andymackem wrote:I don't go out of my way to kill things, but I accept that they will die. Often in ways that they (and probably I) would prefer they didn't.
I think about it a lot, but still find it difficult to accept. Die, well okay, we're all bound to die, but being killed
just for fun will never seem acceptable to me.
There's another difficult issue: I love all animals, but I love cats above all. And cats do tend to kill for fun, and pretty cruel they can be too. That is the only thing I cannot accept about cats. However, I try to justify it by the fact that they are not equipped with certain things that we, humans, are. Actually, we're the only species on Earth that's supposed to be able to make use of these things. I'm talking about conscience, compassion, and mercy.
andymackem wrote:In respect of RJ's callously slaughtered biscuit, when the wheat was being harvested to produce the flour to produce the biccie, are we sure that the field had been cleared of all animal life first? Or must we now add fieldmouse armageddon to the list of crimes? Maybe crop-rearing is responsible for more animal deaths per meal than livestock farming?
That's a good point. And let us not forget that plants have a kind of "nervous system" too. Believe it or not, I often hesitate before picking carrots from my garden, as if I were some kind of executioner. Hate receiving cut flowers too.
When we look close enough, we'll see that death is ubiquitous, it's all around us, all the time. Some of us tend to think about it often, and feel sorry about it. Some don't give a f**k.