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  • edwardligma [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    i think one key difference is that if youre hurting humans then society turns around and says "hey thats fucked up wtf" whereas if youre hurting animals society turns round and says "hey thats cool and normal" (unless theyre hurting a dog in which case its back to "hey thats fucked up wtf") and i dont think we should understate the effect of societal normalisation on assuaging peoples guilt about causing suffering. plenty of people were totally fine with causing suffering to other people in contexts where society said it was fine (institutional slavery being a very obvious one). if you had been beating a slave who was screaming in agony and it wasnt sitting well with your conscience, you could always turn to basically everyone else in society who would say "hey dont worry about it, the negro doesnt actually feel pain plus its for their own good plus gods natural hierarchy" etc and make you feel better about it, especially if your psychological self-protective mechanisms were already primed to want to accept their arguments. i bet you it wouldnt have been 100% effective for most people though, and i reckon if you had modern mental health data for plantation slavedrivers youd probably find that there was a much higher rate of mental health issues than the rest of the (white) population

    and when you look at slaughterhouse workers you see them having hugely elevated rates of mental health and domestic violence issues, cos even though society tells them its cool and good and they can justify it to themselves theres obviously some level where it still really takes its toll on the psyche. and if you offered most people a bunch of different jobs including slaughterhouse worker (all for the same pay) i reckon most people would choose that pretty much dead last. and how many people could sit through dominion and not have a visceral gut response to the cruelty and suffering? not many, i reckon

    i think its true that (even with societal context removed) its harder to not care about other peoples suffering that animal suffering, cos its easier for us to identify with them and i guess cos theres always been reasons not to eat people as food. but i do think not caring about animal suffering is harder than you might think, and i think thats part of why weve built up so many societal (and personal) defense mechanisms against thinking too much about it.

    remember that most vegans used to be non-vegans (as adults) too, so we do know what it looks like from the other side of the fence and weve been the ones who "didnt care" too (spoiler: turns out we really did care at some level but we built up incredible defensive mechanisms to avoid confronting it)

    • furryanarchy [comrade/them,they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      If you look at historical accounts I think its clear people like slave owners had serious psychological problems caused by the things they did. They clearly benefited more than they were harmed due to the economic benefits they got from slavery, but it did cause obvious psychological harm. These problems they faced were normalized and they would deny they existed or their connection to the things they did, but they were real.

      I don't think there is something like that going on with most people. Or if there is, it's masked by the many other greater problems going on in society. These other problems are so much greater it becomes a rounding error.

      Of course this is just my subjective opinion based on no data and I could easily see it going either way.