American confronts live dog meat trade in an undisclosed African country

[Fleetinglife]

Note: There is no graphic footage in the video that violates the guidelines of the forum here.

Found this video posted in a Twitter retweet of a guy I follow that went viral on TikTok. An interesting one-minute exchange video that very graphically shows the conflict of values and perspectives of people raised in very different cultural backgrounds - shows the extent of how the level of development of a culture to sensitivity programs your mind on even a very emotional and feeling level to feel emotionally abhorrent about doing some stuff (to the point of feeling that you are committing a murder) while others see it as part of their daily survival sustenance or as a delicacy or a 'treat' for themselves.

I think the video also provides a nice perspective on the culture of first-world vegans and vegans in other countries cultures or people wanting to become vegans and vegetarians on the indifference of the large part of the underdeveloped world to some of their sensitivities on animals and animals that we see as, like the American guy, as having some sort of souls - since we were programmed in our culture to feel reverence to not violating this norm since we see them as our friends and companions while the rest of the animals as valuable property with feelings that we take care of until its time they are sacrificed on the altar of our sustenance and enjoyment of our taste buds - the more refined and well-spoken savages.

They both wear the same NBA jersey to top things of - I saw it as the superficiality of the worldwide proliferation of economic globalization and global pop-culturally recognizable brands digitally broadcasted and dispersed to the world audience and consumer to change deeply seated and locally or nationally culturally programmed norms and belief system realities that go much deeper in shaping and determining a single mind nodes best adaptation and accommodation to the culture of their local societies for the vast majority of people on Earth.

Here is the controversial video:

Btw I personally feel bad for that dog there - when I peered well to look into his eyes in the video I felt that he had a soul inside him or humanity towards him in my personal projection that I would see in other humans.

 

[impulse9]

Yet you don't feel bad when you eat pork. That pig had a soul too, if you just took a moment to look in his eyes.

[PurpleTree]

17 minutes ago, impulse9 said:

Yet you don't feel bad when you eat pork. That pig had a soul too, if you just took a moment to look in his eyes.

that's true

but gingers and fishes have no soul

the jury is out if chickens have souls or not

[Fleetinglife]

Just now, impulse9 said:

Yet you don't feel bad when you eat pork. That pig had a soul too, if you just took a moment to look in his eyes.

The problem is I never see the pig, not to mention I was kinda forced to eat pork fairly recently a couple of days ago out of respect as part of the guest inviting tradition hereafter the anniversary visit of the grave of my deceased grandfather as part of the Serbian Orthodox feast tradition with invited guest after a forty-day or anniversary visit to the grave of the deceased that we knew - it's in the folk tradition a way of showing you are alive and well to the ones that cared about you and loved you that are no longer here (a part of the culture's norms programmed magical thinking and superstition what can I say), I probably could have avoided that if I started a vegan diet beforehand and declared myself becoming a vegan to the dismissiveness and judgment of others that know me as suddenly resorting to an 'anatural diet' due to a popular trend among the youth but I know some of my acquaintances and friends that managed to pull this off while remaining respectful to the people that are closes to them and care about them widely practiced folk and religious traditions and customs such as this one when inviting guests, if I had to kill it myself probably I couldn't until I've desensitized myself enough and it became a necessary survival routine for supporting myself hypothetically and hypothetical my family with that job but in real life now how and where I live I don't know if I could force myself to do it - I find pigs kinda cute when I look at them  at least when they are alive - I know I am hypocrite in my mind to that physical reality that I don't feel that when they are already processed and consumption ready -how would I feel not the same way if I was told it was and that I am enjoying eating human flesh - damn that would feel abhorent and disgusting and would cause me to puke my guts out probably.

[impulse9]

Whenever someone asks me to eat meat for "traditional" purposes, I tell them to stick it where the sun don't shine.  Couldn't care less about barbaric traditions. Unless my life was on the line, I'd never eat meat.

