It’s hard to have a productive conversation about things like this when people say things like “I think eating meat is murder”. Like what do you even say to someone who has this kind of ridiculous opinion? Personally, eating habits are the same as religious beliefs to me. Do whatever you want, just don’t impose your bullshit on me.
That is a hyperbole (and I guess strawman from you), and should not be met seriously. I have met many meat eaters who would prioritize saving their dogs or cats over other humans - while I have never met one such vegan. So funnily enough this is a position that arises exactly because of the inconsistent moral argument for eating meat.
I attribute moral value to animals, and I attribute more moral value to humans - but since I attribute moral value to animals I refuse to take apart in a system which exploits their very life-essence for the purpose of surplus sustenance. At the same time, I would in 100% of cases prioritize a human over an animal - unlike meat-eaters who (if consistent) view them as private property and thus are willing to kill for their right of continued ownership.
It’s hard to have a productive conversation about things like this when people say things like “I think wage labor is slavery”. Like what do you even say to someone who has this kind of ridiculous opinion? Personally, employment rights and property relations are the same as religious beliefs to me. Do whatever you want, just don’t impose your bullshit on me.
i’m not vegan just trying to reframe your comment into a scenario where there’s a deeply held powerful belief involved, but it’s one you agree with (or should, if you haven’t been banned from lemmygrad)
I kind of get what you’re trying to do, but it doesn’t really work as a comparison. Being dismissive toward class relations as a whole would indeed be a bad thing, but “I think wage labor is slavery” is a contestable statement even in ML terms. Wage labor is not, in fact, slavery. It sucks and capitalism is a highly exploitative power model, but slavery is literal ownership of a person and wage labor is not that. Wage labor may feel as bad as slavery sometimes by people who have never been slaves, but it is still a different form of exploitation.
Though I don’t fully agree with the position Nocturne took, their comparison to religion is somewhat valid. The idea of killing non-human animals counting as murder in the same meaning as killing another human being gets into beliefs that are hard to ground in science, not unlike when a Catholic says that abortion is killing a child. And like abortion, there are real problems with jumping at saying it’s a terrible thing to do and then thinking about it from the standpoint of punishing people for doing it - which could sound like a strawman, but there is someone in this thread who was talking about giving non-human animals human rights (which would mean you could be punished similarly for violating their rights).
Calling vegan ethics “like religion” is backwards. Veganism can be argued from moral principles: consistency, avoidance of unnecessary harm and recognition of animal sentience. By contrast, the idea that animals exist for human use has often been justified through explicit religious and cultural hierarchy, especially in Abrahamic traditions: that animals were created for human use and that human dominion over them is natural or divinely ordained. So if anything, the long-standing normalization of meat eating is closer to a theological worldview than the refusal to exploit animals is.
The idea of animals as property is not some neutral baseline of reason, but deeply tied to theology and cultural inheritance.
Also, comparing animal killing to murder is not a claim that animals are literally human, any more than opposing factory farming is the same as claiming abortion and murder are identical. It is a claim about morally relevant harm, not that species are interchangeable.
At the same time, I do not support axont’s position and do not attribute equal moral value to humans and animals. At the same time, animals already have rights in many places, from wild animals to pets and livestock, and with regards to our other comments, the distinction between which is which of those three is entirely culturally enforced and not “logistical” or a “matter of survival”. Where I live, you would face charges for treating your cat or dog like they treat livestock.
I believe non-human animals are people on the same level as a human and should have the same rights as humans. Eating a deer is cannibalism because it’s consumption of a person’s flesh.
In this very thread. You can speak on what you believe, but you can’t tell me all representations of veganism are saying what you say as if I’m making up positions that aren’t there - when I was just replying to one earlier.
Edited to add:
Calling vegan ethics “like religion” is backwards.
Someone in this thread pointed out that veganism has had ties to buddhism going back a while. Which is a religion…
I believe non-human animals are people on the same level as a human and should have the same rights as humans. Eating a deer is cannibalism because it’s consumption of a person’s flesh.
