Hunter and vegan debate, but not as you know it

the times that i have shot an animal i've never failed to take a moment to sit there and just be like you know it's like wow it's kind of a i mean i don't know if you're particularly religious or not but i am so i sit there and i say a small prayer i mean it doesn't it doesn't do anything because you know and you know and that deer's sitting there and it's got a hole through its neck and it's it's gone you know it doesn't really do anything but well why'd you do it then if if you know that it doesn't do anything why do you say the prayer i wonder if it's more for me as opposed to the animals so of course an animal in its own right will always be innocent all right yeah i just i wonder if it's more for me trying to sit there and be like you know why do you do it for yourself then what's the meaning behind it i wouldn't really know my impression would be and maybe this is wrong maybe this is right but my my impression from what you're describing my impression is that it's almost like an absolving of guilds so hi kyle my name is ed today i'm at texas state university in san marcos and i have a banner that says give me your best argument for not being vegan i'm not sure if that's necessary the argument we're going to have or the debate we're going to have but you've been listening and now you've sat down and so i'm fascinated to hear what your uh response is yeah so um first off i'd say the word argument on the uh poster coming from you at least is kind of uh not correct because from i've seen just clear concise points no calm demeanor it's a debate that's what it is plain simple so the question i really had though is when you've had someone who's come up to give their argument has their argument ever just been like i'm sadistic i just enjoy seeing stuff be tortured like have you ever had that uh i've had versions of that i've had people that say morality is subjective and therefore i can do whatever i want to animal and it doesn't matter and you can do whatever you want to an animal so i've had i've had people who have kind of thinly veiled sadism behind this philosophical belief system but ultimately it's just sadistic not so great though right no not really i wouldn't say that just uh rampant sadism is a really a good argument or even a good point for debate but uh that's that's really all i had to ask is just i've just been interested yeah i was like the thing really do you think that what we do to animals it could be conceived as being sadistic yeah basically basically so and obviously you've been listening to all the conversations i've had and i won't keep you for too long if you do need to dash off at any point but i'm interested to know what your thoughts are about the conversations i've had and if you had any responses that i the things i'd said or you had anything that sprung to mind that you thought would be interesting to discuss uh in totality even though i looked like i was sitting there watching and listening a 26 hour day i was just kind of like i really wonder if you've been asked that question so i would say for certain if i wasn't running on literal fumes right now i'd probably be able to bring up a decent point of view right now but i mean that i can barely remember walking to my classes this morning um what do you think about being vegan that make a relatively easy question just how do you feel what are your thoughts about it well i mean it's it's a lifestyle if that's one thing um it certainly does especially i guess if you're coming from a background that is meat heavy and you know you've consistently eaten meat i mean like me yeah just to do that properly to research exactly what is uh an animal product or a byproduct that would take a lot of time and effort to go through and it's commendable commendable efforts like that are always commendable so i think yes and no obviously it takes a little bit of time at the beginning to get used to it but once you know you know you know once once you've done the research you've done the research and you say it's commendable and i'm just interested to know why you think it's commendable well just coming from the the standpoint that if you're going if you're um having a hard time explaining that's okay uh if you're if you're coming from a background that you do eat meat quite a lot to make that shift whether it's gradually or even like just full stop like right there i mean it's commendable because it takes a lot of willpower i mean if you get used to doing something so much you know it's a habit yeah yeah simple stuff and breaking habits are really hard even if it's eating food or if it's uh like chewing your nails or something yet it is and you're right i guess people who make that change is commendable because it does require a certain amount of willpower and dedication do you think it's commendable in any other way and i guess when i asked that question i was thinking more about commendable in terms of its pursuits in terms of what it seeks to achieve do you think that some of the core philosophies around veganism is that pursuit commendable as well oh yeah i believe that typically everything has its merits uh i'll be completely honest i don't really know a whole lot of stuff about you know the veganism i wouldn't really call it a movement just the lifestyle really i mean when it comes to animals i suppose because you know i'm here to talk about veganism which is related and what it's fundamentally how we view our relationship with animals isn't in the exploitation of