does this look natural to u?
I can side with the vegans that the meat industry needs to be clamped down on hard
But eating meat in of itself is not wrong, that is what is natural
There are plenty of things that are ‘natural’ that are wrong to do, why is eating meat any different?
That’s a personal choice that people are allowed to make for themselves.
That misses the question a bit, no? Everything that is wrong to do is a personal choice. It’s not relevant to whether or not it should be done
Not really, some things are objectively bad and wrong and other things are merely subjective.
The problem we’re having here are people who hold their subjective beliefs very strongly are then adamant that it makes said beliefs objective, just because they believe them.
Killing someone who’s done nothing to you and doesn’t want to die is pretty objectively bad.
Yes, killing other people is objectively bad. Thank you for agreeing with me.
Could you tell me how you measured that badness and how I can repeat the experiment?
What is the ‘objective’ source of your morality?
There is none. It’s just my view based on how people see things. You’re allowed to not agree, it doesn’t have to be combative.
even things like killing being bad is not objective in my opinion, it just simply stems from our minds and societies’ process of growth through natural selection.
We believe that killing is bad only because we share the majority of their DNA and we are close genetically to what we’re killing. It was evolutionarily incentivised to not kill those that are genetically close, as they and we share common ancestors from which such thoughts evolved.
this is imo why we value humans more than other animals, animals more than vegetables and relatives over strangers. Friends being valued more than strangers make sense as well, as they share ideas in the place of the shared genome.
in a wider scope none of this matters anyway, our lives and deaths are irrelevant to the universe and our lives don’t actually matter outside what our minds tell us.
Are the animals also allowed a choice in the matter?
See this is what I told people when they found out I had sex with my dog, and they said I was crazy and abusive! Like, it’s my own choice!
>inb4 some child left behind replies with “are you equating eating meat for sustenance with rape?”
Yes. You could eat something else for sustenance. The reason you choose meat is because it’s a more enjoyable experience for you, despite the inherent harm. That sounds similar to another topic I mentioned in this comment
Yes, but most people in the west don’t have the option to eat meat that are not from the meat industry.
That is exactly why veganism is attractive in the west.
Murder and rape are also “natural.”
Yo this seems to be a bad take
I think something that defines humanity is that we really try not to follow the “rules of nature”, ie. the rule of the stronger over the weaker
Yeah, I wash shocked to find out that Squirrels hunted and ate smaller mice when they felt the urge.
Almost all herbivores are opportunistic carnivores. Cows are known to eat rats found in the hay. Horses sometimes gobble down a chick if they feel like it.
All these strict rules people believe about biology were prescribed by scholars of old who believed in a perfect creation where everything had its place, but reality is very messy.
Carnivores, not cannibals lol
All cannibals are carnivores but not all carnivores are cannibals.
Thanks 😅
99% of vegans dont say eating meat in itself is wrong and this bullshit narrative needs to stop
Edit: I wrote “in itself” to make it especially clear, but it seems people are skipping that part. The act of eating meat can not be evil, carnivorous animals do it for survival. The context is always what matters.
I would go as far as to say that most vegans wouldn’t have a moral problem with eating roadkill. The physical act of eating meat is only harmful to an animal if it’s still alive while you’re eating it. The problem is the part before that, where you paid someone to hurt it
You haven’t been here long, have you?
Youre saying vegans want to stop animals from eating other animals? I dont think so.
🤣 go to the Lemmy vegan community and say that. I’m sure you’ll easily get 99 upvotes and only a single downvote
I can go to a conservative community and say liberals have horns and get the same result. It proves nothing.
Pretty horrifying if you let yourself think of it.
What ever horror humanity has done, we are still holding the beer of invertebrates.
And yet nature’s is is not a justification for aught. The fruit of the tree of wisdom (mythically) gave us empathy that we may live in harmony with neighbors, and in the late game, we have learned the imperative to see value in the fallow wilds.
A century ago, a vegan diet for humans as extremely difficult, possibly impossible. And to quote Saruman the forests will burn in the fires of industry! And they have.
