How to Win an Argument With a Vegetarian

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by KilljoyKlown, Aug 18, 2011.

  1. Anti-Flag Pun intended Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,714
    I quite liked the song about them. Show me the way to Armadillo...


    Personally I'm very lazy; so I'm more of a lying in wait predator, hunting things that I could draw to me. Mice, bugs, coyotes, pizza delivery boys.... The usual. That's a huge drawback of vegetables, they never seem to walk into my traps. :shrug:
     
  2. Guest Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. sifreak21 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,671
    hmm well a couple things i know about this topic, from my experiences in life is "keep mind i live in iowa"

    1. farmers are some of if the the hardest physical working people in the world. not 1 is a vegan or vegitarian because it cannot sustain major physical activities wtihout major suppliments.

    2. there are VERY VERY few pro athletes. "physical" that are vegans.

    3. out of the top natural bodybuilders, people who strive to make there body look the best that there body can, out of these there are absolutly no vegans or Vegetarian,

    but in all honesty if someone just wants to eat just plants more power to them there just hurting/holding themselves back not me
     
  4. Guest Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. sifreak21 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,671
    you are right here but if yout want to be healthy fit and strong pushing your body to its peak performance meat better be in your diet
     
  6. Guest Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. phlogistician Banned Banned

    Messages:
    10,342
    http://www.veganbodybuilding.com/
     
  8. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,493
  9. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,493
    Armadillos can really do a job on your yard. It's mostly night work so the morning surprise is really something to behold. Yes I lived in the Dallas area and had an armadillo in my back yard. They are much worse than gophers or moles, because all their digging is on the surface and the are prodigious diggers. It only takes one armadillo family one night to lay waste to a backyard.

    I've heard from people that know, they taste like chicken.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Armadillos
     
  10. sifreak21 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,671
    thx for proving my point.. no idea who that is and i try and keep up on the stuff cuz my buddy is trying to go pro
     
  11. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    That's an oxymoron. They serve art, not food. The only thing the French can make well is chocolate.

    I remember a French chef on TV saying, "Save the egg whites, maybe you'll make a little meringue later on the side." I said to my wife, "Frenchmen talk about food the way other men talk about women."
    I can't speak for the other carnivores here, but that is not my goal. I'm simply pointing out that you're going against nature, since we've spent several million years evolving to be the only predatory ape.

    Transcending nature is what humans (and our ancestral species) have been doing all along, so you're just carrying on the tradition. We have transcended external nature by inventing clothing, building roofs, turning rocks into tools. But we have also transcended our own internal nature: giving up the nomadic life and settling in permanent villages, growing our own food instead of hunting and gathering, learning to live in harmony and cooperation with people outside of our own extended family, inventing writing so what we learn can be shared more widely. This transcendence requires acting in opposition to our own instincts, since a few thousand years is not long enough for our inner caveman to evolve so extensively.

    Much of the conflict in our civilization is simply a manifestation of our inner caveman occasionally becoming frustrated with being bribed into docility by pizza, TV and air conditioning, and throwing a tantrum. When the inner cavemen of an entire community coordinate their tantrums we call that "war."

    By overriding our instinctive and metabolic harmony with meat, we're just adding one more thing to piss off our caveman.
    It's inevitable that in the future we will grant more rights to animals. But considering how far we have to go before all humans have the rights that most of us claim they should have, that will certainly occur long after I'm dead. So I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

    Besides, by then they'll have Star Trek "replicators" that can make artificial meat without killing anybody.

    I don't actually go around urging people to eat more meat. But I do think people should be more aware of the things they do that conflict with their instincts. Suppressing instinctive behavior is inherently dangerous because it creates an internal dissonance. As I've pointed out on this forum before, the suppression of our pack-social instinct in an attempt to emulate a herd-social species can be seen as the ultimate root of war.
    Actually, throughout history and prehistory, the flesh of carnivores has never been any society's favorite food. It's usually more of a ritual: eat the bear so you'll become strong like the bear. The only ecosystem in which we relax this rule is the sea: the large fish that we eat got large by eating smaller fish.
    Armadillos are the mammalian equivalent of turtles. They are so well protected by their anatomy that they have no instinct to run away from predators, and cars are just big predators.
    The pinnipeds are members of the order Carnivora. They're just raccoons (or weasels or foxes) that adapted to an almost completely aquatic lifestyle. So perhaps they taste like raccoons (or weasels or foxes). As I said, most human societies do not relish the taste of predator flesh.
    They've been surrounded, assaulted, relocated and pitied by the European occupiers for so many centuries that their culture is full of foreign elements. The beautiful jewelry of the Southwestern Indians, for example... wait a minute, they never made the transition to the Bronze Age so metalworking must be something they learned from us. Their graceful horsemanship... wait a minute, horses are not native to the Western Hemisphere. Their lovely colorful blankets... wait a minute, they didn't have those dyes, they just un-wove clothes they got from us and re-used the threads.

    There are native tribes in Latin America who have preserved more of their traditional lives, but they still have chainsaws and iPods. The Inuit have probably been left alone to a greater extent than any other large native community in this hemisphere, but their current lifestyle is about as "aboriginal" as the Maori.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2011
  12. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,391
    Methinks you drastically underestimate the bistro/country segment of French cooking and dining. Not to mention the bakeries. It ain't all Michelin star snootiness over there, even if that's what they're known for in international prestige cuisine circles.

