do you make that out? It strikes me you simply haven't got an answer > to the points I made. > > I get accused of many things, writing stuff full of facts is rarely one > of them. What was incorrect? > > Do veg*ns never use the hypocrisy of eating meat and not wanting to be > eaten as a claim to a higher moral stance? Do you think I *couldn't* > find evidence of such an argument being deployed if I could be arsed to > do so? You probably could but "I don't eat meat in case it causes me to be eaten by an alien" is a misrepresentation of the argument. > > Was I wrong in my analysis that more people eat "noble" salmon and deer > than "nasty" hyaenas and tapeworms? > > In what way did I justify the consumption of meat? I didn't. I simply > took apart one of the arguments sometimes used against meat eating and > showed it to be rather farcical. > > I posted this here because I was looking to see if anybody could come up > with any good case against me. Of course the original piece was designed > to be humorous (do veg*ns do humour?) and was not intended to win any > debate. I run a website that tackles dozens of issues, I don't have a > single-issue agenda. I've been doing this kind of stuff for six years > now and I've never been hounded out of any newsgroup and neither has any > newsgroup ever disbanded because they've been blown away by the power of > my analysis and rapier-like wit (with the possible exception of > alt.religion.christian.amish, but I think they had a few philosophical > difficulties before I showed up). I am here to stimulate a conversation, > not a conversion. I haven't insulted you so I'd appreciate it if you > didn't insult me. If you don't want to engage with me then fine, don't > do it. But please don't do other people's thinking for them by hanging a > ready-made hate label round my neck. > > I've just re-read your post. Is "A Troll" your usual signature? I > apologize if I misinterpreted the nature of your post. > > -- > Martin Willett > > > http://mwillett.org |