In this very thread. You can speak on what you believe, but you can’t tell me all representations of veganism are saying what you say as if I’m making up positions that aren’t there - when I was just replying to one earlier.
Lol, I will not base my arguments around reactionaries. Just as I scoff at people who point to some fringe reactionary marxist-in-name-only organization and say:
“You can speak what you belive but you can’t tell me all representations of marxism are saying what you say…”, lets be serious. Just as there is little moral and logical consistency in eating meat, the same can be said of 1) attributing the equal moral value to humans as other animals and 2) thus enforcing the same judical rights for them.
Calling vegan ethics “like religion” is backwards.
Someone in this thread pointed out that veganism has had ties to buddhism going back a while. Which is a religion…
Now it I am starting to feel you are not arguing in good faith.
You are shifting between two different things: historical religious dietary rules and modern vegan ethics. The fact that some Buddhist traditions or other spiritual systems arrived at similar conclusions does not make veganism itself religious. It only shows that different moral traditions can converge on similar practices.
And yes, that is not strange at all. Philosophical and theological systems often overlap on certain conclusions by coincidence or through shared moral intuitions. That does not mean they have the same basis. Modern veganism can be grounded in secular ethics even though some older religious traditions happened to reach similar dietary practices.
Pointing to Buddhism does not prove that vegan ethics are “like religion.” It proves only that some religious traditions restricted animal use. That is not an argument against veganism, just a historical parallel.
Modern Western veganism is a reaction to factory farming.
Veganism has existed for millennia. (X)
Therefore vegan ethics are like religion.
Those do not cleanly follow from each other. At most, Buddhism shows that some religious traditions have long contained food ethics that overlap with vegan or vegetarian ideas. That does not make the modern secular ethical case for veganism “religious".
Especially since you yourself rejected this argument (X):
In any case, the form of veganism I was trying to talk about is the distinctly modern western form of it, one that doesn’t seem to have any noticeable relationship with buddhism.
If the point is specifically about the modern movement, then the relevant question is its actual moral structure now, not whether some older religion had adjacent practices.
There are multiple things going on here that are becoming painful to follow even when I was one of the ones in the conversation.
You replying to me to tell me:
Calling vegan ethics “like religion” is backwards. Veganism can be argued from moral principles: consistency, avoidance of unnecessary harm and recognition of animal sentience.
Then proceeding to argue that it’s actually the reverse, citing Abrahamic religion as an example:
the idea that animals exist for human use has often been justified through explicit religious and cultural hierarchy, especially in Abrahamic traditions: that animals were created for human use and that human dominion over them is natural or divinely ordained. So if anything, the long-standing normalization of meat eating is closer to a theological worldview than the refusal to exploit animals is.
Buddhism is a direct counterpoint to this, as it shows there is a longstanding religion that has a near opposite view on animals.
On top of this, there is as you say, the more modern secular trend of veganism in the west. So your original claim is not sound. It is a statement on what you believe about where vegan arguments should be derived from, not a historical argument on what it is in practice.
You can say “those aren’t the real vegans” like we might about the ACP with regards to marxism-leninism, but that’s the framing then, if so. Not that the diverging point of view isn’t a real phenomenon. It is the dismissiveness that I was pushing back on and the framing implying that I was arguing with strawmen.
Especially since you yourself rejected this argument (X):
Me: In any case, the form of veganism I was trying to talk about is the distinctly modern western form of it, one that doesn’t seem to have any noticeable relationship with buddhism.
If the point is specifically about the modern movement, then the relevant question is its actual moral structure now, not whether some older religion had adjacent practices.
This was a different argument where I was clarifying that I was criticizing the effectiveness of modern veganism as an individualist boycotting practice in the west. I was in the process acknowledging that veganism also has ties to buddhism historically.
The fact that we cannot point to a “vegan state” of sorts in the way that we can with marxism-leninism is part of the problem (or at least, a revolutionary vegan theory - maybe there is one, but I haven’t seen it brought up in this thread). You can tell me what vegan is and then I might talk to someone else and get a different view and where is it leading? How can anyone organize for it if there is not even broad agreement on what it means in practice beyond the very basic definition of specific foods you don’t consume?
