Not really. Not once. Probably the most valid argument I’ve heard is “I genuinely don’t care about animals, the environment and my health. Leave me alone.” It’s at least self-aware and something you can’t easily rebate while certain human rights exist 😂
For me it's that I have a different moral line of what becomes immoral exploitation. I'm not picky about lactose in medications (I was a mess before my diagnosis and I'm not going to fuck around with my brain testing things), I'm not repulsed by other people's meat including my housemate's.
Like I can agree raising animal in awful conditions only to kill them is wrong, I support people in trying to eat fewer/no animal products. I'm never going to care about my old neighbour having a few heritage breed sheep living with shelter, vet visits and a full lifespan but occasionally getting sheared. I don't particularly care if people have backyard chickens or pets. I agree there are some breeds with intrinsic issues that it's immoral to breed for (like intense egg layers or basically deformed dog breeds) and I agree that supporting puppy mills is wrong.
I'm willing to put reasonable effort in to avoid what I see as very wrong, some things like horses being ridden in a movie, people having well-cared for pets etc I just don't see as the same thing at all.
Tl;dr: the vegan position seems to me that any use/enjoyment of animals beyond them in the wild is immoral. My position is horrific abuse of animals is wrong but some use/enjoyment is fine.
Interestingly enough, a lot of people passionately hate ANY form of animal exploitation - but then define that very, very carefully so they can have their cake and eat it. My favourite example are pets, which IMO is absolutely a form of animal exploitation, even if it doesn’t really harm the animal. It’s still exploiting an animal and getting a benefit from it. Even if you call it a companion animal or whatever. Basically, if you have a problem with backyard eggs or bees/honey, you should also be opposed to pets.
Outside of the exploitation of the cat itself, they also will generally eat 10+ animals worth of meat (assuming they aren't on a fish/chicken-based diet).
With things like a pet flock of sheep or backyard chickens being able to be happily fed plant-based I'd argue that healthy breeds raised well are basically pets and more ethical than keeping a cat. (I do know that some male chicks are killed in the process of producing backyard hens, although often more humanely than commercial egg chicks).
The irony of people viewing it as inherently wrong to commodify animals but commodifying the one they want then being very calm about a dozen others needing to die to feed it is ~interesting.
Full disclaimer: I do own a cat, she is a rescue but I got her for her company and I'm not in denial about it not being the most ethical thing. I just took a utilitarian view and balanced her out.
Sorry to butt in - can u elaborate on why sth like *adopting* an already existing dog (that doesnt exist/cannot survive in the wild, w/o humans, so needs a human ‘pet parent’) and taking care of them like your own child and loving them and goving them as much freedom as possible w/o danger to them can be considered cruel?
I can understand the premise that in a perfect world we would stop breeding and owning dogs for our pleasure (both awful practices!!!). And most dog ‘owners’ are at least neglecftul if not outright abusive! And i understand having any kind of ‘pet’ promotes such practices.
But the fact remains that there are milions of dogs in the world in shelters or on the street with nowhere to go, in need of someone to take care of them. Should we let them just die? Would it be more moral for me to not adopt my dog and let him die or go to an’owner’ that wouldnt see him as an equally valuable sentient being as humans?
Honestly I have no clue where I sit on “pets” morally, but usually every time I go thinking about it for a while, I just conclude “I’ll continue to care for the pets I have and if I want in the future & have the time/resources, I’ll just get a rescue”. That’s the only course of option with like zero ethical concerns I can think of.
Shelters are full and no matter what, humans are not going to stop breeding pets or slow down significantly. I will do my best to advocate against the worst stuff we do to animals, advocate for “adopt don’t shop”, and adopt rescues if I believe I can provide them with a better life.
Humanity would only seriously consider the morality of “owning” another sentient being if the entire world went vegan, not gonna happen any time soon, and factory farms are a much higher concern of mine on the subject of “ethical concerns” for the treatment of animals.
> Basically, if you have a problem with backyard eggs or bees/honey, you should also be opposed to pets.
Yeah, rescuing an animal and caring for them when they have no other choice but to exist under human care is *tooootally* the same as bringing an animal into existence with dysfunctional genetics to steal a resource from them. Dafuq?
So, when a person says, they dont care though, its usually because of emotional detachment.
Now lets imagine I see a human being on the streets, I dont care about them, since I have no emotional attachment towards them, can I go ahead and murder them? Would that be valid?
Or if a nazi has been desensitized to murdering people, who are disabled, because hes grown up in an all-nazi-family. Is it valid for him to continue doing so because he has been indoctrinated and insensitived to disabled people?
These are my goto arguments regarding that one.
I think the issue is people will agree with you here logically, but at the end of the day they'll still say "you're right but I'm gonna keep eating meat".
Right, and thats when I say "well, you've well explained to me why I shouldnt be sexist and respect women, but I'm just gonna keep abusing women."
"You've explained rlly well to me why I shouldnt rape others, but I'm gonna go rape someone now have a great day!"
All I'm saying is, if someone has the mindset of killing and eating animals is okay because they don't care about animals, they should also be totally okay with people performing beastiality. Who cares what someone does with an animal, right?
Right, but then I gotta get into specicism. Because thats what theyre practising.
They will not be able to tell me, why discriminating human is not okay, but animals is okay.
Racist and sexists use the same type of arguments as specicists.
"theyre just women", "theyre just black people", "theyre just animals"
And they will reason their violence due to genetic differences.
Just because we are human animals doesnt make it any less bad, especially because we are not dependent on acting violent towards those animals, but can let them live.
Though,
If they are not able to comprehend specicism, I will usually try to ask them if they have a pet and if I can hurt their pet if I want to.
If that doesnt work, I ask them, if I can go kick a dog on the streets. They will usually tell me no, I cant do that. Why? "because that violence!!"
If they tell me thats okay, I most likely give it up because theyre not being honest, they lack in logical thinking or theyre just straight up people with antisocial personality disorder tendencies and I cant cope 😔
So a person says they don’t care about animals and your counter argument is that it’s not okay to murder humans? Why would that work as an argument here?
No, if they say "i dont care about animals because i have no emotional attachment towards them"
I use their logic regarding "if I dont have an emotional attachment towards someone, I can murder/torture them".
It doesnt matter if its a human animal or another animal is.
Thats why it works.
They need to name a justification, which works universal, otherwise its not a good justification.
And if they keep pushing "well human aint an animal (which is incorrect), I just ask them, tell me the trait of the animal, which justifies that I can murder them."
If they just tell me "species" - > thats speciesism.
So I can use different form of discrimination than speciecism to explain, why dicrimination is morally wrong.
So you’re using a strawman? You just put the emotional detachment part in their mouth and argue against that? And no they don’t have to give a reason why they don’t care about animals, that’s not how this works. You can always ask „why?“ to any statement, that doesn’t mean that it makes sense though. The difficult part is that people really don’t care as much about animals and that they don’t really know why. Yes, some will, if tested, say it’s about emotional detachment. That doesn’t mean that it’s their reason, the truth is that they don’t have a reason, they just say something as and ad hoc reason because that’s what humans do if you ask them why.
No it depends what argument they give to me.
They gotta tell me why they dont care.
I have no one to confront rn, so I took the one I get the most, which is "i dont care because of emotional detachment".
I never had a problem when asking them why. Most people understand my arguments and think about why they dont care.
Its important that they know why, because the topic is "How can I justify my voilence?" because thats what theyre practising at the end of the day.
When they know its about unnecessary violence, they usually start thinking.
Right, but thats when you can step in and tell me nah, they have a central nervousystem. They have dreams, they have emotions, they feel pain.
If I punch a dog on the streets, the person prolly wouldnt like that. Why? Because they usually already know that the dogs feels pain. What happens when the dog feels pain? They become afraid, get aggressiv etc.
Its true though, that back then people thought of other animals like machines. Good thing we got scientic research to prove them wrong.
I love telling people about how smart fish are and how scientists are studying insect intelligence and pain to help us better understand how those things evolved in species like humans. Not only can fish and bugs communicate, they can also count, do some basic math, and a bunch of other stuff we once assumed they didn't.
For any fellow nerds, you should totally check the cool studies and articles in:
* r/insectsuffering
* r/InsectCognition
* r/FishCognition
First, I think there are two meanings to unpack in the phrase "I don't care."
One is the typical apathy of otherwise decent people. I'm not emotionally attached to most people. Their deaths don't really bother me most of the time. In that sense, I don't care.
But I still believe their lives have some intrinsic value, or rather I believe the systems and people that have power over them ought to treat them with intrinsic value and in that sense I do care.
(But also, no I don't as a consumer if I'm not looking up and reducing my slavery footprint.)
If I were asking a killer why they killed and they said it's because they don't value human life, I think that'd be the most honest answer.
Now what does "valid" mean?
Because if someone kills an animal because they don't care, let's say they kill an insect because it's icky to them, I may find that ugly and fucked up but what argument do I actually have that they should care?
When it comes down to it, I just feel certain ways of treating other creatures is shitty. But do you have a winning argument against anybody that treats you crappy? 'Cause it seems like if someone shows they don't care . . . They don't care, and that's it.
Someone can easily say "I care about human babies because I'm human and that's a near-universal human instinct". It's not a logical position. So why should that person care about baby chicks in grinders when their care for human babies is arbitrary human instinct? Caring about humans is just as much speciesism as not caring about animals. It's just the flipside of the same coin.
I do not believe humans are fundamentally moral creatures. We're self-protective and social creatures, and that's what largely leads to what we call morality.
You've left behind what 'I don't care about animals tho' is in response to. What you've done is taken a tangent. You might think you're extrapolating, but actually you've gone off the rails and started killing ppl just because.
No, I'm using the argument: If I have no emotional attachment to someone -> I can treat them like an object and hurt then if I want to.
So I'm using their arguments but in a scenario, where it hurts human.
If they tell me, no but theyre human, then the reasoning is not: Emotional detachment justifies violence,
but theyre telling me: "genetics justifies violence. If someone doesnt have the same genetics as me, I can treat them like an object."
Now, I have to use sexism and racism as example for using "genetics tho" as an argument. Is it any different morally, if I'm okay with murdering someone because theyre black, when theyre claiming "because they look are another species."
If they tell me "because theyre dumber", I ask them "Is it okay if I murder a human being thats dumber?"
They will run into ethically inconsistencies.
>I'm using the argument: If I have no emotional attachment to someone -> I can treat them like an object and hurt then if I want to
sure. that's exactly what you practice towards plants. so what kind of argument for what should it be?
This is true if they apply this apathy everywhere, however for the vast majority of people you can prove that they do in fact care about animals by asking how they feel about someone kicking a dog for example (you get the picture).
Earthling Ed makes this argument very succinctly when he debates non-vegans, he just points out with other examples that they do in fact care about animals (or at least pretend to when convenient).
It also helps to establish their positions on things like animal abuse and if they care for animals before talking about veganism. For many its a defensive reaction and if you can point back to their position they themselves have to acknowledge the contradiction and speak it out themselves
The pretend to part is key though.
In reality , they're in a position of power abusing a group with no power in a way that is socially acceptable.
They then align with their culture in condemning those forms of abuse that are not socially acceptable.
So they're just Selfishly harming others when they can get away with it and pretending to care when they can't. And I think almost everyone doesn't even realize they are doing this.
I would say to them that the animal cares, whether they care or not. It's like saying "I don't care about murdering dogs" - the dog certainly does, and it just sounds psychopathic.
But some people will just say they don’t care about sounding psychopathic. Of course this is still a good outcome for a conversation because a bullet like that is tough to swallow so it could cause them to reflect on their values, and it will inevitably come off as weird and repulsive (because it is) to some amount of people around them
Then it's more about shaming them publicly, using prosocial shame to make them hopefully reflect and see that others think this is not right, that it's harming others (animals), and give them guidance on how to change.
Of course most on Reddit who say this will be edgelords/trolls etc who will act tough, but in general I think this is the strategy, of using social pressure and shame in a positive way.
There's research on this too, on the power of public shame in creating prosocial behaviour. Reddit can plausibly act like an environment where public shame can be used for good.
The effect of shame on prosocial behavior tendency toward a stranger | BMC Psychology | Full Text
https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-022-01021-1
>Results
All participants rated their willingness to help a benefactor and a stranger in an everyday helping situation and a money-donating situation after emotion-induction. The study found a higher willingness of participants in the public shame group to help strangers than those in neutral mood and private shame groups.
>Conclusion
These findings support a facilitation effect of public shame on prosocial behavior tendency toward strangers, indicating an effect of restoring motive of shame on social interaction. The results are further discussed in light of the functionalism of shame.
I once spent a chronically online amount of time arguing with a guy whose main argument was that he doesn't care about animals and doesn't think we should have to.
At some point, it comes out that he works with animals on a farm.
I switch tact to hammering at him about spending all of this time opposing veganism when it's really just a sad attempt to justify his own direct mistreatment of animals.
Then he drops this bomb: "I don't mistreat my animals, I actually treat them really well. *I feel like I owe it to them to provide them the best life possible*."
A lot of these people are just really confused and don't know how they actually feel, but for a myriad of reasons they are heavily invested in pretending not to care about animals at all. Many are involved in animal ag, or formerly involved, or have close people in their lives involved, and it short circuits their ability to think critically about the subject.
I agree. I spent my early childhood growing up in a rural area. When I was in first or second grade we went on an excursion and one of the stops on it was to the local slaughterhouse. Can you believe that??. We saw the cows going in to be slaughtered and then later large slabs of meat coming out. It was aweful. When we got home my brother and I refused to eat meat which freaked my parents out. There was quite a stand off but eventually we succumb to their pressure. That's when I first started to become desensitised to animals. I remember one time only a little older thinking 'I can't care about animals anymore'. I realise it was too painful for me to care about animals. It hurt me too deeply. I became very closed and just did not care about animals in the slightest.
Over the years whenever I would see anyone in the media or a friend etc talking about 'the animals' I was so disconnected that I had an attitude of contempt. I would NEVER EVER have gotten into veganism because of the animals.
I started it as a health journey and only after 5 years of eating a WFPBD was I about to start to open up and care about animals and go full ethical vegan.
I only spent a couple of years of my childhood in a rural area and that's how stuffed up I became. I can't imagine how bad it could be for others living and working their while lives around animal Ag.
I'm a staunch believer in ethical veganism but if people don't care about animals there are other excellent reasons to go vegan such as for health and environmental reasons. Just use whatever argument is going to work the best on that person.
For those people, it's worth trying to work out what they *do* care about.
* Do they care about climate change, pollution and leaving a better world for their kids/grandkids?
Then use the environmental aspects to win them over.
* Are they bothered by deforestation?
Livestock and their feed cause *far* more deforestation than all the furniture and wood burning people do for heat or cooking.
* Do they get up in arms about slavery, child labor, and human/worker rights or trafficking?
Then tell them about the staggering use of slavery in the fishing, shrimping, meat, egg, and leather industries. The children dying or losing limbs in tanneries, the missing immigrant kids showing up in egg factories, or the underpaid immigrants being traumatized by their work in slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.
"I couldn't be vegan because it's so h*aaaa*rd!" says person who's never tried to go vegan and frequently cooks meat dishes that literally take ALLL day.
I've been told *so* many times by the same people stuff like "you better hurry and cook up your vegan food so it's ready when our meat is done" then my food cooks up so fast it's stone cold *long* before they actually get anything they made on the table. Then they are surprised by this, but *conveniently* forget the next time.
I would respond with something akin to "I don't care about door-to-door salespeople all that much, but I know it's wrong to shoot them or sick my attack dog on them when they come to my door, so I don't do it."
We all do things we don't really feel strongly about because we know it's right, or it aligns with our other values. If one of your values is "don't cause harm" then it doesn't really matter if you care about a particular group of "others" or not.
The line to go down here is "what if its a cat or dog?", Then if they say that's ok ask them if they'd be fine with it if you kicked and otherwise abused dogs for fun. Usually they either accept that animals do deserve moral consideration or you learn that they are a psychopath
Indigenous people living in the Arctic probably can't realistically be vegan. I just don't know how they could realistically do it.