We are not a vegan culture today because the food industry focuses on sales and profits, not on nutrition and health.
Though to be fair our massive land-hungry industrial farms will affect the biomes around them regardless of whether we grow plants or ranch livestock. Veganism is part of a solution towards a more harmonious civilization, but misses several pieces.
What the crap is this response?
As much as I admire the morality and overall health of vegetarian/vegan folks, I would also super respect anyone who got all their protein by monstering whole live mice that they caught by hand.
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Our ancestors have been using sharp sticks, heavy sticks, and sharp rocks since they could walk upright, so I’d support that, too.
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I’m vegetarian and my partner is vegan but neither of us are strictly against the “hunter and gatherer” approach.
Where I live traditional hunting is almost nonexistent, but fishing and other ocean-based “hunting” (crabs, crays, oysters etc) is super popular. I’ve considered taking up spearfishing as it’s more intentional than throwing in a hook and dragging up whatever, and requires more (in my opinion) skill and nerve to pull off successfully. But even if I actually caught something the thought of cleaning it puts me off and I’d more than likely ruin it and waste a life for nothing.
No issues with anyone that can fairly catch and prepare their own meat for themselves, but I’ll stick to my tofu and seitan for now.
Hell yeah
Great, now I have to replace all my beef with veal.
Vegans and vegetarians are not often more healthy than meat eaters. In fact a lot of them subsist mostly on junk food and ultra processed shit.
I dunno about their morals. For me it depends on whether they are opposed to meat because they think it’s murder (absurd notion: see op) or because they opposed the treatment of living animals in industrial meat farms, which is the real issue.
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However you gotta justify your choices I guess.
Nature according to people who use that argument
Well if the ants can do it, why can’t we?(Btw, I’m opposed to caged chicken egg cultivation, and even had my own chicken in the past before I couldn’t anymore for eggs. Now I just pay the premium and researched which were the most ethical eggs in the store available. Happy hens make better eggs anyway. I’m just pointing out we’re not the only ones that raise animals for consumption in nature).
Why would what ants do have relevancy to what we should do?
It tracks the logic of the meme then counterpoint, this is the counterpoint to the counterpoint.
Those ants are farming aphids. They keep them in close quarters. Ants are nature. Ergo the meme
Everything is nature. But which closed quarters are they kept?
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You vegan? Apparently y’all are fine with meat too according to some:
I invented a fictional society for stories in which you are allowed to buy and consume meat, but only if you have a “carnivore’s medallion”. The only way to obtain one is to have witnesses observe you personally slaughter a living being (eg, a chicken) with no assistance.
Ideologically, seems like a good way to put friction on meat obsessions and get people to think about it.
Isn’t this just hunting?
Well, hunting involves the whole orange vests, ensuring legal permission, stalking an animal, etc. The idea would be if this world has hunters, any of them certified as a witness can get their colleagues a medallion without going the whole chicken route.
But obviously, most people who eat meat today don’t hunt. So they would need to go through the experience of taking life once before reaping the benefit.
No assistance would be no guns, no bows, no knives, no traps, right?
Literally using your bare hands or something you find on the ground.
I mean humans have always used tools but sure, you could take a chicken bare handed. Fish might be easier for a first go as I have seen a few people catch fish out of the water bare-handed after a few tries
I like this idea. We’re raising chickens and probably rabbits this spring. If you’re going to eat meat, you should face the reality of the life you are consuming.
Sounds interesting.
90% alive today would not eat meat if they had to kill. You can grow up used to it of course.
If they went to live naked in the woods and used their apex predator canines to tear out a deer’s jugular, I’m not judging.
Veganism isn’t about respect for nature. It is a philosophy and way of living against animal cruelty and exploitation.
Congratulations on a legit shitpost.
Whoosh.
E: For those downvoting, remember this is a shitpost and some level of inaccuracy is almost required. It’s the shit part of the post. Like, c’mon guys…
Vegans have to deal with arguments like this but unironically on the daily. That hits a nerve, wether it’s meant as a shitpost or not. Don’t take it personally.
