Me too. We outsource our killing to others. The slaughterhouse workers suffer deeply (PTSD is very common, but some adapt to circumstances to act quite heartlessly). We simply ignore these emotions because it's easier.

What is need though? The "need" for a Christmas tree certainly is different from the need to eat (one is about survival, the other about "living" in a way).

Interesting how Baxter argues that animals' well-being shouldn't be considered beyond humans' simply because we don't understand what they are communicating, yet Dean really does assign a lot of emotion to animals. Is it anthropomorphizing? Is it real?

What exactly is this feeling of humility? From my perspective, I think she is talking about the fragility of one's own life when taking another. She killed the tree, but she is not immune to the cycle either, and perhaps accepts her place in it too. At the same time, though, would you go softly into the night? In the face of death, nearly every animal fights.

Well, at least they have some consideration then. Humans today just kill without thought, they eat meat and forget it was once an animal, then drink milk and don't even realize that milk was produced for a calf and that cows don't just automatically produce milk. There are consequences to your actions, even if you are ignorant, and I like that here that the tradition encourages presence and attention, being knowledgeable rather than turning your eyes away from it.

Is peace a one-way street? If I make peace with the kill, but the animal doesn't, what does that mean?

So, we're saying that, through some sort of spiritual connection, an animal offers itself to be killed? Like divine timing? I'm not certain I can get on board with this one.

Interesting to call it a "hunt" for trees, given it's uncommon

What rituals for this exist in modern society that is more removed from nature? For example, burying the dead seems, in one way, like a metaphor for the permanence of death, but it also seems like a preservation when someone is sealed in a coffin, as if you're still not giving the body back to nature.

"Primal emotions" is an interesting term. Is it the emotions that arise out of close contact with nature? Presence?

Unfortunately, we are animals. We don't live off the sun's rays and water and simply kill out of competition for non-living resources, we eat other living things. Jains put great effort into not killing living things (don't eat root vegetables for example), but that severely impacts their lives.

Being vegan I have a couple ways I think about the violence of my life. Mainly, I honestly don't think it has changed MY life much at all to be vegan, yet it has changed the lives of the many animals impacted by eating animal products regularly. * From an energy perspective, eating plants takes less lives simply because the animal I may eat had to eat something as well, and energy is lost as it goes through that cycle of eating. This is unchangeable right now. * The difficulties with being vegan aren't really because of the lifestyle itself, it's because of greater society. Society allows me to live a vegan lifestyle, in that I can easily get the nutrients I need from the grocery store's options (there is an abundance of food). Society also makes it difficult to be vegan because most available dishes and processed foods use animal products unnecessarily, it is simply the dominant way of living that perpetuates itself. I don't view that inconvenience as important to me, because it is simply a structural problem. * The Jain lifestyle at its most extreme kind of consumes one's life. Not being able to take a step without brushing potential bugs out of the way on the ground makes it difficult to merely exist. Perhaps it is the way of living that reduces suffering the most, but at what cost to you? Veganism doesn't require so much change in ways of living, just choices.

It's easy to see feeding one's body as a necessity: without food you die. Feeding the soul/spirit is different. (From my perspective, it seems frivolous to kill a tree simply for "Christmas," because to that tree, you are taking everything away. However, most interactions with nature that involve life-taking are not so direct. Maybe I want wooden chairs instead of a big rock to sit on because it's more comfortable.)

How do we know what's "necessary" and what's frivolous taking of life? As Baxter ponders, what level of satisfaction should we strive for at the cost of others? Baxter argues the maximum satisfaction still preserves nature to some extent. The thing is, must we strive for a "maximum" satisfaction? Pain develops us on a deeper level than pure pleasure, but a life with no pleasure may be devoid of meaning.

In my life, I've spent a lot of time searching for meaning. Maybe if I never suffered I wouldn't need to search for meaning to make myself feel better, but at the same time, too peaceful a life seems pointless. Why continue to go on if there is nothing to fight for? No places to go?

I think this is also how I feel about veganism. I'm not sure I could forget what I now know even if doctors told me I had to eat animal products again. It would just be deeply unsettling.

Familiarity. Is the feeling of hesitation in killing it from shared experience? In this case, the experience is very concrete and has specific memories attached, but what about other ways to call upon shared experience? Even with no particular being in mind, we can assume some things about the lived experience we share (pain is pain after all, and many of us have the same senses).

main point on animals, we are all subjects of life, and thus have inherent value

These features aren't ignored. For example, POC argue that "colorblind" viewpoints are harmful to their causes as well, because it ignores parts of them that are important to their experiences and identities.

Exactly, the justice point I though of earlier. If getting rid of a hospital reduces city noise, and that reduction of city noise supposedly has a greater collective benefit than keeping the hospital does, then contractarianism argues we should get rid of it. Is that really just? Is it really just cause deep suffering in our most vulnerable people, only to eliminate a mild inconvenience for the not-so-vulnerable majority?

Precisely. Why should we take on this way of thinking, that we have no duties to the beings different than us? It's a slippery slope, because they we narrow down who we do have duties to (so from living things, to animals, to humans, to perhaps only your race, or gender, or your country, speakers of your language, your family members, maybe only you and nothing outside you, you may end up narrowing down what "you" are to something ever smaller).

Yep, this is exactly what was in Baxter's "The Case for Optimal Pollution." If you can't understand the contract, you don't get a say, but it's not detrimental because maybe someone who can understand does care about you.

The advantage to that disgusting thought pattern is that at least we narrow down the information that may inform our decisions to something we can comprehend.