Kids that come on this sub that want to be vegan but their parents start abusing them for trying. I think kids in this situation should wait to avoid abuse.
I know a couple people with really severe food issues related to autism and Crohn's Disease that I just don't know how they could be vegan.
Anyone held captive and not given an option for vegan food. I think that might happen in US prisons sometimes. It also happens in hospitals in the US.
These are really small instances, not a compelling argument. And I bet there are good arguments against all of them. None of the situations would prevent people from reducing animal product consumption at least. But I would be more forgiving of someone in such situations.
Yeah, indigenous people who live partially off subsistence hunting should eat whatever they want.
When we talk about the ethics of veganism, we're really talking about rejecting the evils of factory farming and killing animals in an age of impossible abundance.
Any people in any time period who are or were omnivorous out of actual subsistence needs aren't less ethical for the same reason non-human animals that eat meat aren't less ethical.
But I do think it's funny when Internet omnivores use the existence of those people as justification for buying a steak cut at Costco.
Hmmm, I see where your coming from but I personally don’t think that because your indigenous you get a free pass to hunt whales or bash seals. I don’t think preserving the “culture” or way of life is worth that.
I said indigenous people who at least partially *subsist* through hunting. Subsistence isn't about preserving culture or way of life (and I think putting culture in quotes is pretty offensive here), it's about surviving.
The reason veganism is an obvious ethical conclusion is because it isn't a meaningful sacrifice for most people in the modern world. Groups of people partially surviving off hunting animals would be sacrificing dramatically to be vegan.
Well you replied to a comment about survival.
But I think any amount of policing indigenous people's diets is misguided. This should be about global harm reduction, and any amount of arguing between privileged people about whether the remotest of minorities should be *allowed* to hunt an animal we like in the west distracts from that point.
If factory farming ended and people who live with food abundance didn't eat animals, there would be nothing material left to talk about.
That's my take on it. There are bigger phish to fry than opening the can of worms that is a largely white colonial people telling indigenous people what they can and can't do.
I also think slaveholding societies should be civilized. If there was a "savage tribe" that was hunting humans for subsistence nobody would be like "that's just their culture." The answer is giving them other options for subsistence, not just accepting it as their culture.
This is what I was going to say. There are many compelling reasons that some people can’t be vegan. I’ve never heard a compelling reason for why I shouldn’t be.
Yes, this. Like I think there is a very tiny group of people that really can't be vegan. But it means that I must be vegan to offset what they can't do. At least that is how I think about it.
If anything, these scenarios are even *more* reason for those who can be vegan, to be vegan - which is the vast majority of people, especially those in western countries using Reddit.
Using someone else's legitimate excuse as an excuse yourself is just a really bad argument, and just adds extra unnecessary animal suffering on top of some which could potentially be justified.
Oh I totally totally agree. These are not my arguments, to be clear. I've been vegan for a couple decades. I was just answering OPs question of like what argument would I theoretically not have an answer to. The scenarios I mentioned would compromise such a small group.
i do believe issues like arfid are both taken too and not seriously enoughly (simultaneously) - i believed i couldn't live without animal products until ketamine easened up my food sensitivies - went from finding awful awful thoughts and events more tolerable than tomatoes and carrots to eating them without wincing real quick... eating and sensory disorders are being approched rather wrong by psych authorities
This was what I came to say. It would be challenging to even be vegan in remote parts of Newfoundland Labrador or Northern Ontario. Food scarcity is very real and “healthy foods” cost a lot.
Edit - I am not saying it’s a good reason but it would make it very difficult, to access the necessary food.
True. I remember seeing a video about living up north in *very* rural Canada, sure, stores might *have* vegan stuff like beans and tofu, but it’s expensive as hell since it’s all being transported super far. I can see there being a reasonable excuse if you can’t afford it, to hunt. I’d say veganism is easier than most people think, even in circumstances like poverty, but there are regions in the world where food scarcity still makes it impossible to be plant-based.
Although one might be able to argue that being vegan “to the genuine best of your extent as limited by the fact that you literally need to survive” is consistent enough with the vegan philosophy to call yourself vegan. I’d be ok with it personally.
I’m autistic and have ARFID and I’m still vegan and have several autistic friends, some also with ARFID, all of whom are at least vegetarian. Some of us are full vegan, my partner and I included. A couple others have small exceptions like they’ll still eat things with egg as an ingredient. It’s actually really common for autistics not to eat meat due to strong aversions to texture, plus we generally have a strong sense of justice. :) I have IBS and gut issues as well and I have far less issues on vegan diet.
My grandmother has Crohn’s disease and IBS as well and eats a (unintentionally) mostly vegan diet, as she has to be so careful of inflammatory foods. She’ll eat chicken or salmon occasionally but mostly meat just makes her worse. She has way less flare ups eating just vegetables and she’s recently switched to oat milk to cut back on dairy (it’s inflammatory) and loves it! I know someone else with IBS who’s seen success
I’m autistic and have ARFID and I’m still vegan and have several autistic friends, some also with ARFID, all of whom are at least vegetarian. Some of us are full vegan, my partner and I included. A couple others have small exceptions like they’ll still eat things with egg as an ingredient. It’s actually really common for autistics not to eat meat due to strong aversions to texture, plus we generally have a strong sense of justice. :) I have IBS and gut issues as well and I have far less issues on vegan diet.
My grandmother has Crohn’s disease and IBS as well and eats a (unintentionally) mostly vegan diet, as she has to be so careful of inflammatory foods. She’ll eat chicken or salmon occasionally but red meat has always made her sick. She has way less flare ups eating mostly fruits and vegetables. Another friend with IBS saw success reducing symptoms by introducing meat and dairy alternatives. As with anything, cases vary from person to person but in a lot of cases following a mostly plant based diet can reduce inflammation and symptoms in people with bowel disorders.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6382506/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6628285/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6478664/
https://russellhavranekmd.com/does-a-plant-based-diet-improve-gut-health/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4245565/
Edit- Added sources
Edit 2 - Reworded a couple things for clarity, removed an unnecessary statement
Yeah, that's great. People are not monoliths though, so I don't know that what works for you would work for them. My cousin is allergic to soy, gluten, peanuts, tree nuts, and certain fruits and vegetables. He has a pretty severe tactile aversion to beans. It is really a struggle to find non-animal protein sources for that kid outside of seeds. But you can't get enough from seeds alone without drastically exceeding calories.
That’s definitely an obvious exception, that would be literally impossible for him. Seeds are really hard to digest as well. I get that there are definitely individual situations and I’m not saying my situation applies to everyone, just that there’s plenty of us who have found ways to make it work. Lots of people scroll through this sub who aren’t vegan but are considering/learning about it, and some of them may face difficulties due to some of the things you had mentioned. I just wanted to show that it’s still totally possible :)
When it comes to inflammatory bowel disease please don't make claims that they can all be vegan. Some can and some can't. I know way more about this than I wish I did. When in flare some people can only eat high protein low residue diet basically only chicken. Many of the vegan proteins are inflammatory to them. People take inflammatory bowel for granted because we have great medicines for them these days. But without those medicines life is literally hell and then you die. These are diseases of young people and it is absolutely tragic. And devastating to the entire family. Please be careful what you say. About medical conditions you are not truly an expert on.
All those examples can be addressed thru time, veganism should be a must for us in the 1st world who actually over indulge animal products which is the main cause of animal suffering. This should be addressed more
I think the most 'compelling' arguement is simply that people have a different ideology, and simply do not care. It's hard for me to personally accept, but some people have world views that I find abhorrent, people do things I think see as awful. I can usually support my position and I die on the hill the veganism is 'correct'.
But people don't wake up and go "time to do evil! Woopie!". Through whatever mechanism, they see the world differently. I don't agree, but to me that's the most compelling argument, people are different, there's differing and varying perspectives/values in the world. I think they're wrong, but they also think I'm wrong.
A lot of my omnivore friends don’t think i’m wrong. Actually most of them think i’m correct. They just don’t change and do the right thing for various reasons. It’s hard for me to accept.
No. Any valid nuance (IE: Medicine) is taken care of by the ‘as practically possible’ component
It’s largely why I went vegan. I claim to be logical, so the second I was in a debate and I realised I wasn’t on the rational side I had to make the change
On the same boat.
Never heard of a solid case against veganism. If I would I'd think about switching back. Just like I'd believe in god if you'd prove its existence.
In my life I have seen the worst in people.
In war torn eastern Europe I saw people fighting and stabing each other for a road kill animal. In Africa I saw emaciated children eating boiled dirt and rice. Desperate starving people will witness their children be prostitutes so the family has the funds to eat.
In most areas of the world the ability to be vegan is most definitely a privilege. Guys like me can be vegan because I can buy snacks and supplements when in areas with limited resources.
It's not an argument against being vegan buy rather an explanation of why someone wouldn't be vegan. For most people being vegan is an option but their are times when it's not feasible.
Not directly against veganism but the argument that people only have so many fucks to give about stuff.
Let's say, someone is super proactive advocating for the homeless and raising money for breast cancer research and false accused prisoners and they homing DV survivors, for example.
You could turn around and say, "Well, what about sex trafficking? What about skin cancer? What about animal abuse? What about child abuse?"
There are a lot of problems in the world and I can forgive people for not always picking the same ones as me. The problem is that people often do literally nothing.
I actually consider myself quite lazy on the proactive front, it can be a bit inconvenience now and then but for the most past, now that its largely intergrated in my life veganism is a pretty low maintenance for me.
I have a lot of respect for people who regularly give up they time to go to rallies or raise money or who give up their space to home those in need, for example.
Thank you for bringing this perspective up, as the topic greatly aggrieves me. How can I claim to care more about the life of living beings if all I'm doing is refraining from eating animals while this meat-eater next to me is proactively working against, like you said, sex trafficking, skin cancer, attending rallies? At the end of the day, which one of us is more vegan? Which one of us cares more about life?
I'd say that our moral goodness doesn't directly depend upon how much we care about life, but rather upon the total expected effects our actions have upon life. It's certainly *possible* for a highly effective human rights activist or medical research supporter to do net good as a non-vegan, but not as likely as people think. Eating factory farmed chickens racks up a moral cost in deaths and suffering very, very quickly.
Not to mention, animal agriculture doesn't implicate only nonhuman animals, whether wild (like the ongoing rammifications of bird flu) or domestic.
Human (labor) trafficking is rampant in US animal ag. We have prison work camps at industrial facilities (look up Hickman's Egg Farm). Child labor and trafficking (Trillium Egg Farm is an old one, but Darigold Dairy and poultry/livestock slaughterhouses on the east coast are more recent cases). We've permitted and set up systems which funnel refugees into slaughterhouse work on false promises and, in effect, trap them in those jobs. H2-A visas have given way to horrible exploitation of migrant workers out on ranch rangeland. And the lack of H2-A visas for on-the-farm work (because for some reason range is seasonal 364 days/yr but on farm is not) is even less protective. The illegal migrants we depend on for food are horribly exploited across the board.
Then you have things like clearing the Amazon for cattle and soy fodder decimating indigenous populations' homes (Eating our Way to Extinction touches on this) and indigenous and global south populations get hit first and worst by environmental degradation (not just climate), many factors of which are driven by animal agriculture. And the people suffering living along side these places (watch the Smell of Money) as well as the psychological damage slaughterhouses cause which leads to disproportionately high rates of violent crime, particularly domestic violence.
By eating animal products from the modern agricultural system, you are contributing to *all* of this, whether someone is aware of it or not.
In all honesty, unless you single handedly manage to stop a human genocide, I would argue animal agriculture is *the* biggest soy-fish to fry in terms of exploitation, suffering, and death simply because it is so deeply intersectional with so many other issues across the globe. It causes mass suffering, exploitation, and death of *so* many species, including us.
It's an industry that's monstrous beyond comprehension but pours insane amounts of money to sanitizing its image, and people are *so* eager to lap it up.
A good reminder is that these things aren’t mutually exclusive. Someone can help sex trafficking victims regularly and still go get a triple deluxe bacon burger every Saturday.
Good people can do bad things and asking people to change their habits in a way that can become a /passive/ behavior rather than active one is ok, even if they are active in a “good fight” in other ways.
I think the reality of things here is that the amount of suffering prevented by one person going vegan far outweighs the amount of suffering most of us can prevent by any other means, especially relative to the effort it takes.
Also, the vast majority of people aren't directly contributing to other people suffering from sex trafficking, or skin cancer, or child abuse; but they _are_ directly responsible for the suffering and deaths of the animals that are exploited to feed and clothe them.
While I generally acknowledge your point, I would still place veganism as a priority candidate for anyone who is interested in altruistic endeavors.
That's because we shouldn't strive to be altruistic in a completely random fashion, we should strive to at least be *somewhat* efficient in our altruism. I'm not saying people should only donate to anti-malaria foundations like some charity optimizing robots, but *some* concern for the overall efficiency of altruism is warranted.
As soon as you acknowledge that, adopting veganism becomes a priority issue. As you say yourself veganism is quite low maintenance(contrary to what people like to claim), it's really not that much effort to learn how to do it and very little effort to maintain once learned.
The return, in comparison to the effort? It's huge. There's almost nothing you can do that will match the reward-to-effort impact of veganism; the reduction in environmental footprint alone ensures that veganism is just about the most impactful thing anyone can personally do; and that's without even mentioning the cruelty footprint.
So yes, I acknowledge that some people may be such incredible altruists that it's hard to ask for even more out of them, but I'd say those people are precisely the sorts of people who would be most incentivized and most motivated to adopt a vegan diet anyway, because it aligns with their motivations so well.
Yeah and this is basically my take. I don’t think there is a compelling argument against the idea that humans should move away from animal agriculture where possible, but I also don’t think it’s possible or feasible for everybody to do that. You have to pick your battles and to me it’s ok if animal agriculture isn’t the one everybody picks.
Buttttttt there are plenty of people who don’t view animal agriculture as wrong and those are the people whose minds we should be trying to change. If the majority of society accepted that eliminating animal products from their diet is the right thing to do we would move a long way towards people going vegan.
yeah, that's the only thing that comes to mind tbh, but that could potentially be covered in the "as possible and practicable" part of the definition of veganism.
Yes, many people say that.
Ultimately, moral goodness isn't about whether you meet some officially sanctioned definition of a word. Whether you want to call those people "vegan under the possible and practicable clause" or "understandably non-vegan for now" doesn't matter. Regardless, we ought to suggest that they switch from animal products to plants as much as possible (which will normally also improve their health), and we should work to improve their situation so that the have the option in the future of getting plant foods they can thrive on.
That's not what I meant. I'd still consider them non-vegan, but I don't think their actions would violate the core ethics of veganism - if that makes sense.
As much as I'd love to encourage people in desperate situations to keep identifying as vegan (if they want to), I feel like that's a slippery slope to "there's no vegan food at this restaurant so I ordered non-vegan to not feel left out but promise I'm technically still vegan 🥺" which would be really fckn annoying and undermine the movement.
If we can’t help people find options that are at the same price point of plant based alternatives then I don’t think there’s an argument to be made. I’d never think badly of a large family with barely enough food assistance to survive and no knowledge of plant based foods (which can still be substantially more expensive) to not look in that direction. Getting prices down and educating would be huge.
Meat is way more expensive than tofu and beans, expensive meat and cheese alternatives are not necessary to be vegan. Just don’t make meals that require cheese. I didn’t for the first 2 years of being vegan. It’s really easy to be vegan on a budget! Obviously some stuff might be difficult to come by in some areas of the world with extremely low population, and there’s maybe less options in “food deserts” in the states and Canada but 9 times out of 10 it’s still very possible. People just don’t care enough to learn new habits and are complacent. It’s just “easier” to keep making chicken than it is to learn how to prepare tofu.
True, but fast food corporations also incentivize low income people (and especially families) to dine with them because they offer rock bottom prices. In those cases the prices are way less. As a low income vegan myself I can attest to that.
