I'm so glad you are impervious to corruption, because otherwise such power could drive a fool mad!
— counterpunch

Isn't that why we have elections? — Echarmion

Have you never noticed how the right represent peoples interests whereas the left assume, the people exist to represent their interests? Democratic communism is an oxymoron. People would vote for the freedom of self interest every time! A command economy necessarily implies totalitarian government - prone to corruption - and is inclined to genocide. Do bees and ants have democracy? No. It's a dictatorship. Drones exists to serve the queen, and are disposable. Is that a model you would emulate for human beings?

even though we've defined ourselves as social animals and have attributed our success to being such, our cooperative behaviour can't hold a candle to that of other social creatures like bees and ants. — TheMadFool

...and you'd be the centralized authority, in control of the commons, ensuring that people don't do what's in their own self interest, but limit their needs and wants to what's good for the environment, would you? I'm so glad you are impervious to corruption, because otherwise such power could drive a fool mad!

Both a genetic crapshoot and targeted germline interventions carry risks. — David Pearce

On the so called "genetic crapshoot" - we evolved in relation to a rich and complex biosphere by the function or die algorithm of evolution. This is a process of attrition, where the organism dies until the species chances on a genetic mutation suited to survive, and then all subsequent reproduction follows that "design" - suited to survive within the biosphere, in relation to other organisms. Evolution is not a crapshoot. It's ballet, and you blunder onto the stage in your hobnail boots. For example:

European rabbits were introduced to Australia initially as a food source, but became feral, bred and multiplied into a plague - because they are not designed (by evolutionary attrition) to be in balance with the Australian biosphere. (Australia is now extremely cautious about biosecurity; remember Johnny Depp's dogs.)

Another similar example is Japanese knotweed, brought back from the far east by European landscape gardeners for its aesthetic qualities. It got into the wild and is now an invasive biohazard, almost impossible to eradicate. These organisms get out of control because they are not evolved in relation to the complex living environment to which they were introduced.

The biosphere is not just rabbits and knotweed. It's bacteria and viruses too. In order to try to control the rabbit population they took a virus from central and south America, and deliberately infected the rabbit population of Australia. Unlike the south American brush rabbit, European rabbits have no natural immunity to the myxoma virus, and the disease spread and the rabbit population was reduced for a while, until they developed immunity.

So, it's not just plants and animals, but bacteria and viruses; and what you are claiming is, that despite these examples - and many more, you have the wisdom and technical ability to alter organisms at the genetic level; implying that you can foresee all the possible interactions of all the possible organisms in nature. That's the risk you take upon yourself, not for you personally - but for every subsequent generation of human being. (To say nothing of reprogramming predators in pursuit of your religious vision of the lion laying down with the lamb.)

And one more: I don't know the full history, but here in the US my house sits on land that was undoubtedly seized from Native Americans about 400 years ago. If there are people alive today who could trace their ancestry back to that place & time, are they the rightful owners of the land my house sits on? — EricH

Your example strikes to the very heart of the issue. Nomads cannot be said to own the land, because ownership of the land is the essential difference between nomad-ism, and an agricultural, settled way of life. This is in part why I paraphrased Rousseau:

“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine" ... was the true founder of civil society. — counterpunch

This then raises the question of communal versus private ownership, with the justification of private ownership coming from Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons, and the universal observation that any freely available resource will be exploited to exhaustion. The other examples are more complex. But morally, a nomad cannot refuse you the right to settle on land he wanders.

Stonewalling? — David Pearce

I have commented that your proposals are frankenstien-esque - and not just to religious conservatives. Genetic engineering carries a huge risk of unintended consequences, particularly with regard to disease. I've argued that suffering allows us to navigate a hostile environment. I explained at length why it's an unsystematic misuse of science - that rightfully should begin with energy. I said that longevity could not be environmentally supported. And I've questioned the morality of imposing your values on subsequent generations at the biological/medical level without their consent. You've dismissed these remarks, and simply repeated iterations of the same lecture over and over again. If you don't wish to discuss these criticisms, that's your prerogative - but that so, thanks again for explaining your ideas, again!

