this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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Growing up: “Robert E. Lee was a good man who fought on the losing side.”
As an adult: “Robert E. Lee was a Confederate and supported slavery.”
Reading a PugJesus post about Robert E. Lee: 🤮
It's really sad how lionized Lee is despite being worse than average even by slaver standards.
Like, history is my center of interest. I am acutely aware that morals and norms are deeply contextual things, and that most people will grow up absorbing the morals and norms of the time and place.
But how can someone be such a piece of shit that their own slave overseer refuses to carry out their orders? The man's job is literally to brutalize slaves, and HE thinks you've gone too far?
I mean, shit, at least lionize some blinkered fanatic like Stonewall Jackson. He was a slaver, but at least he was willing to break the law for the sake of treating slaves more humanely, rather than less humanely. It doesn't absolve him from being a slaver at a time when it was increasingly clear that slavery was not some fundamental piece of existence, but it at least absolves him of being worse than his fucking peers.
The only reason that “morals are deeply contextual” is that average people are dumb as shit in all the ways that matter. Moral reasoning is similar to mathematics, but whereas we have formalized math, which people study in school for 12+ years (and are still terrible at it), morality is a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-and-do-your-best endeavor.
That’s why there’s such a discrepancy between the opinions of ethicists and those of average people. Why we had slavery for 10,000 years, why Trump was elected. Why billionaires, religions, and cruise ships exist. Because average people are dumb as shit in all the ways that matter, and no discipline in the world reminds us just how close the average human is to a mindless animal than ethics.
Are you a vegan by chance?
I feel like that's the next big moral shift. People lionize dogs and cats, and harming one makes you literally Hitler. But there's not a lick of difference between a dog and a cow.
I think that an objective ethicist would absolutely say veganism is the only moral choice, and that anyone who isn't a vegan is knowingly participating in unimaginable cruelty.
But in our current context, only a small fraction of people care. Including a lot of people who look down on people of the past for not being as amazingly moral as they are.
I mean, in the end an animal is an animal. I have had cats and dogs and don't really like to see them hurt because (in the West) there is no purpose for their existence besides being pets.
Cows and livestock, on the other hand, only exist for food and we keep breeding them for that.
At the same time, is don't really see a problem with the cultures that eat cats and dogs, in the end, it's all just animals and it doesn't matter if I think that some of them look cuter than others
Many animals are smarter than severely mentally-disabled humans, yet we don't torture and eat severely mentally-disabled humans. So it's not about intelligence. It's obviously also not about being able to feel pain, because animals can feel pain.
Do you agree with "Don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to you"?
If yes, would you be okay with genetically modified people who are much smarter and crueler than you, treating you like factory farmers and fishermen treat animals? 1-3 trillion fish are enslaved in torturous factory-farm conditions every year, and together with fishermen torture about 2-6 trillion fish to death annually, usually by slow asphyxiation. Hundreds of billions of land-animals (mostly chickens) are enslaved in torturous conditions every year and slaughtered. About 1% of chickens are boiled alive because it would cost more money to make sure the machines that kill them don't miss that 1%. Dairy cows are repeatedly put on rape racks to be artificially inseminated, because they only give milk after delivering a calf. The calves are removed from their mothers, because the farmers don't want the calves to drink the milk. Would you like to be kept your entire life in torturous conditions? Be tortured to death? You and/or your female family repeatedly artificially inseminated and made to give birth, then have the babies taken away so you and/or your female family's milk can be harvested, eventually killed for hamburger when not yielding enough milk to make a profit?
comparing the mentally disabled to animals is gross
The reason many people say it's OK to be complicit in factory farming animals, but not humans, is because humans are smarter: "they're just animals". Pointing out that factory farmed animals are smarter than severely mentally-disabled humans, shows it's clearly not about intelligence. Speciesism is therefor similar to racism and sexism.
What's important is whether they can feel pain or not, not intelligence.
Pointing out the lie isn't gross. What is gross is torturing 3-6 trillion fish to death every year, and enslaving 1-3 trillion animals in torturous conditions every year.
Dominion, Land of hope and glory, Earthlings
comparing other races to animals is what racists do. comparing women to animals is what misogynists do. their fight for their own rights isn't premised on their ability to feel pain, but the fact that they, too, are fully human.
"They deserve rights because they are human", ah, okay. So being human is just a magical qualifier that determines whether or not you are entitled to the ability to live unimpeded. Every other species on the planet exists to serve the whims of humanity, for being human is special.
You're getting a lot of pushback and I can see why, but I've actually been coming to similar conclusions in a different way. It's essentially species narcissism, just like we have racial narcissism, gender narcissism, physical narcissism, etc.
But we exist within this planet and evolved with it as well. Factory farming, monoculture, and industrial farm practices are harmful for the planet and us and is pretty bad for many reasons. Being a heterotroph is not something we have control over, however. We consume other species, plant and animal and microbes alike, to get nutrients as do many other species. Even some autotrophs will eat other species.
So it's important to not continue to engage species narcissism and thus remove ourselves as participants living with this world.