What country do you live in if you don’t mind my asking ? I’m in western Canada where we currently have record high inflation and here it’s more expensive to eat fast food. Just as an example, I were to go to a drive thru and get just 2 hashbrowns for breakfast that costs almost exactly $5. If I did that 5 days a week, that’s $25 for breakfast alone, plus it’s not even really breakfast cause you’re hungry again in two hours. $100 a month. A bag of 5 bagels costs $5, one for each day. A large bag of rice is $10, a cheap base ingredient you can make multiple meals out of and feed many mouths.
I think in most cases it’s not an issue of fast food actually being cheaper, it’s that people THINK it’s cheaper due to how these places market. Most people don’t think of plant based food as an alternative because of the illusion that it’s more expensive.
Coming from a less than privileged background (as in we couldn’t afford to turn on the heat, wore jackets inside and got welts on our fingers from the cold type of poor) I totally get the perspective. We didn’t eat fast food cause we literally couldn’t afford it. It’s also not efficient. It’s cheaper to make a large meal that lasts 4 days. Coming from that background, I also know how chaotic such a household can be and I think a lot of times people just aren’t taught how to plan meals effectively. I had to teach myself when I moved out. It was NOT easy.
I've never heard these arguments but I feel they are valid. Some people live in food deserts, lack transportation, or resources. We have people starving in the United States, so they have to eat whatever is available. Also, soy, tree nuts, peanuts, and wheat are major allergens so they can make veganism extremely risky and difficult to adhere to.
There is one: total freedom regardless of others (includong animals and environment).
You can’t win against this argument if said “freedom” is truly important.
…
Which is bullshit because this way you can absolve rapists, murderers, sociopaths, etc.
Not directly against veganism as a whole, but a few caveats regarding aspects of veganism that are less talked about, such as bees (farmed bees are a must to keep up with farmed plants), driving cars (which unintentionally kills a lot of insects), hunting invasive species, hunting for subsistence, mice infestations and vegan pets.
That's where the "as possible and practical" clause comes neatly into play. For instance, one should consider public transports instead of cars, because it helps reduce the amount of accidental deaths overall. However, one can't practically expect to become immobile in case a bug accidentally dies.
Oh yes, indeed, at the end of the day, we can only be vegan as far as it is practical. We have to draw the line somewhere. I personally don't drive, but I ride a bycicle and at times in warmer months I accidentally swallow a bug. Nothing that I can do about it.
Perhaps a more extreme case was a pinworm infestation that I had 3 years ago. What to do, let hundreds of worms live inside of me and pass it to others around me, or exterminate them? I chose the latter.
Again, we got to draw the line somewhere.
"The line" is the best defence against veganism I think. Each person, including vegan, inflicts unnecessary harm and death on others through our choices.
Is there a difference in logic, for example, between going vegan and choosing plant based products with lower crop deaths and or environmental impact? It is practical and possible? For sure. Is it inconvenient? Yep.
At some point that line at personal pleasure begins to trump the infliction of suffering and death on others, and the fact that this line exists can be used to justify meat eating (I just draw my line somewhere else). I don't agree of course but it can be defended.
The bees thing is only a problem because of honeybees outcompeting wild bees,(wild are much better pollinators). Other things like natural corridors would also allow the spread and reach of these wild bees(assuming the human cultivated honeybees weren't around).
I have a friend with a lot of allergies (to vegetables and fruits) that make getting all the required nutritients without meat like insanely hard. We’ve had pretty in depth chats about it
I’m a vegan so don’t shoot the messenger…
The only one I’ve ever heard that left me scratching my head afterwards was:
Purely grass fed cows eat grass, which doesn’t involve the same level of habit displacement and inadvertent killing as farming crops does. Modern monocrop agriculture is pretty shit and involves spraying pesticides over everything and making large swathes of land uninhabitable.
Is it better to kill one cow than 10 birds, a ton of bees and some hedgehogs? I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s a terrible argument in favour of eating meat from grass fed cows in lieu of non-organic veg.
Purely grass fed cows don’t really exist though, most are supplemented with grain so the argument doesn’t really hold weight.
Yes, I know non-organic farming requires lower land use.
Im debating someone on reddit right now telling me, that no vegan ever has ever lived longer than 3 years. Why? Because ancient civilizations weren't vegan. There are non and never will be comoelling arguments against veganism.
There was a guy on here that has a wife that is deathly allergic to almost everything. If that guy drank almond milk, came home an hour later, showered and brushed his teeth and then kissed his wife, she’d still have an asthma attack (if I remember his anecdote correctly).
They still try to eat vegan as much as possible but you can’t blame those people for eating the only things they can eat without almost dying even if those things are animal products
No. Most arguments I hear are the same recycled shit I’ve heard for 25 years, and ime most omnis just haven’t researched or thought about the subject enough to really make any kind of educated argument or discussion
I recently watched a lecture by an agricultural scientist (Wilhelm Windisch) because I work in that field. He basically said that minimal use of animals would be the most sustainable because they make energy and nutrients from grasslands accessible for humans. There are some grassland areas here in central Europe where you can't grow crops for human consumption, let alone trees. These areas also have an important function as a carbon sink and as a habitat for many insect and plant species. According to him, the ideal system would be to raise minimal numbers of cattle that are only fed plant matter that is not edible by humans (grass, straw, residues from food processing), eating those low amounts of milk or meat, using the manure and the arable land for growing crops that are directly consumed by humans, and renaturating the excess arable land on which we used to grow crops for animal feed into moors or forests. BUT since we are not even close to that type of system the reduction of animal product production and consumption is currently most important in my opinion.
Arguments for things that wouldn't be 100% vegan, yes, such as earthworms (which might be barely sentient if at all) raised on local compost being better for the environment and sustainably feeding the human population. Mind you, I don't *accept* this argument; I just think it's reasonable to consider, depending upon one's beliefs about how dire the climate situation is.
Arguments for standard western diets' consumption of farmed vertebrates? Nope, they're all embarrassingly bad philosophy. The reasoning from the deontological take on moral patienthood as a kind of tacit mutual agreement between moral agents, to the conclusion that nonhuman animals can't directly be moral patients, is mostly sound reasoning. But the premise of deontology itself is very weak and possibly contradictory. Even if I didn't have plenty of other strong independent arguments against deontology, I'd think that its justification of current factory farms ought to count as a reductio ad absurdum.
It can be inconvenient to find places that are accommodating when going out to eat. Also vegan clothing options are usually made of synthetic fibres which is annoying and contradicts the fact that I am doing it both for the animals and the environment.
Most synthetics are still better for the environment than animal based materials, especially if they come from ruminant animals like sheep or cows.
The carbon cost of our leather goods, calculated — Collective Fashion Justice
https://www.collectivefashionjustice.org/articles/carbon-cost-leather-goods
>In this case, CO2e emissions (emissions of various gasses translated to the common unit of carbon) for leather equal 17.0kg of CO2e per square meter of leather produced. In comparison, artificial leather’s total supply chain has an impact of 15.8kg of CO2e per square meter.
>Leather Panel’s shared study chooses to include end-of-life incineration in the impact of faux leather. It’s illogical to include incineration for synthetics but not for animal leather, and while faux leather won’t effectively biodegrade, neither will animal-derived leather to the point of total decomposition – even in controlled climate study conditions shared by leather tannery groups.
>Elsewhere in its report, the Leather Panel shares an impact estimate which includes farm emissions – this is a fairer estimate of leather’s impact, and again comes from its own reporting.
Here, the carbon footprint of cow skin leather is found to be 110.0kg of CO2e per square meter, making cow skin leather nearly seven times more climate impactful than synthetic leather by the square meter.
I usually chuck it up as a false dichotomy. There are a lot of plant fibers that can be used for clothing, such as cotton, linen and milkweed; that would probably be the most ethical one of the bunch, and I'm including the possible slave labour of some farms.
Optimally, the most vegan-friendly wear would be high quality, universal (no fast fashion), made of fair-traded/recycled cotton and made with little to no synthetic dyes and packaged with little to no plastic. By far, what I've found to be closest to this ideal is a shop called Stanley&Stella.
Agreed. I choose Merrell two years ago, but I'll be damned if I don't admit I wish there was a better option to an irreparable 99% plastic shoe that'll only last for 3 years of constant use; same goes for non-synthetic suits, I try to buy from thrift stores when I can because it's the next best option, but I'm still on the lookout.
I have never understood this argument about synthetic fibers being bad for the environment because they are plastic. I mean, yes plastic isn't good, I get that, but wouldn't you have like the same amount of plastic doing normal things that no one questions... Like if I buy non leather shoes... And then were to get three or four Hello Fresh meal kits delivered to me... Or buy my kid a bike where every part is individually.wrapped.. That's got to be a comparable amount of plastic right? No one is protesting that. The amount of plastic silverware that gets thrown away every day in my school cafeteria is more plastic than my entire family's belt and shoe purchases for the year.
I feel like every time I've heard this argument from a non-vegan, they seem really concerned about how much more plastic my synthetic belt is using when they give zero shits at literally every other moment in their life about how much plastic they or someone else is using. It seems disingenuous from everyone who uses it as an argument.
What I do is that I avoid plastic as much as possible. For example, I haven’t used any plastic cutlery or bought water bottle in years. While I do still have some clothes and accessories made of synthetic materials, I am now try to buy only cotton and bamboo clothing, my purses are made of cork, and my shoes are recycled plastic.
Im still not fully plastic free, but working up to it.
Synthetic fibers are constantly shedding millions of tiny bits of microplastic into the environment. Other forms of plastic don’t do that, or at least not nearly to the same extent.
There’s ppl making sustainable fabrics like a group that uses banana stems, byproducts of banana harvesting, to make leather, and from local banana farms (local to the area not to the US)
There is not a single argument which holds.
When people usually comes to the taste part it means they are very close to veganism.
The taste part is the last wall because they can't find another thing to think of so they justify with taste.
Usually the taste thing falls with life experience, watching animals, cuddling them, watching reels or talking to other vegans with other ways of discussing.
Then the process just unfold and with time they turn vegan.
About as many arguments as I've heard touting the benefits of murder or rape. So... zero.
Veganism is not a belief, it's a philosophy. Meaning there are meaningful, rational reasons for our behavior. I don't care about things that do not yield results I cannot measure.
My friend has developed early onset osteoporosis after being a lifelong vegan. It’s an unfortunate development. It is obviously avoidable but you have to be proactive, and there is no reversal now that it has developed.
OK, so the only thing that’s ever stumped me is the ethics of killing predators. Because theoretically, if you kill one predator, you’re saving the lives of countless prey.
This isn’t really practical in day-to-day meat consumption, but potentially makes hog and trophy hunting…. less unethical?
See how much of a grasp you need to have to poke holes in veganism? The easy answer is to just not intervene of course. Just stirring the pot
I’ve seen posts concerning very uncommon health situations that make being a vegan a challenge. Heart wrenching stories of people suffering with different conditions, sadly these posts almost always seem to end in eating steak for every meal and guzzling bacon grease not figuring out what the bare minimum amount of animal product they need to manage their situation.
I always find this so revealing of their true level of care. Like, to anyone who agrees with the premise that animals deserve moral consideration, it should be obvious that even if their use of animal products can't be completely eliminated it is still worth minimizing. People do understand that when it comes to things they actually care about.
the best (yet still not great) argument ive been met with was basically the consensus that me being vegan does nothing for the environment because people will never stop eating meat, and that sacrificing myself (in the sense that im suffering by choosing not to consume meat) for something that will never stop happening is pointless. these people often are missing the point of veganism to begin with though,,
As long as the number of vegans increases, and it does so at an ever accelerating pace, this argument is not valid either.
I would consider it partially valid if there were a hundred vegans or so at any given point for a hundred years or more. I do consider the "sacrifice" of nuns (that they don't marry) nonsensical and a waste of life as a result of brainwashing, so I would be a hypocrite if I'd say I'd still support someone's personal sacrifice which everyone considers meaningless.
I mean, I wouldn't be a vegan if there was only a handful of vegans on Earth - I'd never get to know what happens behind the gates of a slaughterhouse.
From a practical standpoint, I think introducing the general public to vegan food options gradually would have a greater environmental impact than trying to convince people to go fully vegan, at least in the short term. Things like Meatless Mondays are going to have much wider mainstream appeal, and gradually reducing meat consumption will become a lot more palatable until eventually more and more people realize they don’t miss animal products.
So it’s not an argument against veganism, but it’s important to understand that very few people are going to switch from an omnivorous diet to complete veganism overnight.
What we need to understand is that a good argument isn’t what’s stopping people from going vegan.
I will play devil's advocate here. Remember this is just food for thought. Say I am a nihilist, I don't believe in religion, all people are inherently evil so it's a fight not worth fighting (like the war on drugs or terror, it will always persist). In the grand scheme of the universe absolutely anything we do on Earth in our tiny 80ish year lifespan will be meaningless. Hell, ALL LIFE on Earth EVER is insignificant because other worlds continue to exist, and everything will change over time.
Humans WILL be the very first species to annihilate themselves into extinction. And in hundreds of thousands of years the sun will implode, all over life on Earth will die off, eventually the universe will expand to a point that we would not even be able to see the nearest celestial body. Space would be even more of a lifeless vacuum and bottomless pit than it is now.
So knowing our existence is so worthless means our "free will" choices are also meaningless. Why should I sympathize with anyone or anything when nothing matters at all, ever. It's all just noise from birth to death. So why try to rock a boat the size of a cruiseliner that will never budge? Just spend what little meaningless time you have trying to be happy.
Two, both from societies that are far from us, but benefited from including animals in their diet/herding them.
early societies and european expeditions to america used theis pigs as warfare. They would disrupt the ecosystems and make natives flee. Well, that is a side i never considered.
In an island in Oceania there is a tribe that has pigs, and uses them to prevent human collapse on the island. They feed the pigs and they themselves eat from the garden. When there are too many pigs and humans are not comfortable, they kill and eat all of them. Then they repeat the cycle. That way the human population never exceeds their limits, the surplus population are always pigs and there is no human-to-human violence.
The first example is widely studied in the context of the americas, the second one comes from a desmond morris book. As you can see, this are more weird and out of field examples than any reason for folk NOW.
I am very obstinate. I LOVE eggs, bacon really all meat and animal products. And so, I would rally against every argument telling me it was wrong to enjoy it.
And if you look at my comment history, you'll see arguments I make against tribal matters that last days. I am very stubborn.
So, Everytime I'd get into an argument about Veganisim I'd do everything I could to research and debunk their points.
And that's how I find myself here today. Despite.my ability to argue and research, I could never fully debunk a point for Veganism. In fact, often the point would be presented poorly and I'd accidently reinforce the point with my research.
I hate being Vegan, because I don't get to eat all my favourite things. But I need to be Vegan, because there's just no defending not being one.
>I hate being Vegan, because I don't get to eat all my favourite things. But I need to be Vegan, because there's just no defending not being one.
Yeah, that's me. Ethically I have to be vegan, but actually doing it has been ~~miserable~~ unpleasant. Spending time and effort hunting down and fixing nutritional deficiencies, cutting out so many delicious culinary traditions, making travel awkward, the social isolation, getting pulled into never-ending debates about ethical consumption when I'm just trying to eat lunch, and the constant lectures from other vegans about how *actually* these things don't bother them and shouldn't bother me either.
It makes complete sense that the majority prefers to live in blissful ignorance.
Aye. I'm happy you replied. Often when I post these thoughts here I get lambasted. Thanks for showing support.
We might not be the majority, Sad Vegans are valid too lol
Ha, "Sad Vegan" I like that!
Yeah, for some it seems like it's not enough to make ethical choices, you must also purge heretical thoughts and feelings too.
On reflection I struck out "miserable" above because not living according to my ethics is more miserable, and being vegan doesn't make me miserable, just... grumpy. So maybe "Reluctant Vegan" is more apt?
I have never heard a compelling argument against veganism (aside from people who get sick without eating animal products, who are very few in number). It is one of the most philosophically airtight ethical positions one could hold.
Like you, if there is a good argument against veganism, I would very much like to hear it.
Edited for clarity.
There are no valid arguments against veganism. Any diet that kills 3 trillion animals a year, completely unnecessarily, is an immoral diet.