There is a past and a future - in reality, that occurred as a consequence of the faster than light expansion of the early universe.

The big bang cast energy ahead of us, and behind us in time - which then coalesced into matter, forming separate past, present and future universes.

Everything ages at the same entropic rate, so we never catch up to the future, and the past never catches up to us.

The only discernible effect is the gravitational influence of what we call dark matter, but is actually gravity exerting an influence, inversely proportional to distance in spacetime squared.

Science is just a tool. — frank

No. It's not. And that's why Popper is wrong.

There are a near infinite number of possible scenarios here — EricH

Are you sure? It seems to me you're driving toward a particular point. The original question was 'Who owns the land?' - and it's an interesting, and difficult question of itself. Now you're asking about descendants of original owners - and the problem with your pretence is that, it consigns me to a hypothetical scenario you construct - with obvious allusions to real world events, without allowing me to make a real world counter argument. I'm not playing a rigged game.

"By contrast, according to Popper, the intellectual enemies of the open society are those who claim to possess knowledge of a common good. This knowledge is both factual-scientific and normative-moral: it is moral knowledge about the highest good together with technocratic knowledge about how to steer people’s lives in order to achieve this good. Therefore, this knowledge stands above the freedom of individual people, namely above their own judgement about how they want to shape their lives.

These enemies of the open society have lost their credibility as a result of the mass murders that proved inevitable on the way to accomplish the alleged good. Not only were human dignity and fundamental rights eliminated, but at the same time a bad result was achieved in relation to the alleged good. Under communist regimes, on the way to a classless, exploitation-free society, more severe economic exploitation occurred than ever seen in a capitalist society. Under National Socialism, the path to the goal of a pure-blooded Volksgemeinschaft led these very people to the brink of ruin.

Nonetheless, today, we face new enemies of the open society from within our own societies. Again, they make knowledge claims that are both cognitive and moral. The difference is that they don’t operate with the mirage of an absolute good, but with deliberately stoked fear of threats, such as the spread of the coronavirus or climate change. These are undoubtedly serious challenges. But they are employed to set certain values absolute, such as health protection or climate protection.

An alliance of some scientists, politicians and business leaders claims to have the knowledge of how to steer society down to family and individual life in order to safeguard these values. Again, the issue is about a higher social good – health protection, living conditions of future generations – that is posed as overriding individual human dignity and basic rights."


https://www.aier.org/article/the-new-enemies-of-the-open-society/#:~:text=By%20contrast%2C%20according%20to%20Popper%2C%20the%20intellectual%20enemies,people%E2%80%99s%20lives%20in%20order%20to%20achieve%20this%20good.

I once used a politics forum that had a panel on the front page showing who's online now.

The problem of suffering is subjective. You think it important. I don't care about it.
— counterpunch

What a disgusting admission. — ProbablyTrue

Admittedly, it doesn't look good when taken out of context. But I don't think there's a realistic solution to the "problem". Animals eat each other, and suffer far worse in nature than on a well run farm. I've explained this repeatedly, but everything I say falls on stoney ground. I don't want to be rude to our guest by using ever greater rhetorical force to break through this stonewalling. Baden wouldn't like it. I assume he wants to invite other guest philosophers in future, and I'm already on thin ice with him for remarks deemed off topic elsewhere. So I've said all I can on the subject without risk of getting banned. Thanks Dave, for explaining your views. I don't agree with them, but they are interesting. And Probably True, thank you for affording me the opportunity to explain my difficult position.

So if current owner obtained the title deeds by killing a previous owner (or forcing them off the property) - the descendants of the previous owner have no legitimate claim? — EricH

Was the hypothetical previous owner a citizen of a terrorist state, intent on genocide, that refused any and all compromises offered, decade after decade? Because if they were, then the legitimate claim of the descendants of the previous owners would be against an intractable government, and their foreign policy failure!

