ITT: A bunch of non-vegans complaining that content posted to a vegan community makes them uncomfortable.
Also ITT: A bunch of people who haven’t been convinced to go vegan asserting how to convince people to go vegan. Not them, but other people of course.
Seriously, non vegans need to shut the feck up unless they’re willing to make the effort to stop hurting animals. Otherwise I’m not interested in their opinions.
For the second group, I always like to ask "Why should I use your argument to convince people when it didn’t convince you?"
I know I’m going to piss off every single group with this unpopular opinion, but I view veganism/vegetarianism and religion similarly.
Both of them come with benefits and downsides. The extent of these benefits and downsides differ from person to person. There’s no “right” answer, talking about your choice is perfectly fine and I don’t really care what you do either way, but I don’t like it when you try too hard to convert me.
People that want to convert you to their religion are usually concerned about YOU (saving your soul, etc.), so it’s reasonable that it’s YOUR choice to decline. The only concern is about your own well being.
People that want to convert you to veganism, on the other hand, are only concerned about the animals you’re exploiting - it has nothing to do with you personally. Your choice to decline means you’re condemning hundreds of animals to die every year for the rest of your life. This is a hard pill to swallow for animal sympathizers, so you must understand why arguments by vegans tend to be quite passionate.
But the two really aren’t similar, other than the fact that they both make you uncomfortable.
I’m completely on your side, but I disagree that declining veganism condemns hundreds of animals to die. If someone goes vegan, does that mean that those animals will then live?
Those animals wouldn’t be born. It’s supply and demand. The less demand there is for meat, the cheaper it gets, and the less incentive there will be to breed more of them. The goal is to reduce suffering as much as possible, and that can only happen if people stop paying for it.
I get the theoretical point, but I highly doubt that if one person goes vegan, it will cause the meat industry to produce 100 less cows. It will just create slightly more waste.
Don’t get me wrong, more people absolutely should go vegan, I just never liked the view of “you single person can change something”, because that’s just false. It should be marketed more as being part of a bigger group that can create change.
Do you also not vote, because one single vote doesn’t change the outcome?
And that’s besides the point anyways. Me not murdering humans also doesn’t stop them from getting murdered worldwide, but that doesn’t mean I can just walk around and kill people, the same way you have no justification to torture and murder non-human animals, just because they will keep getting killed by others.
Well, you did not get my point at all… Please read it again. Even with voting, saying “I changed the election with my vote” is bullshit. But voting and veganism are important, precisely because it is a group. But targeting individuals is just useless. Because your relative won’t change the world. Many relatives may, but the point is that one single person won’t change shit with a behavioral change.
This is rationalization. You are experiencing cognitive dissonance and trying to rationalize a narrative that relieves it.
What do you mean with that?
What are your reasons for comparing veganism to religion? Aside from having a strong opinion I see no real similarities. To me it feels like non vegans want this comparison to be valid to be able to make it about personal choice when it really is about respecting others.
Also the “there is no right answer” argument is always in favor of the status quo which is factory farming animals. Is that really something you want to preserve?
If your belief is that people shouldn’t try so hard to convince people of their beliefs, then why are you trying to spread that belief to others instead of just keeping it to yourself?
I’m saying that’s what I believe in, I didn’t say you have to agree.
Cool, I don’t agree.
and I don’t really care what you do either way, but I don’t like it when you try too hard to convert me
Internet apathy politics in a nutshell.
If you aren’t and won’t be converted anyway, why should anyone be quieter to please you?
Do you hold any strong ethical beliefs at all? Would you also say they are religious? Would you also say that it is up to each individual to decide what is right for them and we should respect that and not push too hard?
when your understanding of philosophy is so poor that you can’t conceive of secular ethics
There’s no “right” answer,
That’s where you’re wrong kiddo. Murdering innocents who are just trying to live their lives for no reason other than your pleasure is actually wrong and makes you evil.
Not vegan, but I can definitely agree factory farms are vastly underregulated
Economic forces are always going to welfare wash and treat these poor sentient beings solely based on the bottom line instead of their actual wellbeing. Please don’t increase demand for their childrens and grandchildrens suffering.
Not vegan
Why?
50% personal convenience, 50% feeling like I should prioritize human suffering like homelessness and sweatshops first
It’s cheaper to eat vegan food than animals. Use the money you save on groceries to fix homelessness and sweatshops.
