Until I joined Lemmy I had no idea how militant vegans could be. I sorta just assumed they were a different brand of vegetarian.
I’m not opposed to their ideaology in any way, but after reading the comments on a few posts that found their way into my feed… I had to block their communities. It didn’t seem likely that I’d be reading any productive discourse there.
I was vegan for 8 years and during that time I didn’t talk to anyone about it other than to say, “I don’t eat that.”
I say that to say this - vegans are insufferable and a large reason why I quit the community and went back to omnivore. Even after 8 years, other vegans were still ‘more vegan’ and would nitpick the dumbest stuff.
“Bro, did you eat a date? That killed a bee or something. Not cool.”
Shut up with that. Let me eat my damn fruit.
I was healthier though. But, to be fair, I was younger.
I’m a level 2 proto-vegan, though it’s functionally equivalent to a level 8 in normal terms I think.
Anyway, our food is cultivated in an open source orchard (the genomes are all fully sequenced) using plea bargains with the surrounding woodland, where we encourage feral animals to aerate and urinate on the soil and we sensually assist in the procreation of the plant reproduction taking a 1%-5% crop yield over what the flies do not touch.
You know what, it’s so much easier to say you’re an omnivore and end up eating meat once a year than to say you are a vegan who makes an exception about once a year. The first label would earn you a “wait so you’re basically vegan?!” vs “you’re not vegan then and you’re a dirty cheater”.
I tried to find historical articles about it, but couldn’t find any. But I swear I used it and saw it all the way back in the AIMs chatroom dialup days
Exactly my experience. I often heard stories of vegans being like that, but I never ever saw it so I thought it was just made up to belittle vegans.
Then I joined lemmy and found out that I’m apparently in favour of massacres, slavery and rape because I consume meat/milk/eggs from time to time.
I imagine the vast majority of vegans just go about their lives and resprectfully discuss the ethics of animal consumption when the topic comes up, but these loud militant members really make vegans look bad and they sure as hell make it so that even less people consider going vegan
Yes, them calling me a rapist totally made we want to be like them and adopt their ideology.
Their strain of it appears to be poison religion like fundamentalist Christianity or Islam. A fanatic is a fanatic, whatever paint they’re dipped in. Guess they’re just trying to fill a hole in themselves.
I’m not in favor of it, but I’m not going to stop eating meat. The second lab grown meat is available to people in my economic tier I’ll switch exclusively to that.
I’m really hoping that lab grown meat will be available soon. I have a weird genetic issue where my body doesn’t like to absorb certain vitamins from food so I get basically nothing from raw veggies, negligible amounts from cooked veggies, and a tiny bit more from meat, eggs and dairy.
I take prescription vitamins, but according to my Dr I need to eat meat/animal products with them or risk going into a deficiency again… the last time I was deficient I had seizures and serious neurological issues.
I hate the meat industry and factory farming, but also want my brain to function and to not have seizures.
I also have severe malabsorption and can’t process most veg at all. I have been told hundreds of times that I am lying, and that I don’t need to eat meat. To some of these people it is better for us to suffer than to eat meat, while they claim to subscribe to a philosophy of reducing suffering.
If I went vegan I’d probably suffer a very slow, agonizing death from my brain going haywire and seize until I go into psychosis and die. If my body could take it I’d probably be a vegetarian and eat only local eggs and cheese, but it’s a bad idea according to my doctor. It sucks.
100% yes. I am fully aware that being vegan is, in my opinion, the more ethical option but I can and will continue to eat meat because 1 it’s cheap, it’s plentiful, I know how to and can cook with it well and because yes it tastes so fucking good. I don’t mean this as a 3edgy5me thing but fuck me I love a nice ribeye stake with butter and garlic cloves and a baked potato.
Okay, but you have to know about plant-based steaks and vegan butter. And of course you know about vegan garlic and vegan potato, because all garlic and potato is vegan. What’s the extra cost of a vegan steak compared to an animal steak in your area? In mine it’s around 3 dollars.