And it gotten so bad, that some people will accuse you being a vegan if you’re not doing keto/carnivore diet, and thus an extremely militant and unpleasant one.
Mayhaps it is the vegans who need to avoid taking things personally
Yeah, it’s totally unreasonable to get tired of hearing the same shitty comments and warmed over “jokes” every day.
It can be both
I wonder how people arguing with them know they are vegans… 🤔
Ooh I know that one! They are in a social situation that involves food and the vegan politely declines an animal product. Then they make an anti vegan joke and the vegan politely disagrees. Have been there many times.
Really? Because I have seen quite a few times vegan claiming that eating meat is a “murder” when people were trying to enjoy their steaks.
Here on Lemmy one idiot even claimed that cutting sheep wool or something similar is a sexual assault
You know mate you get people with extreme opinions in all walks of life.
No doubt about it, but I am yet to see someone who eats meat calling for vegans to be forcibly fed meat - and I have seen vegans saying that eating meat should be forbidden.
I’ve seen quite a few times black people have abused welfare programs. Usually they’re posted under conservative accounts, and I get flamed in the comments for pointing out that these are videos posted by someone with an agenda who wants their audience to think certain things about certain groups of people without providing actual data on the subject
Do you think maybe some of the videos of vegans being douchebags that you’ve seen have been posted by someone with an agenda who wants their audience to think certain things about certain groups of people without providing actual data on the subject?
Have you seen how wool is actually collected? It’s quite violent.
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Are you one of the idiots claiming sheep are sexually attacked during wool cutting?
Here’s a video on wool, but content warning, it is graphic despite blurring.
Is wool cutting a sexual assault according to you?
Have you ever tried to not eat in front of people ever? Turns out it’s pretty hard to do. Sometimes, if you’re nice to people, you get invited to go out to eat to a place. Often those places have no vegan options, and you have to explain why you can’t eat there so people don’t just think you’re blowing them off constantly. We don’t just go around telling everyone we’re vegan like all the hate memes like to say.
Most vegans I’ve met, myself included, don’t pick fights with people about veganism. We just live by example. It’d be cool if more people went vegan, but arguing with people about doing it doesn’t help. Doing that is like trying to push religion on people or make people experience empathy. It isn’t easy to go vegan (getting easier at least). Food is tied to a lot of people’s culture who have a hard time relearning how to cook/eat and make generational recipes or comfort foods they’ve always eaten.
Tell them to find a vegan inclusive place next time and go anyway, the animal is already dead and being a patron this one time to satisfy a friend and have a good time is fine
You also have to keep in mind that it sucks to be a vegan sharing a meal with an omni. Even with access to plant-based options, we’re still required to be surrounded by what we see as gore, and people consuming gore.
You know how smokers can’t smell smoke as well as nonsmokers? When I stopped consuming animals I was surprised to find that all meat, no matter how fresh, smells rotten. And everybody who consumes animals smells faintly like rotting corpses - especially during and right after eating.
the animal is already dead
Never heard this one before. I think I’ll use it next time someone says that jerkin it to revenge porn is wrong. I mean, the harm is already done, right?
By putting a post on the interwebs making fun of them and waiting for them to arrive? Not what you are implying, but also a quite effective method.
Lmao. Look at OPs comments. They actually believe this shit. Based on all the other shitposts they post here and all throughout lemmy, they probably picked it up on reddit or some other trash site, thought it was funny, and came here to share.
Imagine making this literal exact comment under a post about black people committing a bunch of crime
“Remember this is a shitpost, and some level of inaccuracy is almost required. It’s the shit part of the post” under a 13/50 meme
I’ll take “things actual vegans never say” for $500!
it’s not even a contradiction. One can respect something and not emulate it.
I for one have great respect for the ocean, and the brave people who risk their lives sailing across it. I’m fine here in kansas lol
Let the Bullshit Bingo begin!
Preach. This is why every Mr. Olympia is filled to the brim, just like non-vegan dudes’ wives, with vegans. Boom. Nothing but power and rightness and winning. Bigger, stronger, smarter, righter, and better at internet discourse.
