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Not trying to start a fight, just curious. If you (vegans) already know we (meat eaters) don’t care, why would you keep pursuing that line of argument?
At least for my part:
For the same reason I try to fight against injustices for people?
Why do I, as a male, condemn sexist behavior and fight against it? Why do I, as a teacher, stand in for the rights of my students when they get wronged? Why do I, as a human, hate to see other people fighting?
It’s a mixture between empathy and a feeling of justice.
I just dislike unjust behavior - and for me, animal cruelty is unjust.
I think you meant you condemn sexist behavior…
Big Oof.
Thanks for the note, I was kinda hastily writing this and not thinking it through.
Sounds like you should be working on laws to restrict meat eating. That’s typically how we handle injustices on a society wide scale.
You can’t work on laws to restrict meat eating without getting the public onboard first. Our democracy is flawed, sure, but we don’t live in an autocracy. Vegan activists do work day in and day out on lobbying for legislation. California just the other day banned octopus farming.
But that worked because the public was broadly onboard with it because of the recent public understanding of how intelligent octopodes are. If California somehow passed a restriction on meats like pork, beef, chicken, etc., then the entire state would immediately riot and kick the legislature out, completely undoing the restriction.
Good point.
May I ask this… Would you decide to gradually change your lifestyle to a less cruel one when the vegan arguments seem to be correct or would you rather wait for a law against eating meat?
Me personally? I don’t care about cruelty, so what would get me to change is a law that says I must. Or legal/economic incentives.
I do care about the environment, so I don’t eat beef. But that’s not common. Most people who don’t care about animal cruelty also don’t care about the environment.
That sounds like you have that “if it doesn’t affect me, why would I care” mind, which would be crazy. But I might have got that wrong what you just said.
To not care about cruelty is not “normal”. To not have empathy for animals is far from normal. If I go into the city and show people videos of animal abuse, they’d be shocked. They have empathy.
So I wonder, why do you say that you don’t care about cruelty? Is that just in regard to animals? Or do you also not care about other people suffering?
And for the second part: I disagree. People tend to care about the environment even though they consume animal products. It’s just that they don’t care enough so that they’ll change their way of living. They prefer not to go out of their comfort zone. They want to consume. And they put personal wealth over the wellbeing of nature and other individuals if you ask me
A lot of vegans are environmentalists too, and so it caught my eye that you specificied beef. If you’re interested in an easy way to dramatically drop your environmental impact relative to the effort, trying out plant milks can be a great way to go about it. The dairy and beef industries are heavily intertwined, and from an environmental standpoint, dairy milk stands head and shoulders above plant ones in terms of emissions, land usage, and water usage. I would say that plant milks offer a better experience than dairy milk even completely disregarding the ethics and the environment, so it could be worth your while.
Well, yes. That sounds reasonable at first.
But also, think of the broader public reaction, if governments started banning meat / animal products / whatever industries that exploit animals.
I do not think most people would be fine with a government mandated ban on those goods/practices.
Consider that we all used to be in your position.
What took you from not caring to caring?
Information, the same information those groups put on their signs when they protest
Like what? I’m wondering if there’s something that would make me care.
Not the person you were talking to, but what took me from vegetarian to vegan was the documentary Dominion. I couldn’t reconcile what was happening on the screen to the benefit I got from it. I felt appalled at myself.
I’m usually abysmal at sticking to personal change; this is probably one of the only ones that ever stuck with me.
I’m not vegan and won’t ever be but can see that it does work just not to the extent a lot of them would like the world to. Like I said I’m not vegan however with the innovation of the meatless foods like the beyond burgers and such I’d be willing to try it IF I don’t have to pay and if I like it then that’s 1 more thing I’ll do towards a better eco system even if microscopic. Then you have kids/teens who will see this and begin to lean towards being vegan as they wouldn’t like what they see/learn.
At the end of the day even if it’s a small audience they’ll still reach people and change life styles which is ok
Humans, all humans, have a built-in ability to not care about other people. This can easily extend to animals as well. That’s all it is, they don’t want to care so they don’t. They want to eat/use animal products and are far enough removed from the gruesome aspects of it that they can just choose to not care.
