live deep fried fish

hmm, i had the impression you were using the cultural relativism quite doctrinesque ;)

and as we were talking about a very moral-based topic these two relativisms are narrowly linked...

I find this sort of thing completely reprehensible on every level, don't care which culture's perpetrating it, it's always disgusting. There are tons of things done in Western culture that are also terrible and I do not agree with, and the whole using culture as an excuse for cruelty is a real cop out. I'm sure there are tons of people in China who find this sort of thing equally disturbing and unacceptable. I guess using a being's capacity for suffering is a well enough measuring stick for deciding how "wrong" something is, but if a being's ability to rationalize is where the line is for you, then doing this to a fish is no worse than doing it to human baby. Neither is going to know where the fuck all the pain's coming from, and both I imagine would be suffering in a very similar way. It's ridiculous how people try to condone this sort of shit.

  On 11/18/2009 at 9:38 PM, chaosmachine said:

so, let's take this conversation to the next level.

 

assume:

 

all pain is temporary.

you only live once.

you only die once.

 

questions:

 

if you have to die, why not die in the most interesting and entertaining manner possible? you only get to do it once, why not elect for the maximum experience?

 

assume:

 

there is an all powerful, immortal god.

god creates the universe in order to experience it, from all perspectives, in all ways.

if you need a reason, think about why you read a book or go to the movie. you appreciate the unexpected, the unknown. imagine knowing everything. you'd crave a little of the unexpected, too.

 

so, god goes to the movies. he suspends his infinite powers. decides to play all the parts. decides to experience the fullness of his creation. and holds nothing back.

 

god is the man, and god is the fish.

 

question:

 

does morality exist in such a universe, or is it merely an illusion imposed by our intentionally limited perspective?

i originally stopped reading the post halfway through, but now i see what you mean.

i think morality doesn't exist in such a universe because everything is consensual, assuming that all consciousness links back to this god-figure you mention.

I would never try to justify moral relativism.

  On 11/18/2009 at 10:54 PM, Yegg said:

  On 11/18/2009 at 9:35 PM, keltoi said:

no different to torturing a cat imo. in some cultures this may be acceptable, but in mine it is not. therefore i am perfectly within my rights to say this is wrong.

 

why you 'well travelled, open-minded' people are obsessing over this one word i don't know.

 

But yet it's okay to eat pork that comes from pigs who spend the entirety of their lives in their own shit?

 

Shitty things are constantly done to animals domestically and yet this stupid fish is the convenient subject for everyones moral outrage.

So that makes it okay?

Actually, fuck it. pointless conversation. Better things to do.

  On 11/19/2009 at 12:26 AM, Zephyr_Nova said:

I find this sort of thing completely reprehensible on every level, don't care which culture's perpetrating it, it's always disgusting. There are tons of things done in Western culture that are also terrible and I do not agree with, and the whole using culture as an excuse for cruelty is a real cop out. I'm sure there are tons of people in China who find this sort of thing equally disturbing and unacceptable. I guess using a being's capacity for suffering is a well enough measuring stick for deciding how "wrong" something is, but if a being's ability to rationalize is where the line is for you, then doing this to a fish is no worse than doing it to human baby. Neither is going to know where the fuck all the pain's coming from, and both I imagine would be suffering in a very similar way. It's ridiculous how people try to condone this sort of shit.

So is frying a fish no worse than swatting a fly?

I think a misconception many posters are taking for granted is that the people are deriving pleasure from the pain of fish or that the aim is to "torture" the fish. This is definitely not the case.

What's really ridiculous is how people can try and say something is absolutely wrong. You can be absolutely offended but this does not make anything inherently wrong. Cultural norms are prescribed by external factors, by parents, school, media ect. and they're so thoroughly internalized that it seems like these values are innate when they're not. What is innate for people is empathy and the drive for self-preservation. Empathy facilitates social contracts between people which in turn aids self-preservation. When self-preservation is not imminently threatened, generally, people tend to expand their range of things with which they can empathize because the drive is still there. People are probably disturbed by the video because they can imagine the same treatment being applied to themselves or to a beloved animal, they empathize with the fish. I'm not calling everyone a Bourgeois pansy, I'm just saying that morality is flexible even though everyone has morals. In any case, I doubt there are "tons" of people in China that find this video equally offensive.

  On 11/19/2009 at 12:57 AM, Etch said:

  On 11/18/2009 at 10:54 PM, Yegg said:

  On 11/18/2009 at 9:35 PM, keltoi said:

no different to torturing a cat imo. in some cultures this may be acceptable, but in mine it is not. therefore i am perfectly within my rights to say this is wrong.

 

why you 'well travelled, open-minded' people are obsessing over this one word i don't know.

 

But yet it's okay to eat pork that comes from pigs who spend the entirety of their lives in their own shit?

 

Shitty things are constantly done to animals domestically and yet this stupid fish is the convenient subject for everyones moral outrage.

 

So that makes it okay?

 

Actually, fuck it. pointless conversation. Better things to do.

I'm not saying it makes it okay, I'm arguing that the society that you participate in makes it culturally acceptable to treat a certain set of animals in a manner that would be deemed "despicable" by the values of the very same culture. However people will consume the end product without skipping a beat. But the very same people will fly off the handle at the fact other cultures eat live fish, there's some heavy cognitive dissonance happening here.

frankly i don't give a shit, if it tastes good let's eat it

It seems to me that when animals are being kept in conditions that would be considered cruel (eg. battery chicken farming), it's for economic reasons, ie. it would take more time and money to provide them with better conditions.