    /heads to nearby French bistro for lunch, ponders choice between steak au poivre w/ frites, or quiche lorraine w/ salad...

    But as to the OP:

    What idiot author thought that any of those talking points would "win" an argument with a vegetarian? That article has "I have never gotten into an argument with a vegetarian" written all over it.

    I know of exactly two ways to win arguments with vegetarians: bacon, and the protein requirements of intense weightlifting (latter one only applies to fitness freaks who are into intense weightlifting). The bacon one requires some patience, but it's eventually felled about 95% of the (non-religious) vegetarians I've known. And you don't even have to argue with them, you just prepare and/or eat bacon in front of them every once in a while. Once they cave and eat some, it's all over - because if you're going to eat bacon, why not eat pretty much every other meat?

    You can play this game the other way, too, with stuff like chocolate, potatos, chili peppers, corn, papaya, peanuts, tomatos, etc. I think the real take-away is that cultures in general are by no means static, insulated entities, but rather dynamic products of interaction and change. The nationalist myth that it's all pure, internal stuff owned exclusively by one people since time immemorial is just that. Note that most of the things you list the Natives getting from the Europeans, was first obtained by the Europeans from yet other peoples.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2011
  13. Pinwheel Banned Banned

    Messages:
    2,424

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    I like.
     
  14. Varda The Bug Lady Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,184

    We're so self-important. So self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven't learned how to care for one another, we're gonna save the fucking planet?

    I'm getting tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. I'm tired of fucking Earth Day, I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world save for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. They don't care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.

    Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin' around the sun?

    The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worlwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!

    We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.

    You wanna know how the planet's doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet's doing. You wanna know if the planet's all right, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. Or how about those people in Kilowaia, Hawaii, who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.

    The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...asshole.

    So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now. And I think that's begun. Don't you think that's already started? I think, to be fair, the planet sees us as a mild threat. Something to be dealt with. And the planet can defend itself in an organized, collective way, the way a beehive or an ant colony can. A collective defense mechanism. The planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet? How would you defend yourself against this troublesome, pesky species? Let's see... Viruses. Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And, uh...viruses are tricky, always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps, this first virus could be one that compromises the immune system of these creatures. Perhaps a human immunodeficiency virus, making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along. And maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction.

    Well, that's a poetic note. And it's a start. And I can dream, can't I? See I don't worry about the little things: bees, trees, whales, snails. I think we're part of a greater wisdom than we will ever understand. A higher order. Call it what you want. Know what I call it? The Big Electron. The Big Electron...whoooa. Whoooa. Whoooa. It doesn't punish, it doesn't reward, it doesn't judge at all. It just is. And so are we. For a little while."

    George Carlin, 1992
     
  15. Pinwheel Banned Banned

    Messages:
    2,424
    Haha I love that. 'Humans' were simply Earths natural way of making plastic.
     
  16. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,798
    Whether one eats meat or is vegan depends largely on local food sources. For the people who settled the northern climates, meat, fish, berries and seasonal vegetation was pretty much the menu available until established routes of travel and supply lines were established.

    As an experiment, it would be interesting for a vegan to spend a year living a subsistence lifestyle in this climate, that is living off the land with only a basic supply of stables such as flour, salt, leavening, tea, etc.

    I'm sure I could get an elder to donate the use of a cabin and all the attendant hardware, including fishing pole, rifle and shells, berry buckets, drying racks, snowshoes etc.

    One can only be a vegan in this land because the vegetables are imported year round. Cut off the supply route and this neck of the woods would thin out real fast. I would be truly surprised if there would be many vegans or vegetarians among those who remained.

    There is no need to argue dietary choices, IMO, as in the final analysis whether we have anything to eat at all will be the decision of nature and the weather. I am the price checker at our local corporate grocery store and prices are starting to climb steadily upward in response to poor crops this year, and other global economic influences.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    May you all have enough to eat, and selections that please you.
     
  17. Pinwheel Banned Banned

    Messages:
    2,424
    Could you sum that up in two/three sentences?
     
  18. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,798
    Varda's post #71?

    Of course I could.

    Can't you?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  19. jmpet Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,891
    Still no tangible argument for eating meat. Mrumph.
     
  20. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,798
    We eat what's available.

    If it's not adequate, we don't thrive.

    Technology and transportation have greatly enhanced our options.

    In another time and place, you might not have had the option to be a vegetarian, as in no supplements or B12 shots etc.

    Let the supply line fail and you may have to reconsider your options.

    A fact.

    No arguments needed. :shrug:
     
  21. Varda The Bug Lady Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,184
    Yeah, basically. You can live off of rice and dirt cookies if you really need to. People in africa do that.
    it's not a matter of what you can do, it's a matter of getting the best you can lay your hands on.
     
  22. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,493
    Specifically I was thinking of The Prince Of Wails Grill at the Hotel Del Coronado on Coronado Island just south of the City of Long Beach in California. Yes I know it's a strange name for a French restaurant and if going out to eat had been my choice that wouldn't have been it, especially when I found out how much it cost per person for dinner. But, I did go and I wasn't going to not try everything because of how much it cost. To my incredible surprise cooked vegetables that I had hated all my life, tasted great. What can I say, I didn't start eating french, but I did eat more cooked vegetables after that experience.
     
  23. Varda The Bug Lady Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,184
    Can't get more stupid than that. The french either invented or perfected everything. From saucing to pastry to cooking techniques.

    If you disagree, you're probably one of them ranch dressing people.
     

Share This Page