The argument some people give is that plants also feel pain.
Which reveals how little they understand about what they’re talking about
But you can just simply ask them if they want to say by that that cutting an onion is in principle the same as cutting the throat of a cow. They’ll row back then I assume
Facebook ahh post
everytime i see ppl saying “ah” instead of “ass,” I read it in Jeff Goldblum’s voice
idk, personally I really don’t care that much about eating corpses, maybe I’m too detatched or a horrible person, but for some reason I’m fine with it
Indoctrination is a hell of a drug.
Alternatively, psychopathy fits the description.
I don’t belive it to be indoctrination, most people do care, but are just so used to meat, that they don’t care enough
I’m a native with prehistoric roots to meat eating and being part of the chain. I personally do not eat meat, but I see no moral issue with hunting in the way it’s supposed to be. Not this AR 15 hunting for trophies bullshit. I’m talking ethical, respectful, using every part in a spiritual way. No factory farming. What are most vegans views on native culture in that sense?
I think the main difference between you and the people from your prehistoric roots is that you have many other choices. You don’t have to continue to hunt down many animals, because you can choose to buy certain foods and you also have the choice to buy plant based foods.
Whenever you have the choice to buy plant based foods, there is no chance to argue that purchasing animal products in that case is somehow ethical.
The only way to defend hunting for your own survival is when you don’t live in a place where you have many foods available. Like, let’s say you are on an island where there is no shopping centre or anything. You obviously need to hunt to survive. But if you live somewhere where many plant based foods are available, saying that killing animals is justified in order to get food makes no sense at all. And is certainly not ethical (Deciding to kill an individual being without any necessity can never be ethical)
Still odd how you’re talking about people having the choice of what to eat while you reject their choice.
On the contrary. They are critiquing your choice, as you requested. And they did so quite logically too. The ability to choose your actions does not shield you from criticism.
And yes, you have far more choice in what you consume and how you live your life than someone a hundred or a thousand years ago. This means that, “well we used to live that way” is no longer a moral defense.
You respect the environment, you want to live sustainably, yes? Then how do you square that with meat eating being an order of magnitude more harmful to it? It takes far, far more land and resources to support one meat-eater compared to one plant-eater. Surely the land has suffered enough?
I guess I can’t expect any sort of empathetic understanding of native culture from colonizers. Funny thing is I agree with you 90% of the way, but since I don’t conform 100% to your view, you hate me. There’s a word for that, starts with Fasc… Ends in an ism
Bro. Nobody hates you. Nobody has made even the slightest comment about you. Nobody has made even the slightest threat against you or your lifestyle. You openly asked a bunch of people what they thought about your lifestyle and then got defensive when they criticized it. Vegans not liking that you eat meat is worlds apart from facism, and you know that.
What exactly do I reject?
I’m a person with prehistoric roots to eating humans and being part of the chain. I personally do not eat human meat, but I see no moral issue with hunting people in the way it’s supposed to be. Not this AR-15 hunting for trophies bullshit. I’m talking ethical, respectful, using every part in a spiritual way. No factory farming. What are most non-cannibals’ views on my culture in that sense?
That your culture is “native” makes it no less unethical, and killing with an AR-15 versus with a traditional weapon definitely has zero ethical difference (if anything, a bullet is likely minimally more humane).
Curious, how is hunting with an AR unethical?
I’m guessing it’s more about the standard round that it fires. 5.56 or .223 rounds are built more for penetrating materials so when they’re up against a fleshy target, unless you hit them right in the vitals, might not cleanly kill and cause prolonged suffering. That’s not to say that the gun can’t be chambered in something that’s more useful for hunting but having a 20-30 round magazine for hunting is still a bit overkill.
Most states have a limit on how many rounds when you are hunting wild game, 4-5 max capacity.
What’s spiritual and ethical about taking a living being’s life in 2024? There are just so many other foods to eat and ways to think about food that there just isn’t an excuse to kill animals in my books.
Spirituality doesn’t cut it for me. I’d for sure not like to be part of something like that
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How is abstaining from killing a living being extreme? I’m not saying you’re not part of the natural world, I’m not saying I’m not part of the spiritual world by not eating animal-derived products. There’s more to spirituality than killing animals.