animals do you think that there is a moral concern around what we do to animals oh absolutely there always is um i think we went over in our philosophy class and in high school uh i took our wildlife classes for our agricultural side of things in high school and that was always a prevalent question when we come up with uh discussions about livestock treatment and you know basically the ethics of killing something which when you listen to that it's kind of you know contradictory in nature well what do you think then is it ethical to do what we do to animals like specifically what we're doing in like slaughterhouses and stuff just the the just the the legal standard practices just that the normalization of what we do though the raising of them and yeah as you said the slaughtering of them would that be in your eyes objectively ethical no not really i mean it's just of course killing something is like never technically ethical but you know there are ethical ways to do it and i believe that from a like first person perspective doesn't make sense from a um individual personal perspective yeah from a personal perspective of what i've seen because i've i've seen some slaughterhouses and even going into the ethics behind it a really big reason at least personally that i think that comes from the just absolutely abysmal treatment of animals comes from the people working in the factories true that's true i'm gonna try and explain it as best as i can so when when you're exposed to constant death and destruction like with with some people in war world war one world war ii you get desensitized to it it becomes kind of like second-hand nature according to some people in there and it's it's kind of the same thing in slaughterhouses i believe there was a study done at one point where it's like 67 percent of workers i believe i i don't know the exact numbers but there was a large majority of the workers at the factories that had harvard sadistic and or desensitized views towards killing you know they make terrible jokes they're completely used to everything it's it's just like it becomes a secondhand thing to just basically walk up like oh yeah animal and you know take a life right there you know um i believe that's one of the biggest points of contention personally that i can think of uh it's a great point i mean for somebody who's running on a 26-hour day right now that's a really profound and uh very important point something that's often overlooked is the desensitization of violence to the workers um who are often victims of circumstance you know impoverished people who maybe don't have the luxury of choice when it comes to employment forced into a very violent job a hyper-violent job that desensitizes them to violence causes them to you know have increased rates of you know not just desensitization but mental health problems even domestic abuse going home and and hurting their their spouse you know their wife their partners because of this repression of anger and frustration they feel it's really um a sadistic environment that that transcends just beyond what happens to animals and affects humans and wider communities really great points and i think what we a lot of people agree on is that what we currently do is is kind of awful um and probably maybe isn't ethical the argument that i would make isn't just about like what we do now being unethical but that there is no objectively ethical way to unnecessarily slaughter an animal interestingly we used the word something earlier i would use the word someone when describing a sentient being so i would say that there's no objectively ethical way to unnecessarily kill someone else in this instance a non-human animal would you agree or disagree with that statement oh no i'd agree with it i mean like i said killing is never really ethical i mean i guess the only ethical way you could kill something is if that thing or person or you know someone is in like absolute dire pain like i mean there was a story that my father told me he works as a an arson investigator and this was back in the 50s 60s hard times and you know this was back before the jaws of life and real life saving equipment was invented so uh this one officer comes up on a burning car right and he's sitting over there trying to just yank this door open and he's he's getting burns person in front of him is basically literally mounting live and the only thing he can do is pull his sidearm and you know shooting i believe that that is probably the certified uh it's a justifiable and ethical killing is to stop or well just to stop uh stop suffering stop suffering yeah absolutely it's why we euthanize dogs and cats as well isn't it um we recognize that their life now is not a life worth living it's the suffering is too much and it's more it is objectively ethical to take their life in a situation as in as it was indeed in that story you're describing but what we do to animals isn't that situation is that we're increasing suffering we're taking from their life from them not because of a benefit to them but purely because of a benefit to us or at least not necessarily a benefit to us because there are huge negative consequences when it comes to what we do to animals but because we want to would you agree that what we do to animals stems from a want rather than a need from a developmental perspective of the human race as because we are animals uh i believe that there could be honestly there could probably be a study done to figure that out and i would honestly go to say that somewhere along the way yes