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When somebody asks why you're a vegan
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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Vegan
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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.
So first I want to apologize. The other vegan that was replying was being stupid and that has nothing to do with you.
Second of all: I agree that animal farming can be more humane. I know you disagree that there is any level of ethics to animal slaughtering, that's not the point. Here's the true and final difficulty that means most people will never be vegan which is that meat is super hard to avoid while simultaneously being an easy and satisfying source of calories. To cut off that meat goes against our survival instinct in the biggest way possible. People can't even punch themselves in the face very well because our body physically stops us from doing so, much less convincing us to give up the vast vast majority of our food supply and telling us instead to eat... what? Tofu? Rice and beans? You basically need to be a Michelin star chef to make something that doesn't come out like prison food for someone that needs fast, cheap, and filling food.
The morality of it will never matter, because survival is always > morality. Hungry dogs are never loyal, and people's lives, the stress, the time we have, in a society where meat and products that contain meat are the most readily available food supply will always trump that morality.
Which brings us to the main post. People know that we're eating animals. We know animals have to die for us to eat meat. And most of us who are not super sheltered, know what killing an animal looks like and means.
Vegans telling us that "they saw the videos we refuse to watch" not only doesn't address the core issue, it is condescending in the most ignorant and stupid way possible.
Truely you want to convert people? Prepare the best damn vegan meals you can and make them easily available. Make eating vegan as easy and as cheap as going to McDonald's. Vegan food can't be more expensive than meat; you've already lost if you can't do that. You're fighting survival instinct, so you have to put in similar amounts of work. Fat and sugar are addicting, so abuse that.
As for me, I'm already eating more veggies than I used to. But unfortunately where I live I can get a metric shit ton of meat for $20. That would actively be irresponsible of me to not take that deal.
As a side note about hunting: It Sucks that there are no wolves to be a natural predator for deer, but deer must have a natural predator or they kill forests. There's just no vegan friendly solution to that problem.
Saying people will only change once cheap vegan replicas of everything they eat are available is creating a Catch-22. Corporations, which actually operate on a completely selfish motive of amassing as much capital as possible, are not interested in completely veganizing the food industry. Seeing how vegans are a niche in the market and many nonvegans have an adverse reaction to food labeled vegan, vegan products are a risky prospect and generally going to cater to a select few who are able to pay high prices.
We don't need cheap vegan products to eat vegan though, and unlike the market hopefully we as individuals don't do everything for completely selfish reasons. Most of the cheapest culinary staples are vegan, cutting out animal products is actually cheaper even with all the subsidies those industries are given. You do not need to be a star chef to make tasty beans, beans have been a staple in culinary traditions for centuries.
I can agree there might be an instance where hunting as an intervention is ecological. It's interesting though that deer always seem to get brought up when we actually breed additional deer to be hunted. If we are going to be advocating for hunting deer then we should at least put an end to the breeding of deer first, which itself is vegan activism. Most people hunting deer are not doing it for ideological reasons and would be against this. Also humans are the best forest killer out there, and much of that is done in the name of animal ag. If you genuinely care about forests more than the lives of individuals I'd think you'd be advocating for natalism or at least the end of humans raising livestock.
Also many of us do not get our food from hunts, we get our food from a grocer or restaurant. So the ethics of hunting is irrelevant to most people's personal choice to consume animal products.
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.