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.
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.
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.
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?
when your understanding of philosophy is so poor that you can't conceive of secular ethics
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?
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.
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.
I saw Dominion exactly once, and I can't put anything in front of me that contains animal murder. Everyone else is cowards.
Everyone else is cowards.
Or worse: they just don't care. There are people like that. Zero empathy.
I feel like that sign is a bit alienating, which is unfortunate because it perpetuates the idea that vegans are holier than thou. As a person that (i think) understands the basic reasoning behind veganism (intentional non-participation in animal exploitation and cruelty?) i wish that more people would consider it. Hey, maybe that should be a sign
This is something that I often think about in connection with veganism.
I can sit down and watch a video about how vegetables are produced. It might be boring, but I could watch it.
Most carnists, on the other hand, can't sit and watch how hamburger, sausage, cheese, etc. is produced. For them to enjoy that food, they have to ignore all the suffering behind it.
Highlighting contradictions in people's beliefs is good, actually. If they choose to be willfully ignorant of cruelty while reaping the benefits, then they're not going to face that contradiction from you asking nicely while carefully avoiding any implication that they might be doing something wrong. Rather, it's the opposite - you want to make it as difficult as possible for them to ignore what they're doing. But of course, since they are trying to remain ignorant, it can be expected that they will react with hostility when you call attention to it, no matter how nice and polite you are about it. The only way to avoid provoking such a response is by allowing them to keep the cruelty out of sight and out of mind, in which case they will have little motivation to go vegan and you've rendered yourself useless.
People who have neither been convinced nor convinced others of veganism love to offer their perspective on how we can be more convincing which invariably seems to consist of defanging our criticism and going out of our way to avoid making people to confront the cruel realities caused by their actions.
Isn't "I'm for the intentional non-participation in animal exploitation and cruelty" just a consequence of "I saw the videos you refuse to watch", hence similarly alienating and holier than thou?
Maybe even more so. "I can't continue because I saw a video" could be an unreflected emotional statement, whereas yours sounds like a moral argument.
I tried for a while to make those small changes, but I always found it too hard to do, until I finally just decided to cut out all animal products one night, and I never really went back.
I think the difference was how I framed it, mentally. I always saw it as an act of willpower to not eat animal products, like I have to overcome my cravings in the same way I would if I was cutting calories. But quitting animal products altogether allowed me to frame it differently for myself -- instead of telling myself "I shouldn't eat this", I can just say "I don't eat this." Like, it's not on the table as something I have to consider. I don't even have to recognize animal products as food.
Maybe if you cut things out one at a time you could do a similar thing. Though one problem is that it's a series of changes and commitments you have to make, instead of just one thing. I feel like that could be harder, depending on who you are.
The biggest hurdle from me going vegan was I thought it would be difficult, so I did something similar. Turns out, however, that it's SUPER EASY to cut out all meat and dairy. Seriously it blew my mind. Just look up a couple recipes, make sure you read ingredient lists on products, and you're done. That's all it takes.
The key is to just commit. Jump off the high board and take the plunge. Sure the water may shock you at first but you'll quickly adapt. Quicker than you'd expect.
Man the comment section here is so fucking wild.
More than i would have expected honestly.
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
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 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
Locking this thread as it lost any usefulness and it's getting popular among edgelord kids
But what with the meat at market from good farms or meat from hunting wild animals? You just need to stop buying meat from those factories and big companies and buy on your local town or market, from trusted sources farms or hunted. Meat itself isn't the problem, the problem is how is the meat produced, and we consume too much meat right now, and we need to change our habits and eat much less and from those trusted sources. And not mega-factories like McDonalds and those do.
But why continue to exploit fellow earthlings at that point? If mother's are left to their own devices, the minimal amount of milk left over from the calf's rightful share will never be enough to sustain dairy industries. You only get any significant amount of mother's milk because the calf is either slaughtered immediately or kidnapped and sustained on some soy slurry. Cut out the middle man and drink the soy milk yourself. Chickens were selectively bred into unnatural and painful amounts of egg-laying for our benefit, let them brood in peace, which allows them to stop laying painful periods. Imagine if we forced women to sustain and repeat their periods for full months, quite vile.
Also most fishing and hunting is propped up on subsidaries and breeding programs, literally shooting fish in a barrel. ("most" being an operative word here. Please don't return with bad faith tired "indigenous peoples" argument)
But why continue to exploit fellow earthlings at that point?
