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Vegan Fitness
Healthy and Compassionate Living
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emm7
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Joined: 15 Jan 2008
Posts: 6070
Location: South Coast, United Kingdom
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 Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 10:10 am Post subject: |
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| Big Good Wolf wrote: | Lots of small carbon footprints still adds up to more than one big one.
"inspiring others to carry on the vision after I am gone" seems to be a common aspiration for (would be) parents, the idea that "my parents got it wrong, but I have learnt from their mistakes and will get it right" is all too common.
I'm a fairly arrogant argumentative old git, but claiming I could force someone to go vegan against their will and remain vegan long after I am dead would be going a bit far even for me.
What if you have kids and they choose not to be vegan ? Everything you think you have achieved by veing vegan yourself will have been for nothing. |
no BGW you have me wrong, I don't mean force, I mean inspire.
If someone wishes to eat meat that is their choice.
By vision I mean a set of values in general of which my veganism is a manifestation.
Would not wish to force a young person into believing anything for my sake. That is conditional love rather than unconditional.
I think that there are certainly a few Narcissists out there who have no empathy with others or respect for their child's uniqueness and who want their children to be extensions of themself and live out their unfulfilled ambitions.... and that is terribly damaging. I have spoken to people whose parents treated them in this way and it is upsetting. (NB the children usually develop mental health problems as a result.) |
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Gelert
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Joined: 20 Aug 2005
Posts: 6328
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| Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 11:18 am Post subject: |
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| Mr. Cleetus wrote: | | Gelert wrote: |
It's time to ask what we really want to save when we do "our bit", is it climate or our conscience? |
I take it the answer in your case is "neither"?  |
Yeah.
No, actually. Other than keeping my car and using it to commute to work where with a bit more of organization and toleration of motion sickness twice daily I could get the bus, I'm fairly ecofriendly. I recycle everything I can. I even have very few little new clothes in the last three or four years. I only ever fly anywhere if it's directly involved with research aimed at helping save the Arctic, and that would be a very grandiose, overly noble description of why I do the work I do.
I'm also, quelle surprise, vegan.
But am I doing any of this because I think it would really help stop this planet go down the shitter because of human nature, or because I want to feel that I did my bit and thus salve my conscience as I sit down with the last bit of ice from the Arctic sits chilling a perfectly good single malt knowing I've done my part to try and fight the inevitable. Fuck no.
I just does it.
Think of it as a film for our times.
Dr Gelert: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the warming.
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| The Duke wrote: | | ninearms wrote: | | being vegetarian is like wearing a chastity belt and fapping away underneath it. |
post pictures. |
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emm7
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Joined: 15 Jan 2008
Posts: 6070
Location: South Coast, United Kingdom
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| Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 11:54 am Post subject: |
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now I have a cinematic image in my mind:
FADE IN.
Gelert sitting on the deck of a boat at what was the Arctic ice sheet with a glass of Talisker and dropping the last crumb of ice into it as our planet's day of apocalypse draws to a close.............
Enjoy your whiskey Gelert. Make sure you taste every last drop of its ambrosial nectar ......................
Don't know where I'll be at the end of the world...... perhaps watching the waves crashing on the beach where land that once was full of streets and houses has been savagely reclaimed by the sea......... make mine the best cup of coffee in Italy for that one last drink .....
looking out to sea maybe I can see the scientists' boat returning on the horizon. On the deck of the boat a human figure dashing the empty whiskey bottle against the hull..... it has smashed into a million little shards dancing on the water.........
You scientists tell that life started from the sea..... looks like all too prematurely we will be returning to it............
FADE OUT. |
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runrevolt
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Joined: 09 Nov 2007
Posts: 928
Location: hoosier heartland - u.$.
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| Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 11:56 am Post subject: |
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what's all this end of the world talk? humans aren't the world.
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emm7
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| Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 12:04 pm Post subject: |
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agreed, we aren't the world.
But we're doing so much damage to it that we are rapidly becoming the cause of the end of the world.
Climate change affects all species on our planet. |
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Gelert
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| Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 3:17 pm Post subject: |
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| emm7 wrote: | agreed, we aren't the world.
But we're doing so much damage to it that we are rapidly becoming the cause of the end of the world.
Climate change affects all species on our planet. |
Yup, it will allow the emergence of new species to exploit niches freshly vacated by those which failed to survive the challenge of the climate change. It's survival of the fittest. The ultimate que sera, sera is that life follows certain evolutionary highways for so long, evolving along the levels of genes through to ecosystems, and eventually the highway becomes a cul de sac. And then it becomes deadwood, and gets cleared out. Exuent stage left.
All a species is basically, is an experiment in maximising the proliferation and longevity of its genotypes, within a system enclosed by reproductive incompatibility, or an arbitary cap decided by H. sapiens in white coats.
The only species which will be lost are those that lack the evolutionary resources to survive a rapidly changing climate, and Life in all its forms doesn't need those species any more. Death is nature's way of telling you that you failed natural selection.
At the grander scale of things, that it is anthropogenic climate change matters as much as whether it was an asteroid of what kind that caused the K-T extinction event or not. That's still argued about 65.5 million years later! Back to que sera, sera. Life's experiment at present, in the form of humanity is following its own path. If that experiment fails because we produce too much CO2, then it will be written down in many Cephalopod scientific research journals for millenia to come.
