this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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But then what about, say, cows? They were domesticated too, but to the extent that they subjectively like and trust humans (and I've seen very friendly cows) they have been deceived, with very few exceptions. Maybe we deserve them in the purely material sense since they are the products of our labor, but they don't deserve us...
Perhaps not individually - although even there, what is the average lifespan of a cow in the wild? - but collectively there have been far more cow offspring than there would have been if they had not been domesticated.
Also, looking at every other wild species that we've eradicated, they seem to have decided to get in on our good side, which since they aren't extinct may have worked out well for them.
And even individually, if they live >3x longer, in a more comfortable environment where food is provided routinely... it's arguably not as bad a trade-off as it first appears.
A lifetime of slavery ending in death, or try to outcompete the species that invented guns? We might each make a different choice, but they made theirs.
I have heard that argument for animal husbandry, but in today's world the comfortable environment is provided to only a tiny fraction of livestock. If I had the choice to either be a random pig or chicken nowadays, or just nothingness, I rather not exist at all. What's the point of living 3 times longer when you hardly have enough space to even turn around and stand in your own shit? If anything, the longer life span makes it worse.
Cow: I want my species to thrive in number!
monkey's paw finger curls
Damn... good point.
I was even all set to argue back with like: each individual cow makes their own choice, as in the ones who fight back against the system get killed, whereas those who simply accept it as-is continue to exist, leading us to today where those who are left are those who are genetically predisposed to not fight (but theoretically, they could still fight back?). And that even before we delved into direct genetic manipulation, to increase the meat-to-effort ratio. Maybe one day we'll design cows that just walk directly into our mouths and beg us to chew them?
So humans in essence foundationally altered what a "cow" even is - like imagine a wild boar that humans actually feared, vs. today's mere "pigs". What is left is a shadow of the former glory that the true bovine herbivore ruminant was in its prime heyday. i.e. nobody alive to today has ever seen a true "cow" (unless like boars there is some wild variant somewhere, not descendants of some escapee but a truly untouched species?).
That's all on us. As people elsewhere are saying, we treat cows almost as bad as we treat humans beings.
Perhaps that is why shows like The Matrix are so horrifying - it's what we would do (/ are already doing), if the situation were reversed.
Hey, it's great you contemplated my point this much, I do not expect this when arguing online :) While I would prefer there to be less animal suffering, I don't think demand for meat is going away anytime soon, but I think it is realistic for lab grown meat to replace actually raising the entire cow in the not too distant future, making this discussion finally obsolete. In the sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy there are actually some form of livestock that actively want to be eaten and even recommend which parts of them are most delicious. The Matrix comparison is great as well, I did not think of that yet.
Lab grown meat will replace the NEED for cows, but I dunno if it will replace the DESIRE for them to be slaughtered:-(.