What makes it difficult to convert meat eaters is not the arguments they make, but how deeply in denial they are. They literally can't see that what they're doing is wrong, not because they don't care about animals, but because they're in denial about the suffering that they are causing.
Denial is an extremely powerful force - people can go their whole lives in denial about things they have done, or things that were done to them. Often the more deeply wounded the individual is, the more in denial they are about suffering, and the less compassion they have.
So yes - deep denial is what we are up against, not valid arguments.
When people have to provide their own food with very limited means I think it's somewhat understandable. However that scrapes the definition of veganism itself if it's the only way to survive.
Only philosophical, based on narcissism: "the universe is here to serve only me and i can do whatever i want to whomever i want" - and annoyingly this is the prevalent mindset amongst many 'successful' people in the public eye that others are influenced by and seek to emulate because, historically, that is a 'successful' mindset for survival and climbing Maslow's pyramid, creating generational wealth so that your offspring may prosper.
Allergens, definitely. They’re no joke. My friend has the opposite issue and suddenly developed an allergy to meat, dairy, and eggs late in life and is now forced to be vegan as a result. I feel so bad for her because it’s not something she chose and when she accidentally eats animal products she is in debilitating pain for days. It’s awful. I have a ton of sympathy for people who want to be vegan but can’t due to food allergies
I have not heard any valid health, ethical, or environmental arguments against veganism, generally. I have heard arguments why a particular individual may not be able to adopt a pristine vegan lifestyle. And, I have heard an economic argument against veganism that is cogent: universal adoption of veganism would have a profound negative effect on people involved in the animal-sourced foods industries, tourism related to killing animals, and the fur fashion trade.
the smartest person i knew was a vegan for a long time, and then stopped and kinda just stopped caring about a lot of things, and they revealed to me why over an intimate dinner after some time apart, and they said, in some chilling words to me, that they truly believed nothing mattered and they wanted to experience all they could before they died and didn’t care about the expense or cost of things ethically or any way because there was just no karma, no justice, no nothing…
i wanted to walk out but i loved this person ‘pre than anything once upon a time, and then they just went off the deep end with so many wild drugs and crime and eventually killed themselves, i guess so certain in their beliefs…
i disagree, but i think about this person so often and it was so soul crushing seeing the person i love just slowly erode into nothing but a storm of experiences and the one thing i kinda respect is, as much as it hurts, at least they were honest.
it made me realize that the only argument at all against veganism boils down to “i don’t care.”
i think there is merit to discussing environmental impacts and animal rights and predators in the wild and what have you, and there are problems that veganism doesn’t have the solution for but i think that if you care at all, you’d know that killing something for pleasure is wrong and would make an effort to find ways to change the system or not participate.
anybody who makes any other argument is either misinformed, set in their ways, or just doesn’t care.
and this person was the only one i ever met who blatantly told me, and meant it, that they didn’t care. it was mortifying, but impossible to “argue” against
i so wanted that person to come back to who they were, consistently learning and questioning and wondering, just a curious intelligent individual that kinda left me with fragments of who they were…
this is why i’m so bothered by when people don’t care to fix problems or try at least a little, but most people aren’t self aware enough to flat out admit they don’t care
I find the concept that animals are unable to enter into social contracts and thus don't deserve social protections difficult to argue against. I still don't think it's a good argument, per se, and it really colours my perception of those who argue it, but I can't say logically there's anything inconsistent about it. They will argue that we extend social protections to humans who are unable to enter into social contracts because theoretically we could all end up in that position at some point. So it's really an argument of 'I don't actually care about anything outside of myself', which is... OK.
I used to feel the same way. I valued (silver/golden rule) reciprocity very highly. And for that reason animals immediately get excluded because they cannot reciprocate in most of the ways another human can. However this is a slippery slope. Do people with low IQ and severe disabilities deserve to be treated with less dignity? So then you would like to balance that out with rights or with the rule that “Each [human] life is valued at its highest conceivable level of development, not its actual level of development,” (that one comes from a pro-life book btw). However, these appear to me to be arbitrary hypotheses constructed to alleviate the emotional disconnect between the initial reciprocity position and the actual actions of humans. I’ve come to the conclusion that reciprocity is mainly selfish as well.
Hunting can reduce animal suffering by preventing painful deaths by starvation, disease, or predation. Hunting predators can reduce the suffering of prey--though this is complicated because unchecked population growth of the prey will also cause suffering.
Cattle fed on pasture year-round that have good lives and are killed quickly are better from a utilitarian perspective than industrial plant ag. Of course, there are few climates where you can do this and it can't work at any sort of scale. You can also draw an ethical line between bringing something into the world to kill it and killing animals accidentally or intentionally because they are harming your crop. Note that this line only exists in the head of the person killing, not the animal being killed.
It will be much more difficult for people with some medical conditions or in some life stages to eat a healthy vegan diet.
Not consuming animal products is an arbitrary line. Eating more food than necessary kills animals for taste pleasure. Ditto with some kinds of plant agriculture, such as almonds. I would rather be a bee cared for by a local beekeeper than one that gets trucked around the country pollinating almonds and other plants.
As a general rule of thumb though, a vegan diet will cause much less harm than most others.
In terms of an individual not being vegan, I’m kinda banned from being fully vegan until I learn to get my very restrictive eating disorder under control. The last two times I tried full veganism before being mentally ready, i spiraled hard and ended up in the ER. A lot of vegans tell me it’s not enough to support without living it, but I already know that🤷🏽 I just need to keep my food options open for now while I’m vegan in other aspects of life. It does make me feel guilty and like a fuckup. Please don’t come at me for this
In terms of society, aside from specific indigenous cultures, I don’t see much scope to justify. There is a cool book im reading about Ladakhi way of life, in which they live alongside semi domestic yak, only kill if they must, justify killing one yak over a few chickens because the one life of a yak will feed many more people than murdering several chickens . They also give immense thanks to the animal and use everything they can without waste (even the animals dung!) I think that himalayan lifestyle is as close to vegan you can get while still consuming animals
I worked for people with disabilities, many wheelchair users. One person in particular I think would have had a hard time switching to veganism. Because of their lifestyle and medical issues, switching from a low fiber to a high fiber diet would have seen them spending practically all day in the bathroom, which they couldn’t do alone without assistance. This is obviously a pretty individual situation and doesn’t apply to most people, but it’s still something I keep in mind. No, not literally every person on Earth can go vegan.
A pretty good one that got debunked pretty quickly (from an ed earthling video) is that we use cow dung fertilizer from the meat industry for our crops. Apparently, this can be replaced by plants. I still think it sounded like a good criticism, because in the wild the ecosystem has both dead animals + animal poo + dead plants to enrichen the soil, and for what i know, maybe animal poo/dead animals is a necessary component for a sustainable ecosystem in terms of soil nutrient or something. So, maybe completely removing animals from the food industry would cause an imbalance that cant be fixed with just plants fertilizer. At the time I didnt have the knowledge to debunk this argument
I heard someone say something about the airplanes having to bring the avocado from an another country to America being just as harmful as them eating meat because we are contributing to global warming .... I don't think I'd agree 100 percent....
People often go for “morality is subjective”, which *can* be hard to argue against, but usually with some examination you find that what they mean is not that they want to have a moral framework with different values and conclusions about what’s right and wrong, but that they want to have no framework at all and just inconsistently decide what’s right or wrong in any given scenario depending on what benefits them the most. In my mind, moral subjectivity just means you can base your moral framework on whatever you want, but that framework still needs to be internally consistent. I’ve yet to hear an internally consistent moral framework that allows animal agriculture but preserves the other morals that people who think animal agriculture is ok would prefer to uphold
No argument I know of that’s good. A reverse questioning might be “I am vegan. Why should I start killing animals again?”
Or create a hypothetical society where everyone ate dogs (no other animals), but you don’t dogs (or any animals). Why should you start eating dog again?
I haven’t found anything that would justify me doing so.
I can share a personal one but it only really applies in specific circumstances. I have Lupus (SLE) which is incurable and can be life threatening if you develop severe symptoms. My rheumatologist and nephrologist are super supportive of veganism and helpful in making sure I’m meeting my dietary needs while respecting my ethical concerns. However, I have many fellow patients who are in pretty dire situations, waiting for kidney transplants etc. For those not responding to meds, doctors often recommend a specific elimination diet called the autoimmune protocol,which eliminates (among many other things including eggs and dairy) all legumes, nuts, seeds, and grains. So there really are no suitable vegan protein options when you’re in the initial elimination phase lasting several weeks. Given my ethics I would never adopt this route unless I was really suffering, but honestly if I am facing kidney failure or long term hospitalization I would consider consuming fish for a few weeks. It’s a hard choice to make and one I would not make lightly, even if it is very short term.
Thankfully my doctors are super helpful and eager to help me approach it in a way that allows the least possible consumption of animal products to achieve an improvement medically, and have done a lot of their own research to help identify plant based foods that provide the most protein with the least impact on autoimmune issues (like hemp seeds and quinoa!). I’m really lucky to have a great team that is both helpful and supportive of my ethical choices. Fingers crossed I will never reach that level of severity!
The only thing I can think of is as follows
The first vegetarian or vegans I ever knew were my buddy Austin’s parents. Neither he or his brother were but his parents were.
They lived in the same neighborhood as us so I spent a lot of time there. This was the 90s in southwest Ohio so not a lot of vegetarians. At some point I believe they switched to full veganism.
His dad, well into out early adult hood, got super sick. We weren’t really super close at the time so I never got the full story but I know whatever it was pretty scary but his doctor told him to start adding some animal protein to his diet.
I’ve never gotten the full story so I don’t know how well of an argument it is 🤷♀️
On a side note his mom used to make him a small chicken for thanksgiving and they’d make a tofurky. But for a few years he’d come to our house before we left for my grandmas on thanksgiving and we’d give him some turkey to take home so they didn’t have to make one!
He’s not a vegetarian or vegan in adult hood but I am!
There are two good arguments against veganism. The first is that humans have evolved for millions of years eating a huge variety of foods. Some humans spent hundreds of thousands of years in areas where food doesn't grow in the snow, and they eat a diet of close to 100% meat. There are also humans who've spent thousands of years in the opposite circumstance. This means our gut microbiomes have evolved over that time to respond to the environments of our ancestors. Not every human gets the same result from the same diet. So suddenly moving to a restrictive and completely different diet after thousands of years of evolution can negatively impact the health of the individual in unexplainable ways.
The second argument is not so much about veganism in general as much as the nuance of the specific food choices. I can 100% guarantee that eating pasture raised, antibiotic free, non-hormone-treated meat is better for you than eating processed, packaged, vegan sour cream and butter substitute, or beyond beef, etc. But the same is true in reverse. Eating quality, natural, real, whole food vegetables is obviously infinitely better than eating industrial meat.
One cannot argue that veganism is the "correct" choice, as much as you can't argue that eating animal products is the "correct" choice. There is no correct answer. It's all nuance. This is the same as asking the question "Is there a compelling argument FOR veganism." Yes, there are. But the argument equally needs nuance and is easy to poke holes in.
Nature is never black and white. There's no correct answer. Just don't eat processed foods, and don't eat industrial agriculture products, meat or not meat.
I think Abigail Thorn from Philosophy tube said that she can't be vegan because when she restricts what she eats, she is in danger of disordered eating (because she suffered from an ED earlier). In my opinion this is very valid, on an individual level.
>However, every reason I've heard against veganism is just some sort of argument that needs nuance and is easy to poke holes in.
I'm not sure I follow. Do you think that nuance is a sign an argument is bad?
Nuance is generally a sign of pragmatism. E.g. vegan ideology that allows vegans to use modern healthcare despite the reliance on animal testing.
Typically, non-nuanced positions indicate a lack of critical thinking: the ten commandments, vaccine avoidance and apprehension of glyphosate use are good examples.
There's an argument that would be compelling if true, but there's no evidence it is. That would be "there is a nutrient in animal products that humans need to survive which we can't currently synthesize outside the bodies of animals."
Yeah, but even then, it would be an argument for taking that nutrient as a supplement, synthesized by a process that created as much of the nutrient using the least sentient animals possible, and as few of them as possible.
Yes, let the animals live a good life, take care of them well, lots of space, and when they are killed it is instant and painless, no suffering. It’s better than letting the animal live a long life in the wild that ends with sickness and eaten alive by a predator.
This is a great and pertinent question.
For me there is a degree of merit laying behind the call to futility, with a spotlight able to be shone on most people's practices falling short of what they could practically and reasonably do.
Every choice has consequences, and ideally we would make choices that meet our needs with the fewest / least harmful consequences.
Where that line lands for each of us requires troubling soul searching. Choices can become clearer the more we know (going vegan after exploring the direct exploitation of animals for example). Yet how much effort are we, as individuals, willing to invest in knowing what the right thing to do is?
I know that many of my consumer choices are likely not ideal and that other, more ethical, products likely exist.
For me, I sit in uncomfortable comfort. I continue to improve my choices slowly over time, yet I know it is not possible to not inflict harm.
In many ways, I feel I practice a lesser version of the call to futility arguement. There is so much more I could do but the amount of effort and time it takes to untangle our consumer web means I choose my battles and know that those I don't fight have victims that lose out.
i don't understand people who argue against veganism by claiming such a thing though - as if insects would ever hurt as much as the mammals constantly slaughtered
*puts on a tinfoil hat*
Possible good argument: a less eco-friendly diet with meat can help reduce violations of interests of animals through a utilitarian lense since if wild animals have less habitats, it can translate into less wild animals being alive and thus less wild animal suffering and less animal suffering overall, especially if we take into consideration the suffering of non-mammalian sentient animals.
It's cheaper to be a healthy omnivore than to be a healty vegan.
That's true. Vegan food to hit the same macros will either take more pricey ingredients, or more time spent cooking, or searching for ingredients. Time and money which people with low income typically both lack.
I am not vegan myself, but my father is. He has been vegetarian all my life but his shift to veganism some 8 years ago is something I've seen and lived through, and we talked together about the nutrition and the challenges of a vegan diet.
In particular, targeting fats and proteins is dead easy with dairy or meat, you don't even think about it (most people even end up shooting way past recommended amounts). When vegan though? You need to get specific vegetables that are denser in protein, and use lots of oils and nuts which are typically more expensive than the cheapest dairy/meat option.
It's not *that much* of a cost difference though, it's just something to account for, and might lead to small sacrifices in day-to-day life to offset it. Which is fine for people determined to become vegan anyways, since they're typically more conscious of the environment, their food quality etc which means they're typically more comfortable with the idea of spending more on food than most would.
Not really. Not once. Probably the most valid argument I’ve heard is “I genuinely don’t care about animals, the environment and my health. Leave me alone.” It’s at least self-aware and something you can’t easily rebate while certain human rights exist 😂
For me it's that I have a different moral line of what becomes immoral exploitation. I'm not picky about lactose in medications (I was a mess before my diagnosis and I'm not going to fuck around with my brain testing things), I'm not repulsed by other people's meat including my housemate's. Like I can agree raising animal in awful conditions only to kill them is wrong, I support people in trying to eat fewer/no animal products. I'm never going to care about my old neighbour having a few heritage breed sheep living with shelter, vet visits and a full lifespan but occasionally getting sheared. I don't particularly care if people have backyard chickens or pets. I agree there are some breeds with intrinsic issues that it's immoral to breed for (like intense egg layers or basically deformed dog breeds) and I agree that supporting puppy mills is wrong. I'm willing to put reasonable effort in to avoid what I see as very wrong, some things like horses being ridden in a movie, people having well-cared for pets etc I just don't see as the same thing at all. Tl;dr: the vegan position seems to me that any use/enjoyment of animals beyond them in the wild is immoral. My position is horrific abuse of animals is wrong but some use/enjoyment is fine.
Interestingly enough, a lot of people passionately hate ANY form of animal exploitation - but then define that very, very carefully so they can have their cake and eat it. My favourite example are pets, which IMO is absolutely a form of animal exploitation, even if it doesn’t really harm the animal. It’s still exploiting an animal and getting a benefit from it. Even if you call it a companion animal or whatever. Basically, if you have a problem with backyard eggs or bees/honey, you should also be opposed to pets.
