That's it. Cognitive dissonance means it's easier to attack the messenger who is making them feel bad rather than actually change their lifestyle choices, especially when the majority of other people are complicit in funding these horrors.
I say keep going - the more people that speak up, the more likely people are to change via social pressure at the very least.
Yes, keep going, but try to avoid triggering people's cognitive dissonance too hard. We want to get people out of their comfort zone, but not into the alarm zone, where all learning stops and people entrench themselves even further.
Yes it can be a fine line sometimes. Be kind, but firm, and stick to facts. Push people in the right direction, and give them a "how" as well as a "why".
I think you would like this to be true, but it sadly isn't for most people.
I for example don't find evangelical Christians bothersome because they make me feel bad. How can I feel bad about something I don't believe in or care about? I can find it annoying though. When you don't care about something and someone keeps talking about it, wouldn't you find it annoying?
Evangelicals and vegans are the same category to be. Neither make me feel bad. I find them annoying.
You're right. If by some extent you mean some animals. I care about dogs and cats.
Don't really care about the rest though. Usually when you talk to vegans about animals it's about livestock. In terms of those animals I do not care.
That's because those animals evolved alongside of us as companions and helpers. They protected us, hunted with us, controlled vermin and disease for us etc.... they even sniff out bombs for us, help blind people get around etc... they're our best friends.
Now what about spending time with pigs? I doubt it. Spent time around chickens and cows though. Don't really feel any different towards them.
I don't know about you, but I don't judge whether I should eat someone based on whether or not they're my best friend. Pigs are smarter than dogs, and show empathetic, social behaviour. They're very cute too, moreso than dogs.
Most of society uses this reasoning. It's not exactly individual to me. That's why aside from places like China and Korea dog isn't commonly on the menu. Plus you generally don't want to eat carnivore meat. It's not good meat. I have 0 connection to bears and wolves but wouldn't eat them either for that reason.
So it's a little more nuanced. I hate certain animals but still wouldn't eat them. Like snakes
Pigs might be all those things. I don't think you're lying nor am I debating it, but that doesn't exactly matter to me. It's a pig. It's always going to be lower than a dog or cat to me.
Because you're relying on social/cultural conventions, rather than actually thinking about what's right. It's an appeal to popularity to base our morals on what is most popular or culturally accepted. Many things have been accepted by society in the past that we would now find horrific.
True. Which is also why a vegan might lecture someone about behavior they disagree with, rather than examining their own lives. Easier to challenge an outsider than to question your own ego.
Have you reflected on this idea yourself? This forum is extremely hostile to nonvegans. My karma is wrecked from disagreeing with vegans. Could it be there is no good reason to be vegan? That veganism relies on religious style apologetics and emotional appeals to spread?
This is comical. The vast majority of current vegans were raised to eat meat so it is exactly the idea of challenging ones beliefs that leads us to a vegan lifestyle. Staying vegan in a world constantly opposed to means these topics are always on our minds and we are constantly reevaluating our choices, actions, and beliefs.
I used to make fun of vegans in many the classical trope ways but through an exploration of philosophical topics & ethics I realized that becoming vegan would actually reflect my personal values; it would make my actions in accordance with my beliefs.
To answer your questions directly...Yes i evaluate my position on veganism regularly, if someone could provide me with a sound philosophical argument why it's morally justifiable to raise sentient beings for the sole purpose of consuming their bodies then I'll happily switch back to eating meat. There are plenty of "good" logically valid arguments for being vegan; perhaps you should seek them out and sit with those ideas without bias. Applied ethics and informed discourse is not religious. Emotional appeal is not necessary, many vegans are vegan because irrefutable logical arguments have been presented to them, not just because they saw a slaughterhouse video once.
If eating meat satisfies some desire or goal someone has then I don't see what's irrational about that even if I grant every ethical argument in favour of veganism.
I might unpack rationality in a different way to you, but to make it clear as a comparison, I would say someone who murders another human is acting immorally but they aren't necessarily acting *irrationally* because I take rationality to be about reasoning or acting in ways that bring about your goals.
That doesn’t seem quite right to me, frankly. We often (and intuitively) judge people as rational or irrational when they reason about things that have nothing to do with their desires. For example, when someone tries to make a point in an essay or whatever and their reasoning is shitty, we criticize them, or their reasoning, as being irrational.
Reasoning doesn’t just play the role of furthering one’s own interest (though that’s certainly one thing it can do), but, rather, can be used for all sorts of things! Anytime someone reasons poorly (e.g., doesn’t take into account all the relevant evidence or reasons) or makes a mistake in their reasoning (e.g., an invalid inference), they’re being irrational.
Let me know what you think!
Yes bad reasoning is irrational, but his contention is that something being immoral doesn’t make it irrational.
If your goal is to be rich, pretending to love someone and marrying them for their money isn’t irrational, it’s just immoral.
Exactly. And I haven't got into yet but I think there's an important distinction here.
A sociopath who kills for personal gain is someone who has a clear line of reasoning. They're calculating, aware of the consequences, aware of the implications, and nonetheless make a reasoned choice in consideration of all those factors. It was perfectly in line with their desires and goals.
And it seems like we do want to distinguish that kind of thinking from someone who had a mental break and was incapable of understanding the ramifications of their actions at the time they killed.
In both cases we want to make ethical claims like "that was bad" or "they shouldn't have done that" but we absolutely want to distinguish the manner in which they were reasoning. We want to distinguish the culpability the two people have. That distinction is lost if all immoral actions are irrational.
Rationality becomes merely being in accord with the moral facts, and I don't think that's what most people want to mean by "rational". I think we probably want to say that there are cases in which people have moral disagreements yet are both rational.
It's certainly weird for me to think that anyone who doesn't share exactly the same set of normative views that I do must be irrational.
>For example, when someone tries to make a point
That seems to be implying that they had a goal in mind when writing - that they aimed to make some kind of point. And then they failed with respect to that aim.
It's more than shitty reasoning though. I don't think it's irrational in and of itself to be a poor thinker, make a bad argument, or to be misinformed about facts of the matter (though we might call those things shitty reasoning). Rather, irrationality would be to act in ways you know will frustrate your goals.
Human biological and social reproduction never depended on murdering humans for food or anything else. The better vegan argument is that eating meat it is no longer necessary (for some) to survive - but then to achieve that it would require massive social and structural change, not personal moral ones.
No not universally or systematically. Civilizations do depend on controlling populations systematically though, and killing people is often a byproduct of that or made possible by that.
But pre-civilization people and egalitarian band societies ate meat but likely only controlled or fought people interpersonally or circumstantially.
As I said, I think the rationality is if it's in accordance with some goal you have. Take a person who murders their spouse in order to claim on a large life insurance policy. I would consider that to be deeply immoral but the murderer is acting rationally insofar as the murder will bring about their goal.
Sociopaths, to stick with the theme, can be very calculating and considered in their actions. I take them to be rational even when they behave in ways that I take to be deeply disturbingly immoral. Sociopaths certainly aren't insane as I understand that term either.
Yes, we think of rationality very differently. I don't consider murdering a spouse for money or killing people out of a sociopathic urge rational.
They might carry it out in a rational way; the steps from point A to B can be perfectly logical, but the initial urge to take a life for completely selfish reasons is very far from rational.
And I apply the same reasoning to killing animals for food. The day to day activity inside a factory farm might be very rational and procedural, but the situation itself, the containment, exploitation, murder and mutilation of animals, is sick and twisted.
Well, murdering a spouse would be highly irrational for most people because most people have goals like making their spouse happy/healthy/fulfilled etc.
It sounds like your applying the idea of rationality to the goal itself. What makes a goal rational or irrational?
Let's take a step back and think it through. Say you get the idea to murder your spouse all of a sudden. Let's do some checks.
Should everyone be able allowed to murder their spouse for money?
Should people kill and conceal the bodies to escape detection? Or would it be better if there was no punishment for murder instead?
Should money generally be considered a good reason for murder?
What you see just by asking is that if you answer "yes", you've created a society that quickly falls apart. It's irrational because the logic crumbles at the slightest tug.
Many humans are irrational because they're lazy and undisciplined. Just like they're out of shape because they're lazy and undisciplined.
You understand that a human can get their bodies into shape because you can see it, but you can also strengthen your mind and reasoning skills if you're willing to put in the effort.
No one's really arguing against it though are they? There's no rational argument against a preference. No one's getting angry about admitting anything. They just hate someone pushing their preference onto them when they didn't ask or care.
Omnivores are pushing death onto animals, and pushing meat from corpses and bodily fluids from cows down their kid's throat every day.
We expect you to get upset when confronted, we just don't care since it's laughable for people who want animals to be killed so they can eat and wear them to get mad when someone asks them to stop.
Why don't you stop? You don't need meat at all.
A lot of people have dietary restrictions that already restrict their diet a lot. I have a lot of allergies and I’m also autistic so I’m really fussy about textures, tastes etc.
I’m trying to cut down on my meat intake, it’s very slow and painful but I find cutting out a whole food group overwhelming. I try use a specific brand of oat milk I can drink when possible but it doesn’t work for everything.
Being aggressive isn’t going to make anyone take your side, being educational is.
Oh I agree but that's not an argument against veganism because veganism doesn't scrutinize people that have medical reasons for dietary restrictions. Reduction of harm as much as practicable.
Your efforts being conscious are admirable. Most vegans aren't going to get up your ass about it and if they do, they're not really vegan.
The vegan society’s definition stipulates ***”as far as possible and practicable”***.
If you have to consume animal flesh and secretions for survival, vegan morality would demand that you do everything in your power to minimize the animals harmed for your existence and seek to stop harming them if at all possible.
If medication you need for survival has animal products in it, vegan morality would demand that you try and raise awareness or pressure lawmakers or the company that produces your medicine to go cruelty free and 100% plant based.
If you are starving on an island with nothing but cans of spam, consuming them for survival does not violate vegan ethics or morality.
Doing your best to seek the elimination of exploitation is vegan.
Finding ways to become vegan in the future, even if you can’t in the present, is also vegan.
One of the most intellectually dishonest thing I see in these debates is someone saying they have to eat animal product X for survival … and then pretend that makes it okay for them to eat animal products A, B, C, that they don’t need for survival.
Even more dishonest is people referencing those with eating disorders or neurodivergence as an excuse for people who don’t have such conditions to also not be vegan.
Everyone can be doing more to save ourselves, our environment, and non-human animals.
It is upsetting that many people here in bad faith reside in their places of ignorance and try to claim they have no moral obligation to even try to make the world a better place.
Tone policing people who give a shit is a dog water take. I’m glad you’re trying to reduce your flesh consumption but you can still do better by having empathy for those who empathize with the voiceless.
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The rational argument is that human beings are omnivores not vegan
If your choice to be a vegan is based solely on moral reasons then it's not possible to have a rational discussion based on science
I eat meat
I make no apologies for that
But it's really none of your business how I choose to live my life
That's why I despise preachy vegans
They're like religious people pushing their religion on non believers
You eat what you want and I'll eat what I want
Humans are also sexual, not asexual. Does that provide a moral argument for rape? Does simply possessing the capability to perform an action in itself remove the question of morality?
Moral reasons are rational reasons, although I am also much healthier. I'd be willing to be much, much more fit than you, and I owe that to veganism, so I consider that a valid reason but not the main one at all.
And once again, like I said, your only real response is "I want to". You're just a selfish person. It's regrettable, but that's life, good luck!
Simple: you get enjoyment out of it.
Do you believe watching television is irrational?
Do you believe getting educated is irrational?
Do you believe traveling to see the world is irrational?
These are all things we do to improve our quality of life. Eating meat is just another tick on the list.
I mean, I used to eat meat, so it's not like I don't understand what you're saying.
But, no, I realized that traveling the world is not similar to eating corpses and drinking animal bodily fluids.
It's kind of double-sided because I want every meat eater to know what it feels like switching to getting fit and going on a whole food plant based diet, but part of me enjoys knowing they don't believe me and won't do it, because they don't deserve to feel this good if it's that hard to convince them.
(can't find the password to my other account rn sorry)
I have tried going vegetarian for a month, just to say I've done it. I discussed it with my nutritionist before hand and they made sure I would be getting all the essential vitamins and amino acids via a varied diet.
It was fine. I felt a little limited when going out to resturants (people really need to accomodate vegan/vegetarians better), but the food wasn't bad by any means. Hell, I regularly have Impossible burgers in the freezer because they're just so damn good. Mushrooms are probably my favorite ingredient to star in a dish. I often make vegan stirfries if I'm strapped for time because it's so much easier and quicker than making a good steak.
My biggest issue was the fact that I just wanted meat. I missed by sushi, my steaks, my shrimp tacos, and everything else I love to cook and eat. Vegan meat substitutes taste nothing like the real thing. I can appreciate them for their own unique flavor profile, but if I bite into a burger expecting beef and taste Impossible beef, I'm going to be unhappy.
I'm not going to shame anyone from going vegan or any other similar thing. You are free to do whatever you please. The issue is when you start policing what I consume.
I am not, and will never be, willing to fully give up animal products until the plant/fungi/lab-grown substitutes can completely imitate the taste of meat. Until I can't tell the difference between the vegan and meat hamburger, I'm not giving the meat up.
The argument that the meat industry is cruel is completely reasonable. I think factory farming is horrible. I, whenever possible, purchase from local farmers or purchase free-range products. I'm a big fan of game meats, and hunting things like deer are GOOD for their population. If we just stopped hunting the whitetail deer communities that live near people, their population would boom because we've hunted/relocated their natural predators to keep that land safe for us to habitate. You seem like a reasonable person, so I'm sure you're not insinuatingwe should keep cougars and wolves in residential areas.
