ITT: A bunch of non-vegans complaining that content posted to a vegan community makes them uncomfortable.
Also ITT: A bunch of people who haven’t been convinced to go vegan asserting how to convince people to go vegan. Not them, but other people of course.
For the second group, I always like to ask "Why should I use your argument to convince people when it didn’t convince you?"
Seriously, non vegans need to shut the feck up unless they’re willing to make the effort to stop hurting animals. Otherwise I’m not interested in their opinions.
I know I’m going to piss off every single group with this unpopular opinion, but I view veganism/vegetarianism and religion similarly.
Both of them come with benefits and downsides. The extent of these benefits and downsides differ from person to person. There’s no “right” answer, talking about your choice is perfectly fine and I don’t really care what you do either way, but I don’t like it when you try too hard to convert me.
People that want to convert you to their religion are usually concerned about YOU (saving your soul, etc.), so it’s reasonable that it’s YOUR choice to decline. The only concern is about your own well being.
People that want to convert you to veganism, on the other hand, are only concerned about the animals you’re exploiting - it has nothing to do with you personally. Your choice to decline means you’re condemning hundreds of animals to die every year for the rest of your life. This is a hard pill to swallow for animal sympathizers, so you must understand why arguments by vegans tend to be quite passionate.
But the two really aren’t similar, other than the fact that they both make you uncomfortable.
I’m completely on your side, but I disagree that declining veganism condemns hundreds of animals to die. If someone goes vegan, does that mean that those animals will then live?
Those animals wouldn’t be born. It’s supply and demand. The less demand there is for meat, the cheaper it gets, and the less incentive there will be to breed more of them. The goal is to reduce suffering as much as possible, and that can only happen if people stop paying for it.
I get the theoretical point, but I highly doubt that if one person goes vegan, it will cause the meat industry to produce 100 less cows. It will just create slightly more waste.
Don’t get me wrong, more people absolutely should go vegan, I just never liked the view of “you single person can change something”, because that’s just false. It should be marketed more as being part of a bigger group that can create change.
Do you also not vote, because one single vote doesn’t change the outcome?
And that’s besides the point anyways. Me not murdering humans also doesn’t stop them from getting murdered worldwide, but that doesn’t mean I can just walk around and kill people, the same way you have no justification to torture and murder non-human animals, just because they will keep getting killed by others.
Well, you did not get my point at all… Please read it again. Even with voting, saying “I changed the election with my vote” is bullshit. But voting and veganism are important, precisely because it is a group. But targeting individuals is just useless. Because your relative won’t change the world. Many relatives may, but the point is that one single person won’t change shit with a behavioral change.
This is rationalization. You are experiencing cognitive dissonance and trying to rationalize a narrative that relieves it.
What do you mean with that?
and I don’t really care what you do either way, but I don’t like it when you try too hard to convert me
Internet apathy politics in a nutshell.
If you aren’t and won’t be converted anyway, why should anyone be quieter to please you?
There’s no “right” answer,
That’s where you’re wrong kiddo. Murdering innocents who are just trying to live their lives for no reason other than your pleasure is actually wrong and makes you evil.
If your belief is that people shouldn’t try so hard to convince people of their beliefs, then why are you trying to spread that belief to others instead of just keeping it to yourself?
I’m saying that’s what I believe in, I didn’t say you have to agree.
Cool, I don’t agree.
when your understanding of philosophy is so poor that you can’t conceive of secular ethics
Do you hold any strong ethical beliefs at all? Would you also say they are religious? Would you also say that it is up to each individual to decide what is right for them and we should respect that and not push too hard?
What are your reasons for comparing veganism to religion? Aside from having a strong opinion I see no real similarities. To me it feels like non vegans want this comparison to be valid to be able to make it about personal choice when it really is about respecting others.
Also the “there is no right answer” argument is always in favor of the status quo which is factory farming animals. Is that really something you want to preserve?
I, on the other hand, went vegan so that I can be justified in not watching those videos
And now instead I get to watch this cute video of a cow that’s friends with a dog, without having to repress awkward questions about why animal cruelty is only socially condemned for certain animals and not others.
What does that dog eat?
The dog is obviously vegetarian
Unlike cats, which are obligate carnivores, dogs are only opportunistic carnivores and do just fine on vegetarian and even vegan dog foods.
Dogs can survive on only plants but its much better for them to eat a mixed diet.
I watched the videos when I went vegan because I was afraid of backsliding. I thought that if I didn’t see what was happening on factory farms, then I might be tempted to go back to eating meat and dairy again.
Not vegan, but I can definitely agree factory farms are vastly underregulated
Economic forces are always going to welfare wash and treat these poor sentient beings solely based on the bottom line instead of their actual wellbeing. Please don’t increase demand for their childrens and grandchildrens suffering.
Not vegan
Why?
50% personal convenience, 50% feeling like I should prioritize human suffering like homelessness and sweatshops first
It’s cheaper to eat vegan food than animals. Use the money you save on groceries to fix homelessness and sweatshops.