The bit about non-vegans wives fucking sent me, little fucked we (people) joke about adultury as an own tho
Where with all the animals if all went vegan now?
Why are the vegans sounding more like cavemen than the meat-eaters?
Well, the first bullshit here is the word “purely”. While they indeed have a mainly vegan diet, they also opportunistically consume insects and even small mammals.
Please fact check before posting, this is scientificaly inaccurate. Yeah they might eat a bug or two, but gorillas normally don’t eat other mammals.
The human brain is fueled by about 20% of your caloric intake. We’re evolved to be omnivorous. This isn’t prescriptive but descriptive. It’s going to take development to make vegan food delicious and something we want to eat (and then all the other features we want out of food: cheap, storage-safe, easy to prepare, etc.)
For those of us who still eat a meat diet, it usually takes a chef to make something actually enjoyable from strictly vegetables. Otherwise, we’re used to receiving oddly-spiced bland mush from our vegan friends. But we could do better if we were putting billions into it, and not another more-addictive cheeto.
But we live entrenched in capitalism, so no one is going to take this seriously until we’re already dropping dead from natural disasters and famine.
Wow, I asked for the bullshit and you seriously delivered! Not sure if I should take the time to reply to this, because would it even matter?
One thing, though: Everything you eat is vegan, except for the animal tissue, the milk-stuff and eggs. We don’t need capitalism to invest in more vegan meat alternatives, we fight it by eating plant based! No junk, just delicious fruits, nuts, legumes and vegetables, like we always did. It’s cheap, great for your body and for our suffering planet as well!
Omnivores? We were lucky apes who found out that fire kills enough parasites and bacteria that live in meat. Dogs are the real omnivores, pigs are, too. They eat a rotting squirrel if the feel like it! We die if our bleach-cleaned chicken filet wasn’t in the freezer for a couple of hours.
Do you know what elephants and hippos eat all day … damn, I just started replying.In light of the west’s heavily animal-centric diets resulting in most of the top causes of death in these places, it’s not exactly accurate to call us omnivores. The centered on whole plant foods our diets are, the better off we are. Animal flesh, dairy, and eggs, at the very least, cannot be consumed without increasing progression and risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes (Ignoring a host of other harmful effects like cancer and autoimmune disorders, which is more contentious).
It would be more accurate to say that we are primarily herbivores, but with an incomplete and dangerous emergency system for omnivory.
Let’s put it this way, our bodies really like the smell, taste and mouthfeel of meat. So long as our system is focused on compelling people to eat via yummy food, there’s going to be a market for it. It’s not prescription, just description.
That’s why I was saying we’ll have to overcome capitalism before we can really beat this. Otherwise actual balanced nutrition will be a < checks spelling > commodifiable feature of food, rather than its essential point.
Estimates have it that in the industrial world, somewhere between 1-5% of people are vegan. That remaining the same until your preferred revolution happens, and your idealized form of governance becomes the reality everywhere: how is your socioeconomic system going to get the remaining 95% of billions of people to stop consuming, committing cruelty to, and exploiting animals? Sorry, but we have to do whatever we can in the here and now, and there is urgency in time. It’s not only a matter of morality. We know that our wanton animal consumption is one of the largest drivers of climate change. We know that our society’s addiction to flesh and secretions have resulted in agricultural systems that not only resulted in one recent pandemic, but we are hanging on the edge of an even worse flu pandemic that can end up happening at any time. 75% of new infectious diseases have a zoonotic origin.
In a world where ideal society has never happened and is always a dream away, we do not have the luxury of an either/or approach of fixing one problem before we think about the next.
The toxic food environment is a reality, and that needs to be fixed in policy. But individual choice matters too, because what we choose to buy is what drives what is sold. Taste is dynamic and subjective. New diets are only temporarily less satisfying until the person develops the knowledge, cooking skills, and palate to start getting more satisfaction out of their foods. Even better, the difference in the way people feel when they adopt a whole-food plant-based diet for even as little as a couple of weeks, is a start contrast to the standard western diet. Experiencing the difference first-hand generates more motivation to continue.