If the question is about current ownership then the person with their name on the title deeds would seem to be the answer.

Fine. The point is most of the people living in Palestine were Palestinians. Why should they accept some other people coming in to take their land? — Manuel

By that logic "build that wall!" Is that your logic? I'm guessing it's not - Manuel!

This is not the point of the thread. I've already stated the point many times. If you want to start another thread dealing with the conditions of how Israel was created and why it was complicated, you can do that. — Manuel

Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. If you merely want to weep over the Palestinian causalities, I'll leave you alone with your grief.

I am well aware of the history. What is translates to in the present day is, as Brooks put it, a sheer asymmetry of power that is being unilaterally exercised by a brutal apartheid regime for the sake of settler colonialism. It's that's simple. — StreetlightX

See my comments above for why it's not "that simple." It's a hugely complex issue, with wrongs and rights on both sides. That what makes it the most intractable conflict in the world. I completely accept that the Palestinians have suffered - and I have sympathy for that, but they've also inflicted suffering, and have done so to resist political compromise solutions. The zero sum Arab solution is, and always has been the eradication of Israel. Is that what you want too? Unreasonableness invites unreasonableness. We all have spiritual ancestry there.

For the victims, it is not complicated. — Manuel

Exactly what the Jews said in 1947.

We can speak of how the Palestinians could have accepted the UN partition which would have given them 45% of Palestine, which was once 100% — Manuel

No, the territory was 100% ruled by the British - after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

See the Treaty of Sèvres

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_S%C3%A8vres

But the British were in a terrible state after WWII, and couldn't maintain their commitments. Resolution 181 was based on demographics. The Jews accepted it. The Arabs rejected it and launched militia attacks on Jews that then led to a wider conflict.

"The first casualties after the adoption of Resolution 181(II) by the General Assembly were passengers on a Jewish bus driving on the Coastal Plain near Kfar Sirkin on 30 November. An eight-man gang from Jaffa ambushed the bus killing five and wounding others. Half an hour later they ambushed a second bus, southbound from Hadera, killing two more. Arab snipers attacked Jewish buses in Jerusalem and Haifa."

Is your post in response to my comment, because if so, read this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine

followed by this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947%E2%80%931948_civil_war_in_Mandatory_Palestine

I agree it's horrendous, but that's just the surface of things. There are deeper causes to all this that don't allow for an emotive conclusion. It's very complicated. It goes back over a century to the first world war, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Second World War and the withdrawal of the British from the Mandate for Palestine established by the League of Nations in 1922. The 1947-49 Palestinian War, was seminal. But one thing we can say with reasonable certainty is that the Palestinians would have been far better off accepting Resolution 181 of the UN General Assembly. Instead Nikba - and generation after generation of suffering. Yes, it's horrendous, but Arab belligerence has played a very large part in causing this catastrophe.

Knee jerk reaction? I'm speaking about settler colonialism. — Manuel

I said, knee jerk left wing dogma. It's easy to look at this, and see nothing but the suffering, and immediately form an opinion; getting so emotionally hung up on the tragic scenes no deeper understanding is sought - and that, it seems to me, is where the left always are.

I'm saying, I see nothing more substantial than that in your arguments. Plenty of hyperbole, and appeals to emotion in support of a purely a one sided view.

I wonder where people like you would have stood in 1948 - the Jews displaced by the holocaust in Europe, and pleading with the axis powers for a homeland? I imagine you'd have been there weeping for them, using similarly emotionally hyperbolic arguments in support of Zionism that you now describe as settler colonialism.

I look at the investment Jews have brought to the region, and think perhaps that Arab belligerence from 1948 onward, was in retrospect, a mistake. They should have welcomed these displaced people - not gang up, and launch one war after another against World War II refugees.

