Although I don’t fully agree with the sentiment expressed by this thread, it did get me thinking about leaning even further into contributing to an environment I’d like to participate in. I personally much prefer dedicated discussion threads to discussing news stories myself and reading through the comments it seems like there is a huge desire among many for exactly that. In this thread I’d like to brainstorm with y’all about the conversations we wouldn’t risk trying to have on reddit, conversations you don’t have people around willing to engage in but would work well here, community vibe checks, or something I’m not considering. I would also like to explore what obstacles others see for why this hasn’t happened already despite the apparent desire so any solutions we experiment with can avoid issues which we are already aware of.
My response to my own question will be in the comments.
Ooh, alright you asked for it. If this were Reddit I’d probably be downvoted to hell, but since the website protects me, here goes my controversial opinion:
I find people who describe themselves as “animal lovers” - you know, the kind who’d love to have all sorts of animals as pets if they really could (not just cats and dogs), the kind who love going to the zoo, the kind who’d look at pics/gifs of say cows playing on a grassy field or something and go “awwwww so cute!!!”… and yet have absolutely no problems eating these animals, completely hypocritical. I mean, lying to others is one thing, but how could you lie to yourself, for years? Do they not see the fallacy of their existence? Do they not have a conscience? Do they never stop to think that the cow they’re eating could’ve very well been the very same cow that was in that gif, who’s life was cut short just because people like them have no control over their carnal instincts?
I’ve known a few people like this IRL, and I don’t get them. I genuinely don’t understand how their mind isn’t in a constant state of conflict when they’re either eating an animal or aww’ing over them.
To clarify, I have no problems with people who eat meat in general, especially if it’s for survival. I just don’t get the people who also claim to actually like animals, claim to care about animal rights, claim to care about whether the chicken they’d eat were raised in cruelty-free free-range farms, but also don’t see an issue with killing them.
I really don’t get them. If it were me, my brain would self-implode. My conscience would kill me, I’d lose my appetite. Which is exactly what happened to me as a little kid, when I walked past a butcher store and saw a chicken getting killed and it suddenly struck me where meat came from and what it really was - I felt disgusted, and lost my appetite for life. I just wonder why these so called “animal lovers” have yet to go thru that phase, why they didn’t feel the way I did and continue to ignore their conflicting feelings.
Two of my four grandparents were raised and lived most of their lives in a small village, that didn’t even have electricity until they had kids going to school. Extremely poor with almost nothing of most of what is now common in western societies. So, try to imagine living in a place where absolutely nothing is considered waste. Whatever little objects, their houses, everything they used was made by people who knew how to work with some crude material, whether it was wood or some kind of metal. They relied on animals and small pieces of land to get through each year. Literally zero waste. Composting was not a trend, but a necessity.
Now try to imagine a woman, who had little (no plants, chickens don’t lay eggs in the heavy winter, goats don’t have young ones to feed, so no milk either, no fridges, let alone freezers) food to go through the winter and would rather eat a little less and feed wild birds than watch them freezing to death (most living animals need food to regulate body temperature, among other things). Same thing I would watch her do during all seasons. She would always leave fruit on the trees during spring and summer just so that birds would have something to eat near her house. Fruit that was essential to her nutrition, because it was extremely limited, but she did it anyway.
Now try to imagine this woman, butchering a rabbit or a chicken or a goat. Because she did. Feeling no remorse or any negative emotion. And was pretty good at it. The same person who would get furious if someone mistreated a living animal in her presence.
There is some order in life, which is lost on people who never had a chance to see anything except an urban environment. If you were to meet a person like that, who pretty much embodies the supposed conflict you think exists in this behavior, and you talked in the manner you wrote this comment, you probably wouldn’t even get a response. Maybe a smile, maybe a shake of a head.
If you actually want to get how both those actions (butchering and eating a living animal, and caring for all living animals -even the ones you know you are going to kill and eat at some point in their life) can be done by people in peace with their actions, if you really want to do that, to understand, probably the best way is to find people living like this and spend a month near them. Live and observe.
This comment is not meant to justify all the wrongs of how livestock is treated on large scales in pursuit of profit. Neither people eating more meat in a week than their ancestors probably ate in many months. I am not interested in debating this either. Just pointing out that this was the way of life of most people in the past. How long ago, depends on where you were born on this planet.
As I mentioned, I don’t have an issue with people like the woman you mentioned, people who eat meat for survival.
My issue is specifically with people living in an urban environment, who are well-off enough to afford decent food, who claim to care about animals, yet don’t see a problem with eating factory farmed meat, whilst simultaneously having a problem with people in certain countries eating dogs etc and shedding crocodile tears. That’s just double standards, hipocrisy, and cognitive dissonance at its best.
The reason I preferred to respond the way I did in your original comment, is because I noticed two things that make me doubt you are actually willing to discuss with an open mind. The first is that in your original comment there are quite a few remarks in which you assume the moral high ground and judge others en masse while you have actual contact with a limited sample of people through which you observe the behavior you claim you don’t understand. The second is your personal experience, which as you mention it, is equally limited as far as what it takes for a person to end up eating animal meat.