Also, our bodies do not inherently like the smell, taste, and mouthfeel of animal flesh. That is a learned habit. When a person goes long enough without consuming flesh, the very smell of it changes - even the freshest meats smell rotten, and the people who eat these foods smell like rotting corpses.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but our elite class seems determined to stay there, and historically violent revolution is what unseats them and allows their wealth to be redistributed from their Scrooge McDuck vaults.
Nonviolent resistance might work, but we haven’t seen the kind of mass wealth dispersion that will be necessary.
And the elite are content to drive us right into extinction via the climate crisis and the plastic crisis. Even if you make technology that disrupts the meat market, they’re going to legally wrest control of it from you (unless you are rich enough to defend it from Nestlé). Regardless, when it comes to the climate crisis, the deal is done. The pooch is screwed. We know after the collapse the upper limit of sustainable population will be about one billion, and that number dwindles with each day of inaction.
Meanwhile the industrial world is choosing far-right parties over the usual neoliberal crap we’ve endured through the latter half of the twentieth century, so we’re not even serious about managing the climate crisis without the aforementioned revolution (and in that case, into some kind of communal government, since the typical outcome of a people’s revolution is a chain of dictators).
Good luck convincing our officials, elected or not, to choose veganism over the meat industry, or even nutrition over junk food. You will need all you can get.
So be the change, Uriel238! You are against suffering, slavery and destruction of our resources? Against the greedy elite who brutaly and recklessly exploit the weak instead of protecting them? (See what I did there?)
Stop paying for dead animal parts next time you’re shopping at the supermarket! It feels really good to not take part in this evil system of misery and annihilation.
I know veganism is not the only solution, but no solution will ever be enough without it. Plus it’s the easiest Fuck You to the ruling class, while we wait for a revolution.
No idea what you are talking about. I’m not even vegan, but I can make a delicious vegan meal without even trying. All my vegan friends make very tasty food, too. No need for billions.
I have no question that everyone across the industrialized world would gladly switch to your delicious recipes.
Maybe you should start a business!
For those of us who still eat a meat diet, it usually takes a chef to make something actually enjoyable from strictly vegetables.
This is a joke, right? Have you ever tried pasta? Rice? Fruit?
Edit: ramen, PB&J, Oreos, potatoes
The skills you need to make vegetables taste good are the same as the skills you need to make meat taste good. I really hope you aren’t just, like, boiling chicken breasts and eating them unseasoned
Im like 99% sure they use dairy to make the oreo cream
Oreos are famously vegan. There’s some dispute about the ethics of buying products with palm oil, and some sugar suppliers might use bone char to filter sugar, but the ingredients don’t necessarily include any animal products
The human brain is fueled by about 20% of your caloric intake.
That explains most of shit vegans spread.
Not a vegan, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a vegan say that. We’ve all watched nature shows. Rationale is usually a little bit deeper. Overconsumption, abuse of animals in meat/dairy industries, responsibility of humans to aim for a higher level of morality than animals, etc. Sure some go overboard, but I wouldn’t underestimate the complexity of the thinking behind it.
I feel like this is the “attack helicopter” joke of veganism
Isn’t that every joke on veganism?
Humans “i dont rape because i respect other humans”. Meanwhile nature …
And in before “but i need to eat”, you dont need to eat animal products. You can have a healthy life with a vegan diet, arguably an even healthier life. And to go back to my original point, just because you need to cum, doesnt mean that you have the right to cause suffering and death to other sentient beings.
Just masturbate. Just go vegan.
But what about my sharp canine teeth? Check mate.
Look at this carnivore devouring their prey.
Panda’s are omnivores tho
From all the animals thst feed only on plants and have huge canines, you chose the bear?