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You don’t need to replace like for like - not every meal needs a meat replacement. My point is that to get all the nutrients you need to live and thrive, vegan diets are cheaper.
How does eating meat and dairy help homelessness and sweatshops.
cuz meat is delicious
I’ve seen the video i have worked on farms it doesnt bother me terribly
The videos made me want stricter regulation, it didn’t make me want to go vegan or cut down on meat.
But there are other reasons to be a little more conservative with meat in my diet.
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The alternatives of Seitan and tofu are healthier, cheaper and available. Not the heavily processed kind, just the basic ones, are definitely healthier than meat. I try to replace meat regularly by those… especially Seitan can be quite good, it has a good ‘bite’ to it
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I am of two minds on the topic. I am sitting here realizing that lab-grown meat and the meat-like alternatives are all, by definition, processed foods. Like, lab-grown meat is just going to end up being beef-like-Velveeta at the end of the day.
If you look into the history of processed foods and why we moved towards them they have some pretty disastrous consequences for our modern life.
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I find it hard to understand the disconnect you must experience.
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Its human nature to dissociate. You have different moral meters for different situations. I still think its important that these animals live and die in a comfortable environment but banning meat is not a solution.
I think it’s important to be aware of the process of everything we consume, that way we can influence the impact our habits have.
I watched some pretty terrible films. Watching those did make me cut down on meat and milk, and it made me try to source my animal products from more ethical sources. I still haven’t been able to make the full commitment to veganism or vegetarianism, though, unfortunately.
That being said, I do wish these kinda of films were shown in schools. It would make most people more conscious of the cruelty and harm caused by these industries, and maybe there would be more push to move to more ethical ways of doing things in the meat and dairy industries.
ethical rape. ethical murder. ethical looking the other way.
I spent years chasing my tail trying to be an “ethical” consumer of intelligent creatures. Each time realizing, fuck, I’ve been lying to myself, complicit in my own brainwashing. There’s no such thing as the ethical consumption of intelligent creatures.
This is fair. You are right. I am not claiming that my way of eating is ethical as it stands at all. I am in the camp of wanting lab grown meat to be widely available and cheap. That is ethical if done right. I already eat meat substitutes, but my finances are not great and sometimes it’s hard to beat the cost effectiveness/nutritional value of regular ground beef or eggs and bacon. In those cases I at least try to buy the least tortured meat I can afford, if you get what I am saying. I do appreciate that there are empathetic people like you in the world.
This is the attitude that makes people turn away and ignore the entire issue. The fact of the matter is that people don’t care about animals and they think this viewpoint is absurd. You have to give them arguments that are self-serving, because they will never equate “ethical meat” with “ethical murder”.
What’s rule 2? Hell, what’s RULE 1?!
I’m not here, in the fucking VEGAN community forum, to hold the hand of fucking animal abusers. So sorry.
The animals we create are morally equivalent to our own children. They are owed the unconditional love and protection of their creators.
I feel like that sign is a bit alienating, which is unfortunate because it perpetuates the idea that vegans are holier than thou. As a person that (i think) understands the basic reasoning behind veganism (intentional non-participation in animal exploitation and cruelty?) i wish that more people would consider it. Hey, maybe that should be a sign
People have been saying that for decades. It doesn’t work. I never understood the concept of “protests shouldn’t make me feel uncomfortable or inconvenience me.” That kind of undercuts the purpose of a protest and trying to spread a message. If you make it so it’s easy to ignore, it doesn’t work. Without fail there’s always the “ugh, someone who tries to make me feel bad about torturing and killing animals is simply not going to convince me to do otherwise.” It’s such a shitty excuse.
Are you aware of the backfire effect? https://effectiviology.com/backfire-effect-facts-dont-change-minds/
I’m generally not confrontational and honestly usually tell people to try their best, but I get tired of people coming to a vegan community and being assholes.
You are failing then. Because most people are barely getting by and having holier than thou people trying to belittle them just means they are going to view the movement as a bunch of self righteous tools.
Yeah, I can see how being an unrepentant dildo is really winning people over to the cause!
The excuses are always weak because no is trying to convince you or even themselves. They’re politely telling you to fuck off because your type is known for being confrontational and they don’t want to be dragged into an argument.
You’re trying to tell people to cut off the majority of their food supply. That’s an idea that is frankly absurd for most people and it’s a little annoying that egoactivist vegans haven’t taken the hint.
so just as a thought experiment, if you saw what was essentially a modern day holocaust, how would you go about convincing people that willfully(or through lack of knowledge) ignore it? Would you just say "oh I’d better not cause a scene, that would be really egotistical of me "? also cut change != cut off, there are vegan options for a huge range of palates, we are just so used to the current meat diet that anything else feels alien, despite other societies doing fine with these diets.
prey animals != humans; prey animals < predator animals
If you have a problem with that, idk lecture a lion or something.
