Comment by Loughla
3 months ago
Growing up on a farm taught me that animals are absolutely able to think and learn. Not in the same way as humans, but I'm fully convinced there are degrees of consciousness.
Watching new calves play in spring meadows is one of the most purely joyful things you can ever see. They have best friends and will avoid playing with other calves until their friend comes to play with them.
Animals also grieve and mourn their dead, much like we do.
They are fellow sentient beings capable of experiencing pleasure, pain, fear, and forming social bonds. It's a lot of why I take issue with anthropocentrism, and think factory farming is an absolute tragedy. It's the industrialized denial of a meaningful life and one of the biggest examples of human cruelty.
I want to live, and think others do too- so Life must have some kind of Greater Meaning. Yet, almost everything else seems to prove the opposite based on how fragile life is, and how little things change when one is lost.
That's a very pessimistic was to view things, I think.
We're only given one chance; rich, poor, all of us. One shot. You have to try to do the best with what you have.
Nothing changes when you have a big loss, only if you let nothing change. My grandpa died at 102. He and Grandma raised me and were my rocks throughout my entire life. Grandma died when I was a teenager, and I only used that to become more sad and selfish (like a teenager). Looking back, the choices I made would've made her sad for me. When Grandpa died, I chose to use his memory to do good things. Now I volunteer with multiple organizations related to aging farmers. I gather stray old people from the area for weekend and holiday get togethers.
Things changed, and my life improved because of my response to loss. The memories are hard, but they're made easier in a community of people who can share them with me.
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> Yet, almost everything else seems to prove the opposite based on how fragile life is, and how little things change when one is lost.
What a sad way to view things
Thanks for this memory. I had similar experience watching spring lambs and swore off mutton/lamb/etc same day.
See, I never swore off beef, even with that. I took it as a reason to make sure they live their best lives, and to do my best to ensure that their deaths are as quick and painless as possible. I understand the hypocrisy or whatever that might be, but beef has kept my family out of bankruptcy when full time job income has not. I do apologize and thank every animal, for whatever that's worth. It doesn't feel great, but such is life.
Not to go full-PETA, here, but I think there's a pretty decent chance that in 300 years you and your family and this comment will be looked back on like how we now look back on remarks about chattel slavery.
I swore off lamb after trying to make a couple lamb stews. It is clearly an acquired taste if that.
Or that cows can quickly determine when an electric fence isn’t working and rampage a winter feed paddock in an hour.
Cows seem to inherently know when it's down, and choose rainy nights exclusively to go on a tear around the neighbor's fields instead of my own.
We had pigs for one terrible year. Pigs know when the electric fence is down because the sociopaths regularly push each other into it. I think they do it to a) test the defense and b) because they're bastards that enjoy watching other creatures suffer.
I hate pigs entirely, by the way. We raised them for one year and decided they weren't worth the hassle. They're the worst.
Dangerous too. Pigs and bulls, not worth the risk.
Give me a dumbass sheep any day over something that with chase you from one side of a paddock to the other trying to kill you the whole time.
There’s a part of me that speculates that the kashrut laws are meant to rule out eating the most intelligent animals (pigs, cetaceans, cephalopods).
I had a college professor who steadfastly believed that pork was a no go because pigs get sunburned. Not because they're resource and time intensive. Not because they're intelligent and weirdly similar to humans.
Sunburns.
I have no idea
Interesting! I'd never thought of that.
Still, though... bivalves?
I think shellfish was more unambiguously a food safety thing
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> degrees of consciousness
Societal dogma aside, I think this probably applies to all critters, including within species, including us.
Do you still live on a farm on in a city? Here in the suburbs, something is making animals "less smart". Every neighborhood has signs about missing pets. I suspect it also affects people too. Why get a pet when everyone is too busy to take care of it?
Missing pets are because people don't spend enough time with their animals to form a pack attachment (for dogs) and cats just don't give a shit.
Or. . . The encroachment of suburbs in currently rural areas means coyotes and pets come in contact. . .
Also I still live on the farm. And animals here can be dumb as hell as well. Our neighbors miniature donkey regularly escapes, just to get his head stuck in the fence trying to get to his food trough from the outside.
Maybe they run away exactly because they are smart.