I find the juxtaposition of the innocuous lead in ("text from my mom") with the rather unhinged text funny. The comparison to poetry, which I personally associate with peacefulness, adds to the expectation that it's going to be a pleasant text, which gets subverted spectacularly. I can also imagine the mom's encounter with the steak, resulting in them drafting the text to their child, which makes me chuckle because it's such a silly thing to experience.

It's less explicitly funny than a lot of things, but the subtlety doesn't mean it isn't funny. Humor is subjective and all, but there's plenty of funny to be found here for most people.

This goes back way further than ownership. We’re talking millions of years. Dinosaurs feasting on dinosaurs. We’re a little speck of dust on a speck of dust in the blink of an eye to the vast, uncaring universe.

Post the spider poem

I was pressured into going hunting a few times with my dad growing up, and I ended up killing a few deer. It's something I'm not proud of, one among many things I came to regret later in life.

I used to think "If you can't or won't kill it personally, then you shouldn't eat it" was an argument in support of hunting. Now I think of it as an argument in support of vegetarianism. Funny how perspective changes everything...

What's also funny is how as a society we say things like "kids who kill bugs grow up to be psychopaths," yet we totally normalize hunting as a sport. Why is that? For that matter, why don't we say "anyone who eats animal flesh is a psychopath?"

As if being five steps removed from the suffering and death somehow abstracts the cruelty so that one can indulge in the pleasure of what is produced by it without bearing any moral culpability in the processes by which that meat arrived on one's plate?

Why is it only the forms of cruelty that society doesn't accept as cultural pastimes that are considered taboo? I should rephrase. Why does society accept some forms of cruelty and not others?

Trip ≠ High

There are many more vegetal protein sources though, and if you really can't bear those either just eat eggs

We should normalize poetry.

Well at least it's out there, thanks :)

It does probably help a lot with poetry, too, to look at the world for what it is, rather than navigating it on auto-pilot.

I think you hit the nail on the head here. Very few people are capable of examining their loop for what it really is, let alone going off autopilot.

Even chickpeas, lentils, or peanuts? I dislike western beans but I'm fine with these others which are (IMO) quite superior.

Well there was claims that Mcdonalds were processing human cadavers making them into burgers, so it's not a overfetched theory!

Mom, did you find my shroom stash and how much did you take?

omnivore realises the cognitive dissonance required to consume meat :P

As if being five steps removed from the suffering and death somehow abstracts the cruelty so that one can indulge in the pleasure of what is produced by it without bearing any moral culpability in the processes by which that meat arrived on one’s plate?

This, and as a vegan it infuriates/despairs me when people whom I otherwise like and respect just never turn a thought towards this dissonance in their lives. They may care deeply about social injustices and oppression, but see no problem with continuing to participate in the mass torture and murder of non-human sentient creatures. So by now when someone says they "love animals", my first (internal) reaction is a bitter snort, because it's extremely rare that such people are even vegetarian, let alone vegan.

my last straw was Meet Your Meat

Right?

I'm already in a perpetual exesential crisis. I don't need more reason to be.

I don't think anything should suffer unnecessarily (so most of the meat industry is of course terrible), but anything without sapience, and doesn't have a sense of self or concept of time isn't much different to plants to my mind. I don't think there's any cognitive dissonance inherent in eating meat in general.

You probably also wouldn't appreciate my stance on how little I care about a human infant's life.

Tofu, seitan, synthesized pea or soy protein… where I live, you can get vegan nonfat skyr that tastes every bit as funky as real skyr, and although it does have a hollow, oaty aftertaste, you can counter it pretty easily by adding a fat (I tend to carefully temper melted vegan butter and just add that) or using it with something (like jam, oats, and wheat germ/flaxseed) or as a thickener/creamy/cultured element in a recipe

Then they would be vegetarian, not vegan

Someone got into the edibles lol

I personally draw the line at ability to be in pain/suffering, rather than self-awareness. And so trying to minimise the suffering I cause to other beings, within practical limits - living in a capitalist society, everything I buy or use was at least partially made available by human exploitation.

But back to animals, I do agree that, say, a prawn is most likely capable of less suffering, than say, a cow or chicken, since their nervous system and "psychology" (if a prawn even has such) is much simpler. So if someone was truly forced to eat animal protein for health reasons (with the assumption that human health is of elevated priority over animal suffering), then I do think that eating animals of lower ability for suffering is more ethical than those with higher. Both prawns and cows can feel bodily pain, but animals with higher cognitive abilities are probably also harmed by all the ways in which factory farming stops them from being able to express their natural behaviours.

I am of mixed attitudes towards treating animals and humans on the same priority scale. My emotional affection to people I know and my awareness of societal norms tend to make me shy away from saying that a fetus/newborn or a person with profound intellectual disability are potentially less capable of non-pain suffering than a cow or a dog, but intellectually it would only be consistent reasoning. (Same with drawing parallels between human slavery and animal captivity and exploitation.)

New menu item - Soylent Green!

You'd be surprised, those descendants of T-rex can be fierce!

Every mammal possesses sapience and a robust concept of time and self.

You are a bad person for eating meat just as I am. For the selfish desire of our own pleasure and simplicity of nutrition, we cause immense suffering and death at a scale and acuity worse than the holocaust. There is no way to rationalize eating meat in modern society as anything but catastrophically unethical.

Don’t rationalize your way out of it, accept that it makes us bad people and try to do something about it.

We are the universe just as much as anything else. And this universe is likely teeming with life, at least this planet is. Therefore, the universe very much cares.

