Using someone else’s body so you can steal and eat the eggs that they would eat is wrong. I mean, idk why I have to explain why USING someone else as an object for food is wrong tbh.
Not everyone feels that way. Many people who keep chickens feed them a balanced diet to keep them happy and healthy, and also work to protect them from predators. You could say that it’s a symbiotic relationship in that way, much like humans and dogs, or even the way wolves and crows work together.
If the animals are stressed and unhappy then that’s different, and most people would agree that’s exploitative.
But to say that it’s impossible for humans and animals to ever make meaningful trades seems a little unfair to both sides, really.
One way or another, it is impossible to survive in this universe without consuming resources that could have gone to something else, and until we can photosynthesise and live purely off sunlight there are going to be tricky choices.
What you said:^
What I read: I like abusing animals and I’m too fucking lazy and drowned in my own selfishness and entitlement to change anything to help animals.
I’m gonna leave you with this:
You have to choices. Both give you all the nutrients you need, so health isn’t an issue.
Choice 1: Non violence, minimal pain, minimal misery, minimal oppression and minimal environmental destruction with huge health benefits.
Choice 2: Violence, pain, misery, oppression, environmental destruction and health epidemics.
Which do you choose? If it’s number 1, you should go vegan.
This is tangential, but it’s worth considering whether you are trying to reach out to non-vegans or just act tough in front of other vegans, to demonstrate your commitment to the cause. You know, Mormons struggle to make converts, and they greet everyone with a smile and only ask them to give up coffee! :)
A lot of people make the mistake of assuming that all good things go together and all bad things go together, and that’s exactly what you’re doing here. It sure would be nice if we could make choices without any awkward tradeoffs or compromises, but that appears not to be the case.
Many people cannot maintain a vegan diet for health reasons. Some end up eating eggs or dairy but not meat, some avoid eggs and dairy and eat fish; it all depends on their particular digestive issues and what is available to them.
Some people would suggest that tiling the entire world with wheat and soy is not the optimal choice from an environmental point of view, but opinions do differ on this particular issue.
I think you may want to reconsider your approach before you talk to other people about veganism. If encouraging people to switch could reduce oppression etc. and is so important, then you want to succeed in convincing people, and your current method is just going to make people angry, and more set in their ways.
Consider how you would react if people from other philosophies approached you in this manner, eg. pushing a political or religious worldview as a stark choice and insisting that if you choose wrong it must be because you are lazy and selfish. (Even better, imagine if two people offer you mutually contradictory ultimatums like this! You can’t possibly win!)
They say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and you can always substitute rice malt or maple syrup (tasty!) if honey is not politically correct where you come from :)
I am vegan the same way someone might be christian; haha omfglol not even trying to do it properly but basically thinking I support the idea, just being too lazy and poor (YGM) and caring too much about other goals to really try. But still thinking that it’s a (slight) personal sub-optimality that I haven’t decoupled myself from the parts of the food industry that do things I’d rather not have the world contain.
And I am here to tell you that if you want to actually help animals, you don’t become a vegan, you optimize your food for cheapness and your money for effective animal rights advocacy, not the other way around. If you don’t do that, and instead buy vegan product X for $2 more than non-vegan product Y, you aren’t actually caring about animal rights, you are just doing æsthetics and purity.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against æsthetics and purity, I hacked my brain to think animals don’t food and am very happy mostly avoiding them. (To be specific, my brain thinks that plants do food very much, minerals do food sometimes even though that’s kind of funny when you think of it, and animals don’t food as much as minerals. So a package of instant ramen containing 1% salt and 0,7% meat is food enough for me.) I just mean that one shouldn’t pretend to be helping animals when one is optimizing for purity, because that is incorrect and helps animals less than actually, uncompromisingly, helping animals no matter what it entails.
(Also, tiling the world with soy tends to be an outcome of industrial meat production, as plant-based diets require a lot less land to provide the same nutrition. Grazing on non-farmable land is an exception, but otherwise processing plant matter directly for human consumption without an intermediate animal step tends to be more efficient.)
3 months ago · tagged #scrupulosity cw #veganism cw · 106 notes · source: argumate · .permalink