Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

How much of it is an extension of people who, for example, are revolted to think of chicken breast as muscle, or of a chicken laying an egg? A disconnect from the real world due to lack of knowledge, rather than the natural state of things which has to be forcibly interrupted?

I definitely agree that it’s not the same as industrial farming which I imagine must involve some suspension of empathy

Your questions are really challenging, and bless @webdevMason for having the energy to explain her views pretty thoroughly. I have less energy, after a long, hot weekend with the kids, so I'll give you a one-tweet answer.

Any killing involves violence, which needs a high level of justification in order to co-exist with empathy. In hunter-gatherer societies, I think there probably was a high level of empathy at work. Where animals are widgets, empathy seems nearly impossible.

I've been around many animals as they died, and on a few occasions killed myself, so I think I actually have substantially more experience than the typical person... the transition to death is profoundly creepy and aversive to me. *I* would have to break to endure it often.

On a visceral level, there's a big diff between being a rancher who slaughters in-house & a hunter. To be a good rancher, you nurture a maternal/paternal protective drive. To be a good hunter, you follow a prey drive. It's very different to kill an animal that comes when you call

Hunters tend to enjoy hunting. I haven't ever met a rancher who says he enjoys slaughter, and tbh if I did I would stay the fuck away from him

I've actually seen a rancher apologize to his animals before he sold them for slaughter. Ranchers probably see their animals as pets as much as livestock.