And comparing people to lions is silly. A lion is dependant on meat by nature of their being. Humans, by their very nature, have volition and are able to do without eating meat. Animals rape and kill their young - should we do that too? Bar saying that being omnivorous means that we’re fine without meat regardless.
I think there’s something to be said about hunting. I still wouldn’t support it 100% but it’s “better” than factory farming, sure. Still no reason to kill other than convenience, supposed heritage or convenience. It just shows a lack of empathy towards other living beings is the way I see it.
You do you, in the end. No offense meant
It just shows a lack of empathy towards other living beings is the way I see it.
What’s the moral basis of your ethical argument? Is it simply that all living beings deserve to live, or is it about preventing harm/pain?
The question is pretty simple when it’s asked about something like a mammal, but less so when you ask about something like a krill. Why does a krill have the same ethical weight as a mammal, and why wouldn’t that same moral imperative be applied to something like a mushroom?
Both are living beings, to our best knowledge both krill and mushrooms lack the ability to sensate pain as we understand it. Both can respond to stimuli in a way that tries to negate bodily harm.
I don’t eat meat because of my own beliefs, but I often see vegans propose that veganism isnt based on a belief system, rather that it’s logically conclusive. There are just too many internal contradictions for that to be true.
For example, as someone who grew up on farms… I think everyone would be surprised to know how many animals are killed collecting something like corn. I’ve spent more time than I would like clearing thousands of dead frogs from screens of combine harvesters. In my experience if every life is ethically similar, than something like hunting causes a lot less harm than harvesting an acre of corn or wheat.
Here’s our belief system: don’t kill or hurt animals as much as is possible.
We don’t need to theologize and systematize our ideology because it’s a movement with very little requirement to be part of.
There are whole foods plant based people, there are vegans who eat fun junk food (that’s not a judgment statement BTW). There are people from all over life who woke up one day and thought about their life choices. There really are not many other requirements than don’t exploit animals or consume them or their products.
Here’s our belief system: don’t kill or hurt animals as much as is possible.
Right, but by what is the ethical delineation between say a krill and a mushroom?
What is the difference between lesser evolved animals and highly evolved plants or microbes?
One feels pain and has a brain. The other does not feel pain. Also one is an animal with a much more complex body than a mushroom. That makes for a more complex creature which can feel more and experience the world more.
I’m not saying krill are moral philosophers or poets. But they are much more advanced than mushrooms
Accepting for the sake of discussion (but not generally) that hunting is “ethical”, hunting is also a privilege. We obviously cannot all eat hunted meat for survival. You’ve no doubt seen the figures. There are barely enough animals to support tourism and retroprimitivism. It’s not a real solution, it’s just something you can use to trick yourself. The lies we tell ourselves are not convincing to others.
Accepting for the sake of discussion (but not generally) that hunting is “ethical”, hunting is also a privilege. We obviously cannot all eat hunted meat for survival. You’ve no doubt seen the figures.
The sheer variety of produce we currently experience is also an unsustainable privilege.
Eating something with palm oil is also a privilege, one that destroys natural habitats and leads to excess carbon being released to the atmosphere.
I’m not trying to equivocate the two, but the moral justification is similar.
To add to what the other two commenters mentioned, it’s about intent too. Crop deaths are a thing, sure, but it’s the next best to actually outright killing animals and harvesting their flesh. The animals that die in crop fields die regardless given that the corn harvested - and then some - to feed other animals which you end up consuming. Thus, it’s fewer animals dying overall.
To add to what the other two commenters mentioned, it’s about intent too.
I don’t actually think intent is really important to the moral equation. A species going extinct because of over hunting, and a species going extinct because of habitat destruction are pretty morally equivalent to me.
The animals that die in crop fields die regardless given that the corn harvested
Is that not the same reasoning people use to validate hunting?
then some - to feed other animals which you end up consuming. Thus, it’s fewer animals dying overall.
This is getting closer to the ethical imperative question I asked. So it seems that the ethical dilemma is based on preserving as much life as possible?