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You don’t need to replace like for like - not every meal needs a meat replacement. My point is that to get all the nutrients you need to live and thrive, vegan diets are cheaper.
How does eating meat and dairy help homelessness and sweatshops.
cuz meat is delicious
I, on the other hand, went vegan so that I can be justified in not watching those videos
And now instead I get to watch this cute video of a cow that’s friends with a dog, without having to repress awkward questions about why animal cruelty is only socially condemned for certain animals and not others.
What does that dog eat?
The dog is obviously vegetarian
Unlike cats, which are obligate carnivores, dogs are only opportunistic carnivores and do just fine on vegetarian and even vegan dog foods.
Dogs can survive on only plants but its much better for them to eat a mixed diet.
I watched the videos when I went vegan because I was afraid of backsliding. I thought that if I didn’t see what was happening on factory farms, then I might be tempted to go back to eating meat and dairy again.
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A few seem to be breaking the rules for this specific community too, there was one even going into detail describing a processing facility, and when reprimanded by another user they said they didn’t care.
I was hoping to learn something interesting, but maybe another time in a less popular thread
I don’t see those comments while logged in because they’re from instances that went crazy with the defederation. Lots of redditors who will post ”I like eating meat tho” on a vegan comm from that shithole lemmy.world
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You seem to follow this thread a lot for someone who doesn’t care.
A lot of cruelty under capitalism is publicly permitted because people don’t see how the metaphorical sausage is made.
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You’re so brave and edgy and contrarian.
Don’t waste time on pizza slicers. They’re all edge and have no point.
Dunking them for a line at a time is a small price to pay to watch the nazis thrash and screech and fling their own shit.
Locking this thread as it lost any usefulness and it’s getting popular among edgelord kids
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being omnivorous doesn’t mean we have to eat meat, it means you get to choose, which is like, the entire point?
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Do you think you would die or be unhealthy if you stopped eating meat and other animal products? If that’s what you think then say that so someone has the opportunity to rebut you.
Because it’s unclear what you’re trying to imply by saying “we’re omnivorous”.
I am curious, can you please offer your rebuttal on how a vegan diet can be as healthy as a balanced low processed food omnivore diet.
Diets with vegan restrictions consistently perform better than nonvegan diets in studies. Not all of those studies account for UPF consumption among other things, in which case vegans might just perform better because they are a more health conscious demo, but there are those that do account for that as well as interventional studies where participants do not choose what they eat.
Consumption of animal products is associated with some of the most frequent causes of death such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. One explanation of this are SFAs which have been heavily researched on their own, and are known to cause health issues even from plant sources like coconut and palm oil, but are found in most animal products whereas in most plant foods they are found only in small quantities. In addition you have animal proteins which have been shown to trigger the production of certain health negative hormones, likely do to their amino acid composition or just their quantity of protein in general, tbh I have not looked into the nuances of a excessive protein omni diet vs one with no animal products. You also just have the fact that many animal products aren’t as (micro)nutritionally dense compared to many whole plant foods, even high calorie ones like pulses.
I’d be curious though as to know why omnis, especially scientifically minded ones, don’t default to eating in line with vegan ethics. Since the vegan argument is an ethical one it should be on those who think we need to eat animal products to show why that is the case, animal products should have to be extremely necessary for our own survival to justify the harm we do to animals.
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But we need to cook meat
Sashimi exists.
And that’s probably not the only example.
Steak tartar is another easy one. There are a lot more, including the fact that rare steak is basically uncooked inside, just warmed up.
We don’t need to cook the meat before eating.
But doing so lets us get more from the meat than if we don’t.
Humans (or rather what we were before homo sapiens) ate raw meat for a long time before using fire for cooking was invented.
Dunno about them but I need a balance of meat and vegetables in my personal diet to be healthy.
So much of that is misplaced anthropomorphism though. Throughout history hundreds of millions of people have wrung the neck of a chicken or dropped a lobster into boiling water. Almost none of them have cried.
TV melodrama is a weird way to decide which actions have moral weight. We’re particularly sensitive to the deaths of mammals because we see human qualities in their suffering.
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Who said anything about us being alone in reasoning? Sheep not driving cars and chickens not keeping diaries have better factual basis than the west being destined for white men, so I don’t see the analogy except that they both involve exploitation.
