{"id":239,"date":"2009-03-17T21:46:21","date_gmt":"2009-03-17T21:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/03\/17\/ontology_3\/"},"modified":"2009-03-17T21:46:21","modified_gmt":"2009-03-17T21:46:21","slug":"ontology_3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/03\/17\/ontology_3\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontology #3"},"content":{"rendered":"

bq. And… Eva’s thoughtful comment<\/a> deserves a response from me. This was going to be a comment, but seeing as it was quite on-topic for the title I gave it its own space.<\/p>\n

\nI did wonder if posting this story<\/a> and those pictures<\/a> in this forum was appropriate. But seeing as I blog about a scientist’s life as well as science itself, and I’d already established a bit<\/a> of a travelogue<\/a>, I thought why not? I thought, briefly, that I might offend someone but that’s never stopped me before\u2014seriously, I’m happy being carnivorous and I’m happy knowing where meat comes from. <\/p>\n

\nYes, there was a thrill in the tracking, the chase, and the kill (all of them). The adrenaline was pumping and\u2014somewhat ironically, perhaps\u2014I felt alive<\/em>. I enjoyed it. But I wouldn’t have been doing it if I didn’t know that (a) we were controlling vermin and (b) someone was going to eat the animals we killed. (b) was more important to me than (a), for what it’s worth.<\/p>\n

\nAnd this has stirred a few dormant neurons: Killing for food is fine by me (morally, I mean). But how about letting others kill animals for me, and me going to the butcher’s and saying ‘I’ll have that prime steak there, please’? In that case I’m not taking the responsibility for the animal, although I’m quite happy for the moral questions (and the gore and the effort) to be abstracted. Is that inconsistent?<\/p>\n

\nPossibly. I’ve demonstrated that I’m quite able\u2014and happy\u2014to acquire my own food, even if it is fluffy and cute. But the great advance that we as humans have made is to sub-contract the business of staying alive to other people. We make an industry of agriculture, and with the economies of scale<\/a> that brings, the freedom from the tyranny of the struggle for survival, we are free to do more productive things (like wasting time on Nature Network).<\/p>\n

\nSo, morally, that’s an interesting one. If you aren’t prepared to kill animals yourself for food, but will let others do it for you, should you eat meat? I’d say ‘yes’, because you’re participating in a social contract that allows you, frees<\/em> you to do more interesting things, like discover black holes and evolution and the Haber Process and write blog posts about it. <\/p>\n

\nBut I’m willing to have my mind changed\u2014it just won’t stop me eating meat. And before you ask, yes my girls know where food comes from: they’ve caught their own fish, they collect eggs from the chickens, and I’m (hopefully) taking Rachel out soon to shoot and cook her own rabbit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

bq. And… Eva’s thoughtful comment deserves a response from me. This was going to be a comment, but seeing as it was quite on-topic for the title I gave it its own space. I did wonder if posting this story … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}