Do you kill mosquitos that try to feed on you? Flys that contaminate your food? Mice that destroy your home?
I agree killing someone is wrong, even when they have committed a crime. The only time I think it’s acceptable is when it’s a life or death situation. But you’ll never convince me that it’s wrong to kill for food when that’s what the majority of animals do every single day.
Edit: I also disagree with many of the “facts” presented by your “article.” Describing the harvesting of honey as theft, completely disregarding home/hand raised chickens and the fact that infertile eggs will literally rot under the chicken.
Animals do kill each other a lot, does that mean that we are justified in copying this behaviour? The animals that kill eachother either have no means to survive otherwise or have no rational capabliity to deduce that its wrong, I cannot reason with a lion but I hope I can reason with you. As it happens lions also eat their young and forced intercourse is the norm in the animal kingdom, are we justified in copying these acts because it's "natural" to do so?
Furthermore even if we were to conclude that carnivores/omnivores are morally culpable for their killings how does that justify us killing cows, pigs and chickens that did nothing to harm us
The actions of non-humans in the circumstances of non-humans have no bearing on the actions of humans in the circumstances of a modern human
Ugh I deleted that comment by mistake while editing it.
Let me ask you: Does the world currently have the ability to live 100% vegan? I’m not asking “will it ever be 100%” I am asking “can the entire populace live vegan?”
There are also major issues with your linked arguments. It seems to like to skirt around things with half truths. “Eggs are immoral because we kill the chickens” ignores the fact that many people have egg chickens, intending to just let them live and produce. There is no rule that says once a chicken stops producing it needs to be killed.
I’m not doing a deep dive. But when you are the one asking the questions, of course you’re going to have all the answers.
First of all I think that violence in self defense or survival is justified, plants have tropisms which means they have small hard coded responses to certain stimuli like leaning toward light, they do not have any form of sense processing thus no awareness no preference theyre an object
Even if you wanted to minimise the harm caused to plants, it takes far more plants to feed livestock to sustain an omnivorous diet
There is no scientific reason to assume that plants have the capability to suffer. And different scientists try again and again to look into that. But the cold hard truth is, to feel something you need a somewhat complex nervous centrum that plants simply don't have. The same is true for microorganisms and many other simple lifeforms, btw.
Pigs, cows, chickens, even fish experience pain, stress, fear, etc. very similar to how we experience it. And we people know that, that's why many countries have laws against animal cruelty.
Ok yeah in full: "the suffering caused is justified by the pleasure I received" is the argument theyre using and it justifies a whole bunch of shitty things like rape
That is not what they said. The argument is that we normally all agree that "but I like it" is not a valid argument to cause harm to others. Why should it suddenly be a valid argument to cause harm to animals?
I mean its murder, I'm not going to weigh which is worse murder or rape theyre just both bad dont do them "but it gives me pleasure" is not an excuse for either murder or rape
Most meat eaters are too chicken shit and lazy to slaughter their own food. I certainly don't have the stomach to, which is why my meat eating is rapidly approaching zero
I have shot, gutted, skinned, butchered and processed more animals that most people have laid eyes on in their lifetimes. I've either raised or hunted nearly every bit of meat I've eaten in the last 15 years, and given way more of it away to food banks and needy neighbors than I've eaten myself.
But I agree, people should be prepared to kill their own meat, it makes them appreciate it more.
ahhh, youth. To have the sanctimonious, patronizing zeal of a recent convert again...
I deserve to read this garbage for being one of you for more than a decade. Then my fucking system gave out and stopped being able to digest soy and gluten so I had to get back on the meat wagon. At least I dropped a bunch of weight and got my libido back, so I guess there's that
Oh, isn't it annoying to be reminded of your own misplaced zealotry? I used to be like this about atheism, like 20 years ago. What a smug cunt I was. Not that I stopped being an atheist, just that at one point the smugness hit a singularity and I came out the other side going "what was I thinking? I'm not going to change anyone's mind, and in the process, being a twat to anyone I disagree with and getting my blood pressure up isn't doing me any favours."
And hell yah, eating mostly meat and fat is an amazingly effective way to lose weight and fix a lot of stomach issues. Carbs are evil to the body.
I mean, if you wanted to get the largest number of people to stop eating animals, the #1 thing would be donating money to lab-grown meat research, or at least getting other people to, rather than engaging in online arguments in a way that immediately causes people to get defensive and emotional. Sure, it's not doing anything yet, but the second it becomes less expensive than traditional meat (and that can't be hard, since you're only growing the flesh you want, rather than an entire fucking animal, it will be much more efficient given time), that's almost immediately going to sway a lot of people who do not give a shit about the ethics or morality of it, but do care about their budgets or bottom lines.
