I'll try to keep this concise. Some of you may actually use this
group for reasonable discussions.

In Animal Liberation, Singer make heavy use of shock value at the
beginning. Perhaps this is needed, perhaps not. Sometimes reality
itself is shocking. He made his point with me early on, everything
after the first chapter was redundant. I have to decide if I want to
consume animals, particularly if that inflicts a painful life on the
animal.

I'm wrestling with my attitudes about taking human life, capital
punishment, warfare, self-defense. There are many situations where I
feel it's justified to take another person's life. Mainly in the most
extreme Us-Or-Them times. But I have never been held at gun-point by
a chicken. Likewise, cows may have provided the materials for
McVeigh's bomb, but I don't really feel they were complicit.

So on what grounds is it ethically appropriate to kill and eat an
animal? As a necessity of survival, I would feel justified. But
plopping my ass down at Ruth's Chris is not survival, it's gluttony.
Delicious, expensive, gluttony. So I'm working on my perspective. I
will certainly look into the condition the animals I eat are kept in.
Because my speciesist self can more easily accept killing than torture.

As for animal research, I absolutely believe that it must be
justified. And that is a huge grey area. But to push back at Singer,
many of those experiments were conducted during a time when the
greatest threat was the total annihilation of all life on earth. And
I served as Nuclear-Biological-Chemical Specialist. Part of our job
was to inform commanders as to the best course of action to take in a
radioactive area. How long to stay, how much protection (all you can
get), the best exit route, all of these decisions could determine the
fate of the unit, and ultimately, a battle or war.

You can't use the argument that the tests were worthless because they
were never used. The Cold War was a time of preparedness. If we had
faced that challenge, they may have played a key role. But like any
rational being, I can find no reason to inflict purposeless pain on
another being. If there is another way to arrive at the information,
or if the knowledge gained is deemed to have less value than the
suffering it causes, I have no stomach for it. Certainly today, I see
the need for animal testing dropping every second.

So, that's my piece. I'm considering vegetarianism and I'm
determining what ethical boundaries must be crossed to neccesitate the
pain or demise of an animal to benefit our knowledge. What I come up
with may not agree with what you believe, but at least I'm sitting
down and THINKING about it.

--Rick