Despicable: Japan to Resume Commercial Whaling

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powersurge said:
So you and my friend "Leftie" are incensed and call it "racist" that I used the word "Asians"? Come on. By the way I highly respect the Japanese people, their country, and their culture. We in the west could learn a lot by following their customs and ways of life... .

The issue is when you said "That is the problem with the Asian race." You are making a HUGE and frankly offensive generalization with that.

And as mentioned already (thank you jonathanfields) it's not something that is even demanded by most Japanese themselves. It's an industry that requires significant government subsidies to survive. So it would be wrong to even place the blame on the Japanese people.
 
Do you consider yourself a carrot? Have any pets? Are they agricultural resources? I'm sure you are smart enough to understand the semantic issue. If not, here it is: devaluation of one's victims by referring them them as objects or crops.
 
It's easy to take offense to this decision, but upon objective reflection it really is no different than the slaughter of other intelligent, domestic animals - like pigs, as one example. The more we identify with another species, the less likely we are to see it as a food source which is why primates and dogs are generally safe around humans.

So, if Minke whales are indeed no longer endangered, then it's pretty hypocritical to take offense if one is not a vegetarian or vegan. I freely admit though that I am a hypocrite, due to my cultural biases, as I disagree with the hunting of whales - yet I DO eat meat, including pork.

Of note in the article:

According to Japan's Asahi newspaper, whale meat makes up only 0.1% of all meat sold in Japan.

So, as with most things like this, the real problem is the small minority of a$$holes that feel they have a right to eat any animal they like. Without them, the whale hunt wouldn't be economically viable...
 
It's easy to take offense to this decision, but upon objective reflection it really is no different than the slaughter of other intelligent, domestic animals - like pigs, as one example.

There are similarities, obviously, but it is not "no different." The closest land analogy would be the hunting of wild gorillas for food, not the raising and slaughter of pigs. I could write a long post explaining why, even though it should be pretty obvious to those who think seriously about it, but after 9 days of the flu I'm short of both energy and patience.
 
LeftieBiker said:
Do you consider yourself a carrot? Have any pets? Are they agricultural resources? I'm sure you are smart enough to understand the semantic issue. If not, here it is: devaluation of one's victims by referring them them as objects or crops.

I don't consider myself a whale or a cow.
 
Ah, one the "Humans are Unique and Special" crowd. Got it.

I'm on your side, but this is one of those topics so polarizing that I think a more fruitful discussion would be had if everyone switched sides and made all the many counterarguments of the opposing view. Just to see what it felt like to be the enemy. In this affluent society in which I live, there are many things to eat besides animals. The foundation of said society having been laid down by "the most cunning and ruthless band of murderers the world has ever known." (I forget who I'm paraphrasing.)

Personally, I don't like to be complicit in killing and pain and suffering. I seek to minimize this. More and more people are coming around to the idea of empathy for all living things. Not in time and perhaps to no end, but it is never really too late to do the right thing. Is it?
 
NoReleaf said:
Ah, one the "Humans are Unique and Special" crowd. Got it.

I'm on your side, but this is one of those topics so polarizing that I think a more fruitful discussion would be had if everyone switched sides and made all the many counterarguments of the opposing view. Just to see what it felt like to be the enemy. In this affluent society in which I live, there are many things to eat besides animals. The foundation of said society having been laid down by "the most cunning and ruthless band of murderers the world has ever known." (I forget who I'm paraphrasing.)

Personally, I don't like to be complicit in killing and pain and suffering. I seek to minimize this. More and more people are coming around to the idea of empathy for all living things. Not in time and perhaps to no end, but it is never really too late to do the right thing. Is it?
Empathy for all living things leads to starvation. Unless you are a vegan for ethical reasons or vegetarian for health reasons, you are simply picking and choosing because you think one species is cuter than another. You can make a case for not eating endangered species just for the conservation aspect. You don't eat cows in India or pigs in Saudi Arabia or Israel but that's purely cultural. The inuit hunt whales because it was the best food source available to them. Plains Indians hunted buffalo for the same reason.

If Japanese food selections bother you by all means boycott them. I hate dried octopus. If you think whaling is a scourge on the earth, donate to Greenpeace. The Japanese have many quirky behaviors but that's no reason to boycott an entire country.
 
Empathy for all living things leads to starvation. Unless you are a vegan for ethical reasons or vegetarian for health reasons, you are simply picking and choosing because you think one species is cuter than another.

This is one of the commonest, most easily refuted rationalizations for killing whatever animal strikes our gustatory fancy. Unless you feel that intelligence or the ability to suffer just don't matter matter in our choice of what to eat, you are simply throwing up your hands out of intellectual laziness, and saying "It's all just based on what we think is cute." I don't find whales or gorillas "cute." I find them to be "intelligent and self-aware." This is also why I don't eat other mammals, but in the case of whales and gorillas you are destroying the species (and possibly their cultures) by hunting and killing them, not just the individuals.

I suppose next you'll be talking about the "suffering of plants." That too can be easily refuted, if you'd like to test me. It isn't as if any of these rationalizations are new, or uniquely well-crafted.
 
Empathy for all living things leads to starvation.

Actually, I have not seen this particular thought expressed before. I'm not sure if johnlocke is taking me up on the idea of throwing up all the opposite-view counterarguments while actually being in agreement, but I'll take it literally. ("Free the cows" was funny, though. Even though we know they'd all die.) Well, yes, we cannot subsist on sand and fallen leaves. I'm not sure what the Empathy Diet for human beings is, but no animal flesh is a good start for me. Because I can.

