*talks

Adding video to channels (Talks) - requested by gwiz665.

He makes some really great points. If I was a stronger person I would be a vegan, because I really hate the torture and murder of animals. But it would be very hard, and I would terribly miss so many of my favorite foods.

But at least I can admit those areas of my base nature where I am weak and behave counter to my professed ethical standards. That counts for something, I hope.

It's just animals...something is going to eat them...why not me

>> ^Stu:

It's just animals...something is going to eat them...why not me


Heh. People always end up making the perfect arguments for their quality.

I enjoyed the video, it has a great message, however his line of argument was actually off track in my opinion. The cognitive dissonance doesn't involve "I did something stupid" vs "I'm a smart person" - it goes deeper than that. There is a straight suspension of rational thought, most likely due to them wanting to believe this figure that they to admire (for a variety of reasons) knows something that they don't.

So my argument would be that they don't even register that they've done something stupid because before they even reached that mental checkpoint they have made the justification that because some part of their psyche needed what this person offered, they would go to any lengths to satisfy the demands of said person. So it's not about right and wrong any more, it's about providing themselves with mental comfort. The justifications probably came years earlier when they failed to get into grad school, or their boyfriend dumped them and told them they were stupid, so they began to gradually build up a mechanism by which they could go through life without feeling like they had to take responsibility when something went wrong - placing their faith in others. That way, when something bad does happen, it's not their fault.

Using this argument, one could see how if they had placed their faith in someone previously (e.g. something good happened after they prayed), then it would be a good idea to continue that behavior because more good things might happen. So in a sense, the decision to blindly follow someone is actually a logical progression of previous experience. It's just unfortunate that they ignore a whole bunch of stuff that a 'normal' person wouldn't.

PS
I may or may not have just written this to justify why the pig slaughter vid shouldn't have been part of his argument... because I eat meat.

PPS
However, if you just read that last sentence and thought to yourself, "oh crap, maybe his argument is invalid, it's going to be a pain rereading it and deciding for myself if it's valid" then congratulations, you just experienced a similar feeling to what drives certain individuals to try to make life easier on themselves by placing their faith in a person who postures themselves as a leader (and kind of verified my argument).

Gah, now I'm playing mindgames with myself.

Thoughts?

I don't think the links he's making make much sense. By his argument, every time we do something morally wrong or intellectually stupid, it contradicts our belief that we are good or smart. However, I don't think most people believe they are so good, or so smart, that they will always make the correct choice. Making bad choices isn't a conflict of character. It's the reality of being imperfect beings. This doesn't parallel the cultists who invest their entire identity in the idea that they are making a particular important decision correctly and later have to face the fact they were not.

The case of factory farms also seems inappropriate. We've seen several animal slaughter/torture videos on the sift. Most omnivores in the comments don't deny that modern farm animals live miserable tortured lives, nor that our meat consumption is responsible for their situation. Instead they argue that there's no moral imperative for one species (humans) to treat another species (pigs) well. If that's how you feel about it, then you can chow down on pork chops without any cognitive dissonance whatsoever.

..thing is, we all have parts of our lives that suffer from a lack of introspection. We may feel just fine about our actions and beliefs without seeing how they contradict with our set of values. This contradiction can be so great that it is very difficult to accept as an innocent error of the kind we should expect ourselves to make; it shakes out egos.

It's not the strongest argument, but, for the sake of continuity, consider what the reaction of Sift omnivores would be if they were forced to slaughter their own meat. Even those claiming they feel no moral imperative to respect the suffering of other animals might wince just a bit as that calf calls for it's mother in its last moments of consciousness.

>> ^grinter:

It's not the strongest argument, but, for the sake of continuity, consider what the reaction of Sift omnivores would be if they were forced to slaughter their own meat. Even those claiming they feel no moral imperative to respect the suffering of other animals might wince just a bit as that calf calls for it's mother in its last moments of consciousness.