uh there probably could be some just factor to technically enjoy you know in killing i mean it's just it's a it's a predatory instinct to kill uh the lion lions kill tigers kill other stuff like that you know do you think we should kill simply because they do is that a good enough justification for us to do so killing to survive is different for i'd say animals than it is for humans because humans are omnivorous we can we can subsist off berries plants and meat if we need to absolutely and with vegan foods and other other processed foods like that we can get those sources of protein or you know the other stuff we get from meat other ways yes so so is it a need for you and i then do we have to do you and i have to to do what what happens you know partaking these industries that we're discussing technically no then no so why do we do it then why do you do it well i mean for me of course meat just tastes good so i'm i'm not opposed to trying vegan foods i mean they have them in the dining halls though i wouldn't really necessarily call it dining hall vegan food quite quality maybe not but i've been to some of the restaurants around here some of the i even tried some of the stuff in europe i went to the uk and they had some pretty nice stuff so not bad in the uk right i would no not at all it's it's a great country i actually loved it quite a lot but to get on track um it's a taste thing um which would mean that it's not a need but it's indeed a want uh you want to because you enjoy how it tastes does the enjoyment of these products or moreover the the pleasure we get from eating these products the fact that we like them does that morally justify what happens to animals no not really i mean just good lord strong gus i know the moral justification of wanting something is i'd say as as drastic as killing just because it's like oh well i like doing it it's like of course it's wrong i mean i if a serial killer was to sit there and just say like oh yeah i'm going to kill that dude because i like it of course he's wrong yes and i guess that you know are you could be made that of course it's wrong if someone's like well i like eating meat so yeah i kill the animals yeah so of course just from from a just an outsider perspective of being unbiased and unthought yeah easily yeah easy so would you say and i don't put words in your mouth um but with that line of logic would you say that it is the wrong thing for us to do yeah just as it's happening right now the way we're doing everything yeah it's wrong it's it's not ethical it's not clean it is a lot of the standards in the uh the industry have gone down because of just prices and just low it has um it has low budgets basically yes it does absolutely so yeah low budgets maximization of profits and efficiency um but you know outside of that um that is the reality that we have so outside of that then where does that leave you what do you think that you'd be inclined to do obviously we've established it's wrong unethical um unnecessary so where do you go from here what do you think would you be interested in in veganism based on the i guess the the foundations that we've outlined here that potentially even contradicts the values that you have towards animals i mean i've thought about it i i've grown up from a young age hunting so i mean if your views on that are well i don't know what they are but i'm not gonna sit here and try and make a guess but so that's okay from from the young age my grandfather would take me to go hunting and the very first thing that he told me was of course if you can't at least you know if you can't shoot an animal and have it drop there instantly no feeling then you don't make the shot have you shot an animal yes how does that make you feel when you were young when i was young i mean i can describe uh you know the feelings at the time but as far as like how specifically i felt i mean i didn't get any pleasure from it not at all did it did it do the opposite can you can you tell me how you did feel obviously you didn't get pleasure so what did you get what feelings did you have i'll say it just it kind of felt natural i mean i don't want i don't want to sit there and be like oh yeah killing's cool you know it's not but at the same time it didn't feel right but it didn't feel wrong you know it's just it we my family typically uses venison and you know pork meat it's ethical ethical you know do you think it is ethical objectively no no but you know it's just our kind of tenants are of course making sure that there's no undue suffering it's quick it's clean no unnecessary wasting of the parts of the animal so i mean we sport hunting now yeah yeah that so first off we don't sport hunt no sort of truth if i may with sport hunting obviously what's what we both will agree is terrible about that is it's just this pursuit of uh like uh pleasure satisfaction makes you feel like a big man because you've shot an animal and you if you're not going to eat them it feels like the animal's going to waste it's done for an unjust reason but when we think about these issues is it not the issue of the individual is there really a moral difference from that of the the animal between sport hunting and hunting for food because once they're dead what happens to their bodies is irrelevant to them you know they're dead aren't they so the only thing that matters to them is the fact that they have been killed so whether it's spot hunting for fun or hunting for for me both of those things are unnecessary and the meat you eat you eat the meat because