You're making a separate argument. The argument OP is making is that people shouldn't be able to eat animals if they can't butcher them. Which isn't really a Vegan argument, or even an argument against making animals suffer since it implies that people should be able to eat meat as long as they have experience hunting and butchering. As someone else said
Killing something yourself doesn't make it better or worse, this argument just appeals to you because you know many people wouldn't be able to. Wanting to make fewer people eat meat is cool and good, but vapid sophistry is not how you get there.
I think maybe you're reading into my words a bit more deeply than I thought anybody would (though I am a vegan and you're right, I do like the idea of setting a high skill floor on eating meat because I am a vegan).
My argument is merely that it's okay to govern some treats differently than others because there are fundamentally distinct classes of treats and that therefore, proposing that people have to do the killing and/or butchering of an animal in order to acquire it is not analogous to requiring that people mine raw materials, process them into everything needed to produce semiconductors, and then build there own electronics "from scratch".
Which isn't really a Vegan argument,
Totally agree, but it would cut demand for industrial meat production so massively I have trouble rejecting the idea on these grounds alone
proposing that people have to do the killing and/or butchering of an animal in order to acquire it is not analogous to requiring that people mine raw materials, process them into everything needed to produce semiconductors, and then build there own electronics "from scratch".
No they're not perfectly analogous. But why "propose" anything? If you're Vegan why not just say "people shouldn't eat meat, carnists can get fucked"? Proposing a change in the rules of how meat should be eaten is just a reformist half measure. And the truth is you're not going to get anywhere without revolutionary activity. If you really had the power to enforce the rule that people can only eat meat if they butcher it themselves, then that would be reflective of a society in which a revolution has already happened. But we don't live in that kind of society. Nobody is going to pass that law because we live in a society run by carnists and capitalists. If you truly lived in a society where you could force the rules to be that, then you might as well just make eating meat entirely illegal at that point.
Asking carnists to confront their own inconsistency is probably one of the oldest vegan arguments.
Like watching self-proclaimed "animal lovers" go on and on about how much they love bacon. Point out that the bacon is an animal with basically the same emotional and cognizant status as their dog and they get pretty upset. It's the inconsistency that drives this response and it's these agitations that lead to personal action.
Same thing applies to political agitation btw. We make agitprop intended to play on personal moral consistency like not wanting babies to get bombed, like thinking of themselves as non-racist, like "a full time job should be enough", etc.
There are many people out there who would not slaughter their own food because they don't want to harm the animals. There is an easy solution to this: make minor lifestyle changes. What prevents it is the decontextualization that prevents them from setting a red slab as an animal, the disconnect between primary production and their consumption, and a series of reactionary thought patterns that are reinforced by lefties just as much as, if not more than, their liberal counterparts.
Well if it's intended as a rhetorical strategy to get carnists to confront themselves, then great. That works. I was arguing with it because it was presented as a reformist proposal.
How does me killing my own meat stop animals from suffering? If anything OP is encouraging animal suffering. When amateurs kill animals there is more chance for the animals to have a prolonged and painful death. Encouraging amateurs to butcher their own meat will lead to more waste meaning more animals will die.
Because the personal confrontation highlights the inconsistency hidden by commodification and the abstraction of the food item. For many, support for violence against animals for entertainment purposes can only be supported by such a disconnect.
Personally, I think this point is obvious and hexbear is continuing to show its ass and internalized liberalism. I'm convinced that most people here don't even do anything irl, so they should at least try to have basic empathy and understanding in lieu of that.
Personally, I think this point is obvious and hexbear is continuing to show its ass and internalized liberalism. I'm convinced that most people here don't even do anything irl,
How does this post encourage any kind of political organizing? Making the focus of your political messaging on the hyper-individualist concept of personal choice, voting with your wallet, and consumer behavior is about as liberal as you can get. Consumer spending habits will never be a solution to the abuses of industrial food processing because those abuses are not a function of consumer demand. And if your proposed plan of action has no viable theory of change attached to it, then it is not a political position. It is virtue signaling, and nothing more.
I think breathing solder fumes is disgusting. I pay for someone else to do it for me and they don't get paid well. My using electronics is contributing to humans dying for pennies. How is that more ethical than paying someone to process meat instead of doing it myself?
If you want to talk about poor living conditions and inhumane slaughtering practices I cant argue against that. You want to debate that all living animals have a right to life I'll ask why don't plants have that right. But the OP's argument is silly and not a solid argument against eating meat.
I have killed and butchered my own chickens and I have gotten pretty good at it but there were a few near the beginning that didn't go as smoothly as I'd like. If anyone really cares about the suffering of animals they wouldn't be encouraging amateurs to do it just to prove they are worthy of eating meat.
I think breathing solder fumes is disgusting. I pay for someone else to do it for me and they don't get paid well. My using electronics is contributing to humans dying for pennies. How is that more ethical than paying someone to process meat instead of doing it myself?
Do you think someone breathing poison for pennies on the dollar is how it should be? Probably not, right? But you can change those. Better pay is possible, as is better working conditions. It's just the option ain't really there for meat
OP's point is very simple: many people do not confront the unnecessary violence in their habits. Commodities are decontextualized, as you're attempting to say. To many, animal products just don't seem like animals and they get very upset when they truly understand those products as being other thinking, feeling things. OP is challenging people to go through that exercise and, hopefully, recognize that they do actually care enough to make minor habitual changes and not kill the animals for entertainment purposes. They just hadn't confronted it sufficiently.
Personally, I think you and others do understand this. Very few questions, lots of rationalization.
Re: your disgust at soldering, it's obviously not the same. You're not morally disgusted or upset by the existence of soldering fumes, which is the confrontation in OP's post. You're changing the basic nature of the disgust from discomfort at the idea of killing another thinking being to merely reacting to a smell. I think we all understand that these are very different bases of disgust and that the moral disgust has a component evoking personal moral consistency while the other is a simple physical response.
You did try to find a way to talk about moral consistency in consumption, as all leftists do when confronted with doing something immoral at the personal level that involves consumption or production. No ethical consumption under capitalism, right? No ethical production, either! Individualist. Moralizing. These thought-terminating cliches get trotted out whenever a lefty wants to avoid addressing these kinds of issues and it's always highly selective. The same person will hate cops or get pissed about someone they know building baby-killing bombs for money or carry out one-person boycotts because they hate one particular company.
Anyways, the kernel of truth in your example is that you know it's wrong that someone else is underpaid. You haven't really said that you think the fumes are a problem for the workers doing the work you're avoiding, so there's nothing implied to be wrong with that. In bb fact, you didn't explore what the alternatives would be at all, because this isn't a serious attempt at counteepoint. But differential exploitation, especially with such vast differences due to imperialism, yes that's something we agree should be abolished.
If we make your analogy fit despite the other flaws, that would make you someone who thinks the vegans are right but you're personally not making your own changes.
Does that describe you? The vegans are right about all of this but dang it, you just can't make the change?
They aren't, but if you would like expand upon what you believe is misunderstood instead of just asserting that as a premise you are free to do so, and I may reconsider my position depending on your response.
I've personally already replied to several comments if you are interested. Maybe you should go read the thread before assuming I'm merely making assertions.
Everyone should learn how to solder. It gives them more of an appreciation for the equipment they use, and brings them closer to being able to repair or tweak or reinvent their own electronics.
Saying that you should participate directly in the production for yourself, and that this should be normalized, is not the same thing as saying that you should produce everything for yourself on an individual batch level.