I have no problem with avoiding undue pain and i am happy that we have laws against animal abuse. But that in itself includes little information about how often that beats other concerns. And i am strictly against weighting pain of animals similar to pain of humans.
Why are people so dumb about veganism?
- Thread starter CheetoDust_v1legacy
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You could, sure, but I think you'd be wrong.Seanchaidh said:
Humans have also eaten humans for many thousands of years. As far as we can tell, early humans seem to have had absolutely no cultural or moral aversion to eating each other. There is absolutely no reason to decide that human flesh is any less a part of the historical human food supply than animal flesh, it's certainly been around far longer than most of the domesticated livestock which we eat today.
There is no nice, clean "natural" morality which separates us cleanly from animals. Choosing to believe in one may be convenient, but it isn't true. We're all made of meat.
Fortunately, over the past few thousand years we have gradually achieved a greater and greater control over our environment to the point that we have meaningful choices. Unlike our ancestors, we don't need to resort to cannibalism outside of extreme circumstances, and our laws and morality have been built around the idea that cannibalism is a choice. When robbed of the choice by a disaster or famine, people will still do it, but most of the time they don't have to.
This same environmental control now means that people also don't have to eat meat at all. Thus, it does absolutely no favours to pretend that eating animal meat isn't a choice, that we are still bound to the same "food supply" of our ancestors, or that choosing to eat animal meat is somehow any more natural than eating human flesh. They are both things we have surpassed the need for, but can nonetheless choose to do.
I have never said that animals are or should be in the same "moral category" or "status" as humans. I've said that the whole concept of a "moral category" or "status" is a weird human invention which doesn't actually fit reality very well. Of course, without these categories we are still left with certain truths. Animals, even very smart ones, do not have intelligence in the same way we do, but then neither do human babies. We probably shouldn't let animals vote any more than we would let babies vote, but both still exist, both still exhibit intelligence quite independently of our determination of what "species" they are.
It's entirely up to you what you draw from that. I'm not presupposing any kind of outcome. But I really hate these pseudo-dominionist arguments about the natural order of humans and animals. We are not special, as animals go. We were not made in the image of God on the 6th day and granted special divine dispensation to eat everything made on the 4th and 5th day. We evolved from apes who ate whatever they could find and lived in fear of being eaten themselves. We don't have to stay apes forever if we don't want to.
Sure I guess, but humans are also pretty objectively terrible at solidarity. Often, human rights also come down to a matter of arbitrary sympathy, which is why marginalised groups are constantly required to make themselves amenable to their oppressors in the hopes of eliciting sympathy.Seanchaidh said:
If solidarity only comes with the explicit expectation that entering into solidarity will benefit you down the line, then it's pretty useless.
The irony being that line was originally said by a character who thought chicken was a vegetable...Xprimentyl said:
Its not for me but every now and a gain i enjoy something vegan. Its tough to be one though as tone of stuff has animal products in the.. vegams have to be carful about jello because ground up bones is an ingrediant in many jello type stuff for excample
Just have to say that traditional mabo tofu most definitely is not vegan and is made with minced pork or beef.Dreiko said:
On a related note I think it's super weird that tofu gets treated so badly by avid meat eaters as this hippy dippy meat substitute, while in Asian cuisine it's just an ingredient that is used in dishes that highlight the culinary properties that are unique to it, which sometimes involves using it along with meat and not just as a substitute.
The thing that annoys me about most vegans is they don't think on what happens when everyone is vegan. Do they think those dairy cows are going to be kept or do they actually realise that they'll all be slaughtered. What about the rare breeds that are farmed only because people want to eat them, those now go extinct. Sheep will also essentially go extinct too because we've breed them to the point they can't naturally shed their wool.
Most vegans seem to have the silly notion that all the farm animals are all going to be running wild in paradise. That or the ones I encounter are just idiots.
Most vegans seem to have the silly notion that all the farm animals are all going to be running wild in paradise. That or the ones I encounter are just idiots.
I don't have too many strong thoughts on vegans, though I can find them somewhat harder to socialize with. Simply because food/meals for me anyway, is one of the bigger avenues of what little socialization I partake in. Especially with coworkers, and I'm at the age where most social interactions are going to be at work. Vegan food here can be hard to find and/or expensive unless you make your own food. I can't be arsed to make my own lunch to bring in at work, and I'm not willing to spend more on my food on a daily basis. So I'm not going to be making many vegan/vegetarian friends just cause our lifestyles don't mesh.
It does annoy me however, when people try to push it on me. Though this goes for anything, not just vegans. Be it religion or multi-level marketing nonsense. Especially annoys me when they bring it up a lot and adopt a whole holier than thou attitude.
And there's been instances of vegans attacking farmers, freeing livestock and other sorts of nonsense. Granted these are a small mental minority who would've been doing something retarded even if they weren't vegans. It's not solely a vegan thing nor are all vegans like it, put people who use their lifestyle choices as an excuse to be complete dickheads are highly unpleasant.
There are also random idiots who temporarily adopt it cause they think it is intrinsically 'healthier'. And I wish people wouldn't spread this nonsense. You can be a vegan and still be hella unhealthy, and if anything if you don't pay proper attention to your diet cause you think it's 'healthier' - you're going to end up in a bad spot.