I dunno I’m exposed to way more people who do cutsie voices for their “fur babies” than people willing to argue that our murderous, destructive species is exclusively superior. But then I guess that’s because I spend more time with IRL friends than on vegan forums, which I imagine attract edgelords looking to troll.
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I didn’t even watch the videos. I just saw a video of someone’s pet cow who was curled up in a little girl’s lap getting a scratch after having been snuck into the porch by the kid, and that was enough. One day the light just goes on.
A friend told me that she asked her father to watch a vid for her bday. He agreed and converted after seeing it. For this reason, I cowardly avoid seeking out such material (I love meat). I know that I should switch. I’m just selfish enough not to.
That’s fucked up and you should be revolted with yourself for admitting it.
You should really just stop lying to yourself and have a look at what it really is you “love”.
Are you implying anyone who eats meat loves animal cruelty?
No, we just like eating meat. It’s really not that deep
No, I don’t. I think most people are not enjoying cruelty at all. I’m implying that they’re just pretending they were aware of the cruelty they are actually responsible for. While in reality they have no idea.
Edit: Sorry, I thought you were the original commentor. No idea what point of view you have here.
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One of what? Self aware people? Whose actions are aligned with their morals?
Damn, you just philosophically murdered them.
The comments responding to you are pretty unnecessarily hostile, but I personally get where you’re coming from. I personally think it’s best to watch the thing so that you can be best informed, even if it’s hard to do. Not even because of veganism being ethical, but because the fear of the unknown is a lot scarier than any documentary could be, IMO. Information is power, and having information (even distressing information) is empowerment.
Also, I loved meat too, but when I went vegan, I never really missed it. I was pretty worried about missing certain foods (one was sushi), but that never really happened to me.
I’m pretty sure the vast majority of adult meat eaters have seen multiple videos and still continue to eat meat. Very few have actionable ability to directly stop the suffering so they then stop caring. One person cutting down on red meat will never be enough until there’s enough lab grown meat and/or delicious FakeMeat alternatives to satiate western society at large. We still a long ways away from that.
Until then, vote for people who want to cut down on brutal industrial practices.
It is very actionable to vote with their wallet and mouth and not eat meat. The “can’t save them all, so why bother”-argument is really sad. I don’t think most people would apply that logic, if they saw a child in distress, because so many children die every day of preventable causes. Every sentient being matter.
The difference being you’re not going to stop large agricultural practices with it.
You’re going to stop them by voting, going into office yourself, or scientific advancement.
The rest is just saving your own conscience. What other people do with their bodies is none of your business.
If people aren’t buying factory farmed animal products, the agricultural industry wouldn’t still be using awful practices. The supply and demand chain is complicated and the agricultural industry can choose different levers than lowering production, but those different levers would result in lower profit either for example by higher advertisement spending or lowering prices. Over time with a sustained vegan effect, the market would correct itself, since companies hate losing money and will pursue more profitable alternatives, and fewer animals would be slaughtered.
Your own wallet is a very large vote. But voting in elections or advocating for change in other ways are of course also very important. They shouldn’t exclude each other.
People are allowed to do with their body as it pleases, as long as they don’t hurt anyone. There are quite a few scenarios, where I don’t think you would agree with your own statement.
Does your impact have to be massive for you to act? me not throwing trash out the window isn’t going to stop millions of others from doing it, but my impact is still there (ex:go vegan for a year, and your local grocery/fast food place/etc sees a reduction in meat sales and orders 0.001% less for their next shipment)
Right. It’s also the right and good thing to do and you should be commended for it. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
People who eat meat know it can be healthy and terrible for your diet. The same way any other foodstuff is. They also know you’re killing animals, often in terrible conditions. If you go through life caring about everything that has ethical dilemmas though, you wouldn’t be using microprocessors, any clothing that wasn’t made and grown by yourself, etc. You DEFINITELY wouldn’t be on the internet lol. The Good Place had a wonderful look on going through that moral extreme.
Even going the living healthier route, the bigger issue is ultra/processed foods.
Veganism equating boycotting the meat industry is great for your mental, but does a basically non-zero hit to their margins in actuality. People advocating, voting, and being vocal are what makes the small then large changes to shift the food industry paradigm to non-sentient meat options. The people smart enough to make real efforts into alternatives are doing so. Yeah, you want to participate too and feel like you’re doing something, and you are, but let’s not pretend it’s not for your own mental benefit. Both through how you feel by advocating for animals that can’t help themselves, and by not participating directly in something you don’t like as well.
so slightly irrelevant since I assume you’re speaking generally but, have used the same clothes/computer/phone, for ~10 years, not to say I’m living with the bare necessities but I do try to limit those as well.