If so, would it be more ethical to eat the insect as a protein source rather than the soy beans they are feeding upon? If the insects as you say are going to be destroyed during the harvest, would it not be morally justified to gather and eat the insects before or after?
My point isn’t to be pedantic or actually implement anything we’ve talked about. I’m just pointing out the internal contradictions that occur in veganism. Not to try and sway anyone’s life choices, but to allow for people to understand that it’s logically imperfect, and to not let perfection be the enemy of good.
The point I was trying to make about crop deaths is not that corn gets harvested either way and that makes it okay but rather that eating farm animals brings a lot more crop deaths considering the huge amount of feed that needs to be harvested for them compared to just eating the crops themselves. Additionally, if we converted ca. 80% of all farmland that is currently being used just for animal agriculture - feed as well as the animals themselves (look up the exact figures on the Vegan Society sources page) - into farmland for plants to consume directly and reforestation, we would bring back a lot of habitats.
I know it seems like I’m getting off track here, but the point I’m trying to make is that while the ethics of veganism are a personal thing and offer about as much discussion potential as any big philosophical question, I think, considering the state of the world, there has got to be a little utilitarianism involved because that is what veganism is essentially: the effort to cause the least harm to animals that is possible.
That doesn’t mean that frogs are worth less than pigs it just means that if by not eating pigs I save the pig and the frogs whereas by not eating corn I only save the frogs, then eating the corn is the way that I cause the least harm possible. Therefore, I think it’s important that veganism evolves with our options.
There’s also an argument to be made that climate change kills countless animals and increases their risk of going extinct, following which veganism, by being less environmentally taxing, is also saving or attempting to save lives in that regard.
Ultimately, it comes down to how I can reduce the harm I’m causing to the animals in this world. If I had no choice but to hunt, then I would be just like a lion and that would just be nature, but I have choice, so I’m attempting to come as close to the lion as possible in a way that I only cause the minimum of harm I absolutely need to survive. The lion kills to survive but not any more than that - he doesn’t breed animals and eat them. I eat plants to survive because that’s the least harmful choice of eating/living I can conceive of at this moment.
Eight or nine years ago, I start giving a thought to where my food came from. Taking inspiration from what I had been told about FN practices, I started making the animal psychologically present, and acknowledged its suffering and the abuse and violence it was subjected to. Within a year, I was vegan. I can’t imagine how a person can actually do that and remain a meat eater. I think you are conditioning and priming yourself in ways you are not acknowledging. Certainly you are not putting the needs of the animal before your own desires and “traditions”.
“making the animal psychologically present, and acknowledged it’s suffering” What do you mean by this, bc as written Im interpreting it as some sort of Catholic guilt thing but focused on guilt of eating animals. (Genuinely curious)
@[email protected] can correct me if I’m off-base here, but I think what they’ve said can be simplified to “empathize with the animal.” Addressing land mammals like cows, goats, and pigs, which I think are a gateway for a lot of people, you start with the premise that the animal is sentient – capable of happiness, fear, suffering, anger, excitement, love – and work from there. (Just to clarify, I think that “pain” is where the buck really stops, but sentience is a good bridge.) I think most people will acknowledge that dogs are fully capable of all of these things, and that it’s wrong outside of very extenuating circumstances to hurt them (let alone for personal pleasure or gain). They have rich inner lives, they have fears, they have loves – they have a world, one that starts with them and ends with them.
Consider for a second that every person you’ll ever meet has their own inner world that you’ll never really know or fully understand. You can query them, sure, and humans have remarkable tools to communicate their worlds, but it’s ultimately somewhere you’ll never be. Wordlessly, though, I’m betting that you can assume those people have wants – to be safe, to be comfortable, to be happy, to be loved. Inside their world, what they want at a fundamental level is probably something like what you do. And I’m willing to bet that through empathy, you have some appreciation of and respect for that.
I fundamentally believe based both on the preponderance of the ever-expanding body of scientific evidence and on my own experiences interacting with animals that many of them have the same basic wants as we do too, and that these include animals like cows, goats, sheep, chickens, and pigs. I think a lot of people – myself previously included – simply fail to realize this because we’re raised not to, because it’s just alien enough, and because we have every incentive to keep feeling that way.