I'm not trying to be persuasive, anyway. I have no rational argument that I could not counter all by myself, and then counter again, ad infinitum. I have a feeling that a lot of what humans do to and with animals is wrong, bad for them and not necessarily good for us, not what I would have the stomach for personally, and I don't think that a belief that it was God's plan or Nature's plan, or any rational or ethical justification, could ever wash that feeling away. That's where I'm coming from.
 
LeftieBiker said:
Empathy for all living things leads to starvation. Unless you are a vegan for ethical reasons or vegetarian for health reasons, you are simply picking and choosing because you think one species is cuter than another.

This is one of the commonest, most easily refuted rationalizations for killing whatever animal strikes our gustatory fancy. Unless you feel that intelligence or the ability to suffer just don't matter matter in our choice of what to eat, you are simply throwing up your hands out of intellectual laziness, and saying "It's all just based on what we think is cute." I don't find whales or gorillas "cute." I find them to be "intelligent and self-aware." This is also why I don't eat other mammals, but in the case of whales and gorillas you are destroying the species (and possibly their cultures) by hunting and killing them, not just the individuals.

I suppose next you'll be talking about the "suffering of plants." That too can be easily refuted, if you'd like to test me. It isn't as if any of these rationalizations are new, or uniquely well-crafted.
Every grain product or root vegetable you eat represents the represents the unborn children of that species. You can't live without causing harm to something else. You don't have to eat meat to survive but that's how the human body is engineered. Animal protein and fats are preferential foods for humans, like it or not. It doesn't need to be a large part of the diet and if you do it right, you can get by on vegetable proteins. I'm perfectly fine with whatever food choice you care to make, just don't be intellectually lazy and claim that vegetarianism causes no harm.

I suppose that your next endeavour will be to convert lions and tigers to a vegetarian diet as well. By the way, just how stupid does an animal need to be before you would eat it?
 
I'm perfectly fine with whatever food choice you care to make, just don't be intellectually lazy and claim that vegetarianism causes no harm.

I have made no such claim - that's your strawman argument. Now, about those "unborn children": grains are seeds, and most grains and seeded fruits evolved to be eaten and digested by animals, so that a relative few of them would survive to propagate their species, either by surviving digestion or by being scattered when the animal feeds. Eating seeds while planting some of them is doing exactly what the plant "wants" to happen, evolutionarily speaking. Root vegetables are indeed another story, but since there is zero evidence that they can think, feel pain, or suffer in any way, your parroted argument collapses - doing harm to something that can't feel it and doesn't know it is only really harm if the species itself is harmed. And we do replant root vegetables as well, believe it or not.

Last, humans evolved as omnivores. It's quite true that we do well with small to modest amounts of meat, but it's also true that we don't need meat. After half a century of folks opposing vegetarianism by squawking about having to "combine proteins" in order to get "complete protein," it has finally become understood that, given a reasonable variety of foods in the diet, there is no need to combine any of them. Given the amount of meat in the typical Western diet, we actually do far more damage to our bodies than we do if we refrain from eating it at all. So you'll have to forgive me if I don't think much of people who promote the health benefits of meat...while eating so much of it that they are harming themselves. It's rather like listening to an alcoholic spouting the benefits of a glass of wine a day.
 
LeftieBiker said:
I'm perfectly fine with whatever food choice you care to make, just don't be intellectually lazy and claim that vegetarianism causes no harm.

I have made no such claim - that's your strawman argument. Now, about those "unborn children": grains are seeds, and most grains and seeded fruits evolved to be eaten and digested by animals, so that a relative few of them would survive to propagate their species, either by surviving digestion or by being scattered when the animal feeds. Eating seeds while planting some of them is doing exactly what the plant "wants" to happen, evolutionarily speaking. Root vegetables are indeed another story, but since there is zero evidence that they can think, feel pain, or suffer in any way, your parroted argument collapses - doing harm to something that can't feel it and doesn't know it is only really harm if the species itself is harmed. And we do replant root vegetables as well, believe it or not.

Last, humans evolved as omnivores. It's quite true that we do well with small to modest amounts of meat, but it's also true that we don't need meat. After half a century of folks opposing vegetarianism by squawking about having to "combine proteins" in order to get "complete protein," it has finally become understood that, given a reasonable variety of foods in the diet, there is no need to combine any of them. Given the amount of meat in the typical Western diet, we actually do far more damage to our bodies than we do if we refrain from eating it at all. So you'll have to forgive me if I don't think much of people who promote the health benefits of meat...while eating so much of it that they are harming themselves. It's rather like listening to an alcoholic spouting the benefits of a glass of wine a day.
You're a vegetarian, I'm an omnivore and neither one of us is likely to change their opinion. I'm opposed to whaling because the whale population is depleted. The Japanese have a cultural quirk about whale meat. That isn't a rational reason to boycott a country over. If you feel that strongly about it, sell your Leaf , get rid of any Japanese appliances you own, and buy something from someone whose cultural biases align with yours.
 
Having falsely accused me of claiming perfection for myself, you now demand that I seek perfection (for myself) by attempting to be more pure than anyone else. Meanwhile, you are satisfied with your own ethical structure, because.......it's easy for you to follow, I guess. Hopefully this about exhausts your store of boilerplate arguments. I have spam to eliminate.
 
LeftieBiker said:
Having falsely accused me of claiming perfection for myself, you now demand that I seek perfection (for myself) by attempting to be more pure than anyone else. Meanwhile, you are satisfied with your own ethical structure, because.......it's easy for you to follow, I guess. Hopefully this about exhausts your store of boilerplate arguments. I have spam to eliminate.
I never accused you of anything but vegetarianism. I never demanded you seek anything. I did suggest actions you could take if you felt strongly enough about it. What exactly do you plan to about whaling? That was the question.
 
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