Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronin4hire
My position is that dolphins are self aware therefore we shouldnt eat them.
Regarding babies, I can think of numerous reasons why babies shouldnt be eaten despite them not being self aware.
For a start, their mothers wont be very happy about it. Secondly, I dont think that the normalisation of baby eating would make for a very healthy society as I hate to think what the implications of a society which accepts this practice would be. Third.. I think the baby is a human and has the potential for self awareness. It would be just as horrible to eat a baby dolphin as it would be to eat an adult dolphin. The same goes for humans.
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OK. So there are numerous reasons for you shouldn't eat babies. And when it comes to babies, it is not about self-awareness. But when it comes to dolphins, it is self-awareness.
Why the difference?
Also, eating dolphins wouldn't make an unhealthy society, at least Japanese people think so. And if a baby dolphin has a potential for self-awareness, why don't pigs have the "potential" for it? Is it OK to eat a baby if the mother has died and nobody's around?
I can come up with just as many examples too.
The thing is, in the western philosophy, "self" has been reserved for human and for human only. Dogs don't have self. Pigs don't have self. Cows don't have self. And Whales don't have self. This is the view that has been held for more than 2000 years since the Greek invented "philosophy".
Now you are trying to expand the idea of "self" to dogs and whales, which, of and by itself, I agree with. I think it is absurd to think that only humans have selves. But how can you "know" which species at what development stage acquire selves? You can't. Science can't even answer a simple question, "What is self?". It is a feeling we think we all share, and we know it's there. But every time we try to define its boundary, it evades us. The Greek solution was that they "defined" it was something that humans have. You can't go wrong with this one. It's in the definition.
The eastern solution though, was that they thought we all had a bit of self. The amount of which, we don't know. The good old eastern gray area tactic. We feel a human has more self than a dog, and insects probably have teeny tiny selves too. Have you heard of the saying "一寸の虫にも五分の魂"?
So, you, and a lot of westerners, justify eating animals by saying they don't have "self". Japanese people don't justify it. They simply take other "selves" because they need to, not because they are permitted to by some logic. And you are supposed to thank other "selves" you take to sustain your own. Hence "いただきます".
Saying "Pigs don't have selves" is a sacrilege to pigs' selves which Japanese believe they have. It is important to show respect to the taken "selves" and not waste the bodies they left in this material world. Now that contradicts with the amount of food Japanese are wasting but that's a different discussion.
Anyway, a history lessen. Japan abounded her seclusion policy 150 years ago. Why? An American guy called Matthew Perry came all the way from the states with a squadron and pointed cannons at Edo castle, scared the shit out of the Shogun. Perry wanted Japanese ports open to… American whaling ships. Americans didn't eat whale meat (what a sacrilege! :P). They just took oil from them and discarded the carcasses. They hunted and hunted and hunted until the whales almost became extinct. You might say it was long time ago, but Japan is a country with a very long history. People in Kyoto still talk about The War, 応仁の乱, which happened in 1467.
Now, I can't stop you from thinking you are morally superior to people in Taichi, but to their view, and this is merely one way of seeing things, you are one of the people who came from the west, bullied Japanese because they wanted to hunt whales, profaned whales' "selves", and made them almost extinct. You also don't have the moral value of respecting other animal selves sans whales and dogs. You actually look morally lower to their eyes. I'm not judging you, and it is not my "opinion", I'm just trying to present their side of view.
I don't know how you will take this soap box speech of mine, but one thing for sure is your "logic" of "whales have selves, and pigs don't" is not just something that doesn't wash in Japan, but it actually sounds morally low and hippocratic. Again, I'm not judging, and it is not my opinion, I'm just saying it looks so in the light of the Japanese moral and cultural values.
I wrote this using more western logic and ideas, purposely used some rhetorics to better illustrate Japanese values, and so it is more like a westernized version of a Japanese way of thinking. Your Japanese friends will never express things the way I just did, the ones who don't think in English won't anyway. But I think this is a good approximation. Ask your friends why they say "いただきます" and what their feelings are when they say it. Ask how they feel about wasting food and playing with food. And ask what they really feel about the idea that whales have selves and pigs don't. They might give you a good answer, they might not. But there would be something definitely different from the western culture there.
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