I think my first step into cutting out meat began with “if I were there in person, could I bring myself to kill this defenseless animal for food instead of just eating something else?” – because functionally I was doing the same thing by paying someone else to do it. And even as I began to process my feelings more and went from a typical omnivorous Western diet to pescetarian to vegetarian, I always found myself getting stuck on veganism. I was suddenly stuck back where I was when I was omnivorous, where in hindsight I was rationalizing my way out of empathy. I can’t remember when it was, but at some point, I found my way from the vegetarian subreddit onto the vegan one after people would show up there condemning the cheese recipes as cruel. I began to lurk there out of curiosity, and it was basically inevitable – unbeknownst to me – that I would stumble across the 2018 factory farming documentary Dominion. Setting aside some time one evening, I started it…
It took multiple sittings across multiple weeks because I almost couldn’t bear what I was seeing, and from that, something viscerally clicked inside of me: that we’re, on purpose, giving an animal a world, only to make it one where their life is spent like this. (NSFL) One where every waking moment, the world they want and deserve just the same as we do is broken, worn down, drawn further away, and dangled in front of them as something they’ll never have – stealing theirs for some ultimately superfluous part of our own. We’ve given them their one chance at life only to force them to spend it in agony. I realized at that point that the only arguments I ever made for myself that weren’t predicated on outright falsehoods – i.e. not I can’t be vegan; I would be less healthy vegan; they can’t process feelings; nothing I do will impact anything – could all be reduced to “might makes right”, and that to me was no way to live a life.
Thank you!
They’re delving into the religious side of it in the reply to you. It is exactly like self delivering catholic guilt.
Westerners are so arrogant that they think we’re not part of the world - yes, absolutely. The holistic view of the world has been trumped by individualism.
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AR-15 is just a rifle platform designation. It stands for Armalite (the company that developed the platform) Riffle - 15. They fire the same ammunition as any wooden stock rifle does (depending on your build). They are not some scary over powered gun. And, yes, some game does require you use a higher caliber in order to humanly kill the animal you are hunting. Smaller rounds would end up causing a longer drawn out death for the animal. I assure you most hunters do care about hunting compassionately.
Not trying to diminish your comment. I am strictly a bow hunter. I just feel like using the term AR-15 as a boogey man in any argument about guns is bad faith.
Now, if you are referring directly to curated exotic “hunting” farms, then I absolutely agree with you. Those establishments are a mockery of hunting. I will say, however, that many of those farms do work closely with conservation organizations, so it just really depends.
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What about the end goal of all this? If people stop eating cows, and then we stop keeping and breeding cattle because no one is eating them, where do all the cows go?
Same situation as what happened to the horses when cars were invented and then they became obsolete.
So drastic population decline, then?
I just worry that if humanity no longer has a use for cattle, they would likely be seen as a nuisance and driven to extinction.
Given that the people who care about not doing factory farming are generally also quite in favor of wildlife preservation, by the time you have the one you will probably have the other. There’s already animal rescues that take in farm animals.
I am pretty sure cattle will still be exploited indefinitely if not for their meat, then for their milk, so much cheese culture is built around it that I cannot see it stopped in the near future. Let’s see how that lab meat will turn out to be
I think there could be a game changer. If I remember right, they already found a way to reproduce cheese and other dairy products in the lab, which can’t be distinguished from the original. The only problem is that it’s such an act to start it in Europe under the European Parlament. I think it was “precision fermantation”
For example, companies like Perfect Day are pioneering this technology, using fermentation to produce milk proteins without cows. By feeding sugars to microflora, these organisms create the same proteins found in cow’s milk, which can then be used to make products like ice cream, cheese, and yogurt. This process reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 97% compared to traditional dairy farming, offering both environmental and ethical benefits(InsideHook)(ScienceDaily). https://www.insidehook.com/food/precision-fermentation-milk-dairy https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/08/240801121845.htm
The cows are headed to the horse and orphan grinder, I guess. Sad times.
milk!
Milk is not allowed either.
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Life is pain, princess. Anyone who tells you otherwise is obfuscating the realities of factory farms.
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