subsistence living, ethics and vegetarianism

>David:
>> **  More specifically, you should have no regrets at trapping and eating 
>a
>> rabbit or a feral goat while you are living at subsistence level, 
 
At 20:42 2/03/00 -0500, my friend 'M' responded:
>But I /would/ have regrets. In fact, I don't think I could personally
>and locally kill another animal at all and I would probably die (if
>there were not enough plants to subsist on) rather than kill someone
>else. It must have something to do with eyes. Or blood. I have a very
>deep fellow-feeling for other animals ...
>I also think it's disingenuous (inauthentic? false? cowardly? too
>sanitized? too easy?) to eat animals you would not yourself kill. I
>can't eat an animal someone else has killed because I would not kill it
>myself, with my hands. And I would not /want/ someone else to kill an
>animal for me.

**  I don't believe ['M'] could stay vegetarian in a life-threatening
situation except in conditions where [she] was hypothermic. I don't
actually believe [she] would let that happen if, for example, [she] was a
pioneering mother in a sod hut in the Mid-West, with a sea of grass and
rabbits around, and no other way to get food. 


**  I /had/ hoped [she] and I could discuss this new idea of mine, that
ethics and emotional reasons for action are suitable guides /above/ the
subsistence level. Similar to my view that economics only applies /after/
subsistence requirements are met.

At 14:11 24/02/00 +1300, I said (and 'M' didn't respond to) :-
**  I see that there is a normal fitting-in of the organism with its
environment, where it takes its normal requirements (for continued
existence and reproduction, e.g. a mosquito sucking your blood), without
any need for ethical or emotional concern, or there is the abnormal
situation where the individual no longer fits into its niche in the ecology
and splashes out all over the place, having more than twice the typical
effect of an organism on individuals and species around it. These effects
(normal and abnormal) are both negative and positive, life diminishing (or
extinguishing) and life enhancing, but ethical and emotional concerns
should (IMO) only enter when the individual or species moves beyond the
normal into having an excessive effect on the rest.


**  I believe we're not talking about vegetarianism vs. meat-eating, but
about the luxury (I would call it) of being able to /choose/ which. Perhaps
[she] hadn't paid enough attention to my using -subsistence-. 

**  I believe I'm dealing with the question of whether the current humans,
with their aggregate effect on the earth, have the /same/ "right to exist"
that the one-tenth as many did back at the end of the Middle Ages, when
most would have been living at no more than twice subsistence level.

**  Somewhere in there was probably the last time we can be /sure/ that the
human species was having a "normal" effect, typical of similar species
(baboons, bears, buffalo), and that's what I regard as having a right to
exist. It's not granted by some powerful person or group, the way I think
most rights are, but has the similar effect, in that one should be able to
see that, on the average, humans were "doing the right thing" and they
therefore had a right to continue doing it.

**  The way this applies now is that I see the health of the rest of living
things on earth (animals, plants, microbes), its ecology, is now strongly
dependent on the total effect of humans on the earth, and that that health
is seriously threatened by our overconsumption and large numbers. So "doing
the right thing", when there are now nearly 10 times as many as when we're
sure we were doing the right thing, means the average /has to/ come down to
a subsistence level, to return the earth's ecology to close to normal
health. The amazing increase in use of the earth's resources since the
1970s was a real mistake, and has left us with no leeway any longer, IMO.


**  You can see why I'm somewhat bemused by your:
> I have no personal qualm about picking peas or eating grain products.
> I recognise I'm using resources, but it doesn't pain me in any way, 
>like the thought of eating animals does.

**  I just don't think one person's qualms, pain, or ethical feelings have
much to do with the big picture, whereas the latter (to me) is a much
better guide to any one person's action (or in my case, inaction).


**  You do say:
>I think I, as a human being, can stay in my ecological niche 
>without killing an animal. The Nearings certainly did.
> 
**  One can certainly live a much pleasanter life that way, without
expanding beyond one's species' niche. There's still the question of total
effect, but the distance to go is relatively small if one's a vegetarian.


>I guess I don't think in terms at all of a "right" to exist. I just do
>exist. So does everything and everyone else. We all have equal right to
>exist, which makes a "right to exist" sort of a superfluous concept. I
>don't see that I have any /less/ right than a rabbit or a geranium, or
>any more. None of us is responsible for bringing about our own
>existence. 

**  This reasoning, "we all have equal right to exist", /was/ true when
there were less than a billion humans; see above for the rest of my views
on this.

David.
(David MacClement) d1v9d@bigfoot.com 
www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3142/Pg1-AD11.html
 or better: http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/
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