this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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You know there's a lot of valid ethical frameworks that do not espouse veganism?
It's safer to say "YOUR ethics aren't a concern to him", or to me. There's a lot of philosophers who eat meat. And it's not hypocritical. They just think you're wrong. You aren't God (and even if you were, God doesn't get to decide ethics).
As for adverse health effects, I have known dozens of ex-vegans, one with an degree in nutrition, who left veganism despite their ethics, for health reasons. Generally speaking, it's easier to "accidentally" have an reasonably ok diet with a full balanced mix of foods than it is for a vegan to intentionally have one.
This is actually an incredibly complicated accusation, and unless you enter the conversation with the conclusion in mind, there's not enough evidence/arguments out there to show that it's "the meat industry" that's the real environmental problem with our food industry. As someone who has shared a table with experts on a few occasions and then done some of my own armchair research, I'm convinced the two real problems are non-local food and factory farming. The former creates polluting logicistical overhead in transport and over-storage of food (fossil fuels for driving, non-recyclable plastics, etc) and the latter in willful destruction of environment to get more output cheaper, when we have plenty of room and plenty of margins to "do it right"
As for "to do it right", part of doing it right is acknowledging that we have a compost/manure shortfall against crops NOT because we're not producing enough manure but because we don't have localized meat farms balanced in each area around their crop farms, and/or that it's considered acceptable to use fertilizers despite the presence of manure that would better fertilize a crop. So the better answer? Local meat, and transition away from factory farms. And if you've got the land and the courage for it, keep some chickens for eggs and goats for meat/manure.
My 2c anyway.
AND it is about how delicious a steak is to me. Have you ever walked a local farm with the people who do all the work? Helped them pick out the pigs for the meal? Known the love that is involved in the whole process, and the fact that the animals have it 100x better than they'd have had it in nature.
So yes, there is nothing like cutting into that pork chop having a REAL appreciation for the pig's sacrifice, a real appreciation for the work everyone put into it all.
My ethical concerns go beyond raising animals, it's the unnecessary killing them without their consent where it becomes problematic. Particularly when the "sacrifice" is for the trivial reason to satisfy the killer's taste buds; when our taste buds can be satisfied in so many ways that don't involve a victim.
And yes, I grew up on a farm where we raised all our own meat, including pigs. I've personally killed more animals than the average person, and I can say with certainty that every animal wants to live. To violently take another's life "because it tastes good" and then go through such convuluted reasoning to justify it is very puzzling to me. It suggests a lack of empathy that seems to be endemic in our society. To speak of "the love" that is involved in the process doesn't hold much weight with me. Serial killers love to kill, don't they?
Understand that you don't get to pen the ethical frameworks for the world, only for yourself. Even in ethical frameworks where "consent" and "killing" are given extreme weight, there are always other factors... And under most of the foundational ethical frameworks (Utilitarianism and Natural Law Theory come to mind), the argument for necessary-veganism is unsupportable.
So if you want to hate meat eating, say "I think it's wrong to eat animals" or "my morals don't allow it". Don't tell people who eat meat they don't care about ethics, because that statement is simply dead wrong.
My biggest complaint about proselytizing vegans is the way they oversimplify the equation. Like every single person who ever eats meat for any reason stops with a fork in their hand saying "Is this bite of food more important to me than murder? YES IT IS".
With all due respect, reality is not as simple as you're making it out to be. If you cannot see that there's more to the discussion than "meat tastes good" and "animals don't want to die", then nobody can help you. But pretending that people use convoluted reasoning to justify it is an ignorant take, whether willful or out of being blinded by your own zealous position on the matter.
You do understand that from a psychological point of view, human empathy and animal empathy are different factors and rationally exist in different amounts. Honestly, my personal take is that zealous vegans show less empathy towards fellow man than other people. LOOK at the way you're thinking about supermajority of humanity? Why should I not see that as a lack of empathy as well?
And for that matter, there are several empathy-related disorders where a person's mispaced empathy goes so far as to affect their relationships and quality of life. And again, that's only for that rare person staring at meat on a fork commenting about how murder tastes good. The ones who simply categorize animals or plants or insects differently from you in their empathy don't suggest anything of the sort.
Tell it to me straight. Are you so far gone that you cannot understand the moral, ethical, or psychological difference between being an actual serial killer and simply not being vegan?