you enjoy it you know the person sports hunt sport hunts because they enjoy it so both of those come from an enjoyment factor rather than a necessity factor so but from the perspective of the individual animal who's been shot is there any difference between whether or not they're killed and eaten or killed for a photo no because they're already dead so why is it unethical to hunt for sports but not unethical to hunt for food if both are unnecessary because the the difference i'd say between sport hunting versus hunting for food is when you hunt for food you know you use the animal typically when someone thinks of sport hunting and as a as a hunter who's grown up and hunting and stuff the way that i see sport hunting is that you're hunting not to feed something you're not hunting to sustain you know yourself or whatever you're just hunting for either pleasure or you're hunting for like trophies kind of kind of like the predator basically from the movie just thank you like that you know great so yeah great movie solid but um genuinely what i think of when i think of sport hunting is either i think of like the very bare bones i'm just taking you know the skin or the man the head or whatever and then i'm not doing anything with the body i'm leaving it to rot which is like poaching poaching i kind of i kind of see the wrong sport hunting as poaching i kind of loop those together but to the individual animal the experience is the same which is what i guess i'm trying to make and whilst whilst we can agree that um spot hunting is is obviously terrible and part of the reason why it's so terrible is is the motivation behind why it's done the motivation behind why why you hunt isn't a motivation that would make it moral what i mean by that is if you hunted out of necessity you lived in sub-saharan africa or you lived in an area where you had to hunt to survive fair enough but but you don't you hunt because well you like how meat tastes what you're saying earlier so in the same way as the sport hunting is unnecessary the hunting game for you is unnecessary and the experience of the individual animal is the same regardless of whether it's spot hunting or food hunting it's the same so surely the fact that they're both unnecessary and the experience for the individual animals both the same means that they're both wrong yeah technically so of course you know it subverts cots for me but of course uh in the broader term things yes it is wrong uh like i've said just many times before you know killing something in and of itself will always be wrong if it's not for survival could we say killing someone yes killing someone i'm sorry i'm just so used to saying something you know strange things our language can be can reinforce our views i think by referring to animals as something we degrade them you know because yeah so it's like this inbuilt thing that we often do like we we refer to them in a way we call them an eight or something because it's constantly denying them the right to be viewed as a sentient individual which is how we view each other you'd never call me as something as i wouldn't you hopefully i'll call you with someone because you are an individual having a subjective experience of your individual life the same of course is true for the deer who who you kill even outside of the white you know the deer hunting aspect just your day-to-day life where you're just consuming the canteen or buying from grocery stores or wherever it is would you be considerate of would you would you maybe consider being vegan buying plant-based foods in those environments no i've considered it uh surprisingly the the more times i go to the grocery store the more times i pick up a piece of you know me and just with how many times i've seen slaughterhouses i'm like dang you know that shoot this animal was probably you know subjected to a pretty gruesome death i mean i hope it's not but you know at the end of the day i couldn't really know yeah no and i guess we would probably surmise that even if it wasn't a quote unquote gruesome death it was still a death an unnecessary death and that's that's even a thing that i come through with hunting so i guess to to kind of walk back on what i said and many times when many times i say so the times that i have shot an animal i've never failed to take a moment to sit there and just be like it's like wow it's kind of a it's kind of a moment i sit there and i'm just like all right you know you've taken a life you know and it's it's not a small thing because you know it's a living thing it's got its free will um i mean i don't know if you're particularly religious or not but i am so i sit there and i say a small prayer i mean it doesn't it doesn't do anything because you know and you know and that deer's sitting there and it's got a hole through its neck and it's it's gone you know it doesn't really do anything but well why'd you do it then if if you know that it doesn't do anything why do you say the prayer i don't know i guess it's i wonder if it's more for me as opposed to the animals so of course an animal in its own right will always be innocent all right there is no right or wrong for an animal there's just nature it's a big thing that comes up with ethics i don't know how i'm recalling so much stuff from my ethics class i'm doing a great job judging uh just judging off of the uh you know past day i've had but um days it's um yeah i just i wonder if it's more for me trying to sit there and be like you know why do you do it for yourself then what's the meaning behind it