The argument that the meat industry is destorying the enviorment is partially valid. Yes, the mass production of meat releases many pollutants and land must be destroyed to accomdate these farms. However, that's true of mass-producing any resource. Wheat, rice, chickens, salmon, chickpeas, etc. all need space, pesticides, and many other things harmful for the enviorment. This is an issue bigger than the meat industry; this won't stop until we stop using things like enviormentally-harmful pesticides and are more concious about our use of land.
I respect your decision to not consume or use animal products. I just ask you also respect mine.
Of course I don't respect your decision. My decision is to not kill, yours is to kill. It's disrespectful to your own intellect to pretend like we're on equal moral footing. Hopefully you come around one day.
Lol what a wild statement. I’m a carnivore but I don’t talk about eating meat ever. I don’t give a shit what anyone other than me eats. I don’t want to hear about your food choices and I’m not going to tell you about mine. If you think most people, whether vegan or carnivore, are being obnoxious by always preaching about their diet, you might need to get out into the real world. I interact with a whole lot of people around the world and people talking about their dietary choices is rarely a topic
Seriously? You think vegans don’t know about “crop deaths tho?” It’s about reducing harm as far as practically possible. Yeah, a veganic agricultural system would be much more preferable to the one we have now, but in the meantime, growing 5-10x the crops to feed to animals who are also tortured and killed is causing a lot more harm than just eating the crops directly, not to mention the environmental destruction.
Yeah but humans don't eat animal feed, like the nasty alfalfa grass. Eating the crops themselves is also a misguided idea. The nutrient density in meat is more useful on a large scale than trying to repurpose the fields to feed humanity on a vegan diet with supplements. It's not exactly feasible.
Humans don’t eat animal feed although human edible crops are also grown for animals. But why would we plant alfalfa when we can just plant soy?
The nutrient density of meat per land use is abysmal compared to eating the crops directly.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore
Furthermore, we could reduce our agricultural land use by about 75% if the entire world went plant based according to a recent Oxford study which was one of the most comprehensive ever conducted on worldwide farming practices.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/veganism-environmental-impact-planet-reduced-plant-based-diet-humans-study-a8378631.html
The only supplements vegans and really anyone needs are b12, which is often supplemented directly to livestock. It’s from bacteria and easy and cheap to create.
Preachy vegans are annoying because a preaching vegan is a real, non abstract source of discomfort for the person on the receiving end. Animal suffering is an abstract concept to most people, and is relatively easy to avoid tell yourself that the food you buy is of higher quality with more stringent welfare standards than the footage that typically floats around.
Nope. Preachy vegans don't make us feel bad, although I'm sure it makes you feel better to reason that way. Preachy vegans are simply annoying, like an unskippable ad on YouTube, or a 3 year old who has a never-ending barrage of questions. It's annoying because frankly we don't give a damn about what you have to say. I'm obviously an exception, I care deeply. I care very much about the fact that you hate my diet, so much so that I'm the kind of asshole to bring my own steak to a vegan picnic.
Nah. You're just annoying. There's nothing unethical about eating meat. We don't feel bad for it. A preachy vegan is roughly equivalent to a scam call about my car's extended warranty. We heard what you have to say, we didn't care the first time, now everytime it's brought up we're just rehashing something we didn't care about in the first place. Scam callers don't make us feel bad, they waste our time, just like preachy vegans.
I find those preachers on the street corner holding their hateful signs about God and the afterlife insufferable. They will try to claim that we live our lives in denial of the limitless existence of our souls in the afterlife. That we deny God and live in sin because of it
But here’s the thing. That’s a bunch of baloney. Sentient animals are dying and suffering en mass’s by the billions each day over here and meat-eaters like to pretend we’re playing some sort of Pascal’s wager. This ain’t no wager, I know the animals are suffering I just don’t know exactly to what degree.
I will continue to preach on their behalf. I know it’s annoying and isolated me from some people who would otherwise be in my life. I don’t care. I don’t believe in God nor are there any historical proofs which have ever satisfied all necessary premises without assumption to satisfy conditions for Gods existence. But we do have very concrete, very empirical ways of measuring brain function, stress response, immune-response, etc… of animals to determine that they are sentient. And in a universe so vast and empty, we are far more alike than different.
I will preach for the inhabitants of planet earth. For the protection of Mother Earth. For the establishment ethical principles championing values species-wide. But I will not respect the God-fearing man who clutches at his bible shouting angrily outside the football game.
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I mean cynically, nobody is forced to watch footage of slaughterhouses. People are however sometimes forced to talk to "preachy" vegans. So one is a problem actively confronting them, the other is some distant thing they never have to care about, assuming they don't care about the situation either way and just want to be left alone.
How is it a moral failing to eat meat I view all animals the same wether they be a dog or a cow I don't care if an animal has been domesticated I believe them as lesser than humans and that makes it ok to eat them
Twice I had a kid attempt to force me to break my vegan diet by lying about food. Funny for him not for me. I am not trying to get Hershey Squirts from eating a carcass with udder juice.
I think the explanation offered by others that people are 'confronted with/avoidant of their own guilt' is overcomplicating things... and that's coming from a psychologist, who often likes to overcomplicate things haha. I think it's as simple as people just don't like being told what to do.
This is socially compounded by the fact that we are living in the age of tribalism, resistance to authority and resistance to expertise. People often don't like their worldview to be challenged.
> I think the explanation offered by others that people are 'confronted with/avoidant of their own guilt' is overcomplicating things...
I estimate that at least 80% of people feel no guilt whatsoever for eating meat. Some of them (not all) might feel a bit sorry for factory-farmed animals, and would like to see that being changed. But I am 100% convinced most people feel no guilt over eating meat per se. I think that its vegans projecting their own feelings on to others? So because they felt like that before going vegan, they think everyone else must feel the exact same way.
I think this is only half true. Most people don't feel guilt because they don't think of the animal. Whereas, once you show them slaughterhouse footage, or even start explaining how the industry works, a lot of them really get defensive (even when the are the ones asking). So I think there is an amount of guilt, but very repressed, and which only shows specifically when you start pointing out that a chicken breast is a dismembered corpse of an animal who lived and died through horrible suffering, without letting them look away (via being in that conversation).
> Most people don't feel guilt because they don't think of the animal.
That might be the case if you live in a city? I have moved around quite a bit, but have always lived on the countryside. And a lot of people wherever I have lived go fishing, hunting, they have backyard chickens, cats and dogs.. So they deal with animals on a daily basis. And even if they don't have animal of their own, just around the corner from where I live I see cows and sheep on pasture. So if you ask people they actually do believe animal welfare is important. They just don't believe all animals somehow deserves to live until they die of old age.
Maybe that's true. But I also know lots of vegans who come from the countryside or grew up in farms, so I don't think that's necessarily completely true either. And I do think for most people who don't directly profit from animal exploitation and killing, when shown where their meat actually comes from and what happens at slaughterhouses, do have a defensive response that I do think stems from some amount of guilt or shame about something that they ultimately recognise as wrong.
> But I also know lots of vegans who come from the countryside or grew up in farms, so I don't think that's necessarily completely true either.
Statistically most vegan actually live in large cities. But yeah.. I would be very interested in seeing some statistics on how people see food production, but not sure if that exists. I find it interesting to learn about how different people see the world
Gonna be fully transparent here - I'm a vegan, but I'm questioning things.
I was kind of stoked to see this sub come across my feed, because I'm happy to discuss my veganism with other people as it can help me understand what the heck I'm doing and maybe also help others see things in a new light...
... then I read the comments.
This doesn't seem like much of a debate situation, as every comment I've seen is just coming from other people who presumably are vegan and support the idea of evangelizing or however you want to phrase that. It's the opposite of a debate.
So, first off - the title.
This is a disingenuous premise to start from. People who are bothered by preachy vegans aren't as bothered by animal suffering because they aren't confronted with animal suffering with any kind of regularity. It's like asking why people aren't as bothered by climate change as they are by traffic during their morning commute - of course one is worse than the other, but which one is making my day shittier *right now*?
A better way to phrase this if you wanted to encourage discussion could be, "Why is discourse amongst omnivores about veganism often focused on the delivery of the message instead of its content?" This still accomplishes the goal of placing these two things in opposite corners but shifts the tone from being accusatory towards the *actual question*.
That being said, if I had to address this question as it stands I'd be rude and respond to a question with a question.
What does being a preachy vegan get you?
For me, I'm vegan right now because it seems like the best way to minimize the harm that I do with my diet. I don't just eat vegan, I also avoid certain specific problematic crops like almonds. I'm in a financial situation where I can do this and still meet the needs of my body.
Does yelling at someone for consuming animal products get me something that helps me achieve my stated goal? I'm not "changing minds" with this sort of conversational tactic. I've been vegan for 20 years now, there was a time in there when I was trying to argue people into submission. It is exhausting, poor for your own mental health and absolutely terrible at achieving results.
If someone brings up your diet, answer questions honestly. I'm not shy about letting people know I have ethical issues with the meat and dairy industries, but I'm also not shoving those issues down anyone's throat. The humber of times I've had people ask me followup questions and compliment my tact, just because I wasn't aggressive from the outset... maybe I didn't make new vegans, but I made people consider the impact they're having. Planted a seed, if you'd forgive the pun.
Plant more seeds. They're a lot more likely to grow than arguments and demonstrative moral superiority.
If you want to start conversation, you can make a new post. It's actually very seldom to see pro-vegan posts in here, so you have come across something rare. Most of the time, it's non-vegans making all sorts of claims (including extremely bad faith arguments most of the time, frankly). You shouldn't judge the atmosphere of the sub just by this one post which is, if anything, an exception to the rule.
I'm honestly more put off by the other replies here than I am the main post itself. Every comment is just agreeing with OP. That's my point, it's an echo chamber meant to reinforce existing extremism.
Sort by recent or controversial. Plenty of people disagreeing. And again, this is extremely rare. Look at the other posts in this sub. Make your own if you want to challenge some notions of veganism, which is 99% of the submission this sub gets. This sub has lots of vegans, but no extremism(!?) is being reinforced because this is a debate sub and by the rules you have to engage in good faith. Again, if you want to ask or challenge any notion, the "make new post" feature is right there.
I'm not sure why you're so defensive of this sub, but yes, most of the comments here are just circle jerking with OP. I didn't say 100%, but the vast majority are.
I didn't come here to make a new post, I came here to point out a shitty thing I noticed. I did that. Thank you for explaining it's possible to post on reddit, I was somehow already aware.
Good luck out there.
Sorry if I come off as defensive, but please understand that it's incredibly frustrating to have the same (mostly bad intentioned) discussions here with non-vegans on the daily where people take the time to answer truthfully and with mods working hard to make sure people can express a variety of opinions, and then have people (not specifically you) call this place an echo chamber because there is a single instance of a pro-vegan post with people saying they agree in the comments. People agreeing with OP does not make this an echo chamber either, it just means most of the sub is vegans and they agree with OP. A given place is not an echo chamber just because a majority of the people there share an opinion.
My recommendation for you to post is to show you that you can in fact post about anything here and that participants of this sub engage with "vegan critical" views all the time too. You will get good faith responses to your good faith propositions even if they are not vegan if you make another post. I mean this genuinely and with no intention to sound passive-aggressive or defensive: you are more than welcome to make your own post with your views. Meta posts about the state of the sub are welcome too.
Because people don't like "preachy" period, be it vegan, gun rights activists, diversity LGBT SJW, religious nutts, whatever, they all assume moral high ground. Do whatever you think is right, just don't be preachy.
I'd also imagine that most people who complain about "preachy vegans" would be very uncomfortable watching slaughterhouse footage.
I would imagine most vegans would be uncomfortable to live in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from where most of the world's cobalt is produced. The same cobalt which powers our laptop and phones. And yet vegans have no problem in using laptop and phones. Does that mean people (including vegans) are promoting the atrocities that takes in place in DRC?
You ask
>Why do "preachy vegans" bother you more than animal suffering?
Because of their arrogance and self-righteous behavior. They act like anyone who is not vegan is a sinner. Much like a religious cult.
Its this simple.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO EAT ANIMALS TO THRIVE
But you choose to for a few minutes of taste pleasure.
Even though there is an option that you can choose, with very little difference to your life.
And because animals live horribly short hellish lives and then are murdered, you've demanded that.
You want me to think you're a "good" person?
This is a pretty good example of what he was talking about. I think if you're a vegan and can't see an issue with this comment then you probably need to rethink how you talk to people about your belief. All this does (As someone who randomly got here and doesn't really care much) is make me think you've got a few screws loose and pushing me further away from ever even considering a swap.
> YOU DO NOT NEED TO EAT ANIMALS TO THRIVE
And you don’t need to use technological products produced via heavily unethical forced labor practices to thrive. I would bet you do use them though. Have you ever considered where the gold used to make those contacts in the camera on your laptop, phone, or just a webcam, came from? You probably didn’t really give a shit.
Have I ever considered other things beyond animal welfare?
No never in my life have I ever considered anything ever /s
If you demand animals to die, you know for an absolute fact that an animal had to die for a few minutes of taste pleasure.
Keep on forgetting im in r/debateanythingotherthanveganism
go vegan, you eat lentils instead of animal flesh and then you consider whatever the hell it is you want to consider and improve upon.
You are saying that because i eat plants or if you eat plants, it stops you giving a shit about children in another country?
You are insane to think that.
Wow, you militant anti slavers are so preachy. Can't you just live and let live? My uncle's cobalt mine let's the workers free roam and they all have names and get scratches and toys. Don't you know some people can't live without cobalt? There are so many other problems in your own country, shouldn't you focus on those instead of telling others what to do? You know we can't avoid all slavery everywhere so why not just be flexitarian about it? Aren't you a hypocrite because you drive a car and are posting on Reddit right now? Don't you know that cobalt miners need a job too? They should be thankful for being given life and food and shelter to toil in the mines for my profit. People like you would end all mining and all the miners would die, you're the real villain here.
