>> I also believe that if you are going to eat animal flesh, you should really kill it yourself, because that is honest and direct and clear.<<
I agree. I am sure there would be a lot less killing if this were the case. Still I am not a vegetarian and would not want to kill animals in order to eat them. Guess that makes me a hypocrite. And savage.
>>So to me it is more savage for me to go to the store and buy clean, carved, plastic wrapped beef flesh than go out to the stockyard and slay a cow myself.<<
Well, how would you know if you've never slain a cow? Only in theory.
>> because I think that when I can avoid looking at pigs spending their lives suffering in small pens, or can avert my eyes from children suffering, I am less likely to do something that I consider ethical and good.<<
Perhaps, but we must have some way to screen out the suffering of other creatures. If we were truly able to empathize with it, we would go insane.
>>I also think that is how the atrocities in Europe during World War II were achieved, because enough distance was created that people could convince themselves they were not happening. I think the first widely televised war, Viet Nam, was interesting in that public opinion here changed after the carnage was shown nightly on television.<<
Certainly distance makes atrocity easier. If there were no guns or arrows and people had to be killed with hand held weapons, there would certainly be a lot less deaths. I think that in the Viet Nam war, television actually helped to maintain the distance in a way. One could pretend it was just another war film. We are so used to seeing people killed on TV. However, IMO, one cannot compare the Viet Nam war with WW11. WW11 was a moral war, as moral as any war can be, although many immoral acts may have been committed. Viet Nam was, IMO, an immoral war, and that had a strong influence on public opinion. |