i wouldn't really know my impression would be and maybe this is wrong maybe this is right but my my impression from what you're describing my impression is that it's almost like an absolving of guilt yeah you you say a prayer because you think by saying a prayer you're removing some of the guilt that you feel for the taking of the life do you agree yeah i could agree in a sense and of course i know that you know just you know sitting there and praying you know of course i you know i have my beliefs yeah but uh honestly i couldn't say that if it either does or doesn't uh that's something that you know in my line of belief is christianity that's something that you know the lord will judge me for in my day of reckoning so uh one can hope but uh that that that is yet to be seen so well i think you seem like a very genuine um and thoughtful person um who clearly takes consideration these things and maybe through the fact that your family raised you to hunt and searches you i can't imagine what that's like in a way you know i i live in the uk and we do have a bigger hunting scene there and my family certainly don't hunt so i can't imagine what it's like from a young age being taken to something with parents or with family members and having that reinforces being something that's normal and then you have those moments where you've shot the animal and you take that moment to say a prayer without even necessarily understanding why but maybe subconsciously it comes from this belief that actually you feel that you need to because you're worried of how you may be judged for taking the life unnecessarily and there may be almost like a guilt or anxiety around how someone could perceive that action um which i think is is quite profound and i think it speaks to the humanity in you you know the that sense of of justness that you have which i think is really important but i would say that there's something deeper there which is that that notion of um if that is the case then maybe it could be simply said that if you don't pull the trigger there's no reason to say the prayer to ask for any form of forgiveness or to absolve yourself of any form of guilt if you simply didn't pull the trigger then that expression or that need to express yourself would never have to exist yeah yeah no it's it's a simple yeah it's a simple yeah i mean it's just it it's straight up uh cause and effect you know if i pull the trigger then i say the prayer if i don't pull the trigger then i don't say pray and the animal gets to live just simply yeah yeah it was an effect cool man um it's been great speaking with kyle um and i and i wonder if maybe there's an opportunity for for us to both think after this conversation um and to kind of reflect these things and you say when you're in a supermarket you know you do look at the animal that you're about to buy or the animal products you post and you do think about it wow that's so great because so many people don't and that's the problem so maybe it's just the case of now we're in that situation where it's looking down the scope or before you even get to that point look at the rifle before you pick it up to go out or whether it's when you're in a supermarket or in uh wherever it is and you're looking at the food and you're thinking about it just think about a little bit more deeply and go hang on a minute do i need to do this and do the justifications that i have used previously actually hold up or is there something else i could do a different way i could live in a way that would live more in alignment with the values that i have yeah absolutely so i there have been times where i've been at a supermarket and i mean i know everyone talks about it but chickens are just the absolute worst the places are smelly not clean it's a whole thing we probably know you and i both know probably enough about it and there have been times where i'm just like man check it out i'm not a chicken right now man yeah so that's why every time i see chicken i go no yeah no way man i can completely understand it and i think there's something that speaks to your character for wanting to care for these things that seemingly i don't really know how many people come up and disagree but seemingly a lot of people don't care for that obviously something about the humanity in your heart for wanting to care for everything i mean just trying to just trying to reduce the harm that we caused would be it's of course from the christian line of belief you know my belief is that man was put on this earth to care for it to tend to its animals and you're you're caring for them wanting to tend to them so that that means something thank you thank you i really appreciate that it's been so nice speaking to you absolutely what a lovely conversation thank you so much and best of your life um i hope you have a lovely existence and i hope that you get some sleep yeah i'm gonna well i mean i'll probably wait so i don't absolutely destroy my sleep good good idea this has been it's been fun thank you so much you

Channel: Earthling Ed

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Keywords: earthlinged, earthling ed, vegan, veganism, why, be, go, earthlings full movie, activism, hunter, debate, ladbible, agree to disagree, vegan versus, emotional, unexpected, surprise ending, going vegan is, should i go vegan, hunt arguments, joe rogan, texas, college campus, arguments for not being vegan, change my mind, debate table usa

Id: vm1PbBoM_Qc

Length: 25min 22sec (1522 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 27 2022