Maybe what you wrote will make sense to me tomorrow. Oh dear, it's already tomorrow, and it's still nonsense. Ah well, logging off.

It's just that your first thought was that being able to work the land was the basis of ownership. I see you are backing away from that; that working in a factory does not imply ownership. Now you want to add a "first man", a mythological patriarch, an Adam, a protocapitalist.

Looks a bit like ownership isn't quite what you thought.

Of course, the first folk to work the land did so in small family groups, sharing produce on the basis of need, with no notion of individual ownership. But that doesn't suit your narrative. — Banno

I don't have a narrative per se. What I have, as you seem to already know, is some first thoughts - on what I agreed with the OP is a very difficult question. I understood that question to mean, how ownership of land is originally established. If that's not the question - what is?

But you advocated it... or so it seem'd: "Hence, my first thought is that it is the effort it takes to make land productive that is the basis of ownership." Perhaps it would be better for you to think of ownership of the land in terms of the effort needed to make other folk work it for you... would that suit? — Banno

If you've got to the point where you have land and capital - to say nothing of the ideas, and the will, and someone else has nothing but their labour, I see no problem that 'other folk work it for you' ...because your contribution to the productive endeavour far outweighs theirs.

But that aside, I assumed we we're talking about ownership of land from when the world was new - i.e. the first man who drove in a stake, and dug a ditch, and said this is mine, was the true founder of civil society. Not the golden age of capitalism.

Nice to see you leaning towards the labour theory of value. Never took you for a Marxist. Maybe there is hope...So the guy who works in the factory owns it...? — Banno

In Marxism there are three elements to capitalist production: land, labour and capital. A labour theory of value conveniently forgets the other two, and makes out like the unskilled worker has made the most significant contribution to the productive endeavour. I've never understood this. Maybe you can explain it. Seems utterly incoherent to me.

Right to Repair?

Wrong.

Duty to recycle!

If it breaks buy a new one, and keep people in jobs. The old one can be thrown into an industrial mincing machine, along with all the other waste, then heated, and distilled, and rendered down into constituent elements, that can then be used again. Of course, this takes a lot of energy - and it's there, beneath our feet, boiling hot magma 4000 miles deep, 26,000 miles around. All the clean energy we could ever need, and then some!

So - are we doing the flame-war thing? — Banno

If we are, you started it.

'cause that don't work well here. — Banno

You're not good at it, that much is true.

But happy to play along, if that's what you want. — Banno

ditto.

Or better, you could offer an argument, as against anecdotes from your lost loves. — Banno

It is a difficult question. I'm not sure it has an answer, but here's my first thought:

Morally, it's like Rousseau said: “The man who first fenced in a piece of land ...was the true founder of civil society."

Note, the quote is abbreviated. The full quote reads:

“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”

But I disagree. The fruits of the earth are meagre if effort is not added; and it is universally observed that a man tends his own garden best. So, abbreviation of the quote is justified by the concept of productivity; and exclusive ownership is justified by Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons, in that, common ownership leads to neglect and abuse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Hence, my first thought is that it is the effort it takes to make land productive that is the basis of ownership. — counterpunch

Now let's see if I can get a decent reply???

You're right that the myth of the tragedy of the commons will come true if everyone believes it, and as a result takes three slices. — Banno

This comes to you from the space between Banno's ears! The wonder is how he can hear his own thoughts in a vacuum!

...just claim Hume said it... that'll work. — Banno

I saw the notification, and now I'm disappointed. Are you trying to be funny - because, if so, swing and a miss.

Ah, we bow before Counterpunch's ex- girlfriend! With such brilliantly expounded argumentation, how could he be wrong! — Banno

...

The tragedy of the commons is a capitalist myth. — Banno

Is it really? I dated an Estonian girl who lived under communism, and she told me that because nothing is owned, everyone steals. That's not a theory. That's a real world consequence of common ownership; and an example of the destructive rational self interest at the heart of the Tragedy of the Commons. It's why communism failed, and capitalism is still going strong.