We put more animals through factory farms per year than any other animal kills, and it’s not even close. https://animalclock.org/
humans have the ability to reason and empathize, and do not need to kill to survive, all things a lion or any other predator animal cannot do. Humans generally agree might makes right is not acceptable for a society, except when it comes to our food apparently.
It sucks that lions have to kill other animals. If I had the ability to convince them of that and provide them with an alternative besides death I would. You are not a lion though so I can try to convince you, and lions do a lot of other things you would not choose to emulate.
It’s also a false equivalency. What lions do is nothing compared to the enslavement and torture that happens at an unfathomable scale in animal ag. The brutality of nature is overstated in most human narratives.
TBH, I’d rather live in a meat farm and then get a bolt shoved through my skull than get fucking eaten alive even if one lasts vastly longer than the other. And living in a capitalist society, I’m already halfway there.
Which is what happens to wild prey animals if they aren’t dying from some horrible parasite or didn’t get impaled by a rutting bull.
The reason I mentioned wild vs livestock life is because I think people are fooling themselves when they believe the average animal who lives in the wild has a worse life than the average animal in the ag industry. You are choosing to focus on the moments before death which is just a fraction of what an animal experiences, and is assisted by natural endorphins. A life of persistent confinement, abuse, and building trauma is worse than most pain imaginable, I’d rather be flayed alive when my time comes than have to live as a typical industry pig does for even a few months.
And lets not act like livestock are even afforded a quick death, often being shipped to a remote site and corralled into a place full of the smells, sounds, and sights of death. Working in slaughterhouses often causes humans trauma and they aren’t even the ones on the chopping block. And that’s if you’re lucky, most pigs are collectively slaughtered in gas chambers.
Enough of what was supposed to be an aside though. The point is that you can make a choice to not participate in a system of enslavement, torture, and killing. It has nothing to do with what lions do, and you wouldn’t use lions to justify other awful behavior.
Even hunting is wrong. Even though it doesn’t bring all of the terrible living conditions from animal ag, it’s still ending lives that you don’t have to. That’s really the point, we have a choice, so we have a moral obligation. Taking a life when it isn’t necessary for survival is wrong in most cases.
no is trying to convince you or even themselves
You came to a vegan community and insulted them. Are you fucking dense? You’re being confrontational.
I gave you an explanation as to why the excuses are weak. As well as letting you know it’s not a messaging problem, we’re just not going to do what you say no matter what you want.
That’s hardly an insult, unless reading my comment forced you to a sudden realization that you aren’t the moral center of the universe. Then sorry I guess. If you don’t want to hear from meat eaters maybe don’t fucking lecture us?
Lecture you? In a vegan community? Are you dense? What do you expect to hear here? And I told you why your supposed claim was full of shit. And you came up with a bunch of other well-worn bullshit as to why it was ok for it to be shit.
Act like an ass about veganism in a vegan community and then your shocked when someone gets insulted. Your either a troll or lack any social skills whatsoever because your inability to see why that’s a shitty move is telling.
There’s no need to continue this. You’re either a troll or an idiot. I ignore those folks.
The main post is lecturing meat eaters, in a very condescending way. Just in case your b12 deficiency made you forget that. The real tragedy is there’s no satisfactory result when I google “strongest word in the english language for stupid.” But judging my intelligence when you’re at the bottom of the totem pole is kind of funny.
That’s an insult, see the difference?
This is something that I often think about in connection with veganism.
I can sit down and watch a video about how vegetables are produced. It might be boring, but I could watch it.
Most carnists, on the other hand, can’t sit and watch how hamburger, sausage, cheese, etc. is produced. For them to enjoy that food, they have to ignore all the suffering behind it.
I don’t think many people are bothered by cheese making videos, the basic gist is dumping enzymes into milk to separate the water from the fat, then the fatty components are sometimes aged to develop flavor. The enzymes are produced by bacteria these days, so it’s not like it involves a gory butchering step.
I’m talking about forcibly impregnating (i.e. raping) the cow, which is required to keep her pregnant so that she keeps producing milk. And then taking her calf away from her when they’re born.
Highlighting contradictions in people’s beliefs is good, actually. If they choose to be willfully ignorant of cruelty while reaping the benefits, then they’re not going to face that contradiction from you asking nicely while carefully avoiding any implication that they might be doing something wrong. Rather, it’s the opposite - you want to make it as difficult as possible for them to ignore what they’re doing. But of course, since they are trying to remain ignorant, it can be expected that they will react with hostility when you call attention to it, no matter how nice and polite you are about it. The only way to avoid provoking such a response is by allowing them to keep the cruelty out of sight and out of mind, in which case they will have little motivation to go vegan and you’ve rendered yourself useless.
People who have neither been convinced nor convinced others of veganism love to offer their perspective on how we can be more convincing which invariably seems to consist of defanging our criticism and going out of our way to avoid making people to confront the cruel realities caused by their actions.