But hey at least you're not rounding up those ticks whose bite makes you allergic to red meat in order to do an eco-terrorism (8chan's /leftypol/ has just as much brainrot as the rest of that site), since a) that would cause an immense backlash and b) the difference would just be made up in chicken and fish anyway.
"Youre going about it all wrong: this method is how you convince people to stop slitting innocent animals throats. I know this method works because it didnt work on me." fyi if I could snap my fingers and somehow force everyone to leave animals alone I'd do it in a heartbeat, wouldnt you do the same to end all murder?
I mean, it's been scientifically shown that antagonistically trying to change someone's mind only serves to harden their existing views and make them less open to thinking about it. e.g. at this point I'm deliberately avoiding reading your response again, because all it provokes is my anger issues, all that achieves is putting me in a state where you are The Enemy and neither morality or ethics are considerations, and I try to avoid that with people I largely agree with but have one major sticking point against these days.
I've been in a similar position with urbanist/FuckCars stuff, where no matter how many arguments you make about how the suburbs are a blight upon the cities they parasitise and we need to densify now, how cars have no right being the #1 method of transportation within cities, or how SUVs should be banned within city limits, the carbrained suburbanite will ignore them all and continue going about their lifestyle without a thought about it. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
But you can always tap into the fear that comes with "this will economically ruin you if you keep doing this" and as such, high petrol prices are one hell of a gift for getting people to start catching public transport and/or biking, at least the ones who live in places where such a thing is physically possible. We're in the middle of a cost of living crisis, where the average person is getting evermore squeezed for what little they have, and you still can't shift your angle of attack from "you're a terrible person and you should feel bad" to "meat is the most expensive part of your diet and here are alternative ways to get that flavour/texture that cost far less (and incidentally are 100% plant)" and then work on them from there?
Just saying, the average(/mode) person using any English-language space on the internet a) is used to dishes where the meat, or at least some kind of fancy, dairy-based sauce, is the focal point and b) has no idea what the state of fake meat/meat alternatives is like right now.
at the end of the day no matter what vegans do our existence is a threat to the cognitive dissonance of meat eaters, I have two options: I can be so nonchalant that it seems like I'm actually ok with people killing animals needlesly and therefore theres no reason to question their beliefs or I can actually put a bit of passion into my defense of animals and risk people like you for some reason getting annoyed that my advocacy isnt effective? (Like if you are against veganism why correct me while im making a mistake right clearly theres something else going on here psychologically why you feel the need to correct me) Meanwhile lots of people actually do change their mind on veganism from a no nonsense approach see people like joey carbstrong and earthling ed for examples of how that can be done well
I mean, intellectually I agree that the current animal industry has to go at some point soon, albeit mostly for efficiency/environmental impact reasons, it's just that emotionally I find preachy vegans to be annoying as fuck. Especially given that as a neurodivergent person, a lot of us would have trouble cutting meat out of our diets, for samefood/sensory issue reasons (many vegetable textures I've felt over the years give me such bad vibes that I have to struggle to stop my gag reflex from kicking in), and the deeply ableist ways a lot of vegans react to this is concerning and borderline eugenicist.
And it's just, the Gordian Knot-cutting development of lab-grown meat (and also vat milk/eggs) becoming cheaper and less resource intensive than regular meat is pretty close, especially since the same technology also lets you grow replacement human organs from a patient's own cells, a holy grail of medicine. That will 100% cut the animal industry's legs out from underneath it, entirely because they simply will not be able compete in efficiency and cost, and reframes the choice from "noticeable drop in what and where you can eat in exchange for a moral benefit that you can't see for yourself" to "same thing, but cheaper and with a moral benefit you still can't see but can be more sure of because mass adoption". Also it'll be funny watching conspiracy nuts bankrupt themselves spending more and more on trying to hunt down "real, non-virus meat".
And if that day never comes youll just keep paying for innocent animals to be killed? Theres very little that can excuse slicing the throat of an innocent being
"Meat" describes wild venison and grass raised cattle as well as factory farmed meat. Factory farmed meat is akin to an animal holocaust, sure, but what happens to deer if we stop eating them is worse than that. First the population explodes, and with increased proximity to each other, diseases such as CWD also explode amongst the deer population. Good grazing land dwindles as deer slowly starve to death while a growing portion of them live as literal zombies due to CWD. The best case scenario is that the wild predators return and torture them all to death by eating them ass-first. There HAS to be a predator to prevent this, and humans are the more humane predator. As a side note, all of those happy grass raised cattle simply disappear without their consumption, because modern cattle cannot survive in the wild.
hunting as the only source of meat cannot sustain food supply, 99% of people would have to stop eating meat if that were the only source. and there is a more humane way to control deer population with contraceptive darts see the vegan blindspot by humane hancock https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjCp6bUp__M