Just to be clear - I have no clue how to answer this difficult question. — EricH

It is a difficult question. I'm not sure it has an answer, but here's my first thought:

Morally, it's like Rousseau said: “The man who first fenced in a piece of land ...was the true founder of civil society."

Note, the quote is abbreviated. The full quote reads:

“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”

But I disagree. The fruits of the earth are meagre if effort is not added; and it is universally observed that a man tends his own garden best. So, abbreviation of the quote is justified by the concept of productivity; and exclusive ownership is justified by Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons, in that, common ownership leads to neglect and abuse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Hence, my first thought is that it is the effort it takes to make land productive that is the basis of ownership.

Well you point to something important. If we go back far enough, everybody's an invader or colonialist of some kind. Maybe not the Aborigines in Australia. But in many parts of the world this is the case. — Manuel

All homo sapiens emerged from Africa about 70,000 years ago, and they're still moving around. "Colonialism" has not ended. People are still on the move. Look at migration into Europe, or the US. Around 40% of the population of London are non-whites. London is being colonised, yet it's peaceful. It's not entirely unproblematic, but it's a long way from what's going on in Israel and Gaza. So you have to look to another explanation than your knee jerk left wing dogma - that welcomes diversity in Western countries, yet defends everyone else's mono-culturalism.

All settler colonialism is like this. — Manuel

Indeed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(636%E2%80%93637)

The siege of Jerusalem was part of the Muslim conquest of the Levant and the result of the military efforts of the Rashidun Caliphate against the Byzantine Empire in the year 636-637/38. The Muslim conquest of the city solidified Arab control over Palestine, which would not again be threatened until the First Crusade in 1099.

Do you mean like:

In days of yore, your father's father - was farther from the dear deer. D'ya?

You're not serious?! Since the age of ten or eleven, I've been a secular scientific rationalist. My reason for alluding to the "peaceable kingdom" of Isaiah was to disclaim originality for the vision of a vegan biosphere. Molecular biology provides the tools to turn utopian dreaming into practical policy. — David Pearce

Above I argued:

So you "modestly assume" you have the wisdom and technological ability to genetically alter all life on earth that doesn't meet your ethical standards? — counterpunch

Your answer was an appeal to religious authority.

The prospect of ending the cruelties of Nature isn't a madcap scheme some philosopher just dreamed up in the bathtub. It's a venerable vision: the "peaceable kingdom" of Isaiah. — David Pearce

Your belief that the problem of suffering is morally urgent, is your opinion - and that's all. It's not a fact. It's a subjectively conceived priority. So your allusion to Issiah comes across as an attempt at justification of your opinion, with an appeal to religious authority - which is rather odd for a supposedly secular, scientific rationalist.

If you were a secular scientific rationalist, my argument that science describes an understanding of reality that implies a systematic application of technology - to secure a sustainable future, and thereby relive suffering, should have more impact on you. Maybe you think you're a scientific rationalist, but like West Side Story is really Romeo and Juliet, you are hanging your scientific baubles on the same philosophically religious Christmas tree. And I'm trying to explain to you that applying science for unscientific reasons is why we're headed for extinction.

Admittedly, sustainability is a value - but it's the most objective value conceivable; not least because, one has to exist to have values. The problem of suffering is subjective. You think it important. I don't care about it. I'll concede, unnecessary cruelty to animals is to be avoided, but beyond that I don't care that food animals die. All mortal creatures die, and in the wild suffer far worse than they do on a well run farm - as your Dawkins quote illustrates.

All genetic experimentation is risky; the very nature of sexual reproduction involves gambling with the life of a sentient being. — David Pearce

In your anti-natalist opinion! I disagree; and so we cancel each other out. But you cannot cancel out scientific knowledge. And science as an understanding of reality (it's not just a tool box of neat gadgets to use as you see fit) implies systematic application of technology. On any such list of scientific facts, prioritized in terms of sustainability, risky genetic experimentation is a long way down the list of things we need to do.