[Fleetinglife]

32 minutes ago, impulse9 said:

Whenever someone asks me to eat meat for "traditional" purposes, I tell them to stick it where the sun don't shine.  Couldn't care less about barbaric traditions. Unless my life was on the line, I'd never eat meat.

Yeah, I get it self-integrity, independence, and self-reliance I need some more of that to cultivate in my own life, especially in a very hostile and dismissive overall culture when it comes to this question - that somehow even ties into the idea of the 'preservation of the Serbian traditional and ethnic identity since during the Ottoman Muslim occupation times it was seen as a way of maintaining the Orthodox Serb identity in opposition to the Sharia law mandated occupation and later in former multiethnic and multireligious Yugoslav states to differentiate oneself from the other religious groups through the maintenance of that traditional identity through the consumption of pork. Just wanted to give you this brief exposition of how certain meat consumption is tied to ethnocentric thinking and the maintenance of traditions and customs tied to keeping that ethnic group identity afloat, strong and present in the community in order for it to gain its manifestation, hold, relevance and prominence in opposition to other ethnic groups and their traditions and customs. A national identity that gains its legitimacy, is forged upon and maintained only through the opposition to other ethnic identities as they ultimately do.

[impulse9]

Like I said, barbaric traditions don't interest me. Unless the culture was so backwards that my life was threatened by me going against it, I would always fight against it. But I understand not all parts of the world have this privilege, sometimes you have to do stuff just to appear you're on the correct side. It's still wrong, though. In a bout a 1000 years, eating meat will have the exact same connotation as cannibalism has today.

[Fleetinglife]

14 minutes ago, impulse9 said:

Like I said, barbaric traditions don't interest me. 

The original term in ancient Greek meant someone who is foreign to the Greek civilization, culture and to someone whose language the Greeks couldn't understand.  Barbaric has become a more nice polite way to say to someone online that he is an underdeveloped savage without being confrontational and overtly denigrating I have noticed that lately. No qualms about the phrase I like it and I think it's a nicer way to say to someone that they need to develop their humanity and empathy more.

 

23 minutes ago, impulse9 said:

Unless the culture was so backwards that my life was threatened by me going against it, I would always fight against it. But I understand not all parts of the world have this privilege, sometimes you have to do stuff just to appear you're on the correct side.

Not exactly threatened but possibly socially ostracized and made fun of in some more traditionally-minded and conservative environments, however, there is still not a small number of vegans in Serbia even in underdeveloped places in the country who are vocal opposition and have managed to integrate their lifestyle into the countries culture without being heavily demonized just made fun of, scoffed and stereotyped in the aforementioned environments as being almost exclusively more wealthy and well-off overly sensitive elitist urbanites detached from the overall majority's population culture and lifestyle in a relatively poor country from the stuff I have seen online. Though now that I think about there are a few prominent and well-known Orthodox monkswho are/were also vegetarian as part of their fasting (though mostly not because most of them the included fish in their diet as part of emulating experience and keeping the Orthodox Church tradition of fasting on a low caloric diet of early Christians) who were seen as an exception to that rule ascribed to it being a part of their traditional spiritual undertaking and thus granting them immunity from the same aforementioned judgments to the average traditionally-minded and venerating Serb.

 

31 minutes ago, impulse9 said:

It's still wrong, though.

Yep, those monks were conscious enough to know, but for themselves mostly, that but the official church line not so much.

 

43 minutes ago, impulse9 said:

In a bout a 1000 years, eating meat will have the exact same connotation as cannibalism has today.

Perhaps and probably maybe earlier in Serbia and among Serbs, if they still exist by then :D, and yes hopefully so.

[Danioover9000]

 

On 06/10/2021 at 0:10 AM, PurpleTree said:

that's true

but gingers and fishes have no soul

the jury is out if chickens have souls or not

   Oof that's tough.

[Roy]

Perfect example of relativity, nice post @Fleetinglife! There are hundreds of millions of Indian Hindus who see what most of the world does to cows and would have the same sorts of emotional reactions.

It's all just programming, beliefs, perspective.

[hamedsf]

he's saying this when he has the whole pork in his stomach! 