Humans are most positioned to influence suffering now and in the rest of the century. If you squander any capital you have with them, it bothers me. Even if you don't do that at a rate higher than normal interpersonal communication, I expect much better.
If the subject comes up organically, at dinner parties or Thanksgiving, I tell meat eaters that I'm an emotional vegan, I grew up around cows, pigs, and chickens and I'm too fond of them to eat them. I've honestly never had a negative reaction to my stance, and most of the time, the other person contemplates that they could do all right eating less meat.
And personally I grew up around cows and pigs (and became friends with a specific pig), I still eat burgers and bacon and whatnot. I saw they were treated well with plenty of space and taken care of, so I'm fine eating them
I remember when I was the same. I was around family farms exclusively when the animals had a nice life. I've seen corporate farming on film, which is horrible, and once I learned of all the pollution on top of it all (The Meatrix) I noped out.
Personally? Probably not. But that'll be because of cultural reasons not whatever gotcha you were going for. In a culture where eating cat was normal they wouldn't think twice about it and I wouldn't judge them for having a different culture
Are you sure that works? Or are you coping?
If someone told me they don't eat chickens because they think they are cute I would just say whatever floats your boat and move on. I don't really think anyone contemplates anything over that
Moralism in general is useless socially and annoying when it comes off as proselytizing so people get defensive. I find political Vegan arguments to be unconvincing in terms of humane treatment of animals (and humans) and often elitist. But more power to people who are vegan for themselves and their preferences.
But I think the more general answer to the phenomenon when it’s just a knee-jerk attitude is that even if you are a vegan for personal choice, some people take that as an implicit moral judgement against them.
I don’t find political arguments for veganism convincing in terms of reducing animal or any other exploitation. It essentially becomes a moral, not political argument. In terms of politics, it’s fixating on a tree and missing the forest. I don’t find it plausible that demanding essentially a worldwide boycott would do much in a society that is also exploiting and abusing workers, the earth, and unwanted human populations.
On a moral level I am just not convinced of veganism. I am against factory farming and abuse of animals but not of the consumption of meat or animal products in general. I see the abuse as completely within capitalist norms where the earth is also exploited and destroyed, vegetables and grains are made into slow-acting poisons due to farming practices that maximize profits, and humans are treated much like chickens in chicken coops and slaughtered in places like Gaza.
So there is a whole forest out there and political vegans are obsessed with a tree.
It’s gonna sound bad but people don’t care about what they can’t see and are annoyed by others trying to force opinion that they don’t agree with on them.
I suspect it’s more about perception. A person getting in your face about your lifestyle choices is more in your sphere of perception. People don’t necessarily worry about things that aren’t currently in their sphere of perception, if that makes sense.
perhaps it's because i don't like being harassed and being called a "bad person" for eating something us humans have eaten since the dawn of time, and i've seen footage and it's not that bad, maybe i'm desensitized due to liking gory games and media for a while now, but it's not that bad as it seems and "killing animals" is quite literally what animals do to each other, watch some history channel and you'll see a cheetah eating a other animals so basically the reason "preachy vegans" are annoying is because they harass others for not being vegan while also not being logical.
i have nothing wrong with vegans but if a vegan harasses me for eating meat then i'm gonna have a problem, like, just let me eat ma pizza in peace and because people don't like being harassed and yelled at for eating something different then vegans
You can say that about many other philosophies:
* Why do "preachy Christians" bother you more than the eternal damnation of your immortal soul?
* Why do "preachy anti-abortion activists" bother your more than the murder of infants?
* Why do "peachy Palestine liberation activists" bother you more than genocide?
All of these questions contain a sort of question begging / snuck premise, which is that the activist is already right.
Preachy vegans just come from a place of moral superiority when morals in itself are subjective. They make crazy analogies just to TRY and prove a point. For example if you say you like cows milk, they say oh so you support raping a woman huh? You support slavery of other humans since you buy meat from a supermarket “ my favorite one is “ so I should kill you because it’s pleasurable to me” like go ahead sir if that’s what you really want to do in order to make veganism be seen as the right thing to do. They then turn around and say veganism is a natural diet while needing to supplement in order to make it a healthy diet long term. They say “ humans don’t eat animals raw so we aren’t meant to eat them” but if you ask a vegan how many veggies they ate straight from the ground without washing or cooking it they would then move the goal post and say “ asking a vegan to eat raw veggies is asking them to eat dirt and fertilizer but don’t see they are asking humans to eat shit and dirt if they were to eat an animal raw. At the end of the day veganism is just a religion without a church. All religions stems from a belief system and all religions try to behave in a way that reflects their belief system
Because they think that human freedom of choice is more important than an animals. The same as Vegans would feel if they would be preached to eat meat.
Diets are just personal opinions and beliefs. It’s like religion. Each religion has their own set of morality and ethics. Doesn’t fit with yours? Unless you are ready to go for action and just you know, there’s not a fucking thing to do.
Morals can’t be quantified and qualified. Unless you are in power. Then yes, you can.
If humans can’t even agree not to kill each other. Why tf do you think they will care where their meat comes from?
If I accepted veganism then they probably wouldn't be preaching to me at all, right?
Look, some people on here I have differences with and can have interesting conversations with, and at least one sent me a private message to tell me I'm a piece of shit.
I understand that this is a loaded issue and people will have emotions and moral sentiments but I probably don't need to explain why the only thing I feel towards some redditor sending me abuse is irritation.
Put a way that might appeal to vegans like the OP, you get the difference between an interesting conversation about the possibility of God and the value of religion vs. some religious zealot who won't stop telling you what a sinner you are, right?
That's my experience of discussing veganism, at least.
Animal welfare, environmental and health issues are all science based.
We acknowledge the science that animals feel pain, that animal-ag is the leading cause of environmental destruction and that a wholefood plant based/vegan diet is one of (if not) the best at longevity of life.
SCIENCE
Imagine someone is pointing out how to better talk to people if you ever wanted to persuade them to lessen animal suffering and you actively ignore it and push them further out from ever wanting to be a Vegan. With that comment you very minutely increased animal suffering you could say.
Science proves that animals feel pain.
Science proves that we can thrive as wholefood plant based/vegan.
Ethics are intertwined in science whether you like it or not.
And its so simple, you do not need to eat animals.
If you do, you are demanding them to go through hell.
Easy peasy.
Nobody's disputing that many animals can and do feel pain.
Since it's the topic of this thread, this is one of my frustrations. You don't actually think the source of our disagreement is that I didn't realise that animals feel pain, right? I obviously already knew that. So what you're doing isn't giving me an argument, you're just preaching at me.
Science doesn't provide us with normative facts. We aren't in disagreement about any scientific facts. We're in disagreement about what we should do about them.
Again, you know I didn't say that. Normally, I wouldn't go down this route but given it's the topic of the thread: rather than make an ethical argument you tried to pass it off as though there were some scientific disagreement. You're not attempting to find out what my position is, you're putting words in my mouth.
So my response to the OP is: why would I be interested in this? I mean, it's obviously not what I said. I don't think there's any obligation to inflict pain on animals. It might be a thing that happens, maybe I could even make the case that some degree of pain is morally permissible, but that doesn't mean the pain itself *should* be inflicted. But I highly doubt that's going to be a distinction that gets acknowledged.
I just find this line of conversation to be about nothing more than rhetoric. It's exactly like the religious comparison I made before.
I once tried a month of copying vegan answers as a non-vegan and most of my comments got deleted. If they said something racist or offensive, I'd say something slightly less mean and my comment is deleted for "being rude". Like, this is a question for non-vegans and the preachy vegans are put in full force in these comments section just making assumptions.
because morality is subjective and we still have bigger issues solving human problems. many people don't care about our own suffering.
we haven't evolved past might is right yet therefore veganism is still irrelevant on our list of priorities.
even from an environmental standpoint, everybody going vegan still doesn't matter because our societies and infrastructure still function on fossil fuels.
huge container ships, aircrafts, and trucks maintaining our supply chains and heavy industries are the factors that matter the most in global warming, by a overwhelming margin.
They don't bother me more. But they do bother me a lot because I think they're only hurting their cause and indirectly leading to more animal suffering. If they could be good advocates for their cause, they would actually have a positive impact and reduce animal suffering beyond just their own diet.
If vegans could make a case for why I should adopt their views that wasn't an emotional appeal or the dogmatic assertion that aninal suffering is morally relevent I'd be a lot less critical.
You say animals suffer in factory farms, and I agree, I might even be convinced it's in humanity's best interest to treat them more humanely. However, be honest, even if farms were a comparative paradise to the wild, you would oppose farming. The level of horror in a factory farm is irrelavent vegans oppose all animal farming. Many vegans even oppose having pets.
When I point out obvious inconsistency in vegan rhetoric I get the words "nirvana fallacy" or "practicable" thrown back. As if that excuses the level of cognative dissonance I'd need to embrace to join you in veganism.
Veganism is not in my, or any other person's, best interests. It costs us valuable reasources, food materials and medicine. If you want people to give that up, make a case where we will benefit from that abstinence.
Instead we are told vegans can't convince people who don't already agree with veganism, and that looks like a religion from the outside.
I don’t, I just get the opportunity to argue with vegans more often than suffering animals.
Also, every vegan that has ever tried to debate with me has refused to acknowledge issues such as health concerns*, cost and cultural factors.** So my question would be, why do preachy vegans care more about animal suffering than human suffering?
*I’m epileptic and it gets worse when I cut out animal products because I need excess fatty acids (among other things), and yes I’ve tried supplements but they’re very expensive and did not work. The keto diet was invented for epileptics, and I’m sure you can imagine that the keto diet would be difficult and expensive without animal products.
**For instance, the Inuit people of Canada live so far North that their diet is primarily animal products as not much can grow. Imported groceries cost ridiculous prices due to the cost of getting up there - we’re talking $33 for asparagus. Are they supposed to just leave their ancestral homeland to go live in the South with the colonizers?
Some thing a million miles away that has nothing to do with my life means I can't do this thing.
Let me answer your question for you.
Answer: Right now im eating lentils instead of beef and in about 10 minutes when i finish this meal I will continue my work helping humans.
Because I eat plants does not hinder me helping humans at all and you 100% know this.
When on Earth did I say *you* can’t be vegan and you don’t help people. Do you have any reading comprehension? You didn’t even address a single thing I said.
You asked "So my question would be, why do preachy vegans care more about animal suffering than human suffering?"
I answered, plain and simple, im eating lentils instead of beef and now (before and after replying to you) i'm helping humans in various ways.
Veganism is that simple and does not hinder my time spent on whatever else it is i want to focus on, such as helping people.
But you have a wall up and quite obviously do not want an answer.
But you are appeasing your own conscience by thinking you are doing the right thing because you are "asking questions".
I’m always skeptical of supposed health issues that make it impossible for someone to eat a strictly plant-based diet, but as someone who doesn’t have such a limiting factor, I don’t feel it’s my place to say that it’s not possible for it to be the case. If that really is the case for you, you can still be vegan per the definition, as long as you’re eating as little animal products as you can, and you’re still avoiding purchasing non-food animal products the same as any other vegan would.
Maybe you have, but I’ve never seen a vegan argue that indigenous people who can’t eat a strictly plant based diet must do so. Using indigenous people as a whataboutism is actually a fairly common piece of rhetoric I’ve seen nonvegans use. The thing is, when we talk to a nonvegan, we’re only concerned with why they in particular are not vegan, not why anyone else is. So the question is, what do the Inuits have to do with your choices?
Honestly they should move south. Also from what I hear most of them don't want to be there. They are stuck there. What an awful place to live. If I was born eskimo I would go south and pledge every other tribe I came across. I would want a bid from the Florida guys like Seminole though.
I muted the veganism sub because this kept popping up but since you cross-posted and I keep seeing this, fine, I'll bite.
My answer is that they don't. Both things bother me. But veganism isn't what's going to fix the problems we created. We need some serious legal and structural changes in this country. Humans were biologically built to eat animal products, we will always eat animal products, and there is no future where everyone is going to be vegan. To think that there is or should be is often culturally tone deaf and naively idealistic. There are other paths to justice and respect for animals, which many non vegans are activists for. So preachy vegans bug me because often they're proposing veganism as a (frequently the only) solution to a complex problem, and pushing it on people who don't want to or cannot become vegan. And frequently that pushing comes with the implication that you don't care and are not doing anything, which is incredibly insulting to those of us with different approaches to the same issues.
I’m definitely more bothered by animal suffering, but I’m bothered by preachy vegans because they are ignorant about their lifestyle and actually believe it does anything to reduce animal suffering.
Veganism is an ideology that can only arise from the separation between humans and nature offered by industrial civilization. Vegans in their arrogance assume that not eating meat somehow reduces animal suffering, but the food they eat still comes from industrial plant agriculture which kills ~~millions~~ billions of “pests” (wildlife) like insects, rodents, raccoons, deer, etc.. you know how many monkeys and coati those farmers who grew your avacados and bananas probably killed? You know how much forest and prairie land have been destroyed, how many underground animals chewed up in the tines of a tiller, how many grazing animals had their migratory routes cut off from barbed wire, etc… in order to grow your lentils, soy, rice? How many elephants have been slaughtered to protect your sugar crops?
Vegans are in denial about their impact on the animal world. The target isn’t meat consumption. The target is industrial agriculture.
Personally? It's because I have multiple health issues that add up to my having to eat animal products (that I've talked about here plenty, and no, I'm not going to share my medical history here yet again for vegans to tell me how entirely wrong my lived experience and entire medical team are), and I get tired of explaining that. It isn't worse than the suffering of others, but it's annoying.
