So a person who agrees with you 100% 353 days a year and only agrees with you 99.999999% on 12 days a year should be completely cast out? Should they just go back to eating meat or something because they’re ‘no true vegan’? This really feels like a ‘let perfect be the enemy of good’ sort of situation.
This isn’t quite as black and white as you make it out to be. Severity is an issue here. If you apply the same concept to human life, a similar argument would quickly fall apart. (Oh it was just one human life, so it’s OK, you don’t kill anyone 99.9999% of the time.)
I personally think that whom you kill and for what reason matters greatly. If you accidentally step on a bug, that’s not the same as intentionally killing a rodent, which is not the same as intentionally torturing monkey. Just how killing in humans, intent and state of mind matters, so it does with animals.
I’m not saying that your conclusion is wrong, by the way, just that the reasoning by which you’ve arrived at it is suspect.
It isn’t a matter of “casting people out”. Most vegans don’t even have a vegan community to be cast out of. It’s not a helpful lens to be viewing this from.
Veganism isn’t a club. It’s a moral philosophy and the ethical consequences of that philosophy. Whether or not you are a vegan doesn’t depend on what other people think of your conduct, it depends on whether you accept and believe the axioms of veganism.
If someone thinks that all women should be allowed to own property… except for his wife, he is not 99.99999% a feminist. He’s not a feminist at all, he’s just someone with preferences that coincidentally align with the philosophy most of the time. But clearly he does not believe and accept the principles of that philosophy, so he is in no way a feminist.
So a person who agrees with you 100% 353 days a year and only agrees with you 99.999999% on 12 days a year should be completely cast out? Should they just go back to eating meat or something because they’re ‘no true vegan’? This really feels like a ‘let perfect be the enemy of good’ sort of situation.
This isn’t quite as black and white as you make it out to be. Severity is an issue here. If you apply the same concept to human life, a similar argument would quickly fall apart. (Oh it was just one human life, so it’s OK, you don’t kill anyone 99.9999% of the time.)
I personally think that whom you kill and for what reason matters greatly. If you accidentally step on a bug, that’s not the same as intentionally killing a rodent, which is not the same as intentionally torturing monkey. Just how killing in humans, intent and state of mind matters, so it does with animals.
I’m not saying that your conclusion is wrong, by the way, just that the reasoning by which you’ve arrived at it is suspect.
It isn’t a matter of “casting people out”. Most vegans don’t even have a vegan community to be cast out of. It’s not a helpful lens to be viewing this from.
Veganism isn’t a club. It’s a moral philosophy and the ethical consequences of that philosophy. Whether or not you are a vegan doesn’t depend on what other people think of your conduct, it depends on whether you accept and believe the axioms of veganism.
If someone thinks that all women should be allowed to own property… except for his wife, he is not 99.99999% a feminist. He’s not a feminist at all, he’s just someone with preferences that coincidentally align with the philosophy most of the time. But clearly he does not believe and accept the principles of that philosophy, so he is in no way a feminist.
I don’t think that’s the case here. IMO it’s more about wanting to use the term “vegan” while not abiding by the rules this includes.