It’s pretty easy to agree in a general sense, “Don’t mistreat animals”, but if one person’s version of that is don’t factory farm abuse them and another’s is give them human rights, we’ve got no solid ground to stand on. Am I making sense or no?
You impose your beliefs onto the people that are forced to kill your meat for you. The only way for meat to be a readily available commodity in a world of billions of consumers requires working conditions that lead to early death in slaughterhouses and meat packing plants. Eating meat is social murder.
I really don’t care if someone hunts or traps, but if you buy meat at the store there’s human blood in your mouth.
but if you buy meat at the store there’s human blood in your mouth.
This is the type of shit that causes people to completely clock out of ever taking vegans seriously. If you apply this point of view consistently, guess what you get? You basically can’t exist under modern capitalism without having blood on your hands at some step. This tends to lead to things like: you live in some attempted anarcho communist off the grid way, cut off from society and unable to impact anything; you say fuck it I guess I’ll just do whatever because it’s all fucked anyway; or you semi boycott some things and give up on others.
Trying to get people to personalize systemic issues without changing anything on the system level does not fix systemic issues. What it does do is make the most conscientious people more neurotic and causes them to more blame themselves for things that are out of their control. While the least conscientious people continue to orchestrate crimes.
No, people tune out vegans because they want their treats. Meat is a luxury, and suffering people crave luxury, and so anyone who correctly observes “your luxury is soaked with blood” is going to make enemies. We have so few luxuries under capitalism that people will defend their treats to the death, there’s no way to actually convince people to give up meat. I sympathize.
But I’m not going to coddle their commodity fetishism, either. You can’t exist under modern capitalism without having some blood on your hands, but some commodities are more blood soaked than others. They should at least understand what they’re eating and think about the system of exploitation they’re engaged with.
Besides, giving up the most exploitative commodities is just good sense. I’m certainly not going to demand every cadre be a perfect vegan, it certainly isn’t the primary contradiction, but if a discussion about meat comes up I’m going to be honest.
That doesn’t touch the underlying and inescapable fact: industrial meat is impossible without hurting and killing workers. Any fully socialist society will move away from meat simply for the fact that the logistics of making it safe make it unsuitable for mass production. We would either ration meat severely so no worker had to mutilate their mind and body to harvest meat for billions of people, or we’d need fully-automated slaughter and meat processing facilities. The simple logistics of meat are a problem when we consider the workers behind it.
That’s why I stopped eating meat, because I know I’ll have to give it up eventually anyway. Why not start now? It’s easy.
No, people tune out vegans because they want their treats.
Meat is not a treat. It’s a high protein food that’s a staple in a lot of people’s diets, meal plans, known meals that work for protein, and fast food and restaurant menus when eating out. Going out and getting a fancy steak is a treat, sure, but that’s the outlier form of meat consumption. Including some chicken in a meal for protein is not. I just don’t even know how to process this statement. It feels like we’re living in two different worlds.
If plant protein is cheaper then meat doesn’t need to be a staple, you can make high protein meal plans and diets without any meat while also saving money. Therefore, it’s a luxury. People eat meat because it’s tasty and familiar, not because it’s necessary.
“If it’s possible to get a job that pays more, then people who can’t afford to pay rent should just get one. Therefore, complaining about rent prices is invalid and people are just doing it because they don’t want to be bothered to get a better job. People stay where they are in life because it’s comfortable and familiar.” <- That’s about what you sound like right now. It is characteristically no different than bootstraps individualism.
Its so strange how people who eat meat (not out of necessity) refuse to admit that its immoral, or that there is no justification for it. I’d have much more respect for your types if youd preface your libertarian esque straw mans by conceding “there is no justification for eating dead animals for my own enjoyment but I don’t think its that bad, I don’t really care”
No one is imposing anything on you. Youre just playing the victim because you can’t tolerate the cognitive dissonance.
Bro really had the option to just scroll past the post but nah apparently you needed to feel “imposed” upon.
What’s funny is that I didn’t give an opinion on it either way, I was pointing out a comment someone made and how unproductive shit like that is but sure buddy 👍🏿
Talking about eating habits how do you manage having your cake and eating it too?