Isn’t “I’m for the intentional non-participation in animal exploitation and cruelty” just a consequence of “I saw the videos you refuse to watch”, hence similarly alienating and holier than thou?
Maybe even more so. “I can’t continue because I saw a video” could be an unreflected emotional statement, whereas yours sounds like a moral argument.
Or maybe getting people uncomfortable and forced to think about it, and actively face the dissonance is effective. Maybe they get mad and confrontational, but then you have to ask why.
Why are you doing something whose moral implications are making you uncomfortable?
Same thing goes for shit like buying stuff made by people in horrible working conditions. Maybe we shouldn’t feel as if we are entitled to being comfortable all the time, especially when we do so at the expense of others. What if it was you in the place of the worker or animal? Are you okay with continuing on like this?
And it makes people uncomfortable because it makes them see themselves as a bad person. But hey, maybe you should feel uncomfortable if you are doing something you yourself consider bad.
I mean vegans are welcome to be vegan. If you want you can mention these things if you think they might matter to someone but in the end what is important to a vegan isn’t going to be important to other people and that’s fine. In the end suffering is life and we all are made to suffer so that someone else can exploit us. The only difference with meat is that it’s nutritious and something our body makes good use of. Humans on the other hand are exploited so that the privileged can continue to be privileged.
A lot of cruelty under capitalism is publicly permitted because people don’t see how the metaphorical sausage is made.
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You’re so brave and edgy and contrarian.
Don’t waste time on pizza slicers. They’re all edge and have no point.
Dunking them for a line at a time is a small price to pay to watch the nazis thrash and screech and fling their own shit.
To be fair, I feel like there’s a lot of videos that would traumatize you if you watched them, not just ones related to meat. Sure there’s traumatizing videos you should watch, but actively seeking that stuff out seems like no way to live.
Ok, but it’s about something people actively and blindly participate and fund. Not just folks watching traumatizing videos for fun.
Everyone is like “Yeah I know it’s bad.” But they still actively refuse to acknowledge just how bad it really is.
I feel like many have detached themselves way too much to what the realities of life are. We should be watching people and animals die because we are now so sheltered from things that we were born into as a species, that every animal other than us experience we have become sensitized to it. Trauma and violence are part of being a living being and I think it has distorted our perspective and appreciation for living. You won’t see many people who deal with daily violence commit suicide because they’re in survival mode which should be the norm for anything that is living. It changes your baseline for thise experiences. Lows might be very low but tolerable and highs will be extreme because something as mundane as a day without having to chase down a deer and almost get killed by a lion is going to be the most exhilarating day of your life. Veganism is the result of our easy low risk existence and it makes us less adventurous and a lot less likely to make it into space. Space vegans will never be a thing.
If I was actively funding the abhorrent things in those videos, you’d be well within your right to tell me to stop, or at the very least insist I watch them.
I didn’t even watch the videos. I just saw a video of someone’s pet cow who was curled up in a little girl’s lap getting a scratch after having been snuck into the porch by the kid, and that was enough. One day the light just goes on.
I’ve seen those videos, a lot of them. I still choose to eat meat. I totally disagree with the implication that anyone who eats meat is being willfully ignorant of evidence that would convert them.
I think it’s worse to admit that you’re fine with inflicting that kind of pain on animals and still enjoy the end result. There’s a reason they tell parents to be wary of kids who enjoy torture. You’re just a step below that.
Holy shit, you are so delusional and full of yourself. You sound like prepubescent teenagers on Xbox Live that call people “pathetic” every chance they get. 💀💀 Get over yourself.
When in a series there is a serial killer it’s always the person who enjoyed to torture animals as kid. Take a guess why.
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If you’re trying to make a comparison, it makes no sense at all.
Media likes to play with stereotypes and deliver a story which seems to make sense. It’s not a field study on human psychology.
So then why do you eat meat? Are you just a selfish narcissist who thinks their pleasure is more important than anything else? Or what is it?
Because scientific evidence hates you.
Scientific evidence is unbiased, you hate them.
Are you just a selfish narcissist who thinks their pleasure is more important than anything else?
I’ve been a vegan for almost a decade, and I’ve finally started to see how self-entitled carnists are. How I used to be. I thought that I was entitled to the bodies of other living, sentient beings.
Holier than thou.
Maybe you should consider the possibility that some people in some aspects of life really are holier than thou and you could learn from them. Imagine someone pointing out to a serial killer how not killing is more moral and the killer answers with “Holier than thou.”. Would this be a good comeback?
This is not an equivalent situation, being vegan or vegetarian does not make you legitimately “holier than thou”. It is not a virtuous enough decision to be “holier” than the average person, and eating meat is not a bad enough action to be comparable to being a serial killer.
Just because it is not comparable to a serial killer does not mean that it’s not bad enough to warrant a holier label. How do you justify killing and torturing an animal just for taste pleasure?
I dont kill or torture animals, I support an industry that does by buying the products they create. That is not bad enough of an action for you to be holier.