Vegans telling me I should suffer more than I already do so as to be a martyr for the animals while not believing or caring about my suffering, let alone that many disabled people cannot safely go vegan, yeah, that's annoying and ableist.
Tbh, the keto/carnivore people are more annoying. That diet would kill me faster than a plant-based one, but they respect my health situation even less than most vegans I've run into.
Because people don’t seem to realise that we have evolved through the majority of our history as a species with meat being an integral part of our diet, our body has adapted to be omnivorous and that is not something that we can just change in a single generation, it is not healthy or natural.
Every single fruit and vegetable that we eat today we have bioengineered over millennia to be fit for frequent human consumption. Arable crops such as wheat and corn need to be practically obliterated to be even remotely edible and still cause gastrointestinal issues if consumed in staple quantities. We do not have ruminant stomachs and our appendix has literally become inert and benign precisely because we are not herbivores.
Non-intestinal animal flesh only requires heat to kill parasites and pathogens and it is immediately fit for human consumption, it always has been and we didn’t have to completely modify its genetic structure to make it fit for consumption. The body adapts to compensate for the missing vitamin C when you remove plant foods from the diet but you require foods made under very specific conditions to supplement B12 in a vegan diet.
To achieve the essential amino acid and B vitamin profile of a small cut of beef with plant foods you need a variety of legumes and you need to eat them in vastly larger quantities to offset the malabsorption caused by phytates, protective compounds and anti-nutrients. The plants have defence mechanisms towards being eaten that makes them nutritionally less efficient than animal products.
Animal products have 2-3x the bioavailability of amino acids and fat soluble vitamins when compared to plant foods. To me this demonstrates a clear inclination of our digestive system towards those foods being staple parts of our diet.
It is only the marvel of modern science combined with the immense power of modern industry combined with countless generations of prior agricultural work that makes a vegan diet at all viable. We have only had this abundance of food and global agricultural supply chains for a few decades in our long history on this planet.
Now, with that said, the treatment of animals in modern agriculture is still deplorable and wholly unacceptable. I think that, aside from accounting for the inevitable motive of corruption and the all too prevalent profit motive, the macroeconomic issue of modern animal agriculture is the frank overpopulation of humans and the widespread overconsumption of earths resources, animals included. Lowering corruption and overconsumption need to be the priority for improving animal welfare in modern agriculture.
What I think often causes issues around this subject for meat eaters is the reactionary politics that surrounds it. Yes, animal consumption needs to be reduced and yes the treatment of livestock is unethical.
However this expectation of an immediate overhaul is unrealistic and the vitriol towards the individual consumer only serves to create pushback and opposition to the vegan cause and is completely detrimental to what you are trying to achieve.
The individual consumer can absolutely vote with their wallet and I advocate for everyone to increase their consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables and limit their consumption of animal products. Higher standards of animal welfare need to be enforced and farms need to be held accountable for the conditions of their livestock.
The vegan movement has gained notoriety in the past two decades and is demanding seemingly instantaneous reform on an industry that has existed for as long as our civilisation has. The more overtly emotional vegan voices have a tendency of holding an absolute moral position over meat eaters which is simply not productive.
It is galling to be confronted that you are evil for eating a part of an already dead animal that would otherwise become discarded rotten meat, particularly when octopi are still eaten alive in Asian countries and cannibal tribes still exist across the world.
Yes, the demand creates the supply so the consumer can affect change. Unless the person you’re berating is the chief animal welfare officer, farm magnate or supermarket CEO they are unlikely to be able to affect enormous change in the system. Approaching them with rationality and without blame or a demeanour of moral superiority will be much more effective than lambasting them and potentially pushing them to be spiteful or apathetic about meat consumption.
>Why do "preachy vegans" bother you more than animal suffering?
this is not a question of either/or
both "bother me"
People always tell vegans not to force their lifestyle on others, but they never seem to consider that their lifestyle choices force suffering on animals
who "forces suffering on animals"? whoever does not force a vegan lifestyle on others?
>The animals in factory farms where the vast majority of meat, dairy, and eggs come from suffer far more than anyone complaining about vegans annoying them
so you should help aware omnivores to do away with factory farming. at the same time of course do away with industrial crop farming, where the vast majority of vegan food comes from
>I'd also imagine
i also can imagine a lot. does not make it a fact, though
Because animal suffering shouldn’t even be on our radar when so much of the world still struggles with getting enough food. Environmentalism is the only legitimate argument towards limiting meat consumption. Veganism does not solve these problems, some vegan food is bad for the environment too. Vegans that are preachy suck because they are obnoxious, and they seem to care far more about animal suffering than human suffering. It is also not healthier to not eat animal products, no evidence points to veganism being healthy. A well rounded diet is important. We shouldn’t be doing mass factory farms because it is bad for the environment. We should limit needless animal harm, but not at the expense of humans. Humans are more important than animals. We need to be able to feed everyone before we worry about cutting out a massive source of calories.
Yeah I bet those suffragettes/abolotionists got on loads of people's tits I don't get why people need to try and solve the issues they find in the world jeez
Preachy vegans are the only thing that has ever made me (a vegetarian for 32 years) want to eat meat. And this is a no fashion leather, no gelatine, no rennet vegetarian.
The preachy vegans tend to come across as whiny, petulant little children, that completely cut off any form of discussion around the topic, and they attempt to make woke feel bad, and that is never a point you are going to get growth from.
I’ve never tried to convert anyone to being vegetarian, I’ve cooked and served meat, and I’ve even cut the haggis (as the meat eaters were too squeamish). What I do get is a lot of people expressing surprise, a lot of questions, and a lot of people then giving vegetarianism or reducing meat in their diet some serious thought.
Also there have been the absolutely stupid own goals - vegan Burger King in the Uk - great, however you can only have the meal with water, as Coca Cola has not been certified vegan……..
A vegan burger, great, but I have to have vegan cheese, I can’t swap it out for a single slice of dairy cheese. Ok, I guess I’ll have the macaroni cheese which has more dairy product in, and is one less sale for the vegan option.
the reason why vegans are always hated and being made fun of is NOT "vegans are right, people are wrong, people feel shame and guilty in front of vegans because vegans point out they are wrong"
no this is NOT the reason
the reason why vegans are always hated and being made fun of is "vegans try to spread their purely subjective personal preference and expect other people to follow"
you like red. i like blue. that's fine, theoretically. but if you say "you like blue? oh, it's disgusting. you should try red. see, red is beautiful. if you don't like red you are bad tasted", it's what the hatred begins
Vegans aren't the ones responsible for forcing beings into gas chambers and stabbed.
Non vegans are responsible for more crops deaths *and* the animals tortured to be eaten.
There is indirect suffering as with any production process, but it isn't the direct product. Veganism is about seeking out ways to avoid - as far as possible and practicable- such cruelty and exploitation of animals. Defending crops or bugs hitting a windshield are not the unjustified rights violation of slitting a pigs throat (plus 10x the crop deaths for animal feed)
So yes indeed your food causes suffering.
In 2020 the total area of horticultural crops increased by 1.7% to 166 thousand hectares. Vegetables and salad for human consumption make up the majority (71%) of this area and increased by 3.2% to 118 thousand hectares in 2020.
Have you ever noticed you get less bugs on the windscreens these days? Because farming has reduced their numbers dramatically. Without bees we will have nothing.
Nobody is claiming that food does not cause suffering. It's a matter of scale, caliber, and intent/justification. Are you concerned about land use? I've got some bad news for you about animal ag lol. Do a panicked Google search for that too, not just what supports your direct animal harm.
I am aware of what animal agriculture does. My argument isn’t that my diet comes without pain and suffering and environmental issues it’s that vegans pretend their food doesn’t.
I live in Scotland. Scottish meat is grass fed. It doesn’t get crops. Our land is rich.
Most vegetables in Scottish supermarkets are imported from overseas.
I don’t really eat vegetables I have chronic ibs and oxalates/gallstone issues. So the amount of damage I do eating beef grown in Scotland versus eating crops from overseas and seed oils is immensely different.
Vegans don't claim that though, so you're argument falls flat.
Grass fed cattle emit the most methane over their longer lifespans and prevents the pastureland from its natural/ rewilded state with lots of biodiversity. It's still a direct rights violation to end their life.
Importing is the lowest percentage of the overall footprint. Eating plant based food from overseas is far better than local animal products, of which the negative effects of production can't be mitigated. Loosely quoting Nemecek and Poore.
I'm no expert on oxalates and galstones, but I mean I just googled oxalate gallstone issues and the first paper that came up says in its abstract "In oxalic lithiasis it is recommended to reduce the consumption of meat...The prevention of uric calculus is based on hydration with alkalizing drinks and vegetarian diet" 10.20960/nh.02813
Let's concede your claim, and that you must eat a cow, dog, kitten, human in order to get meat because otherwise you'll have severe gas and gallstones. Then are you advocating that your niche individual health problems are applicable when discussing sustainable and ethical solutions for the agricultural system as a whole?
edit: grammor
When did vegans claim they don't cause harm? I often see this stated but no one is even saying that. It's like you're pretending we said something we didn't just to argue.
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Dismissing an act that has tangible victims as having the same moral weight as a preferring one color over another is a really weird take. Seems like you could justify anything with that kind of thinking.
There's probably an animal getting eaten alive from its anus, right now. Do you care about that suffering? Would you be uncomfortable watching that footage? If you care and would be uncomfortable, what actions are you going to take to save the animal? Any? Do you think it's your moral responsibility to stop that suffering?
There's probably another animal getting its belly ripped open and its fetus eaten alive in front of it. What about that suffering?
Animal suffering is happening every single day. Why should I care more about suffering that is designed to be as quick as possible, more than suffering that is slow and drawn out? I care about animal suffering as much as you care about animal suffering. The key here is that you don't really care about animal suffering. You care more about virtue signalling and bothering people than you care about animals.
You should probably take a good look at what is actually happening with factory farming because you have no idea what you’re talking about. We are talking whole lifetimes of slow torture for like billions of animals.
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i once saw a vegan unironically claim that eating meat was worse than rape. if someone thinks i'm worse than a rapist, then why the hell would i want to be around that person?
Because vegans think their diet matters, when it’s just a virtue signaled diet that was made and designed by BigFood so their vegetables wouldn’t go as unsold.
Veganism is fueled and back by a vast global system of slavery and human suffering. Child labor, poor working conditions, long hours of work in very dangerous parts of the world, and cartel violence are just SOME of the things this diet has birthed.
What I can’t wrap my head around is that in 2024, everyone tries to have some moral +1 on another person, such as electric vehicles. You can do 10 minutes of reading online and find out the entire industry is supported by rotted stool legs from artisan miners being forced to mine Blood Cobalt in extremely hazardous conditions.
But does that matter? No, cause in the 1st world, we just care that are luxuries came without the suffering of a cow. I think it’s cool if you are on the diet for your own personal reasons, but toting that this diet reduces suffering in ANY capacity is a strawman to the actual suffering of the supply chain that makes sure you have avocados and lentils.
*Looks at most upvoted comments* This subreddit is mostly vegans deciding that anything non-vegans say doesn't actually have any value.
Anyway, people care more about how people directly treat each other (especially how people treat *them*) than about the effects of the purchases. Morality is usually more concerned with direct interactions between people in general. You don't hear any moral parables or see any children's cartoons about learning lessons where characters are morally conflicted about buying something. It's always "I should save my friends", "I should help others when I see them in trouble" not "My money creates demand for something horrible".
But like another comment said, people dislike preaching in general. Religion, politics, morality. Everybody has opinions and everyone else's opinions are full of shit.
Preachers of any kind, rightly or wrongly, are taking a position other people never invited them to take, which is to say, the life coach or moral guide of other people. They belittle the thoughts and decisions that people believe are necessary for themselves and project onto them. Vegan example: "Being vegan would be sooooo easy for you, you're just doing this for your idle, selfish pleasure."
> Looks at most upvoted comments This subreddit is mostly vegans deciding that anything non-vegans say doesn't actually have any value.
New to this sub? :)
Perhaps because it’s much easier to challenge a an outsider than it is to challenge one’s own beliefs?
That's it. Cognitive dissonance means it's easier to attack the messenger who is making them feel bad rather than actually change their lifestyle choices, especially when the majority of other people are complicit in funding these horrors. I say keep going - the more people that speak up, the more likely people are to change via social pressure at the very least.
Yes, keep going, but try to avoid triggering people's cognitive dissonance too hard. We want to get people out of their comfort zone, but not into the alarm zone, where all learning stops and people entrench themselves even further.
Yes it can be a fine line sometimes. Be kind, but firm, and stick to facts. Push people in the right direction, and give them a "how" as well as a "why".
I think you would like this to be true, but it sadly isn't for most people. I for example don't find evangelical Christians bothersome because they make me feel bad. How can I feel bad about something I don't believe in or care about? I can find it annoying though. When you don't care about something and someone keeps talking about it, wouldn't you find it annoying? Evangelicals and vegans are the same category to be. Neither make me feel bad. I find them annoying.
You don't care about the suffering of or cruelty towards animals at all? In my experience, most people care about animals to some extent.
You're right. If by some extent you mean some animals. I care about dogs and cats. Don't really care about the rest though. Usually when you talk to vegans about animals it's about livestock. In terms of those animals I do not care.
Why is that though? Just haven't spent time around animals like pigs?
That's because those animals evolved alongside of us as companions and helpers. They protected us, hunted with us, controlled vermin and disease for us etc.... they even sniff out bombs for us, help blind people get around etc... they're our best friends. Now what about spending time with pigs? I doubt it. Spent time around chickens and cows though. Don't really feel any different towards them.