Your opinion is transparent regardless if you explicitly stated it or not. If you actually cared about having a “productive converstion” about it you would’ve gone about it differently. E.g. “that argument seems quite extreme and from my view is a hasty false equivalency” could suffice. Pretending to care about having a “productive conversation” yet immediately becoming provocative and inflammatory. Nice work!
Anddd
Being reactionary upon hearing someone else’s opinion that didn’t involve you when nothing was “imposed” upon you. While simultaneously claiming you don’t care about what other people believe or do. You imposed yourself into this thread.
You clearly do care what other people believe and think of you.
So what will it be? Having? Or eating?
Will you unimpose yourself fron this thread? Or will you be the bigger man and try and have a “productive conversation” presumably by ignoring my reciprocal provocations.
It’s hard to have a productive conversation about things like this when people say things like “I think eating meat is murder”. Like what do you even say to someone who has this kind of ridiculous opinion? Personally, eating habits are the same as religious beliefs to me. Do whatever you want, just don’t impose your bullshit on me.
That is a hyperbole (and I guess strawman from you), and should not be met seriously. I have met many meat eaters who would prioritize saving their dogs or cats over other humans - while I have never met one such vegan. So funnily enough this is a position that arises exactly because of the inconsistent moral argument for eating meat.
I attribute moral value to animals, and I attribute more moral value to humans - but since I attribute moral value to animals I refuse to take apart in a system which exploits their very life-essence for the purpose of surplus sustenance. At the same time, I would in 100% of cases prioritize a human over an animal - unlike meat-eaters who (if consistent) view them as private property and thus are willing to kill for their right of continued ownership.
i’m not vegan just trying to reframe your comment into a scenario where there’s a deeply held powerful belief involved, but it’s one you agree with (or should, if you haven’t been banned from lemmygrad)
I kind of get what you’re trying to do, but it doesn’t really work as a comparison. Being dismissive toward class relations as a whole would indeed be a bad thing, but “I think wage labor is slavery” is a contestable statement even in ML terms. Wage labor is not, in fact, slavery. It sucks and capitalism is a highly exploitative power model, but slavery is literal ownership of a person and wage labor is not that. Wage labor may feel as bad as slavery sometimes by people who have never been slaves, but it is still a different form of exploitation.
Though I don’t fully agree with the position Nocturne took, their comparison to religion is somewhat valid. The idea of killing non-human animals counting as murder in the same meaning as killing another human being gets into beliefs that are hard to ground in science, not unlike when a Catholic says that abortion is killing a child. And like abortion, there are real problems with jumping at saying it’s a terrible thing to do and then thinking about it from the standpoint of punishing people for doing it - which could sound like a strawman, but there is someone in this thread who was talking about giving non-human animals human rights (which would mean you could be punished similarly for violating their rights).
Calling vegan ethics “like religion” is backwards. Veganism can be argued from moral principles: consistency, avoidance of unnecessary harm and recognition of animal sentience. By contrast, the idea that animals exist for human use has often been justified through explicit religious and cultural hierarchy, especially in Abrahamic traditions: that animals were created for human use and that human dominion over them is natural or divinely ordained. So if anything, the long-standing normalization of meat eating is closer to a theological worldview than the refusal to exploit animals is.
The idea of animals as property is not some neutral baseline of reason, but deeply tied to theology and cultural inheritance.
Also, comparing animal killing to murder is not a claim that animals are literally human, any more than opposing factory farming is the same as claiming abortion and murder are identical. It is a claim about morally relevant harm, not that species are interchangeable.
At the same time, I do not support axont’s position and do not attribute equal moral value to humans and animals. At the same time, animals already have rights in many places, from wild animals to pets and livestock, and with regards to our other comments, the distinction between which is which of those three is entirely culturally enforced and not “logistical” or a “matter of survival”. Where I live, you would face charges for treating your cat or dog like they treat livestock.
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11773976/8264341
In this very thread. You can speak on what you believe, but you can’t tell me all representations of veganism are saying what you say as if I’m making up positions that aren’t there - when I was just replying to one earlier.