Of course I’m not a ‘selfish narcissicist who thinks their pleasure is more important than anything else’, that’s total hyperbole (and the fact you exaggerated the fuck out of something doesn’t make anyone think you’re more intelligent or your point holds more weight).
I will answer you, but my reasoning really doesn’t matter. For me its a combination of the lack of impact I as an individual consumer can have on that industry, and the negative affects veganism can take on your nutrition.
Also, there is ZERO scientific evidence that humans should not eat meat. Unless you’re trying to say those videos are “scientific evidence” that I should be vegan, in which case I think you have psychosis.
If every one went vegan like vegans do, then there absolutely wouldn’t be a lack of impact, what a bizzare thing to suggest?
If everyone acts like you and goes “ah well, I can’t change anything”, that flawed “logic” can be used to commit any number of atrocities.
I do like that “scientific evidence” argument though. Like, “sorry judge there’s no scientific paper decrying killing people with a car so I did it”. You don’t need a scientist to tell you to do an objectively good thing - in this case stopping the unnecessary culling of sentient life for your tastebuds.
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I understand that fully, trust me, but I only control my own actions. I do not care enough about the issues surrounding meat production to take that action knowing I will not enact any change. If I cared enough about those issues, I wouldn’t care if anyone else followed. (As you have).
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That logic only applies on an individual basis, and has to be weighed against how much you care about something.
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I feel you have my point confused, you think I said: “There is ZERO scientific evidence that humans abstaining from eating meat would have a positive impact on our world.”
I said: “There is ZERO scientific evidence humans should not eat meat.”
What do you mean you’ll have no impact?? You realised for every piece of meat you don’t eat, that’s less demand for an animal to be killed right? Not to mention the significant reduction in carbon emissions. That’s not including the change you impart on others. I was convinced to go vegan, and I’ve convinced others as well.
Your first point is just straight out wrong. Do you vote? Or is the fact your vote doesn’t single handedly decide the election enough to dissuade? Your logic could be used by a murderer to go “well, there’s murder in the world that I can’t stop, so I might as well keep murdering!”. Very very broken logic.
I agree with you the only argument against veganism is “I don’t care”. But then you must accept you are a person who knowingly commits bas deeds, deeds you could easily stop today, but choose not to out of greed.
And your third point is just weird? If you accept that scientific discourse agreed abstaining from meat has a worldly positive impact, isn’t that enough? Or is the scientifically supported increase in life expectancy associated with veganism not enough?
I choose not to because I do not care enough to make that decision when it will have no impact. Even if my vote has no impact, I care much more about who gets elected.
I care much more about whether humans should dietarily eat meat than whether abstaining from eating it has monetary or carbon benefits.
so if I’m a ceo trying to not waste money, and my margin for acceptable wasted product is 90% sold 10% unsold, even one person worth of lost sales of meat has a definite possibility of making me buy less next shipment. Even if they’re buying it by the giant crate, if I’m buying meat crates according to a formula, your 1 purchase could be the one that sways me for or against buying another. Do that over the course of 10 years and this turns from a possibility to essentially guaranteed.
I dont care enough to make that small of an impact.
While I get this, maybe it’s better to look at it as the individual animals you’re saving. Red cross members know there are hundreds of millions of lives they can’t save, and the world should change to where these people don’t need the help, but they’re still saving the life of someone here and now. A cow is maybe “less” than a human life, but you’re saving them a lifetime of suffering.
Even just reducing meat to where it’s not a huge annoyance can still make a big difference.
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I can totally see the individual impact argument. Still personally I think if everyone thinks this way, nothing’s gonna change. On the other hand if a sufficient amount of people tries it’s gonna change everything. We just need to be enough individuals to be a movement.
Then again “ZERO scientific evidence”: yeah just fuck yourself. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/20/vegan-diet-cuts-environmental-damage-climate-heating-emissions-study There are several studies showing that we could easily tackle the global hunger crisis, which will only worsen in the next years by going vegan. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets And that’s just one example of “scientific evidence that humans should not eat meat.”
Neither of those links show any evidence as to why humans should not eat meat. They show evidence as to why humans eating meat could assist in dealing with the effects of climate change, but that is not the same claim.
I’m pretty sure the vast majority of adult meat eaters have seen multiple videos and still continue to eat meat. Very few have actionable ability to directly stop the suffering so they then stop caring. One person cutting down on red meat will never be enough until there’s enough lab grown meat and/or delicious FakeMeat alternatives to satiate western society at large. We still a long ways away from that.
Until then, vote for people who want to cut down on brutal industrial practices.
It is very actionable to vote with their wallet and mouth and not eat meat. The “can’t save them all, so why bother”-argument is really sad. I don’t think most people would apply that logic, if they saw a child in distress, because so many children die every day of preventable causes. Every sentient being matter.
The difference being you’re not going to stop large agricultural practices with it.