I'm sure at least a few sifters are also hunters or at the very least, anglers. Personally, I've never killed a farm animal, but I have caught and killed fish. I am morally comfortable with killing for food. Hell I'm comfortable with killing for a lot less than that and so are most people, including vegans. Or are they happy to live in a cockroach infested apartment or a termite/woodworm riddled house?

Ego will be the end of mankind unless we hit another Black Plague.

>> ^probie:

Ego will be the end of mankind unless we hit another Black Plague.


/hardcore lullaby engaged

That probably won't happen
No, it probably won't happen...
Tonight..

I agree with the comments about the whole morally good smart person vs stupid bad person being a flawed idea. It's too black and white.

Also I don't agree with him saying you shouldn't cop out of doing stuff by making excuses to keep your ego going since there are different kinds of people to consider here. There's the usual people who probably always care about torture of animals but then make a multitude of different excuses to validate their choice of eating meat then there are people who don't care about animal welfare whatsoever and so its simply a life choice to eat meat or not based on taste and the idea that meat makes you stronger etc. There's people who don't even think about it, because they literally don't know about the issue. There's people who are different based on their mood, sometimes they care, sometimes they don't. There's mentally unstable people, there's people who are addicted to it. And many more.

So I don't think its always about making an excuse to keep your ego going. In reality these labels (morally good person, stupid person) don't really exists. Rather it's all about your mental viewpoint and how much knowledge/information you have.

Opposition to the slaughter of animals is an emotional reaction. Either you feel it or you don't. It may be that working in a slaughterhouse for a day would shock people into feeling differently about it. However I don't think we can embrace that as an omnivore hypocrisy test for two reasons.

1) If they stayed at the job for 6 months, they might get over their shock and resume their earlier belief that killing animals for food is perfectly acceptable. There was a time when 95% of the western population had killed an animal for meat, and there was no mass conversion to veganism.

2) More fundamentally, all humans are emotional beings. In a jarring situation, we can all be manipulated into feeling some way that we didn't feel 10 minutes earlier. Go watch some tough guys crying at the end of a romantic comedy. Do they believe Reese Witherspoon has found true love? No, but Hollywood has figured out that if you play swelling violin music, people get emotional, no matter how contrived the story is. I don't think we can consider the reactions to such shocks, particularly as a result of deliberate manipulation, as a true insight into a person's character. Instead, we should see how they feel when they've had time to step back and reflect on the experience.

The video author might decry this as "rationalizing" our emotional failings. However, emotions are beyond our control. It's impossible to feel the wrong way, because there is no choice in the matter. You feel how you feel. It's a good thing that humans have mechanisms to construct their identities apart from their emotional reactions. Otherwise we'd be even more enslaved to them and more easily manipulated than we are now. Is examining and selectively discarding our spur of the moment emotional reactions cognitive dissonance? If so, we should be putting cognitive dissonance in the water supply, like fluoride.
>> ^grinter:

consider what the reaction of Sift omnivores would be if they were forced to slaughter their own meat. Even those claiming they feel no moral imperative to respect the suffering of other animals might wince just a bit as that calf calls for it's mother in its last moments of consciousness.

>> ^Mikus_Aurelius:

Oppos... ..consciousness.



Perhaps it cognitive dissonance on my part that is leading me to see your examples as working counter to your arguments?

If once has the opportunity to eliminate their negative emotional reaction to slaughtering animals through repeated exposure (what do the psychologists call it, "exposure therapy"?), then he truly does have a foothold on his emotions.

Likewise, the "toughguy" crying in response to a string heavy movie soundtrack seems to work against your original point. Do you really expect the toughguy to ask the person next to him for tissues? I expect him to be embarrassed, and within a few hours to go back to thinking of himself as 'the kind of guy' who doesn't cry during Jennifer Aniston films.

>> ^grinter:
... I expect him to be embarrassed, and within a few hours to go back to thinking of himself as 'the kind of guy' who doesn't cry during Jennifer Aniston films.


Dude, EVERY man cries during JenAni films. Not because of any emotional control of the movie, merely due to the money wasted on the tickets...