But basically, I'm gonna do what I want, you do what you want and if we don't get in each other's ways - then there isn't a problem.
It does annoy me however, when people try to push it on me. Though this goes for anything, not just vegans. Be it religion or multi-level marketing nonsense. Especially annoys me when they bring it up a lot and adopt a whole holier than thou attitude.
And there's been instances of vegans attacking farmers, freeing livestock and other sorts of nonsense. Granted these are a small mental minority who would've been doing something retarded even if they weren't vegans. It's not solely a vegan thing nor are all vegans like it, put people who use their lifestyle choices as an excuse to be complete dickheads are highly unpleasant.
There are also random idiots who temporarily adopt it cause they think it is intrinsically 'healthier'. And I wish people wouldn't spread this nonsense. You can be a vegan and still be hella unhealthy, and if anything if you don't pay proper attention to your diet cause you think it's 'healthier' - you're going to end up in a bad spot.
But basically, I'm gonna do what I want, you do what you want and if we don't get in each other's ways - then there isn't a problem.
I mean or third option we wind down the dairy industry gradually, stop breeding dairy cows and let production cease over a period of years if not decades.votemarvel said:
Personally if it were up to me and my choices were "my species goes extinct" or "my species exists in captivity solely to eventually be killed and eaten" I'd probably go for door number 1.
How many vegans are actually saying we just need to jam on the breaks and 100% let animals do their own thing. I mean we're conserving pandas, a species too dumb and lazy to fuck, I'm sure we can save the sheep.
I love eggs and milk, don't plan on going vegan any time soon but I think you're largely going after strawmen here.
The thing that irritates me now is "plant based diet". You're a vegan, just because it hurts your fragile masculinity to admit it if you don't eat animal or animal biproducts you're a vegan. Just admit it. Or at the very least never ever say you have a plant based diet and also give out about identity politics or PC gone mad because you're literally choosing to call yourself something else because you don't like the word for the thing you are.
Oh no! You mean the cows that are kept in pens barely large enough for their bodies, are forcefully impregnated over and over again only to have their calves taken away at birth and are typically slaughtered at four years old to make dog food might have to be slaughtered!votemarvel said:
I think it's interesting that you project this problem onto vegans. Cows live 20 years and eat grass. If cows were being kept in reasonable numbers and concentrations, it would be pretty trivial to just let them live out the rest of their lives and simply to ensure that the population declines naturally to sustainable levels. After all, in this hypothetical vegan utopia some people will still want to keep domestic animals as pets or out of appreciation, and groups that object to that (like PETA) typically have no problem with euthanizing animals.
But that's not the case, because agriculture is run on industrial lines to create the maximum concentration of animals whatever the cost in terms of cruelty. So yes, there are far more dairy cows than it would ever possible to provide a good standard of living for, but that's because the farming industry (and by extension, consumers) are perfectly happy to provide animals with a bad standard of living to facilitate reduced costs and increased production.
Calling vegans out for not having a solution for a problem created by intensive agriculture strikes me as a little hypocritical.
How it could be interpreted is that while the person's main diet is "plant based", they don't give a shit about its "purity" like vegans do. Somebody eating plant-based might eat an omnivore's meal every fortnight, for example, or "cheat" at a party. With that said people definitely use it in the way you describe also.CheetoDust said:
I might be misinformed, but I've read that of a few places which have introduced plant-based alternatives with tag lines like "impossible" meat, it's actually worse for you than the meat it's trying to replace due to the extra processing involved to get it there.
Having said that, I've tried a couple of them and they're rather tasty.
Having said that, I've tried a couple of them and they're rather tasty.
They tend to be quite high in salt. I wouldn't say that, for example, vegetarian sausages are going to be worse than meat sausages, because meat sausages are made up of the shit they scrape off the floor and need to disguise as food.hanselthecaretaker said:
Unprocessed meat isn't necessarily unhealthy (AFAIK), but I don't think health reasons are really why most people who abstain from meat eating do so.
I'm someone who grew up on and around farms, raised animals for slaughter, did my time in 4H and the FFA, hunted, and the like. The only thing about veganism that annoys me is when one runs into some evangelist idiot -- generally an urban/suburban/coastie type -- who talks a big game and speaks in these sweeping, absolutist ideas, universal truths, and maxima...but really don't know shit from shinola about agriculture and food production, and wouldn't be arsed to listen, learn, or even consider the notion they may not know absolutely everything there is to know, even if you held a gun to their head.
No, cupcake, you don't know everything there is to know, and I don't want to hear a word about harm elimination until you've seen for yourself what happens when Bambi or Thumper get caught in a combine harvester. Let alone if you're the type to care oh so much about animals, but when it comes to widespread and endemic mistreatment of humans in the agriculture industry, fuck 'em and anyone who says otherwise is racism doubleplus.
No, cupcake, you don't know everything there is to know, and I don't want to hear a word about harm elimination until you've seen for yourself what happens when Bambi or Thumper get caught in a combine harvester. Let alone if you're the type to care oh so much about animals, but when it comes to widespread and endemic mistreatment of humans in the agriculture industry, fuck 'em and anyone who says otherwise is racism doubleplus.