I have never seen a plant based stake at my local grocery stores. The next time I am there to pick out a stake, I will also look and ask specifically for a plant based one, and I will try it. But I have had other stuff like plant based burgers, and while they are ok, they just can’t hold up to the taste of a meat burger.
I’ve tried plenty of different plant based meat substitutes and so for, not one of them can hold a candle to the real taste. Like, it is not even close in my opinion. I can see the market for it, but plant based diet can be incredible when not trying to impersonate meat. Like lentils with curry. Not meat required and super tasty.
So would argue that meat substitutes are the wrong way to go if you want to eat tasty non meat stuff.
I’m not vegan but I eat plenty of incidentally vegan meals, and all of the best ones have been the ones that weren’t trying to imitate another food. They just can’t get the texture right and I’d rather not eat some squishy disc of beans and wheat while trying to convince myself it’s a burger. It’s not. I know it’s not and pretending doesn’t make it any more of one. Give me a good soup or curry or pasta dish instead.
Never fails in a discussion about how fundamentally shitty vegans are that there will be a ton of vegans invading the thread to prove the point definitively.
I stick with Margaret Cho’s advice on vegans from her Assassin tour back in 2005:
And especially, especially, don’t fuck with vegans. Do not look vegans in the eye. If you get into an argument with a vegan, say “I’m wrong” and run away as fast as you can. Do not fuck with vegans because they will fuck you up…BECAUSE THEY’RE HUNGRY.
I’m sorry to hear that. The thing is, you mainly hear from those who are the most vocal, and those tend to be the most angry and therefore unreasonable. And those probably had their fair share of verbal (and/or physical) abuse from meat eaters, as vegans are hated on by a much, much larger part of society than the other way around. (That doesn’t justify their hate, of course)
It’s all a self reinforcing dynamic of groups riling each other up, unfortunately.
Vegans being annoying was a thing awhile ago, but they really chilled out. This is a smaller band of die-hards.
“Chilling out” is of course a terrible metric when animal abuse is on the line but being good to animals would make you vegetarian, not vegan, and yet that was never where the righteousness was coming from.
For the most part, the “unreasonable vegan” stereotype comes from two places.
Confirmation bias. Veganism makes people uncomfortable with their own decisions, so people spread around the most outrageous stories about vegans as a defense mechanism. This is the same thing that happens in various circles with anyone whose mere existence makes other people insecure; e.g., teetotalers, or polyamorous people.
Just plain disagreeing with them. There are lots of vegan arguments that are logically valid, but they sound outrageous if you don’t already agree with them. People have trouble looking past their initial emotional reactions, so they respond to logically valid arguments with mere incredulity.
Are you talking to the same person, or the same few people, repeatedly? There certainly are people out there who just are unreasonable. You can’t expect individuals to change.
Otherwise, I guess (and I admit that this is biased in my favor) that you simply disagree with each other at a foundational level, and that’s causing you to talk past each other.
I think that most people don’t really know how to discourse with people who have differing ethical foundations, because it can lead to situations where a person who meets all the societal criteria of a “good person” is nonetheless committing (according to whatever ethical precepts) a horrible crime. But, in this context, accusing someone of committing a horrible crime is not unreasonable; in fact, it’s too reasonable; it involves prioritizing reason over tact and politeness.
Are you talking to the same person, or the same few people, repeatedly?
Roughly 10% are repeat conversations, though I’ve rarely had a contact be kept past 3 exchanges, and not a ‘few’ people by any metric.
you simply disagree with each other at a foundational level, and that’s causing you to talk past each other.
I appreciate how you are trying to make this a ‘both sides’ thing, but it really isn’t and I have no way of imparting 30 years of frustrating experience in a way you will find meaningful.
Since you claim to be a reasonable vegan, then maybe this is the best place for this:
What are your plans for all the currently living domesticated animals if, hypothetically, meat eating is made illegal?