You’re going to stop them by voting, going into office yourself, or scientific advancement.
The rest is just saving your own conscience. What other people do with their bodies is none of your business.
Does your impact have to be massive for you to act? me not throwing trash out the window isn’t going to stop millions of others from doing it, but my impact is still there (ex:go vegan for a year, and your local grocery/fast food place/etc sees a reduction in meat sales and orders 0.001% less for their next shipment)
Right. It’s also the right and good thing to do and you should be commended for it. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
People who eat meat know it can be healthy and terrible for your diet. The same way any other foodstuff is. They also know you’re killing animals, often in terrible conditions. If you go through life caring about everything that has ethical dilemmas though, you wouldn’t be using microprocessors, any clothing that wasn’t made and grown by yourself, etc. You DEFINITELY wouldn’t be on the internet lol. The Good Place had a wonderful look on going through that moral extreme.
Even going the living healthier route, the bigger issue is ultra/processed foods.
Veganism equating boycotting the meat industry is great for your mental, but does a basically non-zero hit to their margins in actuality. People advocating, voting, and being vocal are what makes the small then large changes to shift the food industry paradigm to non-sentient meat options. The people smart enough to make real efforts into alternatives are doing so. Yeah, you want to participate too and feel like you’re doing something, and you are, but let’s not pretend it’s not for your own mental benefit. Both through how you feel by advocating for animals that can’t help themselves, and by not participating directly in something you don’t like as well.
so slightly irrelevant since I assume you’re speaking generally but, have used the same clothes/computer/phone, for ~10 years, not to say I’m living with the bare necessities but I do try to limit those as well.
I do agree it’s impossible to be 100% moral in modern society and do harm to no one, but paying $200 every 10 years to a company that far down the line has poor labor practices (without my money these people have no job so even this is debatable), when I essentially can not participate in society without doing these smaller harms, seems to me leagues different.
With meat, you are as closely as possible saying with your wallet “please raise and kill more of this animal as your company does now” while knowing many suppliers either nearly torture the animals they raise, or raise/kill them in really inhumane ways. If you’re still eating meat, you are the direct cause of several animals living that terrible life. I can also exist in society with an inconvenience of not eating meat, whereas I can’t without shoes, a phone, a computer for work, etc
If people aren’t buying factory farmed animal products, the agricultural industry wouldn’t still be using awful practices. The supply and demand chain is complicated and the agricultural industry can choose different levers than lowering production, but those different levers would result in lower profit either for example by higher advertisement spending or lowering prices. Over time with a sustained vegan effect, the market would correct itself, since companies hate losing money and will pursue more profitable alternatives, and fewer animals would be slaughtered.
Your own wallet is a very large vote. But voting in elections or advocating for change in other ways are of course also very important. They shouldn’t exclude each other.
People are allowed to do with their body as it pleases, as long as they don’t hurt anyone. There are quite a few scenarios, where I don’t think you would agree with your own statement.
Animals are the most vulnerable among us. They literally cannot fight for themselves because humans are infinitely more powerful than them. So vegans try to do their best to stand up for animals, including posting content that makes others uncomfortable and hopefully become introspective about their own behavior.
https://kbin.social/m/vegan@lemmy.ml/t/418783/When-somebody-asks-why-you-re-a-vegan#entry-comment-2094354
One person cutting down on red meat will never be enough
You could use that argument to invalidate voting or any boycott. “Why should I vote? My one vote won’t change anything.” The truth is, you aren’t one person. There are many vegans.
But even one person can do quite a bit. I’ve influenced my friends to eat less meat. When we go out to eat, if they want to include me, we’ll go to s vegan-friendly restaurant.
You could use that argument to invalidate voting or any boycott
The difference being that there will never be enough vegans to change large-AG practices until the reasons I’ve stated above. There is a non-zero hit to their bottom line, sure, but Veganism will never be mainstream until healthy and tasty alternatives to meat is viable, tasty, and cheap.
The perpetual shift to healthier lifestyles through lab grown and alternative meats are an inevitability for any prospering/utopian civilization. The technology and culture to get there requires A LOT though.
The world and it’s inhabitants can get fucked because technology will save us? I could think robots are inevitably going to replace slaves but that does not justify me keeping a slave in the present.
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being omnivorous doesn’t mean we have to eat meat, it means you get to choose, which is like, the entire point?
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So much of that is misplaced anthropomorphism though. Throughout history hundreds of millions of people have wrung the neck of a chicken or dropped a lobster into boiling water. Almost none of them have cried.
TV melodrama is a weird way to decide which actions have moral weight. We’re particularly sensitive to the deaths of mammals because we see human qualities in their suffering.
So much of that is misplaced anthropomorphism though.
And i actually have a running hypothesis in my head that the whole term “anthropomorphism” is a false concept based on human’s endless capacity for hubris and arrogance, like “manifest destiny”. In my view ‘anthropomorphism’ as a term defining human traits in animals requires one to first have faith that traits such as “thinking” and “feeling” are limited to humans.