Evidence in support of this? Climate has changed so many times in the biotic past of the planet, yet life has survived and profited. Life has survived massive changes in atmospheric composition, climate, asteroid and all kinds of sci-fi shite. What makes us think that it will end this time rather than be rejuvenated and follow new evolutionary possibilities like it has before? Nothing other than the myopia of living less than a fart's width in the history of the planet.
No, I guess all we're left with is the fact that it will cause change, and we hate change, particularly when it looks bad to us. It will look bad on our scale. It will look bad as a legacy to leave the kids, the outcome of our bodily fluids, to return to the Dr. Strangelove theme.
I guess if you take BGW's approach, then you're solving that problem the only way you can.
_________________
| The Duke wrote: | | ninearms wrote: | | being vegetarian is like wearing a chastity belt and fapping away underneath it. |
post pictures. |
Last edited by Gelert on Wed Sep 03, 2008 3:39 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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emm7
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runrevolt
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Location: hoosier heartland - u.$.
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| Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 9:10 pm Post subject: |
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| emm7 wrote: | agreed, we aren't the world.
But we're doing so much damage to it that we are rapidly becoming the cause of the end of the world.
Climate change affects all species on our planet. |
again, even if humans/industrial capitalism is the CAUSE of global warming, social strife, etc., that doesn't imply THE END OF THE WORLD. the earth will continue on...in an altered state, yes, but not ENDED.
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Mr. Cleetus
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Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 7:48 am Post subject: |
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| defeatism is easy, innit? |
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Gelert
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 8:14 am Post subject: |
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Just a thought: To equate the end of humanity with the end of the world is the ultimate in speciesism, isn't it?
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| The Duke wrote: | | ninearms wrote: | | being vegetarian is like wearing a chastity belt and fapping away underneath it. |
post pictures. |
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Mr. Cleetus
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Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 8:52 am Post subject: |
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| Gelert wrote: | | Just a thought: To equate the end of humanity with the end of the world is the ultimate in speciesism, isn't it? |
hmmm, interesting; however since the ultimate result of that could possibly benefit all existing species (since I assume you are wrong in your other posts  ) , how's that fit in? |
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Gelert
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:08 am Post subject: |
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I think you misunderstood what I've said in both that post and the other posts mate.
My last post there was a comment on the tendency to view the end of humanity as also meaning the end of the world. As solely one species in feck knows how many that exist, and would outlive us, that's arrogant. It's also ironic, because the vegan crew are keen to highlight speciesism when it comes to AR issues, but often the same people seem to be exhibiting a form of it when it comes to environmental issues.
My previous posts did not state that it could benefit *all* extant species. It would, no doubt, benefit some. Others would be driven to extinction. Which is obviously a shame, insofar as those species are concerned. I'm merely quoting the oft-neglected flipside of extinction for one species: it vacates a niche for another or a new species to fill.
To address what you say directly, Hom sap is a keystone species, and if we went, several other domesticated and parasitic species would be threatened as well.
Assumption makes an ass of u & me
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| The Duke wrote: | | ninearms wrote: | | being vegetarian is like wearing a chastity belt and fapping away underneath it. |
post pictures. |
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Mr. Cleetus
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Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:20 am Post subject: |
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| Gelert wrote: | | I think you misunderstood what I've said in both that post and the other posts mate. |
hmm, now I think you've misunderstood me; I thought your question was a reasonable one (but maybe a literal interpretation of a commonly used phrase). Mine was actually an honest question about how what I stated, whether correct or not, would fit in with speciesism. No deeper intent implied.
On the other subject tho you have left a clear impression with me that you feel that since climate change is natural, even if we speed it up, that's life and we should not attempt to change our ways and/or that things are so far gone now that why bother? Am I incorrect in my interpretation? |
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Gelert
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:34 am Post subject: |
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Climate change is natural only because we remain part of nature.
Also, let's not forget, either way, we will change climate anthropogenically, either by carrying on the way we are, or by minimizing emissions and sequestring carbon. Both are anthropogenic.
I'm just trying to redress the balance between certain elements that would have us believe that the world and all within will end imminently because of climate change and the longer perspective.
That element has a tendency to base their position on both the reference frame of the human lifespan, which is of course scant, and the Wordsworthian sentimentality inflicted upon so many of us as regards nature.
I *do* think, as a personal opinion that we should try to mitigate our impact and its effects. But I make personal, human and sentimental arguments for that, not scientific ones. (I like polar bears... I want my kids to enjoy.... I like cold winters, etc.) I just try not to forget the long term as well.
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| The Duke wrote: | | ninearms wrote: | | being vegetarian is like wearing a chastity belt and fapping away underneath it. |
post pictures. |
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Mr. Cleetus
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Posts: 2173
Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:49 am Post subject: |
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OK, I can agree with all of that, but I think make the distinction between scientific-or-not at the motivation level, not at the justification level.
Since you mention sequestration I should say that because a (too) big chunk of my time is funded to work on risk related to sequestration does not necessarily imply that I am in favour of it; I honestly do not know at this point. I am in the lucky position of being paid to research & decide what I do think about it and hopefully have some influence with my results. Not that I expect I will! |
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