Have you ever considered that being raised by humans for consumption is literally the most wildly successful species survival strategy that natural selection has ever thrown up? Literally no wild animal thrives as well as a cared for domesticated example, and domesticated animals released in the wild have an abysmal survival rate. (it is literally animal cruelty to release most domesticated animals into the wild, with the exception of pigs. They can re-adapt no problems)
Meat is one of the most nutrient dense foods out there and is likely the entire reason we were able to develop these incredibly energy and nutrient expensive brains, have you considered what the long term species ramifications are for us if we choose to stop a standard practice that has been with us since before our species was even human yet?
What is your stance on pets?
Do you not think the critical need for specific supplements to maintain good health is a sign that the diet was never intended for our normal operation?
I would like to hear your opinion on parents raising their infants to be vegan from birth.
These are the questions I would usually ask to vegans I meet in the world and online. Most responses are immediate verbal abuse and a refusal to continue communications.
I sincerely hope you are a better person than that and I can FINALLY have this discussion start to finish.
What are your plans for all the currently living domesticated animals if, hypothetically, meat eating is made illegal?
I haven’t here advocated for making meat-eating illegal. If nothing else, at the current moment, that’s infeasible for a number of reasons, and even if it became mostly feasible, there would probably always have to be some exceptions (e.g., people who have very specific dietary requirements, although maybe lab-grown meat could plug that hole?).
That said, thinking purely hypothetically, I recognize two likely endgame scenarios.
A gradual phasing out of animal agriculture. Suppose legislation is passed that increasingly limits animal agriculture over the course of, say, twenty years. Animal stocks dwindle over time, eventually being reduced to nothing.
A mass holocaust, akin to what Denmark did to their mink stocks in 2020. This sounds horrible, but it is, ethically speaking, actually the better option, because it results in the smallest amount of total suffering (i.e., the area under the daily suffering curve is greater in Option 1 then in Option 2).
Have you ever considered that being raised by humans for consumption is literally the most wildly successful species survival strategy that natural selection has ever thrown up?
This is completely irrelevant. For me, veganism is basically just what happens when you take utilitarianism and extend it to include the experiences of non-human animals. I care about individuals. I don’t care one whit about species per se.
Meat is one of the most nutrient dense foods out there and is likely the entire reason we were able to develop these incredibly energy and nutrient expensive brains, have you considered what the long term species ramifications are for us if we choose to stop a standard practice that has been with us since before our species was even human yet?
Do you not think the critical need for specific supplements to maintain good health is a sign that the diet was never intended for our normal operation?
I’ll take both of these at the same time, because my thoughts on them are basically the same.
We were not designed by a god. We were not “intended” for anything. Evolution has no normative value. To believe that it does is pseudoscience (or, perhaps, pseudo-philosophy).
People who argue that veganism is “unnatural” are arbitrarily picking out one out of the innumerable ways that the lives of humans today differ from those of the past. If I suggested that we ought to revert to being subsistence hunter-gatherers in Africa living in groups of ~100 people, you would call me insane. So the mere fact that something is different from the conditions in which we evolved means absolutely nothing.
The question is simply this: can we reduce suffering? If we can, we should, regardless of how “unnatural” the solution is.
If you can provide me a scientific argument against veganism in principle, that would be worth considering. Merely gesturing at the need for supplementation says nothing to me. If it works, it works.
What is your stance on pets?
I haven’t figured this one out for myself yet. I think the anti-pet people have compelling arguments, and I have a lot of cognitive dissonance over that fact.
I would like to hear your opinion on parents raising their infants to be vegan from birth.
This one I’m not sure about, at least right now, simply due our lack of knowledge. My guess is that it’s theoretically possible to raise an infant as a vegan without any problems, but that it’s more difficult to do it right. I don’t know if I’d trust myself to do it. I think this is a problem that will require a lot of studies to figure out, but I also think it’s worth figuring out.