I 100% agree with you, that the existence of canine teeth does not mean that we must eat meat, but pandas are famously bad at living. The species only exists at this point because humans think they’re cute
Those are to hold on to your victim more tightly
I’m not your waiter, and this isn’t Australia
Oh, then, whatever you say when you win checkers 😎
Telling boys to just go masturbate got us the Immorten Joe’s Warboys † that are the alt-right, that got Trump into power twice. The boys we told to literally go fuck themselves when they raged over their sexual frustration got us the army of militants and voters behind the white Christian nationalist movement. I was among them in the 1980s, when the society gave a meager few more fucks about them than they do in the twenty-first century.
I suspect similar movements exist through Europe, which is generally rejecting neoliberalism for fascist-thick movements towards one-party autocracy.
No, I don’t have a solution, and I’ve been working on it for thirty years. Christianity’s proscription against sex (later limited to non-reproductive sex) figures largely into the problem and it’s served so far as a sufficient distraction from class consciousness and effective response to industry’s effect on climate, and the imminent climate crisis.
We don’t have a way to let our young guys sow their wild oats, while we’re careening towards multiple great filters we are unprepared to navigate.
I know: 🧶📌📇
Maybe even: 🐰🎩🫖☕
And yet, very few people think about it, still. Those who do ponder the angry-young-men problem discount them as ineligible or feel they are too repugnant to civilized folk to consider. I’ve heard otherwise rational content creators actually say (I paraphrase) these guys were mistreated as kids and are now a societal problem. But they suck, so fuck those guys.
It might be a failing of the human species itself, that we are compelled to cast our young men out the way gorillas cast out their adolescent females (but welcome strange females), and capitalism intentionally only has limited seats where they can pick themselves up, so the system teaches them from the beginning to be aggressive, ruthless and transactional. Not to get completely nihilist, but maybe our capacity for civilization is limited and we just can’t overcome the paradigms that served us as migratory bands of hunter-gatherers.
In the meantime, our boys are taught they suck in our Christianity-heavy abstinence-only sex-ed, ‡ from which they descend into the incel movement, the manosphere, gamergaters, etc and from there into the transnational white power movement. Our society gave Trump his instant army, and it was ready for him the moment Trump went into politics. And our lack of interest or concern about the new batch of warboys we churn our from the US education system every year, is going to literally kill us all.
Just go vegan is going to end the same way, especially since the food industry cares not about actual nutrition but profit. Taking a page from Fourth International Posadism, we may have to end capitalism before we can create an ethical food production system (probably incorporating farming invertebrates as well as vegetables), but the problem right now is not what’s the end result ( Fully Automated Gay Space Communism ) but how the heck we get there and not crash and burn with the global ecology.
Totally open to ideas, but I’m not the guy you have to convince.
† Not to be confused with Warboyz of W4K fame.
‡ Twenty six states mandate abstinence-only sex ed, that stuff that teaches girls they are chewing gum, or someother one-use safety-sealed metaphor, and that boys aren’t allowed to think about sex until they have a salaried job and a ring. Seriously, this is still what is taught.
Three states mandate comprehensive sex ed: The west coast. And none of them require discussion of consent. (Some teachers include it anyway, as an elective topic). Of course, if we demanded opt-in consent in our sexual relationships, we might demand opt-in sex in our other contracts as well, say our jobs, our devices, our software, etc.
Am I supposed to read more than a sentence of this
Not if you don’t want to. Maybe you think I’m wrong after a couple of sentences. That’s okay. The majority of American voters voted for an autocratic usurper. We can’t expect everyone to get it or care.
There are too many people for us all to hunt our own meat, and the same amount of farmland that can feed x amount of livestock can feed significantly more people than the livestock would.
Not all crops are created equal.
Crops intended for livestock are way easier to farm, require less water, less pesticides, less fertilizer, and less taking care of.
Many times crops intended for livestock are a necessary part of rotatory crops. As they tend to be easier on the land.
Farming is not as easy as “you can grow anything in any given land”.
Non-vegan, hearing that vegans exist: “Hey, these people are different from me! I hate them!”
“Hey guys, check it out. I jus came up with this HILARIOUS owl-meme!”