You might be on to something
I wonder about having backyard chickens then, that otherwise live happy stress free lives. That seems like a trade off of their "work" for being safe well fed and taken care of, but I haven't thought into it super deeply. I think if I were that chicken I'd rather be alive than not exist.
If you didn't exist you wouldn't have cared about not existing. It's only once you have existed that you wish to continue doing so. It's no use making up conscious beings that don't exist and concerning yourself with what they might have wanted had they existed. It isn't comparable to asking yourself "If there was a button I could push that would make me never have existed..."
It would be possible, in theory, to have an ethical chicken egg, but by the time you jumped through all the hoops to manage that at any appreciable scale you will have realized why it makes more sense to simply not. For a start you would have to reverse hundreds of years of selective breeding so they're comfortable and healthy and not laying eggs every 12 hours.
Or you could have some of my kickass tofu scramble which totally looks and tastes the part.
It's pretty standard. I take some medium to firm tofu and crumble it up in a hot, dry, well seasoned cast iron pan and dry it for just a moment, then I add black salt (special salt that tastes like eggs), a little nutritional yeast, and some turmeric for color, as well as black pepper, garlic and usually some smoked paprika. Then when it's cooked a little bit I like to add a little corn starch slurry to mimic a runnier scrambled egg.
I usually have mushrooms, spinach, diced tomatoes, maybe onions in there too!
Distilled down to the essentials mine is: 1- 12oz pack extra/firm tofu (also like the 14oz ones from KS). Only remove from the liquid, no need to drain Crumble by hand and heated for a few minutes medium heat, then add all at once for another minute~ish: ~1tbsp soy sauce 1tsp each turmeric, black salt, curry powder.
Beyond that it's just modifying to taste. I always saute some bell peppers and onions before the tofu. Makes two hearty portions and reheats well. Usually tater tots air frying in the background.
Tofu scramble is one of those things that blew my mind when I found out how easy it was to make. I haven't even tried the black salt; it's good with just salt, pepper, and turmeric. I'll try it out when I find some, though.
I can't comment on how egg laying affects their mood/daily experience, but it seems laying for healthy hens should only very rarely be painful https://peteducate.com/does-it-hurt-a-chicken-to-lay-an-egg/
I think I'd agree we want to reverse the selective breeding. However I've seen backyard chickens that seem really happy, curious, and have a huge area to walk around in with a big variety of food, and in return lay an egg every 24-36 hours. It's hard for me to say raising chickens like that is immoral, but I could be wrong.
It's already getting pretty stretched, so why not just have a delicious vegan meal instead?
Meat is the problem, though. If you haven't realized, vegans don't think killing sentient beings is okay as long as they're killed on muh uncle's ethical farm.
There's no such thing as a "good" animal farm. There's no humane way to murder a healthy creature which wants to live.
How dare you say that about my uncle's cattle ranch where he puts a little birthday hat on all the calves and feeds only the finest quality oats!
Then let's stop those mega-farms and companies first, we have been eating meat all our existence, it's just that now we eat too much. Killing wild animals is actually good if we do with measure, even Greenpeace said it with an article, meat is not the problem, the problem is how we getting it. Extremes are always bad, we need to find a balance because on that Greenpeace article explained why is it good to be wild animals or anima-friendly farm. And first, before trying to replace meat, we need to fix the B12 protein lack on vegetals.
You just don't realize you're on a vegan comm, I guess? You'll never get anyone here to agree with your
carnist ”actually, we should just kill fewer sentient beings” stance.
Even if you accept the premise that so-called ethically raised meat is ethical, there's just not enough land to farm meat at the scale which people in developed countries demand it, unless it's factory farmed. Ethically farmed, free range animals require much more space than caged up factory farmed animals, and the grass they feed on requires yet more land.
That means that there's a limit on the supply, so I'm pretty sure that if someone tries to solve the whole animal rights issue by buying ethical meat, they'll only push the ethical dilemma on to someone poorer than them (the one who would be priced out, due to the increased demand). That person would then have to be the one to make the decision of whether to go vegan or to buy factory farmed meat.
Admittedly, I could be wrong about this? But I'm pretty sure that increasing land use of meat, whether by regulation or economic demand, would necessarily lead to increased prices, so I don't see how it possibly wouldn't just shift the problem on to the less wealthy.
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.
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.