Pain is an interesting concept. There is a great deal of pain in the world, and ideally we would reduce it, but also, pain is biologically generated. So... if the goal is to reduce all pain in the world, then we could simply eliminate all forms of life that feel pain and/or suffer and that would do the trick. This is obviously a strange solution, so I believe there is something other than minimizing pain we are actually striving for.

Yes, in the end of it all, no matter how the animal is treated in life, the treatment is simply in servitude of your own human preferences, and ends up in death.

Compare the veal calf to a dog. If someone's dog was pampered and treated like royalty during life, and I ask to eat it after it has died, it is wrong because you don't view the dog as a resource, but somehow it's okay to perceive it that way for cows, pigs, and chickens?

This is how I reacted when I read "The Case for Optimal Pollution." Is all that matters really just what makes us feel bad, nothing more?

Exactly! This logical/philosophical argument is structured in such a way that there is basically no way to argue against it, or even apply it in its truest form realistically.

If I ever try to make an argument against it, suddenly it's "but you are human and that thing actually contributes to your well-being because you're arguing against it, which totally fulfills the criteria here." And if you're on board, how do you even measure these distant things? How do we anticipate how an action will even impact the well-being of humans, especially if the action has never been done before or is potentially irreversible?

Philosophical arguments like this are simply useless as anything but a thought exercise because we can't even apply it as it states it.

Who benefits from a hospital? Who benefits from noise control? This just makes me think of issues of justice. In research ethics, you deliberately have to outline how the people put at risk from the research also benefit equally from it. This is why historical studies on black communities that primarily benefit white people pose an issue of social justice.

I do see this point, but what about humans that don't currently exist? Like, we cannot communicate with animals, but we do understand what it's like to be affected a decision you had no influence over.

Future children cannot communicate their needs or preferences, but also as humans, we do consider them at times. We, as humans, want to leave some sort of impact, no? We also tend to want to respect the past in some way. So, yes, privately, we feel bad about making the world a worse place for future generations, but that is the full extent of it, just our feelings now. Point is, if we only care about humans, how do we consider others, or humans yet to come, or humans who have passed? We still consider them in our "feelings" and whatnot.

I think seeing human benefit to pollution only is realistic to how we think and nothing more. We ignore the animals and plants, the Earth, and focus solely on ourselves. This is what drives human motivation, but it is a bit saddening that this is the end we strive for, without anything greater as our goal. Like, what even is the meaning of life at that point? Is it really to serve ourselves, potentially until we destroy the thing that fostered our life in the first place? Is the only reason why we shouldn't destroy the Earth because of the direct consequences to us?

I feel like we are also bad at anticipating these costs. When I was considering going vegan at first, I thought I would be giving up the foods I love. In reality, the gains and losses were completely different than what I anticipated. I lost the ability to go to a restaurant without worrying about vegan options, to eat any snack I laid my eyes on, and now have a lot of strange social interactions because people are weird about vegans. However, I gained a lot as well. My mood feels better, my digestion is better, my cooing is more food safe and less strenuous, I spend little on groceries, I discovered a whole lot of foods I like, I connected with people I otherwise would not have, I gained a new perspective and way of thinking, and I just get to feel better about my daily decisions and their impact on the world around me. In short, I thought this move that lowers my pollution would be a whole lot worse for my well-being than it actually was/

People often ascribe moral value to what is "natural" without thinking it through fully. There are plenty of reasons to do things "naturally" that are logically valid, of course.

An example is people writing off synthetic fibers for being unnatural, while natural fibers are always better. They assume they must be higher performing and better for the environment because of it (and they are in many ways, but also aren't in other ways), simply for being "natural." Even much of wildlife is cultivated (e.g., cherry blossoms), so... ascribing morality to what exists outside of human influence is a bit strange, no?

Although many blatant statements of what makes humans "unique" are often far overblown, I agree with this one. Animals live in the here and now, and there is no evidence that they think of what "should" be done beyond personal desires (e.g., gaining reward, avoiding punishment), at least not in a way we would notice/comprehend.

This also relates to how I often talk about international politics with Americans. Yes, you should support Ukraine because what russia is doing is absolutely terrible and unforgivable, but you're an American who isn't affected by Ukrainians dying. I try to focus on how it does affect you, as someone far away (e.g., the global world order, the knowledge and trade benefits of good Ukraine relationship, the threat of russia becoming stronger, etc.). Moralistically, you care, but you care about things more direct to you (think, central and peripheral route of processing information).

I appreciate that Baxter doesn't deny the human's place in nature. We are animals, we are living things, and yes we live very differently because we constructed a very different life for ourselves, but we still have a place in nature, we still live on Earth, we cannot avoid the cycles of life and death, disease, the need to eat, the dangers of the wild, the deep need to explore no matter how rich we are.

While these arguments are selfish, they are realistic. People put their preferences first in their actions. They do kind things when it doesn't inconvenience them and makes them feel good, they commit atrocities to avoid the discomfort social reprehension and lifestyle change.

Humans don't live in a vacuum, and environmental damage can very well come back to bite us in unexpected ways.

leftist movements have more barriers in Ukraine when people try to erase Soviet heritage

an ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food

Since Ukraine's national identity is under threat, patriotic music encapsulates people's emotions. On the other hand, russia is not under threat, if anything, many russians would rather not associate with patriotic songs while their country is invading another. For russians, there is no existential threat, so patriotic songs don't fulfill an emotional need in the same way as in Ukrainians.

Music conveys an image of Ukraine to the outside world, and we know that, for Ukraine, this is extremely important, since much of the world has little knowledge of Ukraine.

War is a time of cultural production.

In linguistic study, it is hard to find so much raw data on how people felt about situations like war since much of it was written. This is a unique time to see how language around the war, especially when our lives are so connected to media and literacy is so high.

These words almost sound made up