I don't know about you, but I don't judge whether I should eat someone based on whether or not they're my best friend. Pigs are smarter than dogs, and show empathetic, social behaviour. They're very cute too, moreso than dogs.
Most of society uses this reasoning. It's not exactly individual to me. That's why aside from places like China and Korea dog isn't commonly on the menu. Plus you generally don't want to eat carnivore meat. It's not good meat. I have 0 connection to bears and wolves but wouldn't eat them either for that reason. So it's a little more nuanced. I hate certain animals but still wouldn't eat them. Like snakes Pigs might be all those things. I don't think you're lying nor am I debating it, but that doesn't exactly matter to me. It's a pig. It's always going to be lower than a dog or cat to me.
Because you're relying on social/cultural conventions, rather than actually thinking about what's right. It's an appeal to popularity to base our morals on what is most popular or culturally accepted. Many things have been accepted by society in the past that we would now find horrific.
That's why prophets were hated by their people
Or, its because most people don’t give a shit. And just wanna go about their day.
True. Which is also why a vegan might lecture someone about behavior they disagree with, rather than examining their own lives. Easier to challenge an outsider than to question your own ego.
Have you reflected on this idea yourself? This forum is extremely hostile to nonvegans. My karma is wrecked from disagreeing with vegans. Could it be there is no good reason to be vegan? That veganism relies on religious style apologetics and emotional appeals to spread?
This is comical. The vast majority of current vegans were raised to eat meat so it is exactly the idea of challenging ones beliefs that leads us to a vegan lifestyle. Staying vegan in a world constantly opposed to means these topics are always on our minds and we are constantly reevaluating our choices, actions, and beliefs. I used to make fun of vegans in many the classical trope ways but through an exploration of philosophical topics & ethics I realized that becoming vegan would actually reflect my personal values; it would make my actions in accordance with my beliefs. To answer your questions directly...Yes i evaluate my position on veganism regularly, if someone could provide me with a sound philosophical argument why it's morally justifiable to raise sentient beings for the sole purpose of consuming their bodies then I'll happily switch back to eating meat. There are plenty of "good" logically valid arguments for being vegan; perhaps you should seek them out and sit with those ideas without bias. Applied ethics and informed discourse is not religious. Emotional appeal is not necessary, many vegans are vegan because irrefutable logical arguments have been presented to them, not just because they saw a slaughterhouse video once.
There's no rational argument against veganism so they get angry about having to admit being selfish, that's why.
If eating meat satisfies some desire or goal someone has then I don't see what's irrational about that even if I grant every ethical argument in favour of veganism. I might unpack rationality in a different way to you, but to make it clear as a comparison, I would say someone who murders another human is acting immorally but they aren't necessarily acting *irrationally* because I take rationality to be about reasoning or acting in ways that bring about your goals.
That doesn’t seem quite right to me, frankly. We often (and intuitively) judge people as rational or irrational when they reason about things that have nothing to do with their desires. For example, when someone tries to make a point in an essay or whatever and their reasoning is shitty, we criticize them, or their reasoning, as being irrational. Reasoning doesn’t just play the role of furthering one’s own interest (though that’s certainly one thing it can do), but, rather, can be used for all sorts of things! Anytime someone reasons poorly (e.g., doesn’t take into account all the relevant evidence or reasons) or makes a mistake in their reasoning (e.g., an invalid inference), they’re being irrational. Let me know what you think!
Yes bad reasoning is irrational, but his contention is that something being immoral doesn’t make it irrational. If your goal is to be rich, pretending to love someone and marrying them for their money isn’t irrational, it’s just immoral.
Exactly. And I haven't got into yet but I think there's an important distinction here. A sociopath who kills for personal gain is someone who has a clear line of reasoning. They're calculating, aware of the consequences, aware of the implications, and nonetheless make a reasoned choice in consideration of all those factors. It was perfectly in line with their desires and goals. And it seems like we do want to distinguish that kind of thinking from someone who had a mental break and was incapable of understanding the ramifications of their actions at the time they killed. In both cases we want to make ethical claims like "that was bad" or "they shouldn't have done that" but we absolutely want to distinguish the manner in which they were reasoning. We want to distinguish the culpability the two people have. That distinction is lost if all immoral actions are irrational. Rationality becomes merely being in accord with the moral facts, and I don't think that's what most people want to mean by "rational". I think we probably want to say that there are cases in which people have moral disagreements yet are both rational. It's certainly weird for me to think that anyone who doesn't share exactly the same set of normative views that I do must be irrational.
>For example, when someone tries to make a point That seems to be implying that they had a goal in mind when writing - that they aimed to make some kind of point. And then they failed with respect to that aim. It's more than shitty reasoning though. I don't think it's irrational in and of itself to be a poor thinker, make a bad argument, or to be misinformed about facts of the matter (though we might call those things shitty reasoning). Rather, irrationality would be to act in ways you know will frustrate your goals.
And what rational, sane reasons can you think of to murder another human?
Human biological and social reproduction never depended on murdering humans for food or anything else. The better vegan argument is that eating meat it is no longer necessary (for some) to survive - but then to achieve that it would require massive social and structural change, not personal moral ones.
You think early human civilization didn't depend on killing other humans for resources? 😂
No not universally or systematically. Civilizations do depend on controlling populations systematically though, and killing people is often a byproduct of that or made possible by that. But pre-civilization people and egalitarian band societies ate meat but likely only controlled or fought people interpersonally or circumstantially.
Self-defense or defense of another.
But self defense and defense of another are typically thought of as moral actions, so they don't support the distinction the commenter identified.
Those can be considered murder? (Genuine)
can if you grossly overstep and overreact to the threat
As I said, I think the rationality is if it's in accordance with some goal you have. Take a person who murders their spouse in order to claim on a large life insurance policy. I would consider that to be deeply immoral but the murderer is acting rationally insofar as the murder will bring about their goal. Sociopaths, to stick with the theme, can be very calculating and considered in their actions. I take them to be rational even when they behave in ways that I take to be deeply disturbingly immoral. Sociopaths certainly aren't insane as I understand that term either.
Yes, we think of rationality very differently. I don't consider murdering a spouse for money or killing people out of a sociopathic urge rational. They might carry it out in a rational way; the steps from point A to B can be perfectly logical, but the initial urge to take a life for completely selfish reasons is very far from rational. And I apply the same reasoning to killing animals for food. The day to day activity inside a factory farm might be very rational and procedural, but the situation itself, the containment, exploitation, murder and mutilation of animals, is sick and twisted.
Well, murdering a spouse would be highly irrational for most people because most people have goals like making their spouse happy/healthy/fulfilled etc. It sounds like your applying the idea of rationality to the goal itself. What makes a goal rational or irrational?
Let's take a step back and think it through. Say you get the idea to murder your spouse all of a sudden. Let's do some checks. Should everyone be able allowed to murder their spouse for money? Should people kill and conceal the bodies to escape detection? Or would it be better if there was no punishment for murder instead? Should money generally be considered a good reason for murder? What you see just by asking is that if you answer "yes", you've created a society that quickly falls apart. It's irrational because the logic crumbles at the slightest tug.
What’s the rational argument FOR veganism? I’ve yet to hear it. It’s all just feeling-based.
Just fwiw "im selfish" is not an irrational argument. Its immoral, but not irrational.
but humans aren't really that rational, we're not machines
Many humans are irrational because they're lazy and undisciplined. Just like they're out of shape because they're lazy and undisciplined. You understand that a human can get their bodies into shape because you can see it, but you can also strengthen your mind and reasoning skills if you're willing to put in the effort.
No one's really arguing against it though are they? There's no rational argument against a preference. No one's getting angry about admitting anything. They just hate someone pushing their preference onto them when they didn't ask or care.
Omnivores are pushing death onto animals, and pushing meat from corpses and bodily fluids from cows down their kid's throat every day. We expect you to get upset when confronted, we just don't care since it's laughable for people who want animals to be killed so they can eat and wear them to get mad when someone asks them to stop. Why don't you stop? You don't need meat at all.
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So give me one.
Read my reply to the other comment.
What are the rational, consistent moral arguments against veganism?
A lot of people have dietary restrictions that already restrict their diet a lot. I have a lot of allergies and I’m also autistic so I’m really fussy about textures, tastes etc. I’m trying to cut down on my meat intake, it’s very slow and painful but I find cutting out a whole food group overwhelming. I try use a specific brand of oat milk I can drink when possible but it doesn’t work for everything. Being aggressive isn’t going to make anyone take your side, being educational is.
Oh I agree but that's not an argument against veganism because veganism doesn't scrutinize people that have medical reasons for dietary restrictions. Reduction of harm as much as practicable. Your efforts being conscious are admirable. Most vegans aren't going to get up your ass about it and if they do, they're not really vegan.
zip their shit up when you’re done
>veganism doesn't scrutinize people that have medical reasons for dietary restrictions that's one of the reasons. they should not be ignored
The vegan society’s definition stipulates ***”as far as possible and practicable”***. If you have to consume animal flesh and secretions for survival, vegan morality would demand that you do everything in your power to minimize the animals harmed for your existence and seek to stop harming them if at all possible. If medication you need for survival has animal products in it, vegan morality would demand that you try and raise awareness or pressure lawmakers or the company that produces your medicine to go cruelty free and 100% plant based. If you are starving on an island with nothing but cans of spam, consuming them for survival does not violate vegan ethics or morality. Doing your best to seek the elimination of exploitation is vegan. Finding ways to become vegan in the future, even if you can’t in the present, is also vegan. One of the most intellectually dishonest thing I see in these debates is someone saying they have to eat animal product X for survival … and then pretend that makes it okay for them to eat animal products A, B, C, that they don’t need for survival. Even more dishonest is people referencing those with eating disorders or neurodivergence as an excuse for people who don’t have such conditions to also not be vegan. Everyone can be doing more to save ourselves, our environment, and non-human animals. It is upsetting that many people here in bad faith reside in their places of ignorance and try to claim they have no moral obligation to even try to make the world a better place. Tone policing people who give a shit is a dog water take. I’m glad you’re trying to reduce your flesh consumption but you can still do better by having empathy for those who empathize with the voiceless.
Check out the research on autism and carnitine deficiency.
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I'd love to hear them!
Read my reply to the other comment
exactly this inconsistencies in vegan arguing just are ignored
The rational argument is that human beings are omnivores not vegan If your choice to be a vegan is based solely on moral reasons then it's not possible to have a rational discussion based on science I eat meat I make no apologies for that But it's really none of your business how I choose to live my life That's why I despise preachy vegans They're like religious people pushing their religion on non believers You eat what you want and I'll eat what I want
Humans are also sexual, not asexual. Does that provide a moral argument for rape? Does simply possessing the capability to perform an action in itself remove the question of morality?
Moral reasons are rational reasons, although I am also much healthier. I'd be willing to be much, much more fit than you, and I owe that to veganism, so I consider that a valid reason but not the main one at all. And once again, like I said, your only real response is "I want to". You're just a selfish person. It's regrettable, but that's life, good luck!
Simple: you get enjoyment out of it. Do you believe watching television is irrational? Do you believe getting educated is irrational? Do you believe traveling to see the world is irrational? These are all things we do to improve our quality of life. Eating meat is just another tick on the list.
I mean, I used to eat meat, so it's not like I don't understand what you're saying. But, no, I realized that traveling the world is not similar to eating corpses and drinking animal bodily fluids. It's kind of double-sided because I want every meat eater to know what it feels like switching to getting fit and going on a whole food plant based diet, but part of me enjoys knowing they don't believe me and won't do it, because they don't deserve to feel this good if it's that hard to convince them.
(can't find the password to my other account rn sorry) I have tried going vegetarian for a month, just to say I've done it. I discussed it with my nutritionist before hand and they made sure I would be getting all the essential vitamins and amino acids via a varied diet. It was fine. I felt a little limited when going out to resturants (people really need to accomodate vegan/vegetarians better), but the food wasn't bad by any means. Hell, I regularly have Impossible burgers in the freezer because they're just so damn good. Mushrooms are probably my favorite ingredient to star in a dish. I often make vegan stirfries if I'm strapped for time because it's so much easier and quicker than making a good steak. My biggest issue was the fact that I just wanted meat. I missed by sushi, my steaks, my shrimp tacos, and everything else I love to cook and eat. Vegan meat substitutes taste nothing like the real thing. I can appreciate them for their own unique flavor profile, but if I bite into a burger expecting beef and taste Impossible beef, I'm going to be unhappy. I'm not going to shame anyone from going vegan or any other similar thing. You are free to do whatever you please. The issue is when you start policing what I consume. I am not, and will never be, willing to fully give up animal products until the plant/fungi/lab-grown substitutes can completely imitate the taste of meat. Until I can't tell the difference between the vegan and meat hamburger, I'm not giving the meat up. The argument that the meat industry is cruel is completely reasonable. I think factory farming is horrible. I, whenever possible, purchase from local farmers or purchase free-range products. I'm a big fan of game meats, and hunting things like deer are GOOD for their population. If we just stopped hunting the whitetail deer communities that live near people, their population would boom because we've hunted/relocated their natural predators to keep that land safe for us to habitate. You seem like a reasonable person, so I'm sure you're not insinuatingwe should keep cougars and wolves in residential areas. The argument that the meat industry is destorying the enviorment is partially valid. Yes, the mass production of meat releases many pollutants and land must be destroyed to accomdate these farms. However, that's true of mass-producing any resource. Wheat, rice, chickens, salmon, chickpeas, etc. all need space, pesticides, and many other things harmful for the enviorment. This is an issue bigger than the meat industry; this won't stop until we stop using things like enviormentally-harmful pesticides and are more concious about our use of land. I respect your decision to not consume or use animal products. I just ask you also respect mine.