If you believe in evolution how realistic would it even be that we are alone in being able to reason? We’re full of ourselves the moment we forget we’re simply monkeys with the most powerful combination to come out of evolution so far: written language so that we might retain the lessons of generations past, and hands to build tools.
Who said anything about us being alone in reasoning? Sheep not driving cars and chickens not keeping diaries have better factual basis than the west being destined for white men, so I don’t see the analogy except that they both involve exploitation.
I dunno I’m exposed to way more people who do cutsie voices for their “fur babies” than people willing to argue that our murderous, destructive species is exclusively superior. But then I guess that’s because I spend more time with IRL friends than on vegan forums, which I imagine attract edgelords looking to troll.
Do you think you would die or be unhealthy if you stopped eating meat and other animal products? If that’s what you think then say that so someone has the opportunity to rebut you.
Because it’s unclear what you’re trying to imply by saying “we’re omnivorous”.
I am curious, can you please offer your rebuttal on how a vegan diet can be as healthy as a balanced low processed food omnivore diet.
Diets with vegan restrictions consistently perform better than nonvegan diets in studies. Not all of those studies account for UPF consumption among other things, in which case vegans might just perform better because they are a more health conscious demo, but there are those that do account for that as well as interventional studies where participants do not choose what they eat.
Consumption of animal products is associated with some of the most frequent causes of death such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. One explanation of this are SFAs which have been heavily researched on their own, and are known to cause health issues even from plant sources like coconut and palm oil, but are found in most animal products whereas in most plant foods they are found only in small quantities. In addition you have animal proteins which have been shown to trigger the production of certain health negative hormones, likely do to their amino acid composition or just their quantity of protein in general, tbh I have not looked into the nuances of a excessive protein omni diet vs one with no animal products. You also just have the fact that many animal products aren’t as (micro)nutritionally dense compared to many whole plant foods, even high calorie ones like pulses.
I’d be curious though as to know why omnis, especially scientifically minded ones, don’t default to eating in line with vegan ethics. Since the vegan argument is an ethical one it should be on those who think we need to eat animal products to show why that is the case, animal products should have to be extremely necessary for our own survival to justify the harm we do to animals.
Dunno about them but I need a balance of meat and vegetables in my personal diet to be healthy.
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It’s the sugar and (to a slightly lesser extent) carbs combined with a lifestyle that presses us into eating quick processed low quality food while not being conducive to exercise that makes Americans fat.
We don’t need to cook the meat before eating.
But doing so lets us get more from the meat than if we don’t.
Humans (or rather what we were before homo sapiens) ate raw meat for a long time before using fire for cooking was invented.
But we need to cook meat
Sashimi exists.
And that’s probably not the only example.
Steak tartar is another easy one. There are a lot more, including the fact that rare steak is basically uncooked inside, just warmed up.
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Is it an oreo?
I saw Dominion exactly once, and I can’t put anything in front of me that contains animal murder. Everyone else is cowards.
Everyone else is cowards.
Or worse: they just don’t care. There are people like that. Zero empathy.
I don’t want to make anyone watch these videos, but it does feel like lind of a litmus test for friendship. Like I don’t need you to be vegan to be friends, but if you watch that and say you don’t care, I feel like I can’t trust you with anything.
If this sign were true I’d be a vegan 10 times over.
I’ve watched all vegan propaganda I’ve ever had sent to me:
Dominion. Earthling. Land of hope and Glory. The greatest speech ever (Gary Yourofsky) Cowspiracy Seaspiracy Don’t watch
Send me more I’ll view it.
This type of propaganda, in my experience, works on impulsive highly emotional people who willingly anthropomorphise animals.
A major diet change like becoming vegan shouldn’t happen because you saw one video. That’s a health disaster waiting to happen.
A vegan view requires no amount of anthropomorphizing. It’s the traits that humans share with non human animals that makes what we do to them unjust. The traits that make us different are not required, and neither do they justify our treatment of animals.
Emotionally resonating with animals also does not require anthropomorphization. Empathy and sympathy between humans and non human animals is default in most people because of our shared experiences. A lack of is a sign of, at the very least, selective sociopathy, like the kind soldiers might be trained to have in regards to enemy combatants.
Veganism also is not a diet, I think that’s important to say. And veganism doesn’t create health disasters out of thin air. There’s a plethora of nutritional studies backing up how eating with vegan restrictions can be more than adequate.
All true, but shock value anti-carnism of course plays on anthropomorphism, which is heavily baked into our culture with kids TV overwhelmingly featuring anthropomorphised animal characters and pet ownership being widespread.
I mean it’s fine to point out that apparent hypocrisy, as the billboard campaign (where do you draw the line) in my country recently did. But it’s not particularly persuasive from a logical perspective, just a useful cultural lever.
I disagree.
An example; Vegans won’t eat honey. There are various reasons why not, but one I have heard is that they disagree with the ‘exploitation’ of the bees.