While this is no excuse, I would think that in the case of the fish, it would take more effort and time to keep it alive than it would to kill it instantly. This seems worse to me because it suggests people have gone out of their way to be cruel to the animal.

It's like taking a prisoner on death row, and instead of giving him a lethal injection (or whatever the most efficient form of capital punishment is), ordering that he be stoned to death with Fabergé eggs; expensive, time consuming and totally unnecessary.

so has anybody in this thread been to a country in the far east? they eat shit like this all the time and it's excellent. i fully condone it.

I went to Thailand, I ate a lot of rice.

yes, more then once. am planning to continue studying in bangkok.

  On 11/17/2009 at 6:09 PM, keltoi said:

China has perfected the science of keeping a fish alive while it's deep fried and then consumed.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BYPuLnAscA&feature=player_embedded

some more ppl for the party to execute .. i look forward to having those fags organs harvested ..

and yes fred i know i'm replying to the first page ...

Had to watch a kitten video to clear my mind ..

I guess the problem with this, that I have is that this serves no purpose other than "oh I know what would be cool, lets see if we can keep a fish alive while we fry it". Thats deifnetly an inhumane thing to do and totally unnesseccary, where as regards to keeping chicken and pigs like they are farmed is done for economic reasons, as stoppit says. This is just some sick minded folks idea of amusement. Because lets be honest, they clearly are amused. For soembody to actually think along the lines of actually frying another creature while alive, is pretty fucked up thinking. imo.

i thank thats pretty much the bottom line as well, it's opinion, ones mans from another. No one can say what is right or wrong, we may feel something is wrong, btu we are in no position to label it as such.

eh, yegg already summed it up pretty well.

  On 11/19/2009 at 2:47 AM, zaphod said:

oh yegg please pay attention to me pelaseplaseplaeaplseapleasepleasepleaseplasea ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodhogd

  On 11/19/2009 at 2:33 AM, abusivegeorge said:

I guess the problem with this, that I have is that this serves no purpose other than "oh I know what would be cool, lets see if we can keep a fish alive while we fry it". Thats deifnetly an inhumane thing to do and totally unnesseccary, where as regards to keeping chicken and pigs like they are farmed is done for economic reasons, as stoppit says. This is just some sick minded folks idea of amusement. Because lets be honest, they clearly are amused. For soembody to actually think along the lines of actually frying another creature while alive, is pretty fucked up thinking. imo.

 

i thank thats pretty much the bottom line as well, it's opinion, ones mans from another. No one can say what is right or wrong, we may feel something is wrong, btu we are in no position to label it as such.

  On 11/19/2009 at 2:56 AM, beatfanatic said:

  On 11/19/2009 at 2:33 AM, abusivegeorge said:

I guess the problem with this, that I have is that this serves no purpose other than "oh I know what would be cool, lets see if we can keep a fish alive while we fry it". Thats deifnetly an inhumane thing to do and totally unnesseccary, where as regards to keeping chicken and pigs like they are farmed is done for economic reasons, as stoppit says. This is just some sick minded folks idea of amusement. Because lets be honest, they clearly are amused. For soembody to actually think along the lines of actually frying another creature while alive, is pretty fucked up thinking. imo.

 

i thank thats pretty much the bottom line as well, it's opinion, ones mans from another. No one can say what is right or wrong, we may feel something is wrong, btu we are in no position to label it as such.

 

did george say that bull fighting wasn't wrong? i don't get the argument of "well, other things are pretty fucked up too, so you're not allowed to be horrified with this."

uhh, ok. faulty logic.

So Stoppit and George, just to make sure I understand you here: to keep chickens in battery cages, cut off their beaks, declaw them, let them get so fat their legs can't support their body weight because it's more economic and generates more profit is ok. But pulling a fish out of the ocean, and deep frying it while it's alive is inhumane. is that about right?

can we all agree that if a devilishly hot asian girl were cutting quivering chunks out of him and placing them gingerly on her tongue it'd be awesome?

  On 11/19/2009 at 2:52 AM, 42Orange said:

  On 11/19/2009 at 2:47 AM, zaphod said:

oh yegg please pay attention to me pelaseplaseplaeaplseapleasepleasepleaseplasea ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodhogd

lol

Really the alternative to declawing and debeaking is probably more inhumane than not doing it in those situations.

  On 11/19/2009 at 3:05 AM, chenGOD said:

So Stoppit and George, just to make sure I understand you here: to keep chickens in battery cages, cut off their beaks, declaw them, let them get so fat their legs can't support their body weight because it's more economic and generates more profit is ok. But pulling a fish out of the ocean, and deep frying it while it's alive is inhumane. is that about right?

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

sorry, I'm being a wanker here, just using you as an example. and I'm glad that you get the point about how just because something is different doesn't make it wrong to everybody"

 

Damn you chen, no that is inhumane too. But it isn't done for fun, which it appears to me is how this came accross. I mean when somebody first had the idea of declawing chickens and cutting their beaks off, it wasn't video recorded with a bunch of people around it laughing at the thing which is experiencing pain. They certainly weren't eating chunks of it's flesh half cooked while it lay their awake either, although thats skinning the bone there, because pulling parts of their body off while they are alive is exactly what happens to chickens, but again it isn't recorded and shown to the world in a "look what we can do and achieve in an experiment" type fashion.

Edit: You weren't being a wanker, it's an extremely valid point.

  On 11/19/2009 at 3:12 AM, 42Orange said:

Really the alternative to declawing and debeaking is probably more inhumane than not doing it in those situations.

So how about don't put the chickens in that situation in the first place? or is it ok because it's for profit?

yeah they shouldnt. and the chinese shouldnt fry fish alive for profit either.