[Helm]

I do not drink alcohol, do not smoke or do drugs. For various reasons I try to live as free of addiction as I can. And good food is certainly an addiction, so I eat less and not based on what tastes good but what (I've been told) the human organism needs so as to work well. I do eat meat for high concentration on protein. I am mentioning this because I am going to try to explain why I am not a vegeterian and I do not want to come off as this guy who has made a whole ethical concept so as to defend his dear meat eating habits. I don't particularily like the taste of most meat. So I'm just saying, the ethics came first.

My main issue with the 'meat is murder' thing is the ethical leap of faith people make when they consider the sledgehammer to cow head scenario. Obviously a violent way to die, in human terms. Humen are sentient beings aware of their own mortality on an abstract level, and to violently end one's life is considered immoral by popular ethics. As I understand it, this happens because people instinctively know that pain is bad, and when they see violence they project themselves in the position of the one being hurt and so deduct that pain is wrong 'generally'. Many will argue a more complicated moral base for their beliefs, but from my experience, when you strip away the bulshit, the basic axiom of most morality stems from human pain, and the avoidace of it. I have issues with this line of thinking too, because my personal morality is not based around the instinctual fear of pain. But that's a different story and for the sake of the argument, let's say that I agree pain, for any sentient being is bad for said reasons.

But to the best of my (layman, obviously, but I've done my share of research) knowledge, the vast majority of animals have no demonstrated anything but the most basic biological memory and no signs of self-awareness. So no matter how gruesome a sledgehammer to the head might seem on a very primordial level (where as we said, pain is bad etc), I ethically see no reason to say the same for an animals. If they're not self-aware they're just biological mechanisms not unlike plants, and I have no problem with the utilizing of all the objects and such mechanisms earth offers for the substantial benefit of mankind.

Animals are not self aware. However, there's no question that animals feel pain. But can any of us quantify the feeling of pain sans self-awareness? For people, pain is inherently tied with the concept of self. Morality itself stems from the interaction of sentient beings, so we can not make any solid theories about the morality of inducing pain in a biological system. We have to move away from the 'first impression' that any act of violence induces and classify violence in terms of violence against what. If killing an animal is morally the same as dissasembling a computer for the further usage of it's parts, then I don't care how bad it makes me 'feel' watching said killing happen. I'll get over it.