Counterpoint: shut up.

That's because it is poetry

Mom got woke

All flesh is one

You guys keep saying the word "sapience." But do you mean SENTIENCE? Because "sapience" is a derivative of homo sapiens which means human. But if you are talking about animals, they are not humans, therefore not homo sapiens, therefore no "sapience." I think you are contemplating animals' SENTIENCE. 🤔

I avoid soy protein because I heard it can promote estrogen production. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Plus I just like steak and octopus too much. I'll wait for lab-grown meat.

Especially chickpeas, lentils, and peanuts. Peanut butter is alright, though.

Is this your mum?

From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call a temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal… Even in death I serve the Omnissiah.

*Gulps and almost chokes on triple-bacon-beefy-saiyan-deluxe*

"Finally!"

The shift in the unseen eyes as the thread takes hold, suffocating and spinning; a meal for me, an annoyance for you. In the corners you don't check, a cornucopia of opportunity as yet another morsel is discarded, attracting them by the droves, your apathy to your own glutton as forgotten as the coconut you keep under your bed. (And, scene.)

If you're going through hell...

Keep going. Why would you stop in hell?

Mom accidentally dropped an existential poem in the group chat and then probably went back to doing dishes.

Only if it's not flowery language. Im too neurodiverse to understand metaphors.

Unless you have allergies and can't eat dairy or beans. Really cuts out all the good protein sources.

Mom tried the edibles.

The principal difference ia that you see the death of a non-sapient animal as murder and I ascribe it the same ethical weight whether a person or a lion does it. It's not "dissonance" it's a foundational disagreement on inherent morality, our place in nature, and the "value of life".

There's lots to complain about regarding the factory farming industry (environmental impact foremost in my mind, and the needlessly inhumane conditions they're raised in) but eating meat is not imo itself a cruel act.

That’s a misunderstanding due to the term phytoestrogens, afaik.

That estrogen thing is wrong. There's more estrogen in the meat people consume, far more, and you never hear anyone about that.

If you're worried about stuff like that, you'd do much better avoiding PFAS, which can affect male fertility. And cause cancer and a bunch of other diseases.

Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre

John Capitalism invented eating in 1901. Open your mind. Breathe.

I been procrastinating this translation for a while but now warhammer and poetry are in the same context, I simply have to.

(In case you wanna listen to it)

I want to be mechanized.

vroom,
vroom,
vroom!
clank clank clank!

I want to be mechanized.
This [feeling] comes from my brain, from my flesh, from my bones.
I go mad to get my hands on every dynamo.
My saliva-covered tongue is licking copper wires.
The auto-draisine in my veins is chasing down locomotives.

vroom,
vroom!

clank clank clank!

I want to be mechanized.
Certainly I will find a solution to this.
And then I will be content only
the day I mount a turbine in my abdomen, and
append a double-propulsor on my tailplane!

vroom vroom
clank clank clank!

I want to be mechanized!

- Nazim Hikmet, 1923. Makinalaşmak İstiyorum.

Holy moral absolutism batman, this barely reaches Sunday School levels of ethical thought. I'm a strong proponent of abandoning animal product dependence but poor-puppy-dog arguments drive me nuts.

For starters, every living being has a prerogative to survive and propagate its genetic pattern; pleasure and pain are base mechanisms for that. I personally refuse to believe that there is anything inherently bad about the existence of pain any more than the existence of pleasure is inherently good. Our human aversion to inflicting undue pain is natural as prosocial animals but that doesn't make it morally just or our tolerances for violence absolute.

Our reactions to violence aren't universal because every plant and animal has a set of characteristics which overlap with human characteristics to varying degrees. Those overlap very little with plants, more with mammals, even more with domesticated animals (selected for prosocial traits) and most with primates.

Moreover, our sensitivity to those traits is highly personal, depending on the context of our exposure to them. If your only exposure to non-human mammals is pet dogs then you'll obviously draw parallels when you see cattle with eyelashes and fur and tails. If you have to deal with dangerous feral dogs and nuisance vermin then you won't have the same sensitivity to those traits.

Our society exists at the expense of other forms of life, either directly (animal husbandry) or indirectly (habitats disrupted by our infrastructure). So saying nobody should eat meat because it causes suffering doesn't say anything about universal ethics, it's an unexamined exclamation that tells more about your existential dissonance than mine.

Before you dive into an argument about minimizing suffering, let's look closer at this part:

There is no way to rationalize eating meat in modern society as anything but catastrophically unethical

Humans have already destroyed many food chains, usually by eliminating apex predators. If there's nothing to hold the deer population in check, native plants will be decimated and the ecosystem will collapse. Humans are left in the position of culling them as the apex predator, the violence must happen either way.

How could eating the meat be "catastrophically unethical" in that situation? That's the expected flow of the food chain. Is it better to self-flagellate by disposing of ready calories; wasting water + topsoil + time to turn it into a vegan food?

Putting aside "humans greedy and meat bad", let's examine a fun part of your argument:

we cause immense suffering and death at a scale and acuity worse than the holocaust

We have 8 billion megafauna primates on our pale blue dot. Any pain we inflict is necessarily going to be at an immense scale. The scale has no ethical bearing unless you're arguing against utility derived, in which case a genocide is infinitely worse because we derive no utility from it.

Fallacy of composition. A car’s tires are made of rubber, doesn’t mean the whole car is made of rubber. Caring is a thing individuals do, not the systems they belong to.

We’re all living in a capitalist society. Does that mean capitalism cares?