One comparatively minor argument for ending animal agriculture is that feeding grain and soya products directly to humans is more energy-efficient than feeding them to factory-farmed nonhuman animals whom humans then butcher. — David Pearce

I'm guessing you've never done a physical days work in your life. A vegetarian diet - with all the necessary supplements, is probably fine for an office worker, or an academic philosopher - i.e. the middle class to whom vegetarianism appeals. But it's simply not adequate to the needs of a manual labourer. Meat is concentrated calories, protein and nutrients - with more energy per kilo than lentil casserole. That's how you can claim vegetarians are more intelligent - and you think that's good science. You're not a scientific rationalist. You're a scientific cherry picker - appealing to your moral opinions and religious authority, as justification for something you refuse to acknowledge is arrogant in the extreme - and precisely mirrors, and justifies the anti-science prejudices of religious conservatives.

Missionaries believed they were morally superior to cannibals. Their moral self-righteousness is not an argument for eating babies. Likewise, the foibles of individual vegans are not a moral argument for harming nonhuman animals. — David Pearce

Scientifically, cannibalism is a bad idea. It's the cause of prion diseases - like CJD, (mad cow disease.) Cannibalism by the natives of Papua New Guinea lead to the spread of a fatal brain disease called kuru that caused a devastating epidemic in the group. There's no need for moral superiority. Simply knowing what's scientifically true and doing what's sustainable is sufficient, and a far more reliable means to reduce suffering.

If we were discussing some academic question of art or literature, fair enough. But the problem of suffering is morally urgent – and calls for radical solutions. — David Pearce

If you were talking about sustainability, I'd agree - it's urgent, and calls for radical solutions, I've sought to explain to you, but you won't acknowledge my argument. I suspect that's because your real purpose is to horrify people with science; to trash science on behalf of religion.

It's a venerable vision: the "peaceable kingdom" of Isaiah. — David Pearce

Since the 1635 trial of Galileo made science a heresy, we have not integrated science as valid knowledge of reality, but merely used it as a tool - as you propose to do. A systematic approach to science puts sustainability as a priority, far in advance of risky genetic experimentation.

You say you value a sustainable future, but you're anti-natalist before you're transhumanist, if I recall correctly, and continue to propound this Croenenberg-esque madcap scheme - bound to horrify religious conservatives, and so maintain 400 years of science denial that's driving the life of this planet toward extinction.

If you really cared about suffering you'd accept my argument that we need to recognise a scientific understanding of reality, and look first to the most fundamental implications; energy and entropy - on page one of your physics textbooks, and therefore harness magma energy for limitless clean electricity, carbon sequestration, desalination and irrigation, recycling - and so on, because if we don't, the suffering is going to be unimaginably worse than that of a factory farmed pig.

I've tried to explain this several times - and got nothing back. This is a philosophy discussion forum - not a lecture hall. My arguments are based in the epistemology of knowledge, not in some dubious, anti-natalist, vegan moral self righteousness - that to my mind is floating in the air with no visible means of philosophical support.

The prospect of ending the cruelties of Nature isn't a madcap scheme — David Pearce

Let's agree to differ!

On some fairly modest assumptions, a world where all sentient beings can flourish is ethically preferable to a world where sentient beings hurt, harm and kill each other. Biotech makes the well-being of all sentience technically feasible. So let's civilise Darwinian life, not glory in its depravities: — David Pearce

So you "modestly assume" you have the wisdom and technological ability to genetically alter all life on earth that doesn't meet your ethical standards? Evolution has produced the lifeforms that exist, by testing them mercilessly over one and a half billion years - and rendering extinct those that are unfit, that fitter lifeforms can take their place. This is the basis for the apparent design in nature - how everything works together to a productive end, and you would presume to take this process on yourself? You should consider Orgel's Second Rule: "Evolution is cleverer than you are."

