
Schizoid Paradox Community Group
If you would like company who understands that 5 minutes is all you can take, or knows that if you go away for months at a time it doesn't mean you don't like us. If ((hugs)) confound you, but you have a question or would like to share a good book.... we now have a place. Welcome.

**Isn't it hypocrisy to eat meat but deem it unethical to kill the animal yourself?**
"There are circumstances in which killing is generally deemed ethical, and others in which it isn’t. To eat meat while asserting that all killing of animals is unethical is perhaps hypocritical, but certainly illogical. Most meat-eating people sidestep this dilemma by deciding that the killing of an animal for food is ethical. Some people assert that killing any animal is ethical, so long as it is done “mercifully.” People who think that all killing of animals is unethical, even those who don’t eat meat for this reason, are forced by necessity to make exceptions. This is not necessarily hypocritical. There are many paradoxes and inconsistencies to be found in the philosopy of the ethics of killing.
For example, if I killed and ate someone’s pet dog, they would probably consider that unethical, even if they were meat-eaters, and I offered to pay the “fair market” value of the dog afterward. However, if I killed the dog while it was attacking me, most people would consider the act to be justifiable self-defense, although eating the dog afterward would be viewed askance. If I killed the dog because it startled, frightened or threatened to attack me, most people would consider it an unjustified act, unless I was a police officer in a country like the USA. If I killed the dog because I wanted to have it stuffed and mounted for display, there are a few who would consider that to be adequate justification. If I pretended to like dogs, but paid anyone a bounty who presented proof of having killed one, that would clearly be hypocrisy.
We must also consider the sometime fine distinctions between the ethical, the moral, and the legal. In meat-eating societies, killing an animal raised for slaughter, like a goat, pig or cow, is considered “ethical” and “legal” under a broad set of conditions. Depending on the society, it can be difficult to escape moral culpability for the killing or eating of particular species. Some people even assert that killing a human is ethical, if the killing can be “justified,” and some people’s list of justifications is pretty long. Killing humans for food is almost always considered unethical, and desecration of a human corpse is illegal and immoral, so when thousands of people are killed on other pretexts, or as the result of some disaster, the protein has to be wasted.
The concept of sin can actually be quite useful in this debate. A sin is an act that causes moral angst. Where ethics are usually binary, i.e. an act is either ethical, or it’s not, sin is a scalar value ranging from zero to infinite. To live a moral, ethical life is to minimize one’s sinning. To be hypocritical is to pretend that you haven’t sinned, when you know that you have.
For example, killing an animal for food could be considered a lesser sin than killing one for sport. In my opinion, any wanton killing is unethical, but killing a spider is not as big a sin as killing an elephant. The legal, ethical killing of a livestock animal raised for slaughter carries a relatively small burden of sin, but wanton killing of an animal that is one of the few remaining members of an endangered species is unethical, probably illegal, and clearly a greater sin.
Returning to the subject of the hapless pet dog, we can order its killings on the scale of sin, from lesser to greater, as killing accidentally; killing for inescapable necessity (starvation or self-defense); killing negligently or for hire; and finally, killing wantonly, for revenge, fun or sport. I can draw the line of ethics wherever I choose, so I choose to draw it between necessity and negligence.
Killing an average plant is not as big a sin as killing an average animal. Still, as a consumer trying to live low on the trophic chain, I admonish myself and others to “eat fruits, not roots” as much as possible, because eating roots usually kills a plant, while eating fruit (or a few leaves) doesn’t. Harvesting a field of grain is a negligible sin, because this method is consistent with the natural life of grasses, although it might collaterally deprive other plants and animals of their opportunity to survive. Clearing the land for the field might have been a greater sin, depending on specific circumstances. While cutting a tree for timber is relatively low on the sin scale, clear-cutting an “old growth” forest is eco-cide, no matter how much money it produces.
Having wandered far afield, we can bring our philosphy to bear on a distantly related question. Isn’t it hypocrisy to sentence a human to death for a crime, while deeming it unethical to kill the person yourself?"
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When I was 24, I came out. The first woman I was with had a friend who worked with homeless people. She volunteered with her friend sometimes. They’d take them out to lunch. I remember her telling me that a good lot of them are where they are for reasons not even close to what people assume. That it’s most often that they simply don’t have a family or a support system. She sent me a list of...
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5. The New Iron Maiden4. #453. The House GOP 2. Law and Order1. Jackpots
If we assume that a sinful act has a fixed value determined by all externalities, then if two people co-operate in the act, they share only part of the sin. An odd consequence of this is that if a very large number of people participate in a crime, their individual burden is quite small. This is actually consistent with our experience, with Nazi Germany being an outstanding example.
The alternative, assuming that each participant in the act bears sin equal to the crime, then we arrive at a somewhat ridiculous point where a state-sponsored execution of an innocent person is millions of times worse than the murder of that person by a criminal on the street.
Consider the situation of a person being killed by firing squad. There is a tradition in firing squads that there is more than one shooter, and one of the rifles given to the squad is loaded with a blank. This allows each of the shooters the presumptive defense that it was not their own gun which killed the victim. The officer in command also accepts no responsibility for the killing, because he did not perform the shooting, and he was only the messenger of orders which were given to him. While the entire squad -- indeed the entire organization -- is responsible for the death, very few of them feel any responsibility or burden for the sin.
The legal system does not codify this mathematical concept, but in practice, conspiracy-murder criminals receive individually lighter sentences than solo 1st-degree murders.
Killing for revenge is a pre-meditated murder done from anger, usually on behalf of another person. A dead person cannot carry out revenge. Perhaps the person being avenged is not even dead - then the murder is even more heinous, for it exacts more than justice.
Negligent killing, which is done carelessly, without regard for the welfare of others, is bad, but it does not compare with revenge killing.