I do agree it’s impossible to be 100% moral in modern society and do harm to no one, but paying $200 every 10 years to a company that far down the line has poor labor practices (without my money these people have no job so even this is debatable), when I essentially can not participate in society without doing these smaller harms, seems to me leagues different.
With meat, you are as closely as possible saying with your wallet “please raise and kill more of this animal as your company does now” while knowing many suppliers either nearly torture the animals they raise, or raise/kill them in really inhumane ways. If you’re still eating meat, you are the direct cause of several animals living that terrible life. I can also exist in society with an inconvenience of not eating meat, whereas I can’t without shoes, a phone, a computer for work, etc
Animals are the most vulnerable among us. They literally cannot fight for themselves because humans are infinitely more powerful than them. So vegans try to do their best to stand up for animals, including posting content that makes others uncomfortable and hopefully become introspective about their own behavior.
https://kbin.social/m/vegan@lemmy.ml/t/418783/When-somebody-asks-why-you-re-a-vegan#entry-comment-2094354
One person cutting down on red meat will never be enough
You could use that argument to invalidate voting or any boycott. “Why should I vote? My one vote won’t change anything.” The truth is, you aren’t one person. There are many vegans.
But even one person can do quite a bit. I’ve influenced my friends to eat less meat. When we go out to eat, if they want to include me, we’ll go to s vegan-friendly restaurant.
You could use that argument to invalidate voting or any boycott
The difference being that there will never be enough vegans to change large-AG practices until the reasons I’ve stated above. There is a non-zero hit to their bottom line, sure, but Veganism will never be mainstream until healthy and tasty alternatives to meat is viable, tasty, and cheap.
The perpetual shift to healthier lifestyles through lab grown and alternative meats are an inevitability for any prospering/utopian civilization. The technology and culture to get there requires A LOT though.
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The world and it’s inhabitants can get fucked because technology will save us? I could think robots are inevitably going to replace slaves but that does not justify me keeping a slave in the present.
What happens If you later see a video of a someone eating a hamburger?
Nothing? What the fuck are you even talking about?
If videos is all it took to change people’s minds then I’d be drowning in threesomes after showing my gf porn.
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I will eat you.
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So very brave, contrarian, and edgy.
All videos are 100% factual, but some offer “alternative facts.” /s
“X stance, 'cause I’m smarter than you”
I think you misunderstood the sign. What does intelligence have to do with this?
Did you just criticize… having a stance on things? Like the whole concept of believing things are true?
I actually don’t have a bone to pick with not living in a state of constant uncertainty about everything.
Its just one could put literally any position at the top of the sign and be just as insufferable.
I think we shoulf reduce meat production and make laws so millions of animals dont het abused every day and i aldo saw the videos but i just like meat so i dont think that everyone becoming a vegan would be a good solution. I of course 100% support if someone makes the decision themself. If a meat substitute is found that tastes like meat and solves meats flaws then i would happily switch.
I’d be happy if people would just proofread before submitting.
This is lemmy not a thesis paper lmao
Still prefer not to suffer a stroke from reading a comment.
“I just like meat” is a weird point to make I feel. From a moral standpoint, if you feel it is wrong, it shouldn’t matter wether or not you like the meat (I too remember meat fondly from when I was still eating it). I’ll twist your word into an extreme to illustrate my point, imagine reading this:
“I agree that raping children should be stopped, but I just like children, I don’t think that every one should stop, we should just reduce how much we do it”.
It probably sound like it’s completely ridiculous, but for someone that believe that it is morally wrong to kill and eat animals, this is kinda how you sound.
I’m ok with people not being morally aligned with me, but when they are not consistent in their viewpoint, I can’t help but think they are just rationalising their behavior to ease their mind.
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So every omnivore and carnivore is a child molester? It doesnt work in this way. You need the nutrients from meat. Thats why its do hard to make a meat substitute.
i just like meat so i dont think that everyone becoming a vegan would be a good solution
Neat argument
“They’re absolutely right morally but I like the taste so really some systemic murder and rape of sentient beings is OK in my book”
Wonderful morality you’ve got there