Edited to add:
Someone in this thread pointed out that veganism has had ties to buddhism going back a while. Which is a religion…
Lol, I will not base my arguments around reactionaries. Just as I scoff at people who point to some fringe reactionary marxist-in-name-only organization and say: “You can speak what you belive but you can’t tell me all representations of marxism are saying what you say…”, lets be serious. Just as there is little moral and logical consistency in eating meat, the same can be said of 1) attributing the equal moral value to humans as other animals and 2) thus enforcing the same judical rights for them.
Now it I am starting to feel you are not arguing in good faith.
You are shifting between two different things: historical religious dietary rules and modern vegan ethics. The fact that some Buddhist traditions or other spiritual systems arrived at similar conclusions does not make veganism itself religious. It only shows that different moral traditions can converge on similar practices.
And yes, that is not strange at all. Philosophical and theological systems often overlap on certain conclusions by coincidence or through shared moral intuitions. That does not mean they have the same basis. Modern veganism can be grounded in secular ethics even though some older religious traditions happened to reach similar dietary practices.
Pointing to Buddhism does not prove that vegan ethics are “like religion.” It proves only that some religious traditions restricted animal use. That is not an argument against veganism, just a historical parallel.
Those do not cleanly follow from each other. At most, Buddhism shows that some religious traditions have long contained food ethics that overlap with vegan or vegetarian ideas. That does not make the modern secular ethical case for veganism “religious".
Especially since you yourself rejected this argument (X):
If the point is specifically about the modern movement, then the relevant question is its actual moral structure now, not whether some older religion had adjacent practices.
There are multiple things going on here that are becoming painful to follow even when I was one of the ones in the conversation.
Then proceeding to argue that it’s actually the reverse, citing Abrahamic religion as an example:
Buddhism is a direct counterpoint to this, as it shows there is a longstanding religion that has a near opposite view on animals.
On top of this, there is as you say, the more modern secular trend of veganism in the west. So your original claim is not sound. It is a statement on what you believe about where vegan arguments should be derived from, not a historical argument on what it is in practice.
You can say “those aren’t the real vegans” like we might about the ACP with regards to marxism-leninism, but that’s the framing then, if so. Not that the diverging point of view isn’t a real phenomenon. It is the dismissiveness that I was pushing back on and the framing implying that I was arguing with strawmen.
This was a different argument where I was clarifying that I was criticizing the effectiveness of modern veganism as an individualist boycotting practice in the west. I was in the process acknowledging that veganism also has ties to buddhism historically.
The fact that we cannot point to a “vegan state” of sorts in the way that we can with marxism-leninism is part of the problem (or at least, a revolutionary vegan theory - maybe there is one, but I haven’t seen it brought up in this thread). You can tell me what vegan is and then I might talk to someone else and get a different view and where is it leading? How can anyone organize for it if there is not even broad agreement on what it means in practice beyond the very basic definition of specific foods you don’t consume?
It’s pretty easy to agree in a general sense, “Don’t mistreat animals”, but if one person’s version of that is don’t factory farm abuse them and another’s is give them human rights, we’ve got no solid ground to stand on. Am I making sense or no?
Yeah that doesn’t really hit the same at all really
ok cool story i think you might just be an asshole
Good thing I don’t really care about what random strangers on the internet think about me 👍🏿
Just say you can’t cook 😂
How much people have you ever heard saying that? like, be for real.
There’s literally someone in this post saying it, are you forreal?
You impose your beliefs onto the people that are forced to kill your meat for you. The only way for meat to be a readily available commodity in a world of billions of consumers requires working conditions that lead to early death in slaughterhouses and meat packing plants. Eating meat is social murder.
I really don’t care if someone hunts or traps, but if you buy meat at the store there’s human blood in your mouth.
This is the type of shit that causes people to completely clock out of ever taking vegans seriously. If you apply this point of view consistently, guess what you get? You basically can’t exist under modern capitalism without having blood on your hands at some step. This tends to lead to things like: you live in some attempted anarcho communist off the grid way, cut off from society and unable to impact anything; you say fuck it I guess I’ll just do whatever because it’s all fucked anyway; or you semi boycott some things and give up on others.
