I'm aware it happens but like anything it's an issue of scale. It makes fuck all difference a bit like the odd person dropping the bacon.
Bye bye MEAT! How will the post-meat future look?
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littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
So the question is how do we extend the practice. Can we get community farms around every town in the country that people can join on a part-time worker status - commit X number of days a year and you get Y percent of the produce? Scale it up so that it does make a real difference, raising the levels of people's diets across the board by reducing the percentage of highly processed food that everyone eats.
I'd like to see a radical rethink of work whereby it becomes the norm for people with office-based work of all kinds to spend one or two days a week doing physical work of this kind.
Sure, it's not easy to effect this kind of change, but your attitude of 'it can't happen' simply ensures that it won't happen. For example, how do we respond to the prospect of many people's jobs being at least partially replaced by AI? There's an opportunity right there for a rethink of how we organise ourselves.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
So you're not saying anything at all, then?
Fuck off.
I'm saying it is unlikely. I'm not sure I support it as a viable or even beneficial alternative. It may be. It has worked in various times and places and helpes to stave off famine in some circumstances. It sounds like it should be but I'd need to look into it more.
Assiming it is worth pursueing you're only saying the easy bits above. We'd all "like to see" things. How do you get from a few community gardens and some tossers on the Internet with too much time on their hands chatting about it to a position where what you're talking about can be implemented?
It is an opportunity but is it a good one or a spiked online one? How do we organise it? Not someone organise it or a machine organise some kind of digital serfdom but how do those that will have to give a few days a week to this push it forward in a way that has really benefits and will not just lead to another form of exploitation both of workers and the environment. How will that be protected from capitalist expansion and resurgence of the very processes that brought us here?
ETA sorry even more garbled than usual. New phone and I need to crack on. I might edit drekly.
I'm saying it is unlikely. I'm not sure I support it as a viable or even beneficial alternative. It may be. It has worked in various times and places and helpes to stave off famine in some circumstances. It sounds like it should be but I'd need to look into it more.
Assiming it is worth pursueing you're only saying the easy bits above. We'd all "like to see" things. How do you get from a few community gardens and some tossers on the Internet with too much time on their hands chatting about it to a position where what you're talking about can be implemented?
It is an opportunity but is it a good one or a spiked online one? How do we organise it? Not someone organise it or a machine organise some kind of digital serfdom but how do those that will have to give a few days a week to this push it forward in a way that has really benefits and will not just lead to another form of exploitation both of workers and the environment. How will that be protected from capitalist expansion and resurgence of the very processes that brought us here?
ETA sorry even more garbled than usual. New phone and I need to crack on. I might edit drekly.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
The answer to your question would be obvious if you subbed out 'chicken' for 'dog'.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
No it wouldn't. Would it be better if a dog had never lived than rather than lived a decent life then been swiftly dispatched? Makes no difference to the question.
This is the heart of much of the misunderstanding on here: the idea that you couldn't possibly ever want to kill animals if you liked/loved/valued them has been expressed many times in various ways.
There's a bit of denial going on here, imo, regarding the inevitable mortality of all living things, and a fetishisation of death over life. In your case, you seem to think there is some moral absolute at work. There really isn't.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
You've got a cat right? Would you be cool with 'swiftly dispatching' them to turn their fur into a nice-looking rug?
you can have them stuffed - same thing really
I can imagine have my cat put to sleep and then stuffed.
No, because then I wouldn’t have my pet cat any more
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Ok. why not?
Is it just better never to have existed full stop? We all die. And unless we opt for having our bodies cremated into ash, we all get eaten after we die.
This is related to a question I put to JR before: Is it better for one cow to live for 12 years or 6 cows to live for 2 years each? Same amount of life - 12 years - in each case, but more death in the second case: 6 deaths rather than 1. Is that worse? If so, why exactly? That's what I mean about fetishising death. Fixating, perhaps, is a better word.
And let's not kid ourselves here. Wild animals mostly die pretty horrible deaths one way or another. They are not swiftly dispatched. Is it better for wild animals never to have existed?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
My cat's dead btw. I had him killed to spare him a horrible death.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
Which was the right thing to do of course but I suspect you find the thought of killing him when he still had many years of good life ahead of him fairly gross if it's only for the purposes of exploiting his body?
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
Why would someone kill a pet?
friedaweed
Me and me girl named Jane
A common moggy wouldn't make much of a rug. Better to make a pair of slippers. That is unless you're in need of a hairpiece.
friedaweed
Me and me girl named Jane
It always comes back to Lengal.
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
You wouldn't get a pair of slippers out of one cat.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
There is no meaningful sense in which you can compare existence to non-existence. Non-existent entities have no moral status. Beings who exist have moral status. Having moral status means being owed prima facie obligations of non-harm. Killing an individual with a life worth living harms them by depriving them of future good life. Not bringing any individual into existence harms nobody so there is no wrong done. Bringing an individual into existence and then prematurely killing them harms them. This is all pretty obvious stuff.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
^^^ That's exactly what I mean about fetishising death.
This bit only looks at the death bit, ignores the bringing into existence:
This bit only looks at the death bit, ignores the bringing into existence:
Creation is morally neutral. Destruction is morally bad. Yet we live in a world in which creation and destruction happen in a continuous cycle in which one is impossible without the other.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
Creation = morally neutral
Non-creation = morally neutral
Destruction = morally bad.
Therefore
non-creation = morally neutral but creation + destruction = morally bad.
Your own moral mathematics agrees with my point.
bcuster
Well-Known Member
Your post is quite thought provoking. However, pigs, chickens, cows, etc are not wild animals
friedaweed
Me and me girl named Jane
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
True. They only exist because they're of use to us and will be killed at some point.
I think this whole line of reasoning is useless, fwiw. You can't establish some kind of countable morality out of lives in this way.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
So, to be clear, you'd think people do nothing wrong if they killed their cats and dogs prematurely to e.g. turn them into ornaments?
Would you rather have ten children who live to be 9 or one child who lives to be 90?
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
Might depend whether or not the ten children were 'swiftly dispatched'!
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I think this line of reasoning is useless.
But whose point of view are we looking at this from? The parent's? The children's? God's? How does the answer change in each instance?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
To be clear, I think you are searching for measurable, countable moral absolutes where none exists.
I apologise if I did not make that clear before.
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