It’s because the very existence of veganism implies that a) eating animals and the things they produce is harmful and b) you don’t need to eat animals or the things they produce. Omnivores have to argue against one or both of those claims, or acknowledge that they’re doing something wrong, and humans will commit a lot of evils to convince ourselves that we’re not doing anything wrong
“I’m a good person, good people don’t do bad things, therefore nothing I do is bad”
Where with all the animals if all went vegan now?
Why are the vegans sounding more like cavemen than the meat-eaters?
This is for real shit post
I think the problem isn’t that we eat meat. It’s that we torture the animals and have them live in deplorable conditions before we eat them. If we all hunted or raised our own animals or had the animals live in decent conditions it would be less of an issue for most REASONABLE vegans and vegetarians. I used to be vegan and vegetarian a decade so I get it a bit. I hated it when anyone would bitch about other people’s food choices, but then complain when they did the same to them for their food choices. Both sides I mean. I had some non-veggies once they found out I didn’t eat meat would attack me for it. When I did start eating meat again some vegans and vegetarians would attack me for it.
I know that the industry is horrific. I have battled internally with becoming a vegan. And this isn’t a but, it’s just something i thought about once when thinking about the argument that whilst in nature, animals eat other animals, its not the same as what we do as we farma dn torture animals to get the meat…
Its cats…
Cats torture their prey…
They play with it, and maim it and keep it alive for as long as possible so they can chase it, for fun…
And sometimes they just fucking leave it there when it dies.
And we love cats. Even vegans love cats.
And that sort of makes me laugh a bit.
For me, I think the difference is that I have the means and opportunity to reduce (an incredibly minor amount, I know) the suffering of animals everywhere by not eating meat, so I feel somewhat an obligation to do so.
Whereas a cat does not have the knowledge or information or desire to make that sort of decision making. So I love them anyway…I just don’t let them outside so they can’t murder every living thing nearby for fun.
To each his own, that’s just my personal impetus to be meat free.
Yeah, I think this is the big difference. We have the capacity to rationalize and introspect. If we can make a change for the better (and know we can), how do we justify not making it?
Sometimes the reason is “it’s hard” or an apathetic “it doesn’t matter”. But I think it’s very difficult to come to the conclusion that it’s (consumption of meat) the correct thing to do.
I say this as someone who commonly falls into the “it’s tough” bucket.
Actually, humans are animals. Once you view them in that light, the “I don’t want to stop eating meat” becomes “I can’t stop eating meat, because I am actually an animal who believe it is above instinct”.
Sure, we’re animals. Being able to reason and rationalize sure are something too, though.
An important addition is that saying “we are animals” isn’t supposed to cut what we judge to be morally right or wrong.
If anything, “We are animals” must be used to know that other animals may probably have similar introspection as us and we are unaware, thinking o ourselves as special kind of creature when it is far from being true.
If, let’s say hypothetically, a cow do have not only feelings but also moral thought, thinking of a sacred "cow god/goddess) and having moral argument with fellow cows, then it just makes butchering them even more of a “crime” that it is already.
It is pretty horrible, but who’s to say that despite our smart words and realizations, we aren’t just acting on our own programming. Who is to say that our subconscious did not desire meat, and then our rational part of our minds made whatever excuse to justify eating more meat. Having said that, I want substitutes…
Most of the time, adults don’t torture their prey. Kittens aren’t born with the ability to hunt, and their instincts need to develop too. So the mom brings home live prey for the kittens to play with. Sometimes adults keep this behaviour.
Absolutely, the meat industry needs to be clamped down on hard
But, there are plenty of vegans who also rail against alternatives like lab grown beef which is still meat but bypasses all the problems with the meat industry of today
If lab grown meat were readily available and affordable, I would switch in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I know for a damn fact I dont have the discipline for veganism, bad as the industry is. Also milk and eggs have to be produced somehow no matter what or the animal dies because we bred them like that millennia ago so like might as well eat those anyway
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Yeah I like meat but that is a stupid argument unless you hunt all your meals yourself.