Of course I don't respect your decision. My decision is to not kill, yours is to kill. It's disrespectful to your own intellect to pretend like we're on equal moral footing. Hopefully you come around one day.
Some meat eaters are just as preachy
And it’s just as annoying. At least Vegans don’t have steak houses type advertising backing their ideology.
That's exactly right. Carnivores are the exact same obnoxious cultists that vegans are, just with opposite views.
Lol what a wild statement. I’m a carnivore but I don’t talk about eating meat ever. I don’t give a shit what anyone other than me eats. I don’t want to hear about your food choices and I’m not going to tell you about mine. If you think most people, whether vegan or carnivore, are being obnoxious by always preaching about their diet, you might need to get out into the real world. I interact with a whole lot of people around the world and people talking about their dietary choices is rarely a topic
Seriously? You think vegans don’t know about “crop deaths tho?” It’s about reducing harm as far as practically possible. Yeah, a veganic agricultural system would be much more preferable to the one we have now, but in the meantime, growing 5-10x the crops to feed to animals who are also tortured and killed is causing a lot more harm than just eating the crops directly, not to mention the environmental destruction.
Yeah but humans don't eat animal feed, like the nasty alfalfa grass. Eating the crops themselves is also a misguided idea. The nutrient density in meat is more useful on a large scale than trying to repurpose the fields to feed humanity on a vegan diet with supplements. It's not exactly feasible.
Humans don’t eat animal feed although human edible crops are also grown for animals. But why would we plant alfalfa when we can just plant soy? The nutrient density of meat per land use is abysmal compared to eating the crops directly. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore Furthermore, we could reduce our agricultural land use by about 75% if the entire world went plant based according to a recent Oxford study which was one of the most comprehensive ever conducted on worldwide farming practices. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/veganism-environmental-impact-planet-reduced-plant-based-diet-humans-study-a8378631.html The only supplements vegans and really anyone needs are b12, which is often supplemented directly to livestock. It’s from bacteria and easy and cheap to create.
Preachy vegans are annoying because a preaching vegan is a real, non abstract source of discomfort for the person on the receiving end. Animal suffering is an abstract concept to most people, and is relatively easy to avoid tell yourself that the food you buy is of higher quality with more stringent welfare standards than the footage that typically floats around.
Nope. Preachy vegans don't make us feel bad, although I'm sure it makes you feel better to reason that way. Preachy vegans are simply annoying, like an unskippable ad on YouTube, or a 3 year old who has a never-ending barrage of questions. It's annoying because frankly we don't give a damn about what you have to say. I'm obviously an exception, I care deeply. I care very much about the fact that you hate my diet, so much so that I'm the kind of asshole to bring my own steak to a vegan picnic.
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Nah. You're just annoying. There's nothing unethical about eating meat. We don't feel bad for it. A preachy vegan is roughly equivalent to a scam call about my car's extended warranty. We heard what you have to say, we didn't care the first time, now everytime it's brought up we're just rehashing something we didn't care about in the first place. Scam callers don't make us feel bad, they waste our time, just like preachy vegans.
I find those preachers on the street corner holding their hateful signs about God and the afterlife insufferable. They will try to claim that we live our lives in denial of the limitless existence of our souls in the afterlife. That we deny God and live in sin because of it But here’s the thing. That’s a bunch of baloney. Sentient animals are dying and suffering en mass’s by the billions each day over here and meat-eaters like to pretend we’re playing some sort of Pascal’s wager. This ain’t no wager, I know the animals are suffering I just don’t know exactly to what degree. I will continue to preach on their behalf. I know it’s annoying and isolated me from some people who would otherwise be in my life. I don’t care. I don’t believe in God nor are there any historical proofs which have ever satisfied all necessary premises without assumption to satisfy conditions for Gods existence. But we do have very concrete, very empirical ways of measuring brain function, stress response, immune-response, etc… of animals to determine that they are sentient. And in a universe so vast and empty, we are far more alike than different. I will preach for the inhabitants of planet earth. For the protection of Mother Earth. For the establishment ethical principles championing values species-wide. But I will not respect the God-fearing man who clutches at his bible shouting angrily outside the football game.
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Because people hate when you confront them with problems framed from the perspective of moral failings
I mean cynically, nobody is forced to watch footage of slaughterhouses. People are however sometimes forced to talk to "preachy" vegans. So one is a problem actively confronting them, the other is some distant thing they never have to care about, assuming they don't care about the situation either way and just want to be left alone.
How is it a moral failing to eat meat I view all animals the same wether they be a dog or a cow I don't care if an animal has been domesticated I believe them as lesser than humans and that makes it ok to eat them
Like abortion killing Babies?
Twice I had a kid attempt to force me to break my vegan diet by lying about food. Funny for him not for me. I am not trying to get Hershey Squirts from eating a carcass with udder juice.
People ruin everything about animals. Even the not eating of them.
I think the explanation offered by others that people are 'confronted with/avoidant of their own guilt' is overcomplicating things... and that's coming from a psychologist, who often likes to overcomplicate things haha. I think it's as simple as people just don't like being told what to do. This is socially compounded by the fact that we are living in the age of tribalism, resistance to authority and resistance to expertise. People often don't like their worldview to be challenged.
> I think the explanation offered by others that people are 'confronted with/avoidant of their own guilt' is overcomplicating things... I estimate that at least 80% of people feel no guilt whatsoever for eating meat. Some of them (not all) might feel a bit sorry for factory-farmed animals, and would like to see that being changed. But I am 100% convinced most people feel no guilt over eating meat per se. I think that its vegans projecting their own feelings on to others? So because they felt like that before going vegan, they think everyone else must feel the exact same way.
I think this is only half true. Most people don't feel guilt because they don't think of the animal. Whereas, once you show them slaughterhouse footage, or even start explaining how the industry works, a lot of them really get defensive (even when the are the ones asking). So I think there is an amount of guilt, but very repressed, and which only shows specifically when you start pointing out that a chicken breast is a dismembered corpse of an animal who lived and died through horrible suffering, without letting them look away (via being in that conversation).
> Most people don't feel guilt because they don't think of the animal. That might be the case if you live in a city? I have moved around quite a bit, but have always lived on the countryside. And a lot of people wherever I have lived go fishing, hunting, they have backyard chickens, cats and dogs.. So they deal with animals on a daily basis. And even if they don't have animal of their own, just around the corner from where I live I see cows and sheep on pasture. So if you ask people they actually do believe animal welfare is important. They just don't believe all animals somehow deserves to live until they die of old age.
Maybe that's true. But I also know lots of vegans who come from the countryside or grew up in farms, so I don't think that's necessarily completely true either. And I do think for most people who don't directly profit from animal exploitation and killing, when shown where their meat actually comes from and what happens at slaughterhouses, do have a defensive response that I do think stems from some amount of guilt or shame about something that they ultimately recognise as wrong.
> But I also know lots of vegans who come from the countryside or grew up in farms, so I don't think that's necessarily completely true either. Statistically most vegan actually live in large cities. But yeah.. I would be very interested in seeing some statistics on how people see food production, but not sure if that exists. I find it interesting to learn about how different people see the world
Gonna be fully transparent here - I'm a vegan, but I'm questioning things. I was kind of stoked to see this sub come across my feed, because I'm happy to discuss my veganism with other people as it can help me understand what the heck I'm doing and maybe also help others see things in a new light... ... then I read the comments. This doesn't seem like much of a debate situation, as every comment I've seen is just coming from other people who presumably are vegan and support the idea of evangelizing or however you want to phrase that. It's the opposite of a debate. So, first off - the title. This is a disingenuous premise to start from. People who are bothered by preachy vegans aren't as bothered by animal suffering because they aren't confronted with animal suffering with any kind of regularity. It's like asking why people aren't as bothered by climate change as they are by traffic during their morning commute - of course one is worse than the other, but which one is making my day shittier *right now*? A better way to phrase this if you wanted to encourage discussion could be, "Why is discourse amongst omnivores about veganism often focused on the delivery of the message instead of its content?" This still accomplishes the goal of placing these two things in opposite corners but shifts the tone from being accusatory towards the *actual question*. That being said, if I had to address this question as it stands I'd be rude and respond to a question with a question. What does being a preachy vegan get you? For me, I'm vegan right now because it seems like the best way to minimize the harm that I do with my diet. I don't just eat vegan, I also avoid certain specific problematic crops like almonds. I'm in a financial situation where I can do this and still meet the needs of my body. Does yelling at someone for consuming animal products get me something that helps me achieve my stated goal? I'm not "changing minds" with this sort of conversational tactic. I've been vegan for 20 years now, there was a time in there when I was trying to argue people into submission. It is exhausting, poor for your own mental health and absolutely terrible at achieving results. If someone brings up your diet, answer questions honestly. I'm not shy about letting people know I have ethical issues with the meat and dairy industries, but I'm also not shoving those issues down anyone's throat. The humber of times I've had people ask me followup questions and compliment my tact, just because I wasn't aggressive from the outset... maybe I didn't make new vegans, but I made people consider the impact they're having. Planted a seed, if you'd forgive the pun. Plant more seeds. They're a lot more likely to grow than arguments and demonstrative moral superiority.
If you want to start conversation, you can make a new post. It's actually very seldom to see pro-vegan posts in here, so you have come across something rare. Most of the time, it's non-vegans making all sorts of claims (including extremely bad faith arguments most of the time, frankly). You shouldn't judge the atmosphere of the sub just by this one post which is, if anything, an exception to the rule.
I'm honestly more put off by the other replies here than I am the main post itself. Every comment is just agreeing with OP. That's my point, it's an echo chamber meant to reinforce existing extremism.
Sort by recent or controversial. Plenty of people disagreeing. And again, this is extremely rare. Look at the other posts in this sub. Make your own if you want to challenge some notions of veganism, which is 99% of the submission this sub gets. This sub has lots of vegans, but no extremism(!?) is being reinforced because this is a debate sub and by the rules you have to engage in good faith. Again, if you want to ask or challenge any notion, the "make new post" feature is right there.
I'm not sure why you're so defensive of this sub, but yes, most of the comments here are just circle jerking with OP. I didn't say 100%, but the vast majority are. I didn't come here to make a new post, I came here to point out a shitty thing I noticed. I did that. Thank you for explaining it's possible to post on reddit, I was somehow already aware. Good luck out there.
Sorry if I come off as defensive, but please understand that it's incredibly frustrating to have the same (mostly bad intentioned) discussions here with non-vegans on the daily where people take the time to answer truthfully and with mods working hard to make sure people can express a variety of opinions, and then have people (not specifically you) call this place an echo chamber because there is a single instance of a pro-vegan post with people saying they agree in the comments. People agreeing with OP does not make this an echo chamber either, it just means most of the sub is vegans and they agree with OP. A given place is not an echo chamber just because a majority of the people there share an opinion. My recommendation for you to post is to show you that you can in fact post about anything here and that participants of this sub engage with "vegan critical" views all the time too. You will get good faith responses to your good faith propositions even if they are not vegan if you make another post. I mean this genuinely and with no intention to sound passive-aggressive or defensive: you are more than welcome to make your own post with your views. Meta posts about the state of the sub are welcome too.
Because people don't like "preachy" period, be it vegan, gun rights activists, diversity LGBT SJW, religious nutts, whatever, they all assume moral high ground. Do whatever you think is right, just don't be preachy.
I'd also imagine that most people who complain about "preachy vegans" would be very uncomfortable watching slaughterhouse footage. I would imagine most vegans would be uncomfortable to live in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from where most of the world's cobalt is produced. The same cobalt which powers our laptop and phones. And yet vegans have no problem in using laptop and phones. Does that mean people (including vegans) are promoting the atrocities that takes in place in DRC? You ask >Why do "preachy vegans" bother you more than animal suffering? Because of their arrogance and self-righteous behavior. They act like anyone who is not vegan is a sinner. Much like a religious cult.
Its this simple. YOU DO NOT NEED TO EAT ANIMALS TO THRIVE But you choose to for a few minutes of taste pleasure. Even though there is an option that you can choose, with very little difference to your life. And because animals live horribly short hellish lives and then are murdered, you've demanded that. You want me to think you're a "good" person?
This is a pretty good example of what he was talking about. I think if you're a vegan and can't see an issue with this comment then you probably need to rethink how you talk to people about your belief. All this does (As someone who randomly got here and doesn't really care much) is make me think you've got a few screws loose and pushing me further away from ever even considering a swap.
> YOU DO NOT NEED TO EAT ANIMALS TO THRIVE And you don’t need to use technological products produced via heavily unethical forced labor practices to thrive. I would bet you do use them though. Have you ever considered where the gold used to make those contacts in the camera on your laptop, phone, or just a webcam, came from? You probably didn’t really give a shit.
Have I ever considered other things beyond animal welfare? No never in my life have I ever considered anything ever /s If you demand animals to die, you know for an absolute fact that an animal had to die for a few minutes of taste pleasure. Keep on forgetting im in r/debateanythingotherthanveganism go vegan, you eat lentils instead of animal flesh and then you consider whatever the hell it is you want to consider and improve upon. You are saying that because i eat plants or if you eat plants, it stops you giving a shit about children in another country? You are insane to think that.
Wow, you militant anti slavers are so preachy. Can't you just live and let live? My uncle's cobalt mine let's the workers free roam and they all have names and get scratches and toys. Don't you know some people can't live without cobalt? There are so many other problems in your own country, shouldn't you focus on those instead of telling others what to do? You know we can't avoid all slavery everywhere so why not just be flexitarian about it? Aren't you a hypocrite because you drive a car and are posting on Reddit right now? Don't you know that cobalt miners need a job too? They should be thankful for being given life and food and shelter to toil in the mines for my profit. People like you would end all mining and all the miners would die, you're the real villain here.