Trying to get people to personalize systemic issues without changing anything on the system level does not fix systemic issues. What it does do is make the most conscientious people more neurotic and causes them to more blame themselves for things that are out of their control. While the least conscientious people continue to orchestrate crimes.
No, people tune out vegans because they want their treats. Meat is a luxury, and suffering people crave luxury, and so anyone who correctly observes “your luxury is soaked with blood” is going to make enemies. We have so few luxuries under capitalism that people will defend their treats to the death, there’s no way to actually convince people to give up meat. I sympathize.
But I’m not going to coddle their commodity fetishism, either. You can’t exist under modern capitalism without having some blood on your hands, but some commodities are more blood soaked than others. They should at least understand what they’re eating and think about the system of exploitation they’re engaged with.
Besides, giving up the most exploitative commodities is just good sense. I’m certainly not going to demand every cadre be a perfect vegan, it certainly isn’t the primary contradiction, but if a discussion about meat comes up I’m going to be honest.
That doesn’t touch the underlying and inescapable fact: industrial meat is impossible without hurting and killing workers. Any fully socialist society will move away from meat simply for the fact that the logistics of making it safe make it unsuitable for mass production. We would either ration meat severely so no worker had to mutilate their mind and body to harvest meat for billions of people, or we’d need fully-automated slaughter and meat processing facilities. The simple logistics of meat are a problem when we consider the workers behind it.
That’s why I stopped eating meat, because I know I’ll have to give it up eventually anyway. Why not start now? It’s easy.
Meat is not a treat. It’s a high protein food that’s a staple in a lot of people’s diets, meal plans, known meals that work for protein, and fast food and restaurant menus when eating out. Going out and getting a fancy steak is a treat, sure, but that’s the outlier form of meat consumption. Including some chicken in a meal for protein is not. I just don’t even know how to process this statement. It feels like we’re living in two different worlds.
Wrong, vegan protein is cheaper.
Why reply to me with such a non-sequitur?
If plant protein is cheaper then meat doesn’t need to be a staple, you can make high protein meal plans and diets without any meat while also saving money. Therefore, it’s a luxury. People eat meat because it’s tasty and familiar, not because it’s necessary.
“If it’s possible to get a job that pays more, then people who can’t afford to pay rent should just get one. Therefore, complaining about rent prices is invalid and people are just doing it because they don’t want to be bothered to get a better job. People stay where they are in life because it’s comfortable and familiar.” <- That’s about what you sound like right now. It is characteristically no different than bootstraps individualism.
Ok 👌🏿
Its so strange how people who eat meat (not out of necessity) refuse to admit that its immoral, or that there is no justification for it. I’d have much more respect for your types if youd preface your libertarian esque straw mans by conceding “there is no justification for eating dead animals for my own enjoyment but I don’t think its that bad, I don’t really care”
No one is imposing anything on you. Youre just playing the victim because you can’t tolerate the cognitive dissonance.
Bro really had the option to just scroll past the post but nah apparently you needed to feel “imposed” upon.
What’s funny is that I didn’t give an opinion on it either way, I was pointing out a comment someone made and how unproductive shit like that is but sure buddy 👍🏿
Haha.
Talking about eating habits how do you manage having your cake and eating it too?
Your opinion is transparent regardless if you explicitly stated it or not. If you actually cared about having a “productive converstion” about it you would’ve gone about it differently. E.g. “that argument seems quite extreme and from my view is a hasty false equivalency” could suffice. Pretending to care about having a “productive conversation” yet immediately becoming provocative and inflammatory. Nice work!
Anddd
Being reactionary upon hearing someone else’s opinion that didn’t involve you when nothing was “imposed” upon you. While simultaneously claiming you don’t care about what other people believe or do. You imposed yourself into this thread.
You clearly do care what other people believe and think of you.
So what will it be? Having? Or eating?
Will you unimpose yourself fron this thread? Or will you be the bigger man and try and have a “productive conversation” presumably by ignoring my reciprocal provocations.