Exploitation is, as far as we know, a human concept that bees have no comprehension of. How can you argue an insect is being exploited without anthropomorphising it?
Are you honestly arguing the bee is aware of its exploitation? Or are you extending your own feelings to that bee as if you were in the bee’s position?
Exploitation doesn’t require the comprehension of the exploited. In fact, it’s usually the case the exploited is unaware of it. If I tricked my brother into doing my chores for me, that’s exploitation. If I take an animal’s food away (thus requiring it to gather more than usual), that’s exploitation.
It’s an insect, jack. Do I exploit my bicycle when I ride it? Do you exploit your gut biome when you digest something? What about the bacteria in water treatment plants? Yeast? How small does an animal have to be to not count as exploitation, if bees can be exploited despite having a central nervous system so small it can’t meaningfully feel emotions?
IDK, I don’t have a boat in this race, but refusing to eat honey leaves the realm of personal ethics/activism and enters the realm of dogma IMO.
Yes, you exploit your bicycle when you ride it. The same way you exploit your knowledge of your city to navigate it. That is what the word means. There is no negative connotation because you are not exploiting an unconsenting sentient creature.
Just like how you assume for the protection of children that children are not capable of consenting to exploitation, vegans make the same assumption about animals. And since they cannot consent, we do not exploit them.
Bacteria and yeast aren’t animals. They aren’t sentient, they have no perception of the world around them, they don’t have feelings. That’s the difference. Nearly every animal (yes, even insects) is sentient. We may not understand exactly what it feels like to be a bee (what kinds of emotions they can experience), but it’s better to err on the side of not hurting an animal than assume they are mindless little robots.
Given, this is usually not the primary focus of vegan activism. Taking some food from some bees versus raising cows in the pure hellscape that is factory farming… There’s a very obvious greater evil happening. Let’s not let the minutia of veganism derail from the greater picture.
I suppose I just disagree with the premise… Insects ARE mindless little robots. They can react to stimuli, and have some basic behavior, but to say they experience emotions is a huge stretch. Bees have less than a million neurons, 10,000x less than a human.
If we were to follow that logic, we should keep brain-dead people “alive” on the basis that the peripheral nervous system has neurons and can independently react to basic stimuli. Thankfully doctors aren’t quite so radical.
I mean, this has been researched. It’s not just my opinion, researchers agree that bees are sentient and have feelings.
Describing vegans as making major dietary changes because they “saw one video” is a pretty dishonest interpretation. Rigorously sticking to a vegan diet can be fairly difficult, and requires you to be very aware of exactly what you’re eating – including innocuous seeming things like food dyes and white sugar, which can often be made of animal products. To me, that doesn’t read as impulsive, but instead disciplined.
Furthermore, while the decision to switch to going vegan could theoretically sometimes be done on impulse, one still has to make the decision every single day. It’s not just a decision you make and it’s done, it’s one you must always choose to continue to make. A vegan has to decide to continue to be vegan every day, likely while under scrutiny of themself and others.
I’ll grant you I said video, singular. I would have been more correct saying videos because that’s what the person holding the sign in the picture thinks is the case.
They are implying pretty clearly they are vegan because they watched vegan propaganda videos.
Again, I’m NOT making the argument that if you watch a vegan propaganda video or videos you’ll become vegan, you’re disagreeing with the person in the picture.
What had the biggest impact on me was videos of pigs and cows being cute and dog like. Nothing else changed my view like a cow hopping around like a happy idiot.
(I’m not vegan but I eat pescatarian now and feel myself on the way to a bit more)
I’ve seen only a few you listed like cowspiracy and seaspiracy and a majority of those two films were just facts and diagrams and interviews. So I call bullshit. I know this is a bad faith attempt I mean seriously, “impulsive highly emotional person”? Maybe people who care for the environment see the facts and diagrams and convert because it isn’t possible to feed this many people sustainably. It’s not a health disaster to be vegan either, that’s ridiculous of you to say. This won’t shock you because you came here to troll but vegans can go through pregnancy just fine, breast feed just fine too, something that shouldn’t be possible if it was such a health disaster. A lot of our food is already fortified with vitamins so you don’t need meat for b12 or iron, just eat a bowl of cereal with soy milk. I’m in the process of going vegan so not 100% but I’m so tired of seeing trolls come to vegan communities to talk about how much they don’t care about animals or the planet. And how manly and fulfilled it makes them feel to eat bacon. We get it, you’re boring and have nothing new to say.
I have no doubt you wanting to become vegan comes from a genuine place and you’re trying to do the right thing.
I respect your choice and I hope it works for you.
If at some point in the future though you decide you no longer wish to be vegan I’d respect that choice as well and I don’t think it would make you a bad person.
as a little kid i saw the slaughterhouse videos PETA would put into flash games. still eat meat to this day
Locking this thread as it lost any usefulness and it’s getting popular among edgelord kids