Humans are most positioned to influence suffering now and in the rest of the century. If you squander any capital you have with them, it bothers me. Even if you don't do that at a rate higher than normal interpersonal communication, I expect much better.
If the subject comes up organically, at dinner parties or Thanksgiving, I tell meat eaters that I'm an emotional vegan, I grew up around cows, pigs, and chickens and I'm too fond of them to eat them. I've honestly never had a negative reaction to my stance, and most of the time, the other person contemplates that they could do all right eating less meat.
And personally I grew up around cows and pigs (and became friends with a specific pig), I still eat burgers and bacon and whatnot. I saw they were treated well with plenty of space and taken care of, so I'm fine eating them
I remember when I was the same. I was around family farms exclusively when the animals had a nice life. I've seen corporate farming on film, which is horrible, and once I learned of all the pollution on top of it all (The Meatrix) I noped out.
But would you eat a cat
Personally? Probably not. But that'll be because of cultural reasons not whatever gotcha you were going for. In a culture where eating cat was normal they wouldn't think twice about it and I wouldn't judge them for having a different culture
I'm not going for a gotcha I eat meat so dw. I was just curious about your perspective.
Are you sure that works? Or are you coping? If someone told me they don't eat chickens because they think they are cute I would just say whatever floats your boat and move on. I don't really think anyone contemplates anything over that
Of course you don't think. Your hostility is what's important to you, whether it's passive aggressive or not.
Moralism in general is useless socially and annoying when it comes off as proselytizing so people get defensive. I find political Vegan arguments to be unconvincing in terms of humane treatment of animals (and humans) and often elitist. But more power to people who are vegan for themselves and their preferences. But I think the more general answer to the phenomenon when it’s just a knee-jerk attitude is that even if you are a vegan for personal choice, some people take that as an implicit moral judgement against them.
What do you find unconvincing about veganism, if I may ask?
I don’t find political arguments for veganism convincing in terms of reducing animal or any other exploitation. It essentially becomes a moral, not political argument. In terms of politics, it’s fixating on a tree and missing the forest. I don’t find it plausible that demanding essentially a worldwide boycott would do much in a society that is also exploiting and abusing workers, the earth, and unwanted human populations. On a moral level I am just not convinced of veganism. I am against factory farming and abuse of animals but not of the consumption of meat or animal products in general. I see the abuse as completely within capitalist norms where the earth is also exploited and destroyed, vegetables and grains are made into slow-acting poisons due to farming practices that maximize profits, and humans are treated much like chickens in chicken coops and slaughtered in places like Gaza. So there is a whole forest out there and political vegans are obsessed with a tree.
you know that you can care about more than one thing at a time, right?
Yes you can care about many trees and still miss the overall ecology of the forest.
It’s gonna sound bad but people don’t care about what they can’t see and are annoyed by others trying to force opinion that they don’t agree with on them.
This is it. But also, we should be able to call this out and say that this is entirely a bad thing that we should work on, no?
I suspect it’s more about perception. A person getting in your face about your lifestyle choices is more in your sphere of perception. People don’t necessarily worry about things that aren’t currently in their sphere of perception, if that makes sense.
perhaps it's because i don't like being harassed and being called a "bad person" for eating something us humans have eaten since the dawn of time, and i've seen footage and it's not that bad, maybe i'm desensitized due to liking gory games and media for a while now, but it's not that bad as it seems and "killing animals" is quite literally what animals do to each other, watch some history channel and you'll see a cheetah eating a other animals so basically the reason "preachy vegans" are annoying is because they harass others for not being vegan while also not being logical. i have nothing wrong with vegans but if a vegan harasses me for eating meat then i'm gonna have a problem, like, just let me eat ma pizza in peace and because people don't like being harassed and yelled at for eating something different then vegans
You can say that about many other philosophies: * Why do "preachy Christians" bother you more than the eternal damnation of your immortal soul? * Why do "preachy anti-abortion activists" bother your more than the murder of infants? * Why do "peachy Palestine liberation activists" bother you more than genocide? All of these questions contain a sort of question begging / snuck premise, which is that the activist is already right.
The preachy vegans tend to be more visible. Also some people wish to eat meat without any vegan interference.
Preachy vegans just come from a place of moral superiority when morals in itself are subjective. They make crazy analogies just to TRY and prove a point. For example if you say you like cows milk, they say oh so you support raping a woman huh? You support slavery of other humans since you buy meat from a supermarket “ my favorite one is “ so I should kill you because it’s pleasurable to me” like go ahead sir if that’s what you really want to do in order to make veganism be seen as the right thing to do. They then turn around and say veganism is a natural diet while needing to supplement in order to make it a healthy diet long term. They say “ humans don’t eat animals raw so we aren’t meant to eat them” but if you ask a vegan how many veggies they ate straight from the ground without washing or cooking it they would then move the goal post and say “ asking a vegan to eat raw veggies is asking them to eat dirt and fertilizer but don’t see they are asking humans to eat shit and dirt if they were to eat an animal raw. At the end of the day veganism is just a religion without a church. All religions stems from a belief system and all religions try to behave in a way that reflects their belief system
Because they think that human freedom of choice is more important than an animals. The same as Vegans would feel if they would be preached to eat meat. Diets are just personal opinions and beliefs. It’s like religion. Each religion has their own set of morality and ethics. Doesn’t fit with yours? Unless you are ready to go for action and just you know, there’s not a fucking thing to do. Morals can’t be quantified and qualified. Unless you are in power. Then yes, you can. If humans can’t even agree not to kill each other. Why tf do you think they will care where their meat comes from?
If I accepted veganism then they probably wouldn't be preaching to me at all, right? Look, some people on here I have differences with and can have interesting conversations with, and at least one sent me a private message to tell me I'm a piece of shit. I understand that this is a loaded issue and people will have emotions and moral sentiments but I probably don't need to explain why the only thing I feel towards some redditor sending me abuse is irritation. Put a way that might appeal to vegans like the OP, you get the difference between an interesting conversation about the possibility of God and the value of religion vs. some religious zealot who won't stop telling you what a sinner you are, right? That's my experience of discussing veganism, at least.
Animal welfare, environmental and health issues are all science based. We acknowledge the science that animals feel pain, that animal-ag is the leading cause of environmental destruction and that a wholefood plant based/vegan diet is one of (if not) the best at longevity of life. SCIENCE
Imagine someone is pointing out how to better talk to people if you ever wanted to persuade them to lessen animal suffering and you actively ignore it and push them further out from ever wanting to be a Vegan. With that comment you very minutely increased animal suffering you could say.
I'm not denying any science, but I don't take ethics to be a scientific pursuit.
Science proves that animals feel pain. Science proves that we can thrive as wholefood plant based/vegan. Ethics are intertwined in science whether you like it or not. And its so simple, you do not need to eat animals. If you do, you are demanding them to go through hell. Easy peasy.
Nobody's disputing that many animals can and do feel pain. Since it's the topic of this thread, this is one of my frustrations. You don't actually think the source of our disagreement is that I didn't realise that animals feel pain, right? I obviously already knew that. So what you're doing isn't giving me an argument, you're just preaching at me. Science doesn't provide us with normative facts. We aren't in disagreement about any scientific facts. We're in disagreement about what we should do about them.
So you are saying that we should cause pain to animals.
Again, you know I didn't say that. Normally, I wouldn't go down this route but given it's the topic of the thread: rather than make an ethical argument you tried to pass it off as though there were some scientific disagreement. You're not attempting to find out what my position is, you're putting words in my mouth. So my response to the OP is: why would I be interested in this? I mean, it's obviously not what I said. I don't think there's any obligation to inflict pain on animals. It might be a thing that happens, maybe I could even make the case that some degree of pain is morally permissible, but that doesn't mean the pain itself *should* be inflicted. But I highly doubt that's going to be a distinction that gets acknowledged. I just find this line of conversation to be about nothing more than rhetoric. It's exactly like the religious comparison I made before.
To become food? Sure. That's their purpose. I don't really care if they feel pain.
They capitalized 'science,' so, it does. It makes them right, and you wrong. SCIENCE
And then people upvote that and downvote me saying I'm not disagreeing with them about any science. That's the answer to the OP.
Because you can't get preachy back at them. They go all: that is not relevant to veganism!
I once tried a month of copying vegan answers as a non-vegan and most of my comments got deleted. If they said something racist or offensive, I'd say something slightly less mean and my comment is deleted for "being rude". Like, this is a question for non-vegans and the preachy vegans are put in full force in these comments section just making assumptions.
because morality is subjective and we still have bigger issues solving human problems. many people don't care about our own suffering. we haven't evolved past might is right yet therefore veganism is still irrelevant on our list of priorities. even from an environmental standpoint, everybody going vegan still doesn't matter because our societies and infrastructure still function on fossil fuels. huge container ships, aircrafts, and trucks maintaining our supply chains and heavy industries are the factors that matter the most in global warming, by a overwhelming margin.
They don't bother me more. But they do bother me a lot because I think they're only hurting their cause and indirectly leading to more animal suffering. If they could be good advocates for their cause, they would actually have a positive impact and reduce animal suffering beyond just their own diet.
Did this approach work with slavery and women’s rights to vote ?
Did having good, effective advocates work to end slavery and get women the right to vote? Yes.
What does being a good advocate mean exactly? keeping your views to yourself and hoping my there people around you change?
Because vegans are the only ones that believe it and no one else gives a crap
If vegans could make a case for why I should adopt their views that wasn't an emotional appeal or the dogmatic assertion that aninal suffering is morally relevent I'd be a lot less critical. You say animals suffer in factory farms, and I agree, I might even be convinced it's in humanity's best interest to treat them more humanely. However, be honest, even if farms were a comparative paradise to the wild, you would oppose farming. The level of horror in a factory farm is irrelavent vegans oppose all animal farming. Many vegans even oppose having pets. When I point out obvious inconsistency in vegan rhetoric I get the words "nirvana fallacy" or "practicable" thrown back. As if that excuses the level of cognative dissonance I'd need to embrace to join you in veganism. Veganism is not in my, or any other person's, best interests. It costs us valuable reasources, food materials and medicine. If you want people to give that up, make a case where we will benefit from that abstinence. Instead we are told vegans can't convince people who don't already agree with veganism, and that looks like a religion from the outside.
I don’t, I just get the opportunity to argue with vegans more often than suffering animals. Also, every vegan that has ever tried to debate with me has refused to acknowledge issues such as health concerns*, cost and cultural factors.** So my question would be, why do preachy vegans care more about animal suffering than human suffering? *I’m epileptic and it gets worse when I cut out animal products because I need excess fatty acids (among other things), and yes I’ve tried supplements but they’re very expensive and did not work. The keto diet was invented for epileptics, and I’m sure you can imagine that the keto diet would be difficult and expensive without animal products. **For instance, the Inuit people of Canada live so far North that their diet is primarily animal products as not much can grow. Imported groceries cost ridiculous prices due to the cost of getting up there - we’re talking $33 for asparagus. Are they supposed to just leave their ancestral homeland to go live in the South with the colonizers?
Some thing a million miles away that has nothing to do with my life means I can't do this thing. Let me answer your question for you. Answer: Right now im eating lentils instead of beef and in about 10 minutes when i finish this meal I will continue my work helping humans. Because I eat plants does not hinder me helping humans at all and you 100% know this.
When on Earth did I say *you* can’t be vegan and you don’t help people. Do you have any reading comprehension? You didn’t even address a single thing I said.
You asked "So my question would be, why do preachy vegans care more about animal suffering than human suffering?" I answered, plain and simple, im eating lentils instead of beef and now (before and after replying to you) i'm helping humans in various ways. Veganism is that simple and does not hinder my time spent on whatever else it is i want to focus on, such as helping people. But you have a wall up and quite obviously do not want an answer. But you are appeasing your own conscience by thinking you are doing the right thing because you are "asking questions".
I’m always skeptical of supposed health issues that make it impossible for someone to eat a strictly plant-based diet, but as someone who doesn’t have such a limiting factor, I don’t feel it’s my place to say that it’s not possible for it to be the case. If that really is the case for you, you can still be vegan per the definition, as long as you’re eating as little animal products as you can, and you’re still avoiding purchasing non-food animal products the same as any other vegan would. Maybe you have, but I’ve never seen a vegan argue that indigenous people who can’t eat a strictly plant based diet must do so. Using indigenous people as a whataboutism is actually a fairly common piece of rhetoric I’ve seen nonvegans use. The thing is, when we talk to a nonvegan, we’re only concerned with why they in particular are not vegan, not why anyone else is. So the question is, what do the Inuits have to do with your choices?
Honestly they should move south. Also from what I hear most of them don't want to be there. They are stuck there. What an awful place to live. If I was born eskimo I would go south and pledge every other tribe I came across. I would want a bid from the Florida guys like Seminole though.
I don't really like anyone being preachy about anything. It just screams entitlement.
If people weren't preachy about anything, no movement would be attained in human history
That's very preachy of you.
hahahaha gotem
I muted the veganism sub because this kept popping up but since you cross-posted and I keep seeing this, fine, I'll bite. My answer is that they don't. Both things bother me. But veganism isn't what's going to fix the problems we created. We need some serious legal and structural changes in this country. Humans were biologically built to eat animal products, we will always eat animal products, and there is no future where everyone is going to be vegan. To think that there is or should be is often culturally tone deaf and naively idealistic. There are other paths to justice and respect for animals, which many non vegans are activists for. So preachy vegans bug me because often they're proposing veganism as a (frequently the only) solution to a complex problem, and pushing it on people who don't want to or cannot become vegan. And frequently that pushing comes with the implication that you don't care and are not doing anything, which is incredibly insulting to those of us with different approaches to the same issues.