It would be gross if the comparison sought to belittle the mentally disabled, but the comparison is to point out the cruelty and inhumanity. It's gross that you think it's okay to cause pain and suffering because animals are "lesser" in your worldview.
I never said they are lesser. you are fighting a strawman
Oh? If their existence isn't lesser than humanity, then what issue do you take in comparing the value of their existence? 🤔 oh right, it's not a strawman, you just aren't smart enough to compete in an actual argument. Go back to school, champ.
different things are different. that doesn't mean better or less.
At what point did anyone say humans and cows were the same? Or dogs and cows? You just started saying that because you don't have any actual rebuttal.
We compare things that are different all the time- in fact, that's how the concept of comparison works. You can't really compare two identical things because there is nothing to compare. They are identical.
livestock aren't tortured
Hundreds of billions of livestock are kept in torturous conditions every year. Dominion, Land of hope and glory, Earthlings.
1-3 trillion fish are kept in torturous conditions every year on factory farms.
in torture, the point is to cause pain. the pain incurred by animals in agriculture is incidental. it's not the point of the practice. if there were some other options that were just as cost effective or cheaper, farmers would use them.
Actually, torture is a method by which people advance their goals. For example, you might torture someone to extract information. The point of the practice is to extract information, not necessarily cause pain. It just so happens that torture was the method they deemed most effective.
Have anything intelligent to say or are you just going to keep saying stupid shit?
dogs can be housebroken
Cows can be housebroken.
so I have learned
Puppies aren't housebroken and their meat would be very tender.
they can be housebroken, though.
Then they're no longer a puppy but a dog.
Besides, cows can be housebroken. https://www.cnet.com/science/scientists-show-cows-can-be-potty-trained-just-like-your-favorite-pets/
There's also pigs. Pot bellied pigs were a popular pet a few years ago.
so I guess there is no difference at all. I can take em to the dog park and watch em run and tussle and play fetch...
it's clear they are different, and saying they're not is just a lie.
I mean, I'm not a vegan, but yes, you literally can. Pigs are generally regarded as intelligent creatures in the same vein as dogs.
What animals we eat and which we don't is a purely cultural affectation. There's nothing wrong with a cultural affectation, but there's not a fundamental difference between what creatures it's okay to eat and which it is not okay to eat.
even among animals we eat, there are clearly differences. denying this doesn't serve anyone.
In parts of Africa, monkeys are eaten. In parts of Asia, dog is eaten.
Cat is generally not eaten in most cultures outside of spiritual and crisis contexts because it's stringy, apparently.
Our tradition of not eating certain animals is just that - tradition. It's not anything deeper, and certainly not universal.
this has nothing to do with whether there is a difference between dogs and cows, which there clearly is.
this appears to be an appeal to ridicule.
Your point about being housebroken was shown to be wrong. Your point about fetch was shown to be wrong. No one is saying a cow is a dog. You are being deliberately obtuse to avoid the unpleasant idea that cows are just as sentient and loving as many dogs (most dog breeds are smarter than cows but some breeds are stupid). But for cultural reasons we don't eat dogs.
I'm not vegan either but I recognize the horror.
so you know they are not the same
They are the same in the ways that are relevant to this argument. Some dogs aren't housebroken. Some dogs you can't play fetch with. Do you eat those dogs?
i didnt suggest eating any animal is ok. I'm pointing out that is simply untrue to claim there isn't a lick of difference between cows and dogs
There's a difference between different dogs too. You write like all dogs are the same. Again not all dogs play fetch or are housebroken.
this doesn't change whether dogs are different from cows
Your argument wasn't that cows are different than dogs but that you could play fetch with them.
Stop ignoring the actual argument.
that's all i've been arguing this whole time.
The differences that everyone has already acknowledged that exist between a dog and a cow isn't relevant to this particular argument.
I've already said a cow isn't a dog. You keep repeating an argument no one is making.
The argument is about the ways in which a cow is similar to a dog.
if there is more than a lick of difference, and you can admit that, then there is no further discussion.
The differences being discussed are what makes one animal food.
Again absolutely no one has said a cow is a dog.
That's a strawman you prop up because you thought cows were practically vegetables. Then I showed you that they can be house trained and play fetch.
You were wrong.
picks up goal post and moves it still sounds like a dumbass
surely you are referring to the people who no longer want to defend dogs and cows not having a lick of difference
For sure. You have remained intellectually honest throughout. 100% 🥱
https://youtu.be/Sx-CxuAeVPo
this doesn't change the fact that dogs and cows are different
Yes, I agree. In about a century folks will look back on modern humans as irredeemable monsters. And they would be right! This is an objective fact, and downvotes don’t change normative reality. More’s the pity.
I only see this happening if lab grown meat takes off in a really big way. Which I'm in favor of, but with how it's been going I'm not so sure.
Assuming civilization (i.e., democracy) survives, it will happen. Democracy is almost ineluctable in promulgating moral progress. That’s one of the chief reasons that it’s under such sustained attack. Can’t have the poor and ignorant learning right from wrong.