I assume you're trolling. But if not, I promise vegans love food as much as eaters. Visit a vegan foodie community if you've any doubt. — David Pearce

Funny because, I assume the same of vegans - that they troll normal people with their presumed moral superiority.

Is the level of pleasure someone derives from harming his victims – human or nonhuman – a morally relevant consideration? — David Pearce

It's you broadcasting moral claims based on your personal choices, that seek to cast me, and much of the rest of the world in a bad light. So, who's the troll here?

If so, then it's mysterious why scientific studies suggest vegetarians tend to be slimmer, longer-lived and more intelligent than meat-eaters — David Pearce

Scientifically, that would be such an incredibly difficult finding to prove - that I know any such study is seriously methodologically flawed. Two identical babies - one raised vegan, the other normal, would have to be followed all their lives - to draw such conclusions.

I suspect that vegetarianism is a cultural practice that occurs among a particular type of person, that are already more intelligent than the average. They're slimmer because they don't really like food, don't like to cook, and don't enjoy eating - and I suspect that's because they are hung up on the Freudian anal stage of development, and have some childhood trauma around defecation that subconsciously influences adult behaviour.

Tell me which describes you best:

* hate mess, obsessively tidy, punctual, and respectful to authority, or -
* messy, disorganized, rebellious, inconsiderate of others' feelings.

Is the level of pleasure someone derives from harming his victims – human or nonhuman – a morally relevant consideration? — David Pearce

In terms of what we owe each other, my only moral obligation to the animals I eat is to minimise the suffering of a mortal creature that is a food animal. It exists for that reason, in nature - and in farming, because that's where that kind of animal is on the food chain. I'm glad I'm human, because I'm at the top of the food chain, and I'm not the 'pull down the ceiling to make everything equal' type. There are inherent inequalities in life. Animals are not all equal. There are predators and prey. I'm a predator.

For a rebuttal, perhaps see e.g.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/04/allan-savorys-ted-talk-is-wrong-and-the-benefits-of-holistic-grazing-have-been-debunked.html — David Pearce

And if you'd like to see successful trial of Savory's methods, see here:

Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment
Grazing management impacts on vegetation, soil biota and soil chemical, physical and hydrological properties in tall grass prairie

W.R.Teague S.L.Dowhower S.A.Baker N.Haileb P.B.DeLaune D.M.Conover

► We evaluated the impacts of multi-paddock grazing and continuous grazing. ► We measured impacts on soils and vegetation on neighboring ranches in three counties. ► Multi-paddock grazing had superior vegetation composition and biomass. ► Multi-paddock grazing had higher soil carbon, water- and nutrient-holding capacities. ► Success was due to managing grazing adaptively for desired results.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167880911000934?via%3Dihub

Civilisation will be vegan. — David Pearce

No, it really will not, and anyone who's a foodie can assure you that's never going to happen. I always think that, vegans don't really like food; don't like to cook - and take no pleasure in eating.

You massively underestimate what a cultural shift if would be - because individually, you can just stop eating meat, and you think that's it. But it's very different universally. And if Allan Savory is right, there wouldn't be civilisation for very long after.

Have you ever wondered why vegan foods mimic meat? Ever wondered why vegans need supplements for Vitamin B12, Vitamin D, Long-chain omega-3s, Iron, Calcium, Zinc, and Iodine? It's because we are carnivores. As a personal choice - choosing to be a herbivore is fine. That is, until you can take a pill and not have to eat at all! But I love food, I love cooking and eating, and you put yourself between me and a pork chop at your peril!

Either I have no choice but to believe I have free will. Or I have free will. In either case, I believe I have free will.

Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer. — Charlotte Thomas-Rowe

I'm guessing Schopenhauer didn't have a gym membership!