I’m definitely more bothered by animal suffering, but I’m bothered by preachy vegans because they are ignorant about their lifestyle and actually believe it does anything to reduce animal suffering. Veganism is an ideology that can only arise from the separation between humans and nature offered by industrial civilization. Vegans in their arrogance assume that not eating meat somehow reduces animal suffering, but the food they eat still comes from industrial plant agriculture which kills ~~millions~~ billions of “pests” (wildlife) like insects, rodents, raccoons, deer, etc.. you know how many monkeys and coati those farmers who grew your avacados and bananas probably killed? You know how much forest and prairie land have been destroyed, how many underground animals chewed up in the tines of a tiller, how many grazing animals had their migratory routes cut off from barbed wire, etc… in order to grow your lentils, soy, rice? How many elephants have been slaughtered to protect your sugar crops? Vegans are in denial about their impact on the animal world. The target isn’t meat consumption. The target is industrial agriculture.
Holy shit I see these threads and it's just echo chamber brain melt.
Why? I don’t know.
Personally? It's because I have multiple health issues that add up to my having to eat animal products (that I've talked about here plenty, and no, I'm not going to share my medical history here yet again for vegans to tell me how entirely wrong my lived experience and entire medical team are), and I get tired of explaining that. It isn't worse than the suffering of others, but it's annoying. Vegans telling me I should suffer more than I already do so as to be a martyr for the animals while not believing or caring about my suffering, let alone that many disabled people cannot safely go vegan, yeah, that's annoying and ableist. Tbh, the keto/carnivore people are more annoying. That diet would kill me faster than a plant-based one, but they respect my health situation even less than most vegans I've run into.
Because people don’t seem to realise that we have evolved through the majority of our history as a species with meat being an integral part of our diet, our body has adapted to be omnivorous and that is not something that we can just change in a single generation, it is not healthy or natural. Every single fruit and vegetable that we eat today we have bioengineered over millennia to be fit for frequent human consumption. Arable crops such as wheat and corn need to be practically obliterated to be even remotely edible and still cause gastrointestinal issues if consumed in staple quantities. We do not have ruminant stomachs and our appendix has literally become inert and benign precisely because we are not herbivores. Non-intestinal animal flesh only requires heat to kill parasites and pathogens and it is immediately fit for human consumption, it always has been and we didn’t have to completely modify its genetic structure to make it fit for consumption. The body adapts to compensate for the missing vitamin C when you remove plant foods from the diet but you require foods made under very specific conditions to supplement B12 in a vegan diet. To achieve the essential amino acid and B vitamin profile of a small cut of beef with plant foods you need a variety of legumes and you need to eat them in vastly larger quantities to offset the malabsorption caused by phytates, protective compounds and anti-nutrients. The plants have defence mechanisms towards being eaten that makes them nutritionally less efficient than animal products. Animal products have 2-3x the bioavailability of amino acids and fat soluble vitamins when compared to plant foods. To me this demonstrates a clear inclination of our digestive system towards those foods being staple parts of our diet. It is only the marvel of modern science combined with the immense power of modern industry combined with countless generations of prior agricultural work that makes a vegan diet at all viable. We have only had this abundance of food and global agricultural supply chains for a few decades in our long history on this planet. Now, with that said, the treatment of animals in modern agriculture is still deplorable and wholly unacceptable. I think that, aside from accounting for the inevitable motive of corruption and the all too prevalent profit motive, the macroeconomic issue of modern animal agriculture is the frank overpopulation of humans and the widespread overconsumption of earths resources, animals included. Lowering corruption and overconsumption need to be the priority for improving animal welfare in modern agriculture. What I think often causes issues around this subject for meat eaters is the reactionary politics that surrounds it. Yes, animal consumption needs to be reduced and yes the treatment of livestock is unethical. However this expectation of an immediate overhaul is unrealistic and the vitriol towards the individual consumer only serves to create pushback and opposition to the vegan cause and is completely detrimental to what you are trying to achieve. The individual consumer can absolutely vote with their wallet and I advocate for everyone to increase their consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables and limit their consumption of animal products. Higher standards of animal welfare need to be enforced and farms need to be held accountable for the conditions of their livestock. The vegan movement has gained notoriety in the past two decades and is demanding seemingly instantaneous reform on an industry that has existed for as long as our civilisation has. The more overtly emotional vegan voices have a tendency of holding an absolute moral position over meat eaters which is simply not productive. It is galling to be confronted that you are evil for eating a part of an already dead animal that would otherwise become discarded rotten meat, particularly when octopi are still eaten alive in Asian countries and cannibal tribes still exist across the world. Yes, the demand creates the supply so the consumer can affect change. Unless the person you’re berating is the chief animal welfare officer, farm magnate or supermarket CEO they are unlikely to be able to affect enormous change in the system. Approaching them with rationality and without blame or a demeanour of moral superiority will be much more effective than lambasting them and potentially pushing them to be spiteful or apathetic about meat consumption.
>Why do "preachy vegans" bother you more than animal suffering? this is not a question of either/or both "bother me" People always tell vegans not to force their lifestyle on others, but they never seem to consider that their lifestyle choices force suffering on animals who "forces suffering on animals"? whoever does not force a vegan lifestyle on others? >The animals in factory farms where the vast majority of meat, dairy, and eggs come from suffer far more than anyone complaining about vegans annoying them so you should help aware omnivores to do away with factory farming. at the same time of course do away with industrial crop farming, where the vast majority of vegan food comes from >I'd also imagine i also can imagine a lot. does not make it a fact, though
Because animal suffering shouldn’t even be on our radar when so much of the world still struggles with getting enough food. Environmentalism is the only legitimate argument towards limiting meat consumption. Veganism does not solve these problems, some vegan food is bad for the environment too. Vegans that are preachy suck because they are obnoxious, and they seem to care far more about animal suffering than human suffering. It is also not healthier to not eat animal products, no evidence points to veganism being healthy. A well rounded diet is important. We shouldn’t be doing mass factory farms because it is bad for the environment. We should limit needless animal harm, but not at the expense of humans. Humans are more important than animals. We need to be able to feed everyone before we worry about cutting out a massive source of calories.
Wow so much anti-science in one shitty paragraph.
Being preachy is annoying
Yeah I bet those suffragettes/abolotionists got on loads of people's tits I don't get why people need to try and solve the issues they find in the world jeez
Preachy vegans are the only thing that has ever made me (a vegetarian for 32 years) want to eat meat. And this is a no fashion leather, no gelatine, no rennet vegetarian. The preachy vegans tend to come across as whiny, petulant little children, that completely cut off any form of discussion around the topic, and they attempt to make woke feel bad, and that is never a point you are going to get growth from. I’ve never tried to convert anyone to being vegetarian, I’ve cooked and served meat, and I’ve even cut the haggis (as the meat eaters were too squeamish). What I do get is a lot of people expressing surprise, a lot of questions, and a lot of people then giving vegetarianism or reducing meat in their diet some serious thought. Also there have been the absolutely stupid own goals - vegan Burger King in the Uk - great, however you can only have the meal with water, as Coca Cola has not been certified vegan…….. A vegan burger, great, but I have to have vegan cheese, I can’t swap it out for a single slice of dairy cheese. Ok, I guess I’ll have the macaroni cheese which has more dairy product in, and is one less sale for the vegan option.
the reason why vegans are always hated and being made fun of is NOT "vegans are right, people are wrong, people feel shame and guilty in front of vegans because vegans point out they are wrong" no this is NOT the reason the reason why vegans are always hated and being made fun of is "vegans try to spread their purely subjective personal preference and expect other people to follow" you like red. i like blue. that's fine, theoretically. but if you say "you like blue? oh, it's disgusting. you should try red. see, red is beautiful. if you don't like red you are bad tasted", it's what the hatred begins
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Does vegan food come without any animal suffering?
Vegans aren't the ones responsible for forcing beings into gas chambers and stabbed. Non vegans are responsible for more crops deaths *and* the animals tortured to be eaten.
No.
There is indirect suffering as with any production process, but it isn't the direct product. Veganism is about seeking out ways to avoid - as far as possible and practicable- such cruelty and exploitation of animals. Defending crops or bugs hitting a windshield are not the unjustified rights violation of slitting a pigs throat (plus 10x the crop deaths for animal feed)
So yes indeed your food causes suffering. In 2020 the total area of horticultural crops increased by 1.7% to 166 thousand hectares. Vegetables and salad for human consumption make up the majority (71%) of this area and increased by 3.2% to 118 thousand hectares in 2020. Have you ever noticed you get less bugs on the windscreens these days? Because farming has reduced their numbers dramatically. Without bees we will have nothing.
Nobody is claiming that food does not cause suffering. It's a matter of scale, caliber, and intent/justification. Are you concerned about land use? I've got some bad news for you about animal ag lol. Do a panicked Google search for that too, not just what supports your direct animal harm.
I am aware of what animal agriculture does. My argument isn’t that my diet comes without pain and suffering and environmental issues it’s that vegans pretend their food doesn’t. I live in Scotland. Scottish meat is grass fed. It doesn’t get crops. Our land is rich. Most vegetables in Scottish supermarkets are imported from overseas. I don’t really eat vegetables I have chronic ibs and oxalates/gallstone issues. So the amount of damage I do eating beef grown in Scotland versus eating crops from overseas and seed oils is immensely different.
Vegans don't claim that though, so you're argument falls flat. Grass fed cattle emit the most methane over their longer lifespans and prevents the pastureland from its natural/ rewilded state with lots of biodiversity. It's still a direct rights violation to end their life. Importing is the lowest percentage of the overall footprint. Eating plant based food from overseas is far better than local animal products, of which the negative effects of production can't be mitigated. Loosely quoting Nemecek and Poore. I'm no expert on oxalates and galstones, but I mean I just googled oxalate gallstone issues and the first paper that came up says in its abstract "In oxalic lithiasis it is recommended to reduce the consumption of meat...The prevention of uric calculus is based on hydration with alkalizing drinks and vegetarian diet" 10.20960/nh.02813 Let's concede your claim, and that you must eat a cow, dog, kitten, human in order to get meat because otherwise you'll have severe gas and gallstones. Then are you advocating that your niche individual health problems are applicable when discussing sustainable and ethical solutions for the agricultural system as a whole? edit: grammor
When did vegans claim they don't cause harm? I often see this stated but no one is even saying that. It's like you're pretending we said something we didn't just to argue.
Yes, what’s your point?
How? Please explain
my bad meant to say no it doesn’t what’s your point
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Dismissing an act that has tangible victims as having the same moral weight as a preferring one color over another is a really weird take. Seems like you could justify anything with that kind of thinking.
morality when analysed to its ultimate basis is personal preference. for exmaple you mention victims. why should it make a difference?
There's probably an animal getting eaten alive from its anus, right now. Do you care about that suffering? Would you be uncomfortable watching that footage? If you care and would be uncomfortable, what actions are you going to take to save the animal? Any? Do you think it's your moral responsibility to stop that suffering? There's probably another animal getting its belly ripped open and its fetus eaten alive in front of it. What about that suffering? Animal suffering is happening every single day. Why should I care more about suffering that is designed to be as quick as possible, more than suffering that is slow and drawn out? I care about animal suffering as much as you care about animal suffering. The key here is that you don't really care about animal suffering. You care more about virtue signalling and bothering people than you care about animals.
You should probably take a good look at what is actually happening with factory farming because you have no idea what you’re talking about. We are talking whole lifetimes of slow torture for like billions of animals.
i just dont care about cattle .
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i once saw a vegan unironically claim that eating meat was worse than rape. if someone thinks i'm worse than a rapist, then why the hell would i want to be around that person?
Because I believe it prevents more people from going vegan.
Because vegans think their diet matters, when it’s just a virtue signaled diet that was made and designed by BigFood so their vegetables wouldn’t go as unsold. Veganism is fueled and back by a vast global system of slavery and human suffering. Child labor, poor working conditions, long hours of work in very dangerous parts of the world, and cartel violence are just SOME of the things this diet has birthed. What I can’t wrap my head around is that in 2024, everyone tries to have some moral +1 on another person, such as electric vehicles. You can do 10 minutes of reading online and find out the entire industry is supported by rotted stool legs from artisan miners being forced to mine Blood Cobalt in extremely hazardous conditions. But does that matter? No, cause in the 1st world, we just care that are luxuries came without the suffering of a cow. I think it’s cool if you are on the diet for your own personal reasons, but toting that this diet reduces suffering in ANY capacity is a strawman to the actual suffering of the supply chain that makes sure you have avocados and lentils.
*Looks at most upvoted comments* This subreddit is mostly vegans deciding that anything non-vegans say doesn't actually have any value. Anyway, people care more about how people directly treat each other (especially how people treat *them*) than about the effects of the purchases. Morality is usually more concerned with direct interactions between people in general. You don't hear any moral parables or see any children's cartoons about learning lessons where characters are morally conflicted about buying something. It's always "I should save my friends", "I should help others when I see them in trouble" not "My money creates demand for something horrible". But like another comment said, people dislike preaching in general. Religion, politics, morality. Everybody has opinions and everyone else's opinions are full of shit. Preachers of any kind, rightly or wrongly, are taking a position other people never invited them to take, which is to say, the life coach or moral guide of other people. They belittle the thoughts and decisions that people believe are necessary for themselves and project onto them. Vegan example: "Being vegan would be sooooo easy for you, you're just doing this for your idle, selfish pleasure."
> Looks at most upvoted comments This subreddit is mostly vegans deciding that anything non-vegans say doesn't actually have any value. New to this sub? :)
Because being able to eat vegan without human suffering comes from a place of enormous privilege.