You're making a separate argument. The argument OP is making is that people shouldn't be able to eat animals if they can't butcher them. Which isn't really a Vegan argument, or even an argument against making animals suffer since it implies that people should be able to eat meat as long as they have experience hunting and butchering. As someone else said
Killing something yourself doesn't make it better or worse, this argument just appeals to you because you know many people wouldn't be able to. Wanting to make fewer people eat meat is cool and good, but vapid sophistry is not how you get there.
I think maybe you're reading into my words a bit more deeply than I thought anybody would (though I am a vegan and you're right, I do like the idea of setting a high skill floor on eating meat because I am a vegan).
My argument is merely that it's okay to govern some treats differently than others because there are fundamentally distinct classes of treats and that therefore, proposing that people have to do the killing and/or butchering of an animal in order to acquire it is not analogous to requiring that people mine raw materials, process them into everything needed to produce semiconductors, and then build there own electronics "from scratch".
Which isn't really a Vegan argument,
Totally agree, but it would cut demand for industrial meat production so massively I have trouble rejecting the idea on these grounds alone
proposing that people have to do the killing and/or butchering of an animal in order to acquire it is not analogous to requiring that people mine raw materials, process them into everything needed to produce semiconductors, and then build there own electronics "from scratch".
No they're not perfectly analogous. But why "propose" anything? If you're Vegan why not just say "people shouldn't eat meat, carnists can get fucked"? Proposing a change in the rules of how meat should be eaten is just a reformist half measure. And the truth is you're not going to get anywhere without revolutionary activity. If you really had the power to enforce the rule that people can only eat meat if they butcher it themselves, then that would be reflective of a society in which a revolution has already happened. But we don't live in that kind of society. Nobody is going to pass that law because we live in a society run by carnists and capitalists. If you truly lived in a society where you could force the rules to be that, then you might as well just make eating meat entirely illegal at that point.
Asking carnists to confront their own inconsistency is probably one of the oldest vegan arguments.
Like watching self-proclaimed "animal lovers" go on and on about how much they love bacon. Point out that the bacon is an animal with basically the same emotional and cognizant status as their dog and they get pretty upset. It's the inconsistency that drives this response and it's these agitations that lead to personal action.
Same thing applies to political agitation btw. We make agitprop intended to play on personal moral consistency like not wanting babies to get bombed, like thinking of themselves as non-racist, like "a full time job should be enough", etc.
There are many people out there who would not slaughter their own food because they don't want to harm the animals. There is an easy solution to this: make minor lifestyle changes. What prevents it is the decontextualization that prevents them from setting a red slab as an animal, the disconnect between primary production and their consumption, and a series of reactionary thought patterns that are reinforced by lefties just as much as, if not more than, their liberal counterparts.
Well if it's intended as a rhetorical strategy to get carnists to confront themselves, then great. That works. I was arguing with it because it was presented as a reformist proposal.
You're making a separate argument. The argument OP is making is that people shouldn't be able to eat animals if they can't butcher them. Which isn't really a Vegan argument, or even an argument against making animals suffer since it implies that people should be able to eat meat as long as they have experience hunting and butchering. As someone else said
I think maybe you're reading into my words a bit more deeply than I thought anybody would (though I am a vegan and you're right, I do like the idea of setting a high skill floor on eating meat because I am a vegan).
My argument is merely that it's okay to govern some treats differently than others because there are fundamentally distinct classes of treats and that therefore, proposing that people have to do the killing and/or butchering of an animal in order to acquire it is not analogous to requiring that people mine raw materials, process them into everything needed to produce semiconductors, and then build there own electronics "from scratch".
Totally agree, but it would cut demand for industrial meat production so massively I have trouble rejecting the idea on these grounds alone
No they're not perfectly analogous. But why "propose" anything? If you're Vegan why not just say "people shouldn't eat meat, carnists can get fucked"? Proposing a change in the rules of how meat should be eaten is just a reformist half measure. And the truth is you're not going to get anywhere without revolutionary activity. If you really had the power to enforce the rule that people can only eat meat if they butcher it themselves, then that would be reflective of a society in which a revolution has already happened. But we don't live in that kind of society. Nobody is going to pass that law because we live in a society run by carnists and capitalists. If you truly lived in a society where you could force the rules to be that, then you might as well just make eating meat entirely illegal at that point.
For sure, and "people shouldn't eat meat, carnists can get fucked" has been said elsewhere
right, and "people can still eat meat as long as they kill it themselves" is a step backwards from that, as far as proposals go.
Agreed. It's also better than what we have now.
Asking carnists to confront their own inconsistency is probably one of the oldest vegan arguments.
Like watching self-proclaimed "animal lovers" go on and on about how much they love bacon. Point out that the bacon is an animal with basically the same emotional and cognizant status as their dog and they get pretty upset. It's the inconsistency that drives this response and it's these agitations that lead to personal action.
Same thing applies to political agitation btw. We make agitprop intended to play on personal moral consistency like not wanting babies to get bombed, like thinking of themselves as non-racist, like "a full time job should be enough", etc.
There are many people out there who would not slaughter their own food because they don't want to harm the animals. There is an easy solution to this: make minor lifestyle changes. What prevents it is the decontextualization that prevents them from setting a red slab as an animal, the disconnect between primary production and their consumption, and a series of reactionary thought patterns that are reinforced by lefties just as much as, if not more than, their liberal counterparts.
Well if it's intended as a rhetorical strategy to get carnists to confront themselves, then great. That works. I was arguing with it because it was presented as a reformist proposal.
I don't even know how this could be a reformist proposal. What is being reformed, what's the alternative, and how is OP proposing it?
never mind, you're not the person I was talking to yesterday. I was thinking of a different conversation. apologies.
No biggie it's all good