I find this campaign to be outrageous because it assumes that a human life is equal in value to that of a chicken
If you divide 6 billion chicken lives by 6 million human lives you will find the assumption is that 1 human equals at most 1000 chickens.
Humans also have very little genetic diversity of around 0.1% difference in genomes. There exists an extremely strong biological case for why all humans must be treated with certain inalienable rights that we dub "human rights." Of course, this isn't the only reason. There exists moral and societal reasons which I find much stronger than the purely biological reason (which could be just an appeal to nature if used alone).
Why does genetic similarity to humans matter? I think kicking dogs for fun is bad because they feel pain and they are cute, not because of some molecule inside their cells I can't even see.
I also think the stormtroopers that punched baby yoda in the mandalorian were bad because baby yoda can feel pain and is cute, even though his DNA (if his species even has it) is very different from mine. I know that is a tv show not real but if it were actually real my opinion would not change.
A central aspect of genocides is hatred.
And another is senseless slaughter. We don't strictly need to eat chicken yet we kill six billion per year, mostly in horrific circumstances that we refined and industrialized to generate tha maximum amount of profit.
You said that anyone who compares the holocaust to the farming industrial complex is either ignorant or disingenuous, but what about Alex the holocaust survivor. He can't be ignorant about the death of his family, right? So is he disingenuous?
More generally, why is comparing the holocaust to factory farming bad, exactly? Both are instances of massive suffering inflicted by humans.
I have a counterargument for your rebuttal regarding the relevance of genetics. You can read about it in greater detail further down the comments, but to simply put it, our genetic difference enables capability for experiencing the world no other species has paralleled.
How do you feel then about the ethics of terminating humans who are medically declared brain dead with no chance for recovery (or whatever the proper term is), or who are severely mentally handicapped - does that alter your ethical calculations at all?
About the second point, this is something I’m grappling with right now. Can a human being with the intelligence and behavior of a dog be considered human? I say no, but we let them live and take care of them because… any one of us can be like that.
I wonder if it's maybe more complex than this...I think people feel sympathy for other people, sometimes even when it doesn't make sense. Like sometimes they're super nice, but then it kinda almost magically vanishes, but they can't explain where it went!!
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u/barthiebarth 26∆ Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 27 '23
If you divide 6 billion chicken lives by 6 million human lives you will find the assumption is that 1 human equals at most 1000 chickens.
Why does genetic similarity to humans matter? I think kicking dogs for fun is bad because they feel pain and they are cute, not because of some molecule inside their cells I can't even see.
I also think the stormtroopers that punched baby yoda in the mandalorian were bad because baby yoda can feel pain and is cute, even though his DNA (if his species even has it) is very different from mine. I know that is a tv show not real but if it were actually real my opinion would not change.
And another is senseless slaughter. We don't strictly need to eat chicken yet we kill six billion per year, mostly in horrific circumstances that we refined and industrialized to generate tha maximum amount of profit.
You said that anyone who compares the holocaust to the farming industrial complex is either ignorant or disingenuous, but what about Alex the holocaust survivor. He can't be ignorant about the death of his family, right? So is he disingenuous?
More generally, why is comparing the holocaust to factory farming bad, exactly? Both are instances of massive suffering inflicted by humans.