I mostly agree but think its strange to dismiss the individual part of it. Although a social movement is the goal being worked towards, I feel its a bit harmful to state the goal as ‘global vegan movement’ instead of ‘stop exploiting animals’ because that difference provides wiggle room to do harmful things if you don’t expect it to affect the odds of the movement succeeding, which gets yourself thinking in unhelpful utilitarian terms. Easier to get intersectional-understanding benefits of connecting veganism to other issues, and be a better voice for that movement, when you’re an abolitionist vegan who doesn’t care if what you’re doing might not be worthwhile according to an arbitrary metric.
The movement is of course the vitally necessary action to end the industry, but I’m also sick of carnist leftist friends excusing individual carnist actions because of it ‘not really changing things’, which I think is driving my thoughts here.
No, see, this is the exact mindset I dislike. There isn’t anything more I need to say because by it’s very nature, something that doesn’t affect anything doesn’t affect anything. The only reason to care about anything that doesn’t actually help stop animal suffering is out of moral fear.
The only place this argument is really relevant is are thing we can’t reliably control without lots of privilege, anyways. Everyone should be vegan. But lots of non-food products aren’t vegan because it has become heavily normalized societally, and it has gotten to the point that they are more expensive vegan than non-vegan. It doesn’t help animals to refuse to bath because one can’t afford non-vegan soap (which is almost always more expensive, unlike food).
To be clear, I think anyone should use vegan soap if they can
Edit: it’s not worth arguing with a fellow person who dislikes util*tarianism
I think I just couldn’t tell if you were suggesting ‘buying or not buying harmful products doesn’t make a difference’ to mean supporting carnist stuff is fine, cause it felt like an odd inclusion but I getcha now.
But yeah I was, in response, arguing the importance of still considering consumption habits in your veganism, which comes from my mechanistic worldview thinking that everything has an affect on something, so what should instead be the limiting factor for these decisions is stuff like privilege (instead of util priorities), which ends up at the same stance as you (I think). Anxiety over my political alienation making me min-max my veganism lol.
My beliefs boil down to: As a boycott, whether or not any one person buys animal products matters much less than if we get as many people not buying animal products as possible. Or more precisely, our goal is the total destruction or the meat industry, not just changing our consumer choices.
And, because the meat industry will continue murdering as long as we fail to destroy it, buying their products is harmful because it indicates there is still demand for their murder, not because it is murder directly in and of itself. Is there a difference? Kind of. It helps up both keep in mind that veganism is a radical movement, not a diet, and that our family members aren’t sociopaths. Or maybe I’m just coping.
I mostly agree but think its strange to dismiss the individual part of it. Although a social movement is the goal being worked towards, I feel its a bit harmful to state the goal as ‘global vegan movement’ instead of ‘stop exploiting animals’ because that difference provides wiggle room to do harmful things if you don’t expect it to affect the odds of the movement succeeding, which gets yourself thinking in unhelpful utilitarian terms. Easier to get intersectional-understanding benefits of connecting veganism to other issues, and be a better voice for that movement, when you’re an abolitionist vegan who doesn’t care if what you’re doing might not be worthwhile according to an arbitrary metric.
The movement is of course the vitally necessary action to end the industry, but I’m also sick of carnist leftist friends excusing individual carnist actions because of it ‘not really changing things’, which I think is driving my thoughts here.
No, see, this is the exact mindset I dislike. There isn’t anything more I need to say because by it’s very nature, something that doesn’t affect anything doesn’t affect anything. The only reason to care about anything that doesn’t actually help stop animal suffering is out of moral fear.
The only place this argument is really relevant is are thing we can’t reliably control without lots of privilege, anyways. Everyone should be vegan. But lots of non-food products aren’t vegan because it has become heavily normalized societally, and it has gotten to the point that they are more expensive vegan than non-vegan. It doesn’t help animals to refuse to bath because one can’t afford non-vegan soap (which is almost always more expensive, unlike food).
To be clear, I think anyone should use vegan soap if they can
Edit: it’s not worth arguing with a fellow person who dislikes util*tarianism
I think I just couldn’t tell if you were suggesting ‘buying or not buying harmful products doesn’t make a difference’ to mean supporting carnist stuff is fine, cause it felt like an odd inclusion but I getcha now.
But yeah I was, in response, arguing the importance of still considering consumption habits in your veganism, which comes from my mechanistic worldview thinking that everything has an affect on something, so what should instead be the limiting factor for these decisions is stuff like privilege (instead of util priorities), which ends up at the same stance as you (I think). Anxiety over my political alienation making me min-max my veganism lol.
My beliefs boil down to: As a boycott, whether or not any one person buys animal products matters much less than if we get as many people not buying animal products as possible. Or more precisely, our goal is the total destruction or the meat industry, not just changing our consumer choices.
And, because the meat industry will continue murdering as long as we fail to destroy it, buying their products is harmful because it indicates there is still demand for their murder, not because it is murder directly in and of itself. Is there a difference? Kind of. It helps up both keep in mind that veganism is a radical movement, not a diet, and that our family members aren’t sociopaths. Or maybe I’m just coping.
That’s a good summary ill have to use it