Apr 20, 2010 -- 7:30PM, solfeggio wrote:

Freedoms are not absolute.  There are prohibitions on actions that interfere with the public good or which cause suffering to any creatures, human or otherwise.

The fur business is one of those that causes suffering.  Therefore, there are concerned people who think it should be banned.

That depends on your doctrine. Sometimes freedoms are absolute. Sometimes they are not, and might more properly be described as 'privileges', rather than as freedoms or rights.

There is no basis for asserting that harvesting fur or farming fur must necessarily involve suffering.

And we may well have different a different analysis of the 'public good'. In particular fur is a renewable resource that is more ecologically benign than many of the substitutes for fur.

Apr 21, 2010 -- 12:18AM, solfeggio wrote:

Your concerns might be valid if you were more specific, but because they're so generalised they are meaningless.

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Give me something specific.  When you talk about generalizations, I will reply to them that way. 

Apr 21, 2010 -- 12:18AM, solfeggio wrote:

Absolute freedom means being unconstrained by constitutional or other provisions.  Therefore, absolute freedom as so defined means the ability for humans to make and/or act upon choices detactched from the input, control, or influence of society or other persons.  Because we are constantly being influenced in one way or another by others, it stands to reason that nobody can escape this influence.

No, but how much we let those actions be infringed upon, either actual, or rehetorical, and by what groups is up to discussion. 

Apr 21, 2010 -- 12:18AM, solfeggio wrote:

The choices and decisions we make in life are all subject to reasonable - or even unreasonable in some cases - restrictions, whether we like to admit this or not.

No, not really.  We may be subject to those restrictions, but the decisions that we make don't nessecarily factor them in.  If they were, there wouldn't be any illegal activity out there. 

Apr 21, 2010 -- 12:18AM, solfeggio wrote:

Freedom does not simply entail just being able to do anything we wish.  Our actions have to justify the many disparate determining factors, obligations, and influences in all of our lives at all times.  Furthermore, our actions are constrained as well by our place in the community of humankind.

You must live a very constrained existence. 

Apr 21, 2010 -- 12:18AM, solfeggio wrote:

Because the fur industry is a cruel one, and because it is as well an unnecessary one, I cannot see what is wrong with compassionate individuals trying to end it.

Nothing.  There is nothing wrong with a compassionate individual or even a group of compassionate individuals trying to end it. 

However getting the government to ban it for you is kind of like getting your brother to beat up the other kid on the play ground.  It's not trying to end it, it is trying to get a bigger kid to force your will on someone else. 

The problem with banning this particular instance is that people still want to do it.  I don't want to buy fur, and you don't want to buy fur, but people do.  So now, instead of trying to convince them that they don't want to, that they can get other products that are just as good and probably cheaper, you want to ban it. You want to take the easy way out. 

Apr 21, 2010 -- 12:18AM, solfeggio wrote:

Banning such an industry has nothing to do with curtailing anyone's right to free speech, religion, or democratic existence.  It has only to do with protecting innocent creatures from suffering and death.

Banning an industry has to do with their right to pursuit of happiness.  Convince them that they are wrong and they will stop doing it of their own free will.  If no one wants to buy fur anymore, their is no more fur industry.  If you ban something, all you have done is create poachers.  People will find a way to do things that they want, legal, or illegal. 

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My point will always be that any activity that causes unnecessary suffering or death to any animals will be morally wrong.

Whether or not governments ban the fur industry - or the horrible practice of clubbing baby seals to death on the ice floes - has nothing to do with the basic immorality of killing creatures that have not done anything to deserve it.

This is why I am completely against the animal agriculture industry, and why I believe that raising and killing any animals for fur is wrong.

However, I am realistic enough to realise that none of these practises are ever going to change, and that, regardless of how enormously and obscenely fat Americans become from stuffing their faces with burgers and cheese, the fast food industry will go merrily on and the pigs and chickens and cows will continue to live short, miserable lives and be slaughtered in horrendous ways.

I only post these things for the lurkers to read, because if only one or two persons takes what I say to heart and stops to think about his/her next meat meal, that will at least be something.

Well, we have reached the inevitable impasse (or the irresistible force paradox, if you wish.)

No arguments are going to change our minds about any of this, which is understandable, I think, given that we are coming into this discussion from two very different points of view complicated not only by a generational gulf, but also dissimilar backgrounds. 

But, strangely enough, I know exactly where you're coming from in much of what you've said, because when I was younger I was a meat-eater, too.  I enjoyed the taste of meat and ate it often, never giving a thought to where it came from.   For some reason (probably because my husband and I had taken anthropology courses at university, which led us to have many indepth discussions about man's origins and original diet), though, my thinking started to gradually evolve, as did my husband's as well.

You read and study widely enough, and you start to see things differently.  That's what happened to us.  We gave up religion early on, then progressed to thinking about our world and the creatures in it, and finally came the time when my husband suggested we should give up eating red meat, because all that we'd read about it was that it was unhealthy.

That was about thirty years ago, and things went on from there until we became vegans.  It was obviously a good choice for us because it suits our general philosophy about life, and because it pleases us to know that we're at least making a very small effort not to support a cruel  animal-killing industry.  (I don't go along with this 'humane slaughter' option touted by the animal welfarists, because I am of the opinion that abolition of animal slaughter is the only humane option.)

It pleases us to be atheists as well, because we like to imagine that this world is not at all what it seems to be, and that there are such things as parallel universes and forces at work that we humans could never being to understand, like telepathy and precognition.  And none of this has any connection to a god belief at all.

Apr 22, 2010 -- 1:17AM, bluehorserunning wrote:

I gotta say, I'm with Solf on this one.  The fur industry might not be inherently cruel, but the way it actually functions is:  either fur farms with many animals confined to small cages in close proximity, or traps that exert far too much cruelty because they must not damage the pelt in the process of killing the animals.

You may be right about the way a lot of this is done, BHR, but I still think the distinction is important. If the way in which it is done is needlessly cruel, then reform the method. Don't say that the product of the method should be banned. There are a lot of products that can be produced in responsible ways or irresponsible ways.... probably most of them. The answer is not to ban the products but to supervise the methodology.