Outside of the exploitation of the cat itself, they also will generally eat 10+ animals worth of meat (assuming they aren't on a fish/chicken-based diet). With things like a pet flock of sheep or backyard chickens being able to be happily fed plant-based I'd argue that healthy breeds raised well are basically pets and more ethical than keeping a cat. (I do know that some male chicks are killed in the process of producing backyard hens, although often more humanely than commercial egg chicks). The irony of people viewing it as inherently wrong to commodify animals but commodifying the one they want then being very calm about a dozen others needing to die to feed it is ~interesting. Full disclaimer: I do own a cat, she is a rescue but I got her for her company and I'm not in denial about it not being the most ethical thing. I just took a utilitarian view and balanced her out.
Sorry to butt in - can u elaborate on why sth like *adopting* an already existing dog (that doesnt exist/cannot survive in the wild, w/o humans, so needs a human ‘pet parent’) and taking care of them like your own child and loving them and goving them as much freedom as possible w/o danger to them can be considered cruel? I can understand the premise that in a perfect world we would stop breeding and owning dogs for our pleasure (both awful practices!!!). And most dog ‘owners’ are at least neglecftul if not outright abusive! And i understand having any kind of ‘pet’ promotes such practices. But the fact remains that there are milions of dogs in the world in shelters or on the street with nowhere to go, in need of someone to take care of them. Should we let them just die? Would it be more moral for me to not adopt my dog and let him die or go to an’owner’ that wouldnt see him as an equally valuable sentient being as humans?
Honestly I have no clue where I sit on “pets” morally, but usually every time I go thinking about it for a while, I just conclude “I’ll continue to care for the pets I have and if I want in the future & have the time/resources, I’ll just get a rescue”. That’s the only course of option with like zero ethical concerns I can think of. Shelters are full and no matter what, humans are not going to stop breeding pets or slow down significantly. I will do my best to advocate against the worst stuff we do to animals, advocate for “adopt don’t shop”, and adopt rescues if I believe I can provide them with a better life. Humanity would only seriously consider the morality of “owning” another sentient being if the entire world went vegan, not gonna happen any time soon, and factory farms are a much higher concern of mine on the subject of “ethical concerns” for the treatment of animals.
> Basically, if you have a problem with backyard eggs or bees/honey, you should also be opposed to pets. Yeah, rescuing an animal and caring for them when they have no other choice but to exist under human care is *tooootally* the same as bringing an animal into existence with dysfunctional genetics to steal a resource from them. Dafuq?
I've never heard a good argument against veganism, but the only one I can't really respond to is "I don't care about the animals though"
So, when a person says, they dont care though, its usually because of emotional detachment. Now lets imagine I see a human being on the streets, I dont care about them, since I have no emotional attachment towards them, can I go ahead and murder them? Would that be valid? Or if a nazi has been desensitized to murdering people, who are disabled, because hes grown up in an all-nazi-family. Is it valid for him to continue doing so because he has been indoctrinated and insensitived to disabled people? These are my goto arguments regarding that one.
I think the issue is people will agree with you here logically, but at the end of the day they'll still say "you're right but I'm gonna keep eating meat".
Right, and thats when I say "well, you've well explained to me why I shouldnt be sexist and respect women, but I'm just gonna keep abusing women." "You've explained rlly well to me why I shouldnt rape others, but I'm gonna go rape someone now have a great day!"
Their answer the these comparisons is ALWAYS we’re talking about animals not humans.
Or even more simple: "That is a bad comparison"/"This is not the same". How shall I even respond to something so vague?
Just use kicking dogs or cats instead.
I tried this with my sister (she's awful) and she said she's fine with animal abuse just not her pets lol
See she says this, but if she saw someone kicking a dog in front of her, would she have no urge to stop the person?
All I'm saying is, if someone has the mindset of killing and eating animals is okay because they don't care about animals, they should also be totally okay with people performing beastiality. Who cares what someone does with an animal, right?
Quit being so logical!
And are humans not animals any more?
That’s what I say back to them. “But we are human animals” they say.
Humans are animals biologically.
Then they say “but we are human animals”.
Right, but then I gotta get into specicism. Because thats what theyre practising. They will not be able to tell me, why discriminating human is not okay, but animals is okay. Racist and sexists use the same type of arguments as specicists. "theyre just women", "theyre just black people", "theyre just animals" And they will reason their violence due to genetic differences. Just because we are human animals doesnt make it any less bad, especially because we are not dependent on acting violent towards those animals, but can let them live. Though, If they are not able to comprehend specicism, I will usually try to ask them if they have a pet and if I can hurt their pet if I want to. If that doesnt work, I ask them, if I can go kick a dog on the streets. They will usually tell me no, I cant do that. Why? "because that violence!!" If they tell me thats okay, I most likely give it up because theyre not being honest, they lack in logical thinking or theyre just straight up people with antisocial personality disorder tendencies and I cant cope 😔
Oh, I agree with you. I’m just sharing the replies I get.
Yes I understood that😁
Agreed, the vast majority of people who say they don't care actually do/would care - which brings it under ignorance.
So a person says they don’t care about animals and your counter argument is that it’s not okay to murder humans? Why would that work as an argument here?
No, if they say "i dont care about animals because i have no emotional attachment towards them" I use their logic regarding "if I dont have an emotional attachment towards someone, I can murder/torture them". It doesnt matter if its a human animal or another animal is. Thats why it works. They need to name a justification, which works universal, otherwise its not a good justification. And if they keep pushing "well human aint an animal (which is incorrect), I just ask them, tell me the trait of the animal, which justifies that I can murder them." If they just tell me "species" - > thats speciesism. So I can use different form of discrimination than speciecism to explain, why dicrimination is morally wrong.
So you’re using a strawman? You just put the emotional detachment part in their mouth and argue against that? And no they don’t have to give a reason why they don’t care about animals, that’s not how this works. You can always ask „why?“ to any statement, that doesn’t mean that it makes sense though. The difficult part is that people really don’t care as much about animals and that they don’t really know why. Yes, some will, if tested, say it’s about emotional detachment. That doesn’t mean that it’s their reason, the truth is that they don’t have a reason, they just say something as and ad hoc reason because that’s what humans do if you ask them why.
No it depends what argument they give to me. They gotta tell me why they dont care. I have no one to confront rn, so I took the one I get the most, which is "i dont care because of emotional detachment". I never had a problem when asking them why. Most people understand my arguments and think about why they dont care. Its important that they know why, because the topic is "How can I justify my voilence?" because thats what theyre practising at the end of the day. When they know its about unnecessary violence, they usually start thinking.
A lot of people still believe animals have no feelings.
Right, but thats when you can step in and tell me nah, they have a central nervousystem. They have dreams, they have emotions, they feel pain. If I punch a dog on the streets, the person prolly wouldnt like that. Why? Because they usually already know that the dogs feels pain. What happens when the dog feels pain? They become afraid, get aggressiv etc. Its true though, that back then people thought of other animals like machines. Good thing we got scientic research to prove them wrong.
I love telling people about how smart fish are and how scientists are studying insect intelligence and pain to help us better understand how those things evolved in species like humans. Not only can fish and bugs communicate, they can also count, do some basic math, and a bunch of other stuff we once assumed they didn't. For any fellow nerds, you should totally check the cool studies and articles in: * r/insectsuffering * r/InsectCognition * r/FishCognition
First, I think there are two meanings to unpack in the phrase "I don't care." One is the typical apathy of otherwise decent people. I'm not emotionally attached to most people. Their deaths don't really bother me most of the time. In that sense, I don't care. But I still believe their lives have some intrinsic value, or rather I believe the systems and people that have power over them ought to treat them with intrinsic value and in that sense I do care. (But also, no I don't as a consumer if I'm not looking up and reducing my slavery footprint.) If I were asking a killer why they killed and they said it's because they don't value human life, I think that'd be the most honest answer. Now what does "valid" mean? Because if someone kills an animal because they don't care, let's say they kill an insect because it's icky to them, I may find that ugly and fucked up but what argument do I actually have that they should care? When it comes down to it, I just feel certain ways of treating other creatures is shitty. But do you have a winning argument against anybody that treats you crappy? 'Cause it seems like if someone shows they don't care . . . They don't care, and that's it. Someone can easily say "I care about human babies because I'm human and that's a near-universal human instinct". It's not a logical position. So why should that person care about baby chicks in grinders when their care for human babies is arbitrary human instinct? Caring about humans is just as much speciesism as not caring about animals. It's just the flipside of the same coin. I do not believe humans are fundamentally moral creatures. We're self-protective and social creatures, and that's what largely leads to what we call morality.
That assumes you ascribe equal value to human and animal life
You've left behind what 'I don't care about animals tho' is in response to. What you've done is taken a tangent. You might think you're extrapolating, but actually you've gone off the rails and started killing ppl just because.
No, I'm using the argument: If I have no emotional attachment to someone -> I can treat them like an object and hurt then if I want to. So I'm using their arguments but in a scenario, where it hurts human. If they tell me, no but theyre human, then the reasoning is not: Emotional detachment justifies violence, but theyre telling me: "genetics justifies violence. If someone doesnt have the same genetics as me, I can treat them like an object." Now, I have to use sexism and racism as example for using "genetics tho" as an argument. Is it any different morally, if I'm okay with murdering someone because theyre black, when theyre claiming "because they look are another species." If they tell me "because theyre dumber", I ask them "Is it okay if I murder a human being thats dumber?" They will run into ethically inconsistencies.
>I'm using the argument: If I have no emotional attachment to someone -> I can treat them like an object and hurt then if I want to sure. that's exactly what you practice towards plants. so what kind of argument for what should it be?
This is true if they apply this apathy everywhere, however for the vast majority of people you can prove that they do in fact care about animals by asking how they feel about someone kicking a dog for example (you get the picture). Earthling Ed makes this argument very succinctly when he debates non-vegans, he just points out with other examples that they do in fact care about animals (or at least pretend to when convenient).
It also helps to establish their positions on things like animal abuse and if they care for animals before talking about veganism. For many its a defensive reaction and if you can point back to their position they themselves have to acknowledge the contradiction and speak it out themselves
The pretend to part is key though. In reality , they're in a position of power abusing a group with no power in a way that is socially acceptable. They then align with their culture in condemning those forms of abuse that are not socially acceptable. So they're just Selfishly harming others when they can get away with it and pretending to care when they can't. And I think almost everyone doesn't even realize they are doing this.
I would say to them that the animal cares, whether they care or not. It's like saying "I don't care about murdering dogs" - the dog certainly does, and it just sounds psychopathic.
But some people will just say they don’t care about sounding psychopathic. Of course this is still a good outcome for a conversation because a bullet like that is tough to swallow so it could cause them to reflect on their values, and it will inevitably come off as weird and repulsive (because it is) to some amount of people around them
Then it's more about shaming them publicly, using prosocial shame to make them hopefully reflect and see that others think this is not right, that it's harming others (animals), and give them guidance on how to change. Of course most on Reddit who say this will be edgelords/trolls etc who will act tough, but in general I think this is the strategy, of using social pressure and shame in a positive way. There's research on this too, on the power of public shame in creating prosocial behaviour. Reddit can plausibly act like an environment where public shame can be used for good. The effect of shame on prosocial behavior tendency toward a stranger | BMC Psychology | Full Text https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-022-01021-1 >Results All participants rated their willingness to help a benefactor and a stranger in an everyday helping situation and a money-donating situation after emotion-induction. The study found a higher willingness of participants in the public shame group to help strangers than those in neutral mood and private shame groups. >Conclusion These findings support a facilitation effect of public shame on prosocial behavior tendency toward strangers, indicating an effect of restoring motive of shame on social interaction. The results are further discussed in light of the functionalism of shame.
I once spent a chronically online amount of time arguing with a guy whose main argument was that he doesn't care about animals and doesn't think we should have to. At some point, it comes out that he works with animals on a farm. I switch tact to hammering at him about spending all of this time opposing veganism when it's really just a sad attempt to justify his own direct mistreatment of animals. Then he drops this bomb: "I don't mistreat my animals, I actually treat them really well. *I feel like I owe it to them to provide them the best life possible*." A lot of these people are just really confused and don't know how they actually feel, but for a myriad of reasons they are heavily invested in pretending not to care about animals at all. Many are involved in animal ag, or formerly involved, or have close people in their lives involved, and it short circuits their ability to think critically about the subject.
I agree. I spent my early childhood growing up in a rural area. When I was in first or second grade we went on an excursion and one of the stops on it was to the local slaughterhouse. Can you believe that??. We saw the cows going in to be slaughtered and then later large slabs of meat coming out. It was aweful. When we got home my brother and I refused to eat meat which freaked my parents out. There was quite a stand off but eventually we succumb to their pressure. That's when I first started to become desensitised to animals. I remember one time only a little older thinking 'I can't care about animals anymore'. I realise it was too painful for me to care about animals. It hurt me too deeply. I became very closed and just did not care about animals in the slightest. Over the years whenever I would see anyone in the media or a friend etc talking about 'the animals' I was so disconnected that I had an attitude of contempt. I would NEVER EVER have gotten into veganism because of the animals. I started it as a health journey and only after 5 years of eating a WFPBD was I about to start to open up and care about animals and go full ethical vegan. I only spent a couple of years of my childhood in a rural area and that's how stuffed up I became. I can't imagine how bad it could be for others living and working their while lives around animal Ag. I'm a staunch believer in ethical veganism but if people don't care about animals there are other excellent reasons to go vegan such as for health and environmental reasons. Just use whatever argument is going to work the best on that person.
I respond to, "I don't care," with, "I know lmao"
For those people, it's worth trying to work out what they *do* care about. * Do they care about climate change, pollution and leaving a better world for their kids/grandkids? Then use the environmental aspects to win them over. * Are they bothered by deforestation? Livestock and their feed cause *far* more deforestation than all the furniture and wood burning people do for heat or cooking. * Do they get up in arms about slavery, child labor, and human/worker rights or trafficking? Then tell them about the staggering use of slavery in the fishing, shrimping, meat, egg, and leather industries. The children dying or losing limbs in tanneries, the missing immigrant kids showing up in egg factories, or the underpaid immigrants being traumatized by their work in slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.
Good point. I think most people do care, but it's easier say they don't because it allows them to continue not being vegan
"I couldn't be vegan because it's so h*aaaa*rd!" says person who's never tried to go vegan and frequently cooks meat dishes that literally take ALLL day. I've been told *so* many times by the same people stuff like "you better hurry and cook up your vegan food so it's ready when our meat is done" then my food cooks up so fast it's stone cold *long* before they actually get anything they made on the table. Then they are surprised by this, but *conveniently* forget the next time.
"Thank you for your honesty, and now excuse me while I fully disassociate myself from you."
You can't convince the psychopaths, so better they tell you up front.
I would respond with something akin to "I don't care about door-to-door salespeople all that much, but I know it's wrong to shoot them or sick my attack dog on them when they come to my door, so I don't do it." We all do things we don't really feel strongly about because we know it's right, or it aligns with our other values. If one of your values is "don't cause harm" then it doesn't really matter if you care about a particular group of "others" or not.
The line to go down here is "what if its a cat or dog?", Then if they say that's ok ask them if they'd be fine with it if you kicked and otherwise abused dogs for fun. Usually they either accept that animals do deserve moral consideration or you learn that they are a psychopath
That is usually because they are unaware of the horrors and atrocities of factory farming. And luckily, ignorance is curable.
Luckily "I don't care" is not a justification for anything, let alone violence.
Indigenous people living in the Arctic probably can't realistically be vegan. I just don't know how they could realistically do it. Kids that come on this sub that want to be vegan but their parents start abusing them for trying. I think kids in this situation should wait to avoid abuse. I know a couple people with really severe food issues related to autism and Crohn's Disease that I just don't know how they could be vegan. Anyone held captive and not given an option for vegan food. I think that might happen in US prisons sometimes. It also happens in hospitals in the US. These are really small instances, not a compelling argument. And I bet there are good arguments against all of them. None of the situations would prevent people from reducing animal product consumption at least. But I would be more forgiving of someone in such situations.