[Fleetinglife]

11 hours ago, Roy said:

Perfect example of relativity, nice post @Fleetinglife! There are hundreds of millions of Indian Hindus who see what most of the world does to cows and would have the same sorts of emotional reactions.

It's all just programming, beliefs, perspective.

Thanks, found this randomly on Twitter and it got me thinking so I thought I share my thoughts here on it 

[Fleetinglife]

5 hours ago, hamedsf said:

he's saying this when he has the whole pork in his stomach! 

What a hypocrite!  Piggies are considered even one of the most intelligent animals in the animal kingdom, I think I heard somewhere at the same possible level perhaps as five to six-year-old human kids if I am not grossly mistaken. Well so am I unfortunately 

[Fleetinglife]

11 hours ago, modmyth said:

I think I might have a more expansive perspective here having grown up with a Chinese parent and having regularly visited Hong Kong, and sometimes China where they do also tend to traditionally have a different attitude towards animal death, captivity, meat eating, and humanness. I was a very sensitive kid too, for what it was worth. I also prefer not to eat meat, but I also don't believe in wastage.

You see things from a young age, and it becomes normal. Here, we're very disconnected from the process of death and where our meat comes from on a very visceral, lived in level. I think this shapes a large part of our attitudes towards meat-eating and the kneejerk reaction that happens when we learn more about what "death is actually like". You see meat in packages, processed, or ground up, usually. You see steaks or chicken breasts which are relatively unprocessed, but you don't see an animal being butchered.

In a traditional open Chinese market, you see animals alive in tiny cages, you might even see small animals being butchered out in the open (like being cut up, not the actual killing part, though it's pretty obvious that it happens there, where else?), like chickens and especially most seafood like fish, crustaceans, shelled animals, etc. You see dead animals hanging from meat hooks. Traditionally, a great value is placed on the freshness of foods, and probably originally it was more hygienic this way, though growing up I had serious doubts about the hygiene of food from open air markets and it was one of the reasons why I didn't want to eat anything from there...

I watched my mom gut and process small animals too when I was very younger; I had no illusions that I was eating a thing that was formerly alive. She would often show me the various anatomical parts of the animals and explain how it corresponded to different aspects of the human body: guts, muscles, tendons, bone and marrow. I remember some moments where some of my peers had the realization that they were eating a dead thing, and it usually anguished, horrified, or at least disconcerted them on some level. I found this unrelatable. I think I was introduced to all of this before I had the chance to get disgusted anyway.

You sometimes see "pets" there being treated in a similar sort of commodified way, there is less sentimentality about it. That sort of sentimentality tends to come moreso in modern, urbanized environments when we're removed from the process of captivity and domestication. If you read about people in the past, even Victorian people, they also tended not to get so sentimental about animals. Even reading about some cases in the 50s-60s. I read about a couple who decided to euthanize their pet dog because they were going on vacation and they couldn't find an appropriate sitter or they couldn't be bothered; (I don't remember if they were American or European)this wasn't so socially unacceptable then, apparently. Times have changed since then too.

Seeing this stuff growing up and making the connections changes the way you react to the idea of all of this. I'm not saying it's right by the way; I'm just saying that it's how it is and how its tended to be. You can say that it's fundamentally a lack of sensitivity. It's at least part of it, but it's also at least as much about how early exposure shapes you. If you read about the experiences of people who grew up on farms, or perhaps grew up learning how to hunt (even if they only went with other people hunting or they watched others butcher a carcass), you don't have the same sort of "luxury" when it comes to death and what it looks like to get sentimental in a very "precious" way. It just doesn't happen. You've seen too much in your formative years that you can't unsee too, I think, and it changes your perspective forever even if you decide not to eat meat.

Thanks for taking the time to write out in-depth and honestly and openly share your insights, perspective, and experiences on this post about the seemingly uncomfortable and sort of controversial subject at hand! Much appreciated. Very interesting analysis on its undercurrent and formative background.

Edited October 7, 2021 by Fleetinglife