Having personally known several perfectly normal and sane vegans, maybe your “reasonable conversation” is a bit more combative than you believe. Vegans are just normal people. Some will be crazy. Some will be normal. If your experience with your hundreds of vegans you’ve met is 100% unreasonable, then you’re definitely the problem. Someone choosing to avoid animal products for personal health or environmental reasons, or any other personal reason, is inherently not unreasonable. They might be unreasonable if they try to force their ideas on others, but defending their own choices isn’t unreasonable. Tone down your confirmation bias and aggression, and you might find that just like every large enough group, people are still people and they vary.
Yep, that’s always the response. 'it’s not the inherent radicalism of vegan ideology that is the problem, but the fact that you didn’t talk nice to them (which I am assuming because I wasn’t there).
What radicalism? What part of that ideal is radical? Also, a bizarre reaction. “My beliefs were challenged in the slightest, therefore this person must be silenced.” Weirdo.
I have to admit, diet restriction vegans (and not the ones that just think meat is icky and can get a doctor to sign off on it) do not fall into the general stereotype but then only one of them ever had a chance to speak to me and she would sneak chicken occasionally so I don’t really consider her vegan as such. Also she was a work associate and I normally never bring up the subject in the office.
There may be reasonable vegans out there, and I have actively sought them on forums and IRL through school clubs and protests. I have never IRL raised my voice, never used a derogatory label harsher than ‘leafeater’ and that only once. Yet I am so ridiculously burned out by the arguments and harsh words I’ve endured that I’m done holding any hope out any longer.
You sound like what I like to call a “debatist.” No one wants to be challenged on their personal choices. You don’t seem to be approaching this concept with an open mind. Can you define what makes anything they say unreasonable? I am not vegan, but I can recognize, definitively, that veganism is better for the environment (by far), healthy (if you make sure you’re getting all the nutrients you need, just like any diet), and less cruel to animals. You can choose to disagree that those conclusions mean you need to cut out animal products, but those aren’t opinions up for debate. Farming meat is far worse for the environment, vegan diets are perfectly healthy, and obviously, killing animals isn’t something the animal wants.
Again, you can disagree with their conclusion that those reasons mean you shouldn’t eat animal products, but denying that they’re true is like denying climate change. I’m not vegan, so clearly I didn’t come to the same conclusion, but I’m not trying to purport that anyone that does is somehow unreasonable.
No one wants to be challenged on their personal choices.
Yet that is what every vegan does to carnists, in many cases very viciously. I am NOT going up to vegans and telling them to stop being vegan, nor am I judging them for their dietary choices. I ask them questions like ‘What would be your plans for all the current living domesticated animals in the hypothetical situation where eating meat is outlawed?’ and they flip their shit on a regular basis. I go out of my way to present everything I ask as neutral as possible but all my effort has never once mattered.
illing animals isn’t something the animal wants.
I think you are attributing human qualities to nonhuman consciousnesses. There’s a lot of evidence that the concept of death doesn’t even exist in most animal minds, as well as the fact that animals in the wild suffer FAR more disease, discomfort, illness and death than domesticated and cared for livestock.
“debatist”
That isn’t even a real word… I’m sorry I can’t take you seriously anymore.
Good read, though anyone that’s seen a pet mourn their owner or their friend knows that’s not true already.
can’t take you seriously anymore
It’s a portmanteau of debater and statist. Frankly, I don’t care what you think about me. You’re clearly biased beyond any reason as to the motives of others, to the point of making false blanket statements about entire groups. Any time someone says “all _____ are _____,” there is a problem and they should be questioned. Did the vegans you approach solicit your question? If they did not, then mind your own business. If they did, and “flip their shit,” (X to doubt on the reliability of this narrator) then that one person had an issue. The sheer fact that you can easily find very chill vegans online or irl without much effort means you’re a statistical anomaly, an asshole, or misrepresenting the truth.
Until I joined Lemmy I had no idea how militant vegans could be. I sorta just assumed they were a different brand of vegetarian.
I’m not opposed to their ideaology in any way, but after reading the comments on a few posts that found their way into my feed… I had to block their communities. It didn’t seem likely that I’d be reading any productive discourse there.
I was vegan for