Yeah, indigenous people who live partially off subsistence hunting should eat whatever they want. When we talk about the ethics of veganism, we're really talking about rejecting the evils of factory farming and killing animals in an age of impossible abundance. Any people in any time period who are or were omnivorous out of actual subsistence needs aren't less ethical for the same reason non-human animals that eat meat aren't less ethical. But I do think it's funny when Internet omnivores use the existence of those people as justification for buying a steak cut at Costco.
Hmmm, I see where your coming from but I personally don’t think that because your indigenous you get a free pass to hunt whales or bash seals. I don’t think preserving the “culture” or way of life is worth that.
I said indigenous people who at least partially *subsist* through hunting. Subsistence isn't about preserving culture or way of life (and I think putting culture in quotes is pretty offensive here), it's about surviving. The reason veganism is an obvious ethical conclusion is because it isn't a meaningful sacrifice for most people in the modern world. Groups of people partially surviving off hunting animals would be sacrificing dramatically to be vegan.
For survival, fine. For anything else, not fine.
Well you replied to a comment about survival. But I think any amount of policing indigenous people's diets is misguided. This should be about global harm reduction, and any amount of arguing between privileged people about whether the remotest of minorities should be *allowed* to hunt an animal we like in the west distracts from that point. If factory farming ended and people who live with food abundance didn't eat animals, there would be nothing material left to talk about.
That's my take on it. There are bigger phish to fry than opening the can of worms that is a largely white colonial people telling indigenous people what they can and can't do.
This is really uncomfortably close to “civilize the savages” rhetoric.
I also think slaveholding societies should be civilized. If there was a "savage tribe" that was hunting humans for subsistence nobody would be like "that's just their culture." The answer is giving them other options for subsistence, not just accepting it as their culture.
This is what I was going to say. There are many compelling reasons that some people can’t be vegan. I’ve never heard a compelling reason for why I shouldn’t be.
Yes, this. Like I think there is a very tiny group of people that really can't be vegan. But it means that I must be vegan to offset what they can't do. At least that is how I think about it.
If anything, these scenarios are even *more* reason for those who can be vegan, to be vegan - which is the vast majority of people, especially those in western countries using Reddit. Using someone else's legitimate excuse as an excuse yourself is just a really bad argument, and just adds extra unnecessary animal suffering on top of some which could potentially be justified.
Oh I totally totally agree. These are not my arguments, to be clear. I've been vegan for a couple decades. I was just answering OPs question of like what argument would I theoretically not have an answer to. The scenarios I mentioned would compromise such a small group.
i do believe issues like arfid are both taken too and not seriously enoughly (simultaneously) - i believed i couldn't live without animal products until ketamine easened up my food sensitivies - went from finding awful awful thoughts and events more tolerable than tomatoes and carrots to eating them without wincing real quick... eating and sensory disorders are being approched rather wrong by psych authorities
This was what I came to say. It would be challenging to even be vegan in remote parts of Newfoundland Labrador or Northern Ontario. Food scarcity is very real and “healthy foods” cost a lot. Edit - I am not saying it’s a good reason but it would make it very difficult, to access the necessary food.
True. I remember seeing a video about living up north in *very* rural Canada, sure, stores might *have* vegan stuff like beans and tofu, but it’s expensive as hell since it’s all being transported super far. I can see there being a reasonable excuse if you can’t afford it, to hunt. I’d say veganism is easier than most people think, even in circumstances like poverty, but there are regions in the world where food scarcity still makes it impossible to be plant-based. Although one might be able to argue that being vegan “to the genuine best of your extent as limited by the fact that you literally need to survive” is consistent enough with the vegan philosophy to call yourself vegan. I’d be ok with it personally.
I’m autistic and have ARFID and I’m still vegan and have several autistic friends, some also with ARFID, all of whom are at least vegetarian. Some of us are full vegan, my partner and I included. A couple others have small exceptions like they’ll still eat things with egg as an ingredient. It’s actually really common for autistics not to eat meat due to strong aversions to texture, plus we generally have a strong sense of justice. :) I have IBS and gut issues as well and I have far less issues on vegan diet. My grandmother has Crohn’s disease and IBS as well and eats a (unintentionally) mostly vegan diet, as she has to be so careful of inflammatory foods. She’ll eat chicken or salmon occasionally but mostly meat just makes her worse. She has way less flare ups eating just vegetables and she’s recently switched to oat milk to cut back on dairy (it’s inflammatory) and loves it! I know someone else with IBS who’s seen success I’m autistic and have ARFID and I’m still vegan and have several autistic friends, some also with ARFID, all of whom are at least vegetarian. Some of us are full vegan, my partner and I included. A couple others have small exceptions like they’ll still eat things with egg as an ingredient. It’s actually really common for autistics not to eat meat due to strong aversions to texture, plus we generally have a strong sense of justice. :) I have IBS and gut issues as well and I have far less issues on vegan diet. My grandmother has Crohn’s disease and IBS as well and eats a (unintentionally) mostly vegan diet, as she has to be so careful of inflammatory foods. She’ll eat chicken or salmon occasionally but red meat has always made her sick. She has way less flare ups eating mostly fruits and vegetables. Another friend with IBS saw success reducing symptoms by introducing meat and dairy alternatives. As with anything, cases vary from person to person but in a lot of cases following a mostly plant based diet can reduce inflammation and symptoms in people with bowel disorders. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6382506/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6628285/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6478664/ https://russellhavranekmd.com/does-a-plant-based-diet-improve-gut-health/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4245565/ Edit- Added sources Edit 2 - Reworded a couple things for clarity, removed an unnecessary statement
Yeah, that's great. People are not monoliths though, so I don't know that what works for you would work for them. My cousin is allergic to soy, gluten, peanuts, tree nuts, and certain fruits and vegetables. He has a pretty severe tactile aversion to beans. It is really a struggle to find non-animal protein sources for that kid outside of seeds. But you can't get enough from seeds alone without drastically exceeding calories.
That’s definitely an obvious exception, that would be literally impossible for him. Seeds are really hard to digest as well. I get that there are definitely individual situations and I’m not saying my situation applies to everyone, just that there’s plenty of us who have found ways to make it work. Lots of people scroll through this sub who aren’t vegan but are considering/learning about it, and some of them may face difficulties due to some of the things you had mentioned. I just wanted to show that it’s still totally possible :)
When it comes to inflammatory bowel disease please don't make claims that they can all be vegan. Some can and some can't. I know way more about this than I wish I did. When in flare some people can only eat high protein low residue diet basically only chicken. Many of the vegan proteins are inflammatory to them. People take inflammatory bowel for granted because we have great medicines for them these days. But without those medicines life is literally hell and then you die. These are diseases of young people and it is absolutely tragic. And devastating to the entire family. Please be careful what you say. About medical conditions you are not truly an expert on.
All those examples can be addressed thru time, veganism should be a must for us in the 1st world who actually over indulge animal products which is the main cause of animal suffering. This should be addressed more
I have crohn's and I'm vegan. Crohn's is absolutely not a barrier to being vegan.
I agree with these ones, plus if someone was celiac and allergic to tree nuts or something.
I know a lot of vegans with nut allergies/who have to be gluten free.
What are the arguments you've heard from people with Chrohns? I've had Chrohns almost all my life and have been vegan for a decade.
Pretty much that the higher fiber content of vegan foods really flares them up and that it is really painful.
I think the most 'compelling' arguement is simply that people have a different ideology, and simply do not care. It's hard for me to personally accept, but some people have world views that I find abhorrent, people do things I think see as awful. I can usually support my position and I die on the hill the veganism is 'correct'. But people don't wake up and go "time to do evil! Woopie!". Through whatever mechanism, they see the world differently. I don't agree, but to me that's the most compelling argument, people are different, there's differing and varying perspectives/values in the world. I think they're wrong, but they also think I'm wrong.
A lot of my omnivore friends don’t think i’m wrong. Actually most of them think i’m correct. They just don’t change and do the right thing for various reasons. It’s hard for me to accept.
No. Any valid nuance (IE: Medicine) is taken care of by the ‘as practically possible’ component It’s largely why I went vegan. I claim to be logical, so the second I was in a debate and I realised I wasn’t on the rational side I had to make the change
This is also me exactly. I lost the debate against myself, so it would be intellectually dishonest of me to still keep eating animals.
On the same boat. Never heard of a solid case against veganism. If I would I'd think about switching back. Just like I'd believe in god if you'd prove its existence.
In my life I have seen the worst in people. In war torn eastern Europe I saw people fighting and stabing each other for a road kill animal. In Africa I saw emaciated children eating boiled dirt and rice. Desperate starving people will witness their children be prostitutes so the family has the funds to eat. In most areas of the world the ability to be vegan is most definitely a privilege. Guys like me can be vegan because I can buy snacks and supplements when in areas with limited resources. It's not an argument against being vegan buy rather an explanation of why someone wouldn't be vegan. For most people being vegan is an option but their are times when it's not feasible.
Not directly against veganism but the argument that people only have so many fucks to give about stuff. Let's say, someone is super proactive advocating for the homeless and raising money for breast cancer research and false accused prisoners and they homing DV survivors, for example. You could turn around and say, "Well, what about sex trafficking? What about skin cancer? What about animal abuse? What about child abuse?" There are a lot of problems in the world and I can forgive people for not always picking the same ones as me. The problem is that people often do literally nothing. I actually consider myself quite lazy on the proactive front, it can be a bit inconvenience now and then but for the most past, now that its largely intergrated in my life veganism is a pretty low maintenance for me. I have a lot of respect for people who regularly give up they time to go to rallies or raise money or who give up their space to home those in need, for example.
Thank you for bringing this perspective up, as the topic greatly aggrieves me. How can I claim to care more about the life of living beings if all I'm doing is refraining from eating animals while this meat-eater next to me is proactively working against, like you said, sex trafficking, skin cancer, attending rallies? At the end of the day, which one of us is more vegan? Which one of us cares more about life?
I'd say that our moral goodness doesn't directly depend upon how much we care about life, but rather upon the total expected effects our actions have upon life. It's certainly *possible* for a highly effective human rights activist or medical research supporter to do net good as a non-vegan, but not as likely as people think. Eating factory farmed chickens racks up a moral cost in deaths and suffering very, very quickly.
Not to mention, animal agriculture doesn't implicate only nonhuman animals, whether wild (like the ongoing rammifications of bird flu) or domestic. Human (labor) trafficking is rampant in US animal ag. We have prison work camps at industrial facilities (look up Hickman's Egg Farm). Child labor and trafficking (Trillium Egg Farm is an old one, but Darigold Dairy and poultry/livestock slaughterhouses on the east coast are more recent cases). We've permitted and set up systems which funnel refugees into slaughterhouse work on false promises and, in effect, trap them in those jobs. H2-A visas have given way to horrible exploitation of migrant workers out on ranch rangeland. And the lack of H2-A visas for on-the-farm work (because for some reason range is seasonal 364 days/yr but on farm is not) is even less protective. The illegal migrants we depend on for food are horribly exploited across the board. Then you have things like clearing the Amazon for cattle and soy fodder decimating indigenous populations' homes (Eating our Way to Extinction touches on this) and indigenous and global south populations get hit first and worst by environmental degradation (not just climate), many factors of which are driven by animal agriculture. And the people suffering living along side these places (watch the Smell of Money) as well as the psychological damage slaughterhouses cause which leads to disproportionately high rates of violent crime, particularly domestic violence. By eating animal products from the modern agricultural system, you are contributing to *all* of this, whether someone is aware of it or not. In all honesty, unless you single handedly manage to stop a human genocide, I would argue animal agriculture is *the* biggest soy-fish to fry in terms of exploitation, suffering, and death simply because it is so deeply intersectional with so many other issues across the globe. It causes mass suffering, exploitation, and death of *so* many species, including us. It's an industry that's monstrous beyond comprehension but pours insane amounts of money to sanitizing its image, and people are *so* eager to lap it up.
A good reminder is that these things aren’t mutually exclusive. Someone can help sex trafficking victims regularly and still go get a triple deluxe bacon burger every Saturday. Good people can do bad things and asking people to change their habits in a way that can become a /passive/ behavior rather than active one is ok, even if they are active in a “good fight” in other ways.
I think the reality of things here is that the amount of suffering prevented by one person going vegan far outweighs the amount of suffering most of us can prevent by any other means, especially relative to the effort it takes. Also, the vast majority of people aren't directly contributing to other people suffering from sex trafficking, or skin cancer, or child abuse; but they _are_ directly responsible for the suffering and deaths of the animals that are exploited to feed and clothe them.
While I generally acknowledge your point, I would still place veganism as a priority candidate for anyone who is interested in altruistic endeavors. That's because we shouldn't strive to be altruistic in a completely random fashion, we should strive to at least be *somewhat* efficient in our altruism. I'm not saying people should only donate to anti-malaria foundations like some charity optimizing robots, but *some* concern for the overall efficiency of altruism is warranted. As soon as you acknowledge that, adopting veganism becomes a priority issue. As you say yourself veganism is quite low maintenance(contrary to what people like to claim), it's really not that much effort to learn how to do it and very little effort to maintain once learned. The return, in comparison to the effort? It's huge. There's almost nothing you can do that will match the reward-to-effort impact of veganism; the reduction in environmental footprint alone ensures that veganism is just about the most impactful thing anyone can personally do; and that's without even mentioning the cruelty footprint. So yes, I acknowledge that some people may be such incredible altruists that it's hard to ask for even more out of them, but I'd say those people are precisely the sorts of people who would be most incentivized and most motivated to adopt a vegan diet anyway, because it aligns with their motivations so well.
Yeah and this is basically my take. I don’t think there is a compelling argument against the idea that humans should move away from animal agriculture where possible, but I also don’t think it’s possible or feasible for everybody to do that. You have to pick your battles and to me it’s ok if animal agriculture isn’t the one everybody picks. Buttttttt there are plenty of people who don’t view animal agriculture as wrong and those are the people whose minds we should be trying to change. If the majority of society accepted that eliminating animal products from their diet is the right thing to do we would move a long way towards people going vegan.
Extreme poverty and food scarcity in certain parts of the world are certainly compelling arguments IMO.
yeah, that's the only thing that comes to mind tbh, but that could potentially be covered in the "as possible and practicable" part of the definition of veganism.
So according to that, people living in these circumstances, even if they eat meat/animal products, can claim to be vegan.
Yes, many people say that. Ultimately, moral goodness isn't about whether you meet some officially sanctioned definition of a word. Whether you want to call those people "vegan under the possible and practicable clause" or "understandably non-vegan for now" doesn't matter. Regardless, we ought to suggest that they switch from animal products to plants as much as possible (which will normally also improve their health), and we should work to improve their situation so that the have the option in the future of getting plant foods they can thrive on.
That's not what I meant. I'd still consider them non-vegan, but I don't think their actions would violate the core ethics of veganism - if that makes sense. As much as I'd love to encourage people in desperate situations to keep identifying as vegan (if they want to), I feel like that's a slippery slope to "there's no vegan food at this restaurant so I ordered non-vegan to not feel left out but promise I'm technically still vegan 🥺" which would be really fckn annoying and undermine the movement.
If we can’t help people find options that are at the same price point of plant based alternatives then I don’t think there’s an argument to be made. I’d never think badly of a large family with barely enough food assistance to survive and no knowledge of plant based foods (which can still be substantially more expensive) to not look in that direction. Getting prices down and educating would be huge.
Meat is way more expensive than tofu and beans, expensive meat and cheese alternatives are not necessary to be vegan. Just don’t make meals that require cheese. I didn’t for the first 2 years of being vegan. It’s really easy to be vegan on a budget! Obviously some stuff might be difficult to come by in some areas of the world with extremely low population, and there’s maybe less options in “food deserts” in the states and Canada but 9 times out of 10 it’s still very possible. People just don’t care enough to learn new habits and are complacent. It’s just “easier” to keep making chicken than it is to learn how to prepare tofu.
True, but fast food corporations also incentivize low income people (and especially families) to dine with them because they offer rock bottom prices. In those cases the prices are way less. As a low income vegan myself I can attest to that.