So I wrote, probably quite badly, about a fragment of another person’s life. Trying to paint a picture of a way of life in which there was no cognitive dissonance, hypocrisy (you do realize that these are not nice things to say about another person, right?) or even conflict. What was equally important, in my comment, with the mention of this one person, was the fact that I mentioned that almost everyone lived like this in the past. Which, I guessed, while probably not enough to make you re-evaluate your position, might make you question both the validity of the moral high ground and how your experience helped formed your beliefs about eating animal meat.
Unfortunately, seems like I guessed wrong, because you reduced my comment to “human eats meat for survival”, when it was more of a “human makes peace with killing, butchering, eating other animals while actually caring for all animals”.
It’s not that I didn’t see what you wrote about “eating meat for survival”. I even quoted this specific part of your comment. So maybe it’s not that great assuming that I didn’t when you read my response.
But who will judge whether or not a person is eating for his survival? Who will judge whether or not someone is being a hypocrite? I mean, most of us, at any given time, are on a different path of life, with our own unique experiences. What might seem obvious to one person, might be something the next person wouldn’t even be able to imagine because of different experiences. It’s not like artificial (books, movies, infotainment, what have you) stimuli are the same thing with actually experiencing the world. Especially when it comes to nature with its extreme vastness of interactions.
You claim you were put off from eating animal meat by watching a butcher killing a chicken. Why should I feel bad (hypocrite? lying to myself?) or less of a sentient being when after, myself, helping to butcher a goat (I mean, do you have any idea what this requires? the sound of skin separating from what is underneath? the sound of internal organs when you slice it’s body open? the flow of blood? the smell of it all? and if you do have an idea do you think the idea is comparable, as far as impact goes, to the actual deed?) and while feeling seriously overloaded by the stimuli (in a young age mind you, less than 10 years old the first time I did it) at the same time being at peace with what I was doing?
Finally, being in an urban environment, at least when I mention it, is not indicative of more options (like food stores, or supermarkets) but indicative of a way more limited environment as far as natural stimuli are concerned and how people’s perceptions of the world are formed. It’s easy, if not a complete certainty, to be completely oblivious of many of the horrors involved in how animals feed themselves. And documentaries, neither smell, nor capture enough of this. So, I, for one, won’t judge neither a person who is put off by a killing of a chicken nor a person who isn’t. I can see how different paths might lead different people to different perceptions of the world. I even find it interesting to observe the differences.
ps. I like to do a little experiment when (which you 'll almost never see me do) I say “I don’t understand X”. I replace that part of the text with “I really don’t like X” and if the text still makes sense, I pause and think.
I hope I can offer some of my experience, if just for some flavor in the spectrum of how some people approach the lives of creatures which sustain some of us.
We raise ducks on our property - they’re wonderful for our gardens given our location, they help to sustain the pond ecosystems we have where we live, and due to the forestry industry in our area there aren’t many native nesting ducks to fulfill the roles they play. There are serious…population pressures… in duck society which makes some form of population control necessary for the health of the flock to continue. Rather than wild predatory action (which we protect against) taking a portion of them, we can manage the population in a way that keeps more of them living without suffering that can also help to feed our neighbors in town. Our goal is for them to be able to live the best life a duck could want, with one bad hour at the end.
I cannot express to you my sorrow any time any duck loses its life. There have been accidents as new mothers have reacted to the new lives around them, and injuries incompatible with life, which have been my responsibility to resolve with the least amount of suffering possible. It is heart-rending, and it crushes me.
We’re fortunate enough to have met other folks who have similar relationships and outlooks for the types of animals they raise. We’re even more fortunate that those people in our community can provide that food that comes from their management practices to us and our neighbors locally. There’s never been a better time for people to support the kinds of agriculture they agree with by connecting with farmers who share their values and are in their communities; I feel confident saying that we should all be doing that to the extent we can.
I’d be interested to see conversations like this, possibly in it’s own animal rights community. There are many things related to this.
Ethical farming and ranching practices
What animals do you feel are ok to eat or get products from
Animal personhood
Attention for less popular or stereotypically cute animals
I feel our role is an omnivorous one. I love just about all animals but creepy and cuddly. But I also eat meat. I want to learn to eat less of it. I do hunt, and I feel less guilty of that than buying supermarket meat.
Nature I feel is beautiful, but also sometimes cruel and brutal. With human intellect, we have some ability to break some of the cycles of nature. We can choose what we eat and how we get it. We can farm and make food from nothing. We can convert foods to different foods or invent brand new things. We can be friendly with other species. Our food culture is evolving along with us, and conversations need to be had to progress.
This can be a tricky conversation in general, so it would have to be approached very carefully and deliberately to foster an actual conversation without triggering defensiveness. You might not get downvoted but also might not be able to get any engagement when your question is framed as an accusation. This is not to tone police you because you are of course free to express your own beliefs with all the passion which you carry for them. This is only offering a strategy if your aim is to get people to feel comfortable enough to honestly answer your question, where you may be able to challenge them and perhaps cause them to really consider their actions if they haven’t. This isn’t general advice of course, because as you stated however you frame something like this on reddit it’s going to drive antipathy. I think you could do it on this platform with some considerations. I know that there have been talks about a vegan community here, so it’s possible when that exists you would be able to ask this there without reservation with non-vegans who choose to go there to offer their perspectives.