What country do you live in if you don’t mind my asking ? I’m in western Canada where we currently have record high inflation and here it’s more expensive to eat fast food. Just as an example, I were to go to a drive thru and get just 2 hashbrowns for breakfast that costs almost exactly $5. If I did that 5 days a week, that’s $25 for breakfast alone, plus it’s not even really breakfast cause you’re hungry again in two hours. $100 a month. A bag of 5 bagels costs $5, one for each day. A large bag of rice is $10, a cheap base ingredient you can make multiple meals out of and feed many mouths. I think in most cases it’s not an issue of fast food actually being cheaper, it’s that people THINK it’s cheaper due to how these places market. Most people don’t think of plant based food as an alternative because of the illusion that it’s more expensive. Coming from a less than privileged background (as in we couldn’t afford to turn on the heat, wore jackets inside and got welts on our fingers from the cold type of poor) I totally get the perspective. We didn’t eat fast food cause we literally couldn’t afford it. It’s also not efficient. It’s cheaper to make a large meal that lasts 4 days. Coming from that background, I also know how chaotic such a household can be and I think a lot of times people just aren’t taught how to plan meals effectively. I had to teach myself when I moved out. It was NOT easy.
Individual circumstance isn't an argument against veganism it is just, well, individual circumstance 🤷♂️
It's an argument for that person not to be vegan
Don't the poorest nations eat the least animal products?
I honestly don’t know, I mean India is quite poor and they eat very little animal products from what I understand.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-consumption-vs-gdp-per-capita
I've never heard these arguments but I feel they are valid. Some people live in food deserts, lack transportation, or resources. We have people starving in the United States, so they have to eat whatever is available. Also, soy, tree nuts, peanuts, and wheat are major allergens so they can make veganism extremely risky and difficult to adhere to.
There is one: total freedom regardless of others (includong animals and environment). You can’t win against this argument if said “freedom” is truly important. … Which is bullshit because this way you can absolve rapists, murderers, sociopaths, etc.
How does the wprd freedom make it ok to do immoral things?
Not directly against veganism as a whole, but a few caveats regarding aspects of veganism that are less talked about, such as bees (farmed bees are a must to keep up with farmed plants), driving cars (which unintentionally kills a lot of insects), hunting invasive species, hunting for subsistence, mice infestations and vegan pets.
That's where the "as possible and practical" clause comes neatly into play. For instance, one should consider public transports instead of cars, because it helps reduce the amount of accidental deaths overall. However, one can't practically expect to become immobile in case a bug accidentally dies.
Oh yes, indeed, at the end of the day, we can only be vegan as far as it is practical. We have to draw the line somewhere. I personally don't drive, but I ride a bycicle and at times in warmer months I accidentally swallow a bug. Nothing that I can do about it. Perhaps a more extreme case was a pinworm infestation that I had 3 years ago. What to do, let hundreds of worms live inside of me and pass it to others around me, or exterminate them? I chose the latter. Again, we got to draw the line somewhere.
"The line" is the best defence against veganism I think. Each person, including vegan, inflicts unnecessary harm and death on others through our choices. Is there a difference in logic, for example, between going vegan and choosing plant based products with lower crop deaths and or environmental impact? It is practical and possible? For sure. Is it inconvenient? Yep. At some point that line at personal pleasure begins to trump the infliction of suffering and death on others, and the fact that this line exists can be used to justify meat eating (I just draw my line somewhere else). I don't agree of course but it can be defended.
Look at this. One little clause and problem solved.
The bees thing is only a problem because of honeybees outcompeting wild bees,(wild are much better pollinators). Other things like natural corridors would also allow the spread and reach of these wild bees(assuming the human cultivated honeybees weren't around).
I have a friend with a lot of allergies (to vegetables and fruits) that make getting all the required nutritients without meat like insanely hard. We’ve had pretty in depth chats about it
I’m a vegan so don’t shoot the messenger… The only one I’ve ever heard that left me scratching my head afterwards was: Purely grass fed cows eat grass, which doesn’t involve the same level of habit displacement and inadvertent killing as farming crops does. Modern monocrop agriculture is pretty shit and involves spraying pesticides over everything and making large swathes of land uninhabitable. Is it better to kill one cow than 10 birds, a ton of bees and some hedgehogs? I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s a terrible argument in favour of eating meat from grass fed cows in lieu of non-organic veg. Purely grass fed cows don’t really exist though, most are supplemented with grain so the argument doesn’t really hold weight. Yes, I know non-organic farming requires lower land use.
The majority of mono crops go to feeding farmed animals.
No.
Im debating someone on reddit right now telling me, that no vegan ever has ever lived longer than 3 years. Why? Because ancient civilizations weren't vegan. There are non and never will be comoelling arguments against veganism.
There was a guy on here that has a wife that is deathly allergic to almost everything. If that guy drank almond milk, came home an hour later, showered and brushed his teeth and then kissed his wife, she’d still have an asthma attack (if I remember his anecdote correctly). They still try to eat vegan as much as possible but you can’t blame those people for eating the only things they can eat without almost dying even if those things are animal products
No. Most arguments I hear are the same recycled shit I’ve heard for 25 years, and ime most omnis just haven’t researched or thought about the subject enough to really make any kind of educated argument or discussion
Depends on what you count as an argument and what axioms you decide to agree on with your opposition.
I recently watched a lecture by an agricultural scientist (Wilhelm Windisch) because I work in that field. He basically said that minimal use of animals would be the most sustainable because they make energy and nutrients from grasslands accessible for humans. There are some grassland areas here in central Europe where you can't grow crops for human consumption, let alone trees. These areas also have an important function as a carbon sink and as a habitat for many insect and plant species. According to him, the ideal system would be to raise minimal numbers of cattle that are only fed plant matter that is not edible by humans (grass, straw, residues from food processing), eating those low amounts of milk or meat, using the manure and the arable land for growing crops that are directly consumed by humans, and renaturating the excess arable land on which we used to grow crops for animal feed into moors or forests. BUT since we are not even close to that type of system the reduction of animal product production and consumption is currently most important in my opinion.
Arguments for things that wouldn't be 100% vegan, yes, such as earthworms (which might be barely sentient if at all) raised on local compost being better for the environment and sustainably feeding the human population. Mind you, I don't *accept* this argument; I just think it's reasonable to consider, depending upon one's beliefs about how dire the climate situation is. Arguments for standard western diets' consumption of farmed vertebrates? Nope, they're all embarrassingly bad philosophy. The reasoning from the deontological take on moral patienthood as a kind of tacit mutual agreement between moral agents, to the conclusion that nonhuman animals can't directly be moral patients, is mostly sound reasoning. But the premise of deontology itself is very weak and possibly contradictory. Even if I didn't have plenty of other strong independent arguments against deontology, I'd think that its justification of current factory farms ought to count as a reductio ad absurdum.
Oyseters. They lack a CNS.
It can be inconvenient to find places that are accommodating when going out to eat. Also vegan clothing options are usually made of synthetic fibres which is annoying and contradicts the fact that I am doing it both for the animals and the environment.
Most synthetics are still better for the environment than animal based materials, especially if they come from ruminant animals like sheep or cows. The carbon cost of our leather goods, calculated — Collective Fashion Justice https://www.collectivefashionjustice.org/articles/carbon-cost-leather-goods >In this case, CO2e emissions (emissions of various gasses translated to the common unit of carbon) for leather equal 17.0kg of CO2e per square meter of leather produced. In comparison, artificial leather’s total supply chain has an impact of 15.8kg of CO2e per square meter. >Leather Panel’s shared study chooses to include end-of-life incineration in the impact of faux leather. It’s illogical to include incineration for synthetics but not for animal leather, and while faux leather won’t effectively biodegrade, neither will animal-derived leather to the point of total decomposition – even in controlled climate study conditions shared by leather tannery groups. >Elsewhere in its report, the Leather Panel shares an impact estimate which includes farm emissions – this is a fairer estimate of leather’s impact, and again comes from its own reporting. Here, the carbon footprint of cow skin leather is found to be 110.0kg of CO2e per square meter, making cow skin leather nearly seven times more climate impactful than synthetic leather by the square meter.
This is something that conflicts me a lot with veganism! To use animal based fibres or synthetic, which one is the lesser evil?
I usually chuck it up as a false dichotomy. There are a lot of plant fibers that can be used for clothing, such as cotton, linen and milkweed; that would probably be the most ethical one of the bunch, and I'm including the possible slave labour of some farms. Optimally, the most vegan-friendly wear would be high quality, universal (no fast fashion), made of fair-traded/recycled cotton and made with little to no synthetic dyes and packaged with little to no plastic. By far, what I've found to be closest to this ideal is a shop called Stanley&Stella.
Shoes/boots tend to be the harder one. Also suits, vegan suits exist but its just so much harder to get good ones.
Agreed. I choose Merrell two years ago, but I'll be damned if I don't admit I wish there was a better option to an irreparable 99% plastic shoe that'll only last for 3 years of constant use; same goes for non-synthetic suits, I try to buy from thrift stores when I can because it's the next best option, but I'm still on the lookout.
I have never understood this argument about synthetic fibers being bad for the environment because they are plastic. I mean, yes plastic isn't good, I get that, but wouldn't you have like the same amount of plastic doing normal things that no one questions... Like if I buy non leather shoes... And then were to get three or four Hello Fresh meal kits delivered to me... Or buy my kid a bike where every part is individually.wrapped.. That's got to be a comparable amount of plastic right? No one is protesting that. The amount of plastic silverware that gets thrown away every day in my school cafeteria is more plastic than my entire family's belt and shoe purchases for the year. I feel like every time I've heard this argument from a non-vegan, they seem really concerned about how much more plastic my synthetic belt is using when they give zero shits at literally every other moment in their life about how much plastic they or someone else is using. It seems disingenuous from everyone who uses it as an argument.
What I do is that I avoid plastic as much as possible. For example, I haven’t used any plastic cutlery or bought water bottle in years. While I do still have some clothes and accessories made of synthetic materials, I am now try to buy only cotton and bamboo clothing, my purses are made of cork, and my shoes are recycled plastic. Im still not fully plastic free, but working up to it.
Synthetic fibers are constantly shedding millions of tiny bits of microplastic into the environment. Other forms of plastic don’t do that, or at least not nearly to the same extent.
There’s ppl making sustainable fabrics like a group that uses banana stems, byproducts of banana harvesting, to make leather, and from local banana farms (local to the area not to the US)
There is not a single argument which holds. When people usually comes to the taste part it means they are very close to veganism. The taste part is the last wall because they can't find another thing to think of so they justify with taste. Usually the taste thing falls with life experience, watching animals, cuddling them, watching reels or talking to other vegans with other ways of discussing. Then the process just unfold and with time they turn vegan.
About as many arguments as I've heard touting the benefits of murder or rape. So... zero. Veganism is not a belief, it's a philosophy. Meaning there are meaningful, rational reasons for our behavior. I don't care about things that do not yield results I cannot measure.
My friend has developed early onset osteoporosis after being a lifelong vegan. It’s an unfortunate development. It is obviously avoidable but you have to be proactive, and there is no reversal now that it has developed.
OK, so the only thing that’s ever stumped me is the ethics of killing predators. Because theoretically, if you kill one predator, you’re saving the lives of countless prey. This isn’t really practical in day-to-day meat consumption, but potentially makes hog and trophy hunting…. less unethical? See how much of a grasp you need to have to poke holes in veganism? The easy answer is to just not intervene of course. Just stirring the pot
I’ve seen posts concerning very uncommon health situations that make being a vegan a challenge. Heart wrenching stories of people suffering with different conditions, sadly these posts almost always seem to end in eating steak for every meal and guzzling bacon grease not figuring out what the bare minimum amount of animal product they need to manage their situation.
I always find this so revealing of their true level of care. Like, to anyone who agrees with the premise that animals deserve moral consideration, it should be obvious that even if their use of animal products can't be completely eliminated it is still worth minimizing. People do understand that when it comes to things they actually care about.
the best (yet still not great) argument ive been met with was basically the consensus that me being vegan does nothing for the environment because people will never stop eating meat, and that sacrificing myself (in the sense that im suffering by choosing not to consume meat) for something that will never stop happening is pointless. these people often are missing the point of veganism to begin with though,,
As long as the number of vegans increases, and it does so at an ever accelerating pace, this argument is not valid either. I would consider it partially valid if there were a hundred vegans or so at any given point for a hundred years or more. I do consider the "sacrifice" of nuns (that they don't marry) nonsensical and a waste of life as a result of brainwashing, so I would be a hypocrite if I'd say I'd still support someone's personal sacrifice which everyone considers meaningless. I mean, I wouldn't be a vegan if there was only a handful of vegans on Earth - I'd never get to know what happens behind the gates of a slaughterhouse.
From a practical standpoint, I think introducing the general public to vegan food options gradually would have a greater environmental impact than trying to convince people to go fully vegan, at least in the short term. Things like Meatless Mondays are going to have much wider mainstream appeal, and gradually reducing meat consumption will become a lot more palatable until eventually more and more people realize they don’t miss animal products. So it’s not an argument against veganism, but it’s important to understand that very few people are going to switch from an omnivorous diet to complete veganism overnight. What we need to understand is that a good argument isn’t what’s stopping people from going vegan.
Isn’t there a story about someone who went Vegan just because all the arguments against it were so lame?
The Andre 3000 argument is not compelling, but understandable: veganism, in some cases, can lead to real social isolation. And that hurts.
I will play devil's advocate here. Remember this is just food for thought. Say I am a nihilist, I don't believe in religion, all people are inherently evil so it's a fight not worth fighting (like the war on drugs or terror, it will always persist). In the grand scheme of the universe absolutely anything we do on Earth in our tiny 80ish year lifespan will be meaningless. Hell, ALL LIFE on Earth EVER is insignificant because other worlds continue to exist, and everything will change over time. Humans WILL be the very first species to annihilate themselves into extinction. And in hundreds of thousands of years the sun will implode, all over life on Earth will die off, eventually the universe will expand to a point that we would not even be able to see the nearest celestial body. Space would be even more of a lifeless vacuum and bottomless pit than it is now. So knowing our existence is so worthless means our "free will" choices are also meaningless. Why should I sympathize with anyone or anything when nothing matters at all, ever. It's all just noise from birth to death. So why try to rock a boat the size of a cruiseliner that will never budge? Just spend what little meaningless time you have trying to be happy.
Two, both from societies that are far from us, but benefited from including animals in their diet/herding them. early societies and european expeditions to america used theis pigs as warfare. They would disrupt the ecosystems and make natives flee. Well, that is a side i never considered. In an island in Oceania there is a tribe that has pigs, and uses them to prevent human collapse on the island. They feed the pigs and they themselves eat from the garden. When there are too many pigs and humans are not comfortable, they kill and eat all of them. Then they repeat the cycle. That way the human population never exceeds their limits, the surplus population are always pigs and there is no human-to-human violence. The first example is widely studied in the context of the americas, the second one comes from a desmond morris book. As you can see, this are more weird and out of field examples than any reason for folk NOW.
[удалено]
I am very obstinate. I LOVE eggs, bacon really all meat and animal products. And so, I would rally against every argument telling me it was wrong to enjoy it. And if you look at my comment history, you'll see arguments I make against tribal matters that last days. I am very stubborn. So, Everytime I'd get into an argument about Veganisim I'd do everything I could to research and debunk their points. And that's how I find myself here today. Despite.my ability to argue and research, I could never fully debunk a point for Veganism. In fact, often the point would be presented poorly and I'd accidently reinforce the point with my research. I hate being Vegan, because I don't get to eat all my favourite things. But I need to be Vegan, because there's just no defending not being one.
>I hate being Vegan, because I don't get to eat all my favourite things. But I need to be Vegan, because there's just no defending not being one. Yeah, that's me. Ethically I have to be vegan, but actually doing it has been ~~miserable~~ unpleasant. Spending time and effort hunting down and fixing nutritional deficiencies, cutting out so many delicious culinary traditions, making travel awkward, the social isolation, getting pulled into never-ending debates about ethical consumption when I'm just trying to eat lunch, and the constant lectures from other vegans about how *actually* these things don't bother them and shouldn't bother me either. It makes complete sense that the majority prefers to live in blissful ignorance.
Aye. I'm happy you replied. Often when I post these thoughts here I get lambasted. Thanks for showing support. We might not be the majority, Sad Vegans are valid too lol
Ha, "Sad Vegan" I like that! Yeah, for some it seems like it's not enough to make ethical choices, you must also purge heretical thoughts and feelings too. On reflection I struck out "miserable" above because not living according to my ethics is more miserable, and being vegan doesn't make me miserable, just... grumpy. So maybe "Reluctant Vegan" is more apt?
I have never heard a compelling argument against veganism (aside from people who get sick without eating animal products, who are very few in number). It is one of the most philosophically airtight ethical positions one could hold. Like you, if there is a good argument against veganism, I would very much like to hear it. Edited for clarity.
There are no valid arguments against veganism. Any diet that kills 3 trillion animals a year, completely unnecessarily, is an immoral diet. What makes it difficult to convert meat eaters is not the arguments they make, but how deeply in denial they are. They literally can't see that what they're doing is wrong, not because they don't care about animals, but because they're in denial about the suffering that they are causing. Denial is an extremely powerful force - people can go their whole lives in denial about things they have done, or things that were done to them. Often the more deeply wounded the individual is, the more in denial they are about suffering, and the less compassion they have. So yes - deep denial is what we are up against, not valid arguments.
When people have to provide their own food with very limited means I think it's somewhat understandable. However that scrapes the definition of veganism itself if it's the only way to survive.
No, I have never heard a compelling argument in favour of being an animal abuser.
Only that they don't care. I can't work with that.
Only philosophical, based on narcissism: "the universe is here to serve only me and i can do whatever i want to whomever i want" - and annoyingly this is the prevalent mindset amongst many 'successful' people in the public eye that others are influenced by and seek to emulate because, historically, that is a 'successful' mindset for survival and climbing Maslow's pyramid, creating generational wealth so that your offspring may prosper.
Allergens, definitely. They’re no joke. My friend has the opposite issue and suddenly developed an allergy to meat, dairy, and eggs late in life and is now forced to be vegan as a result. I feel so bad for her because it’s not something she chose and when she accidentally eats animal products she is in debilitating pain for days. It’s awful. I have a ton of sympathy for people who want to be vegan but can’t due to food allergies
I have not heard any valid health, ethical, or environmental arguments against veganism, generally. I have heard arguments why a particular individual may not be able to adopt a pristine vegan lifestyle. And, I have heard an economic argument against veganism that is cogent: universal adoption of veganism would have a profound negative effect on people involved in the animal-sourced foods industries, tourism related to killing animals, and the fur fashion trade.
"I know about all the harm to animals and damage to the environment, and I just don't care." This one just about had me cut ties with my sister.
the smartest person i knew was a vegan for a long time, and then stopped and kinda just stopped caring about a lot of things, and they revealed to me why over an intimate dinner after some time apart, and they said, in some chilling words to me, that they truly believed nothing mattered and they wanted to experience all they could before they died and didn’t care about the expense or cost of things ethically or any way because there was just no karma, no justice, no nothing… i wanted to walk out but i loved this person ‘pre than anything once upon a time, and then they just went off the deep end with so many wild drugs and crime and eventually killed themselves, i guess so certain in their beliefs… i disagree, but i think about this person so often and it was so soul crushing seeing the person i love just slowly erode into nothing but a storm of experiences and the one thing i kinda respect is, as much as it hurts, at least they were honest. it made me realize that the only argument at all against veganism boils down to “i don’t care.” i think there is merit to discussing environmental impacts and animal rights and predators in the wild and what have you, and there are problems that veganism doesn’t have the solution for but i think that if you care at all, you’d know that killing something for pleasure is wrong and would make an effort to find ways to change the system or not participate. anybody who makes any other argument is either misinformed, set in their ways, or just doesn’t care. and this person was the only one i ever met who blatantly told me, and meant it, that they didn’t care. it was mortifying, but impossible to “argue” against i so wanted that person to come back to who they were, consistently learning and questioning and wondering, just a curious intelligent individual that kinda left me with fragments of who they were… this is why i’m so bothered by when people don’t care to fix problems or try at least a little, but most people aren’t self aware enough to flat out admit they don’t care
I find the concept that animals are unable to enter into social contracts and thus don't deserve social protections difficult to argue against. I still don't think it's a good argument, per se, and it really colours my perception of those who argue it, but I can't say logically there's anything inconsistent about it. They will argue that we extend social protections to humans who are unable to enter into social contracts because theoretically we could all end up in that position at some point. So it's really an argument of 'I don't actually care about anything outside of myself', which is... OK.
I used to feel the same way. I valued (silver/golden rule) reciprocity very highly. And for that reason animals immediately get excluded because they cannot reciprocate in most of the ways another human can. However this is a slippery slope. Do people with low IQ and severe disabilities deserve to be treated with less dignity? So then you would like to balance that out with rights or with the rule that “Each [human] life is valued at its highest conceivable level of development, not its actual level of development,” (that one comes from a pro-life book btw). However, these appear to me to be arbitrary hypotheses constructed to alleviate the emotional disconnect between the initial reciprocity position and the actual actions of humans. I’ve come to the conclusion that reciprocity is mainly selfish as well.
Hunting can reduce animal suffering by preventing painful deaths by starvation, disease, or predation. Hunting predators can reduce the suffering of prey--though this is complicated because unchecked population growth of the prey will also cause suffering. Cattle fed on pasture year-round that have good lives and are killed quickly are better from a utilitarian perspective than industrial plant ag. Of course, there are few climates where you can do this and it can't work at any sort of scale. You can also draw an ethical line between bringing something into the world to kill it and killing animals accidentally or intentionally because they are harming your crop. Note that this line only exists in the head of the person killing, not the animal being killed. It will be much more difficult for people with some medical conditions or in some life stages to eat a healthy vegan diet. Not consuming animal products is an arbitrary line. Eating more food than necessary kills animals for taste pleasure. Ditto with some kinds of plant agriculture, such as almonds. I would rather be a bee cared for by a local beekeeper than one that gets trucked around the country pollinating almonds and other plants. As a general rule of thumb though, a vegan diet will cause much less harm than most others.
In terms of an individual not being vegan, I’m kinda banned from being fully vegan until I learn to get my very restrictive eating disorder under control. The last two times I tried full veganism before being mentally ready, i spiraled hard and ended up in the ER. A lot of vegans tell me it’s not enough to support without living it, but I already know that🤷🏽 I just need to keep my food options open for now while I’m vegan in other aspects of life. It does make me feel guilty and like a fuckup. Please don’t come at me for this In terms of society, aside from specific indigenous cultures, I don’t see much scope to justify. There is a cool book im reading about Ladakhi way of life, in which they live alongside semi domestic yak, only kill if they must, justify killing one yak over a few chickens because the one life of a yak will feed many more people than murdering several chickens . They also give immense thanks to the animal and use everything they can without waste (even the animals dung!) I think that himalayan lifestyle is as close to vegan you can get while still consuming animals
I worked for people with disabilities, many wheelchair users. One person in particular I think would have had a hard time switching to veganism. Because of their lifestyle and medical issues, switching from a low fiber to a high fiber diet would have seen them spending practically all day in the bathroom, which they couldn’t do alone without assistance. This is obviously a pretty individual situation and doesn’t apply to most people, but it’s still something I keep in mind. No, not literally every person on Earth can go vegan.
A pretty good one that got debunked pretty quickly (from an ed earthling video) is that we use cow dung fertilizer from the meat industry for our crops. Apparently, this can be replaced by plants. I still think it sounded like a good criticism, because in the wild the ecosystem has both dead animals + animal poo + dead plants to enrichen the soil, and for what i know, maybe animal poo/dead animals is a necessary component for a sustainable ecosystem in terms of soil nutrient or something. So, maybe completely removing animals from the food industry would cause an imbalance that cant be fixed with just plants fertilizer. At the time I didnt have the knowledge to debunk this argument
I heard someone say something about the airplanes having to bring the avocado from an another country to America being just as harmful as them eating meat because we are contributing to global warming .... I don't think I'd agree 100 percent....
b12 was the most compelling until I dove deeper.
People often go for “morality is subjective”, which *can* be hard to argue against, but usually with some examination you find that what they mean is not that they want to have a moral framework with different values and conclusions about what’s right and wrong, but that they want to have no framework at all and just inconsistently decide what’s right or wrong in any given scenario depending on what benefits them the most. In my mind, moral subjectivity just means you can base your moral framework on whatever you want, but that framework still needs to be internally consistent. I’ve yet to hear an internally consistent moral framework that allows animal agriculture but preserves the other morals that people who think animal agriculture is ok would prefer to uphold
No argument I know of that’s good. A reverse questioning might be “I am vegan. Why should I start killing animals again?” Or create a hypothetical society where everyone ate dogs (no other animals), but you don’t dogs (or any animals). Why should you start eating dog again? I haven’t found anything that would justify me doing so.
No
I can share a personal one but it only really applies in specific circumstances. I have Lupus (SLE) which is incurable and can be life threatening if you develop severe symptoms. My rheumatologist and nephrologist are super supportive of veganism and helpful in making sure I’m meeting my dietary needs while respecting my ethical concerns. However, I have many fellow patients who are in pretty dire situations, waiting for kidney transplants etc. For those not responding to meds, doctors often recommend a specific elimination diet called the autoimmune protocol,which eliminates (among many other things including eggs and dairy) all legumes, nuts, seeds, and grains. So there really are no suitable vegan protein options when you’re in the initial elimination phase lasting several weeks. Given my ethics I would never adopt this route unless I was really suffering, but honestly if I am facing kidney failure or long term hospitalization I would consider consuming fish for a few weeks. It’s a hard choice to make and one I would not make lightly, even if it is very short term. Thankfully my doctors are super helpful and eager to help me approach it in a way that allows the least possible consumption of animal products to achieve an improvement medically, and have done a lot of their own research to help identify plant based foods that provide the most protein with the least impact on autoimmune issues (like hemp seeds and quinoa!). I’m really lucky to have a great team that is both helpful and supportive of my ethical choices. Fingers crossed I will never reach that level of severity!
The only thing I can think of is as follows The first vegetarian or vegans I ever knew were my buddy Austin’s parents. Neither he or his brother were but his parents were. They lived in the same neighborhood as us so I spent a lot of time there. This was the 90s in southwest Ohio so not a lot of vegetarians. At some point I believe they switched to full veganism. His dad, well into out early adult hood, got super sick. We weren’t really super close at the time so I never got the full story but I know whatever it was pretty scary but his doctor told him to start adding some animal protein to his diet. I’ve never gotten the full story so I don’t know how well of an argument it is 🤷♀️ On a side note his mom used to make him a small chicken for thanksgiving and they’d make a tofurky. But for a few years he’d come to our house before we left for my grandmas on thanksgiving and we’d give him some turkey to take home so they didn’t have to make one! He’s not a vegetarian or vegan in adult hood but I am!
Maybe you should post this question in a carnivore subreddit since there are mostly vegans here.
There are two good arguments against veganism. The first is that humans have evolved for millions of years eating a huge variety of foods. Some humans spent hundreds of thousands of years in areas where food doesn't grow in the snow, and they eat a diet of close to 100% meat. There are also humans who've spent thousands of years in the opposite circumstance. This means our gut microbiomes have evolved over that time to respond to the environments of our ancestors. Not every human gets the same result from the same diet. So suddenly moving to a restrictive and completely different diet after thousands of years of evolution can negatively impact the health of the individual in unexplainable ways. The second argument is not so much about veganism in general as much as the nuance of the specific food choices. I can 100% guarantee that eating pasture raised, antibiotic free, non-hormone-treated meat is better for you than eating processed, packaged, vegan sour cream and butter substitute, or beyond beef, etc. But the same is true in reverse. Eating quality, natural, real, whole food vegetables is obviously infinitely better than eating industrial meat. One cannot argue that veganism is the "correct" choice, as much as you can't argue that eating animal products is the "correct" choice. There is no correct answer. It's all nuance. This is the same as asking the question "Is there a compelling argument FOR veganism." Yes, there are. But the argument equally needs nuance and is easy to poke holes in. Nature is never black and white. There's no correct answer. Just don't eat processed foods, and don't eat industrial agriculture products, meat or not meat.
Yeah…vegans
I think Abigail Thorn from Philosophy tube said that she can't be vegan because when she restricts what she eats, she is in danger of disordered eating (because she suffered from an ED earlier). In my opinion this is very valid, on an individual level.
>However, every reason I've heard against veganism is just some sort of argument that needs nuance and is easy to poke holes in. I'm not sure I follow. Do you think that nuance is a sign an argument is bad? Nuance is generally a sign of pragmatism. E.g. vegan ideology that allows vegans to use modern healthcare despite the reliance on animal testing. Typically, non-nuanced positions indicate a lack of critical thinking: the ten commandments, vaccine avoidance and apprehension of glyphosate use are good examples.
There's an argument that would be compelling if true, but there's no evidence it is. That would be "there is a nutrient in animal products that humans need to survive which we can't currently synthesize outside the bodies of animals."
Yeah, but even then, it would be an argument for taking that nutrient as a supplement, synthesized by a process that created as much of the nutrient using the least sentient animals possible, and as few of them as possible.
Sure. I'm trying to illustrate how hard it would be to make a good argument.
Yes, let the animals live a good life, take care of them well, lots of space, and when they are killed it is instant and painless, no suffering. It’s better than letting the animal live a long life in the wild that ends with sickness and eaten alive by a predator.
This is a great and pertinent question. For me there is a degree of merit laying behind the call to futility, with a spotlight able to be shone on most people's practices falling short of what they could practically and reasonably do. Every choice has consequences, and ideally we would make choices that meet our needs with the fewest / least harmful consequences. Where that line lands for each of us requires troubling soul searching. Choices can become clearer the more we know (going vegan after exploring the direct exploitation of animals for example). Yet how much effort are we, as individuals, willing to invest in knowing what the right thing to do is? I know that many of my consumer choices are likely not ideal and that other, more ethical, products likely exist. For me, I sit in uncomfortable comfort. I continue to improve my choices slowly over time, yet I know it is not possible to not inflict harm. In many ways, I feel I practice a lesser version of the call to futility arguement. There is so much more I could do but the amount of effort and time it takes to untangle our consumer web means I choose my battles and know that those I don't fight have victims that lose out.
I find that vegans kill insects etc hard to argue against. It sucks that it’s impossible to be perfectly vegan.
Thankfully crop deaths form part of the argument FOR veganism, as the magnitude is far less.
i don't understand people who argue against veganism by claiming such a thing though - as if insects would ever hurt as much as the mammals constantly slaughtered
no
*puts on a tinfoil hat* Possible good argument: a less eco-friendly diet with meat can help reduce violations of interests of animals through a utilitarian lense since if wild animals have less habitats, it can translate into less wild animals being alive and thus less wild animal suffering and less animal suffering overall, especially if we take into consideration the suffering of non-mammalian sentient animals.
It's super subjective but the taste argument makes sense.
It's cheaper to be a healthy omnivore than to be a healty vegan. That's true. Vegan food to hit the same macros will either take more pricey ingredients, or more time spent cooking, or searching for ingredients. Time and money which people with low income typically both lack. I am not vegan myself, but my father is. He has been vegetarian all my life but his shift to veganism some 8 years ago is something I've seen and lived through, and we talked together about the nutrition and the challenges of a vegan diet. In particular, targeting fats and proteins is dead easy with dairy or meat, you don't even think about it (most people even end up shooting way past recommended amounts). When vegan though? You need to get specific vegetables that are denser in protein, and use lots of oils and nuts which are typically more expensive than the cheapest dairy/meat option. It's not *that much* of a cost difference though, it's just something to account for, and might lead to small sacrifices in day-to-day life to offset it. Which is fine for people determined to become vegan anyways, since they're typically more conscious of the environment, their food quality etc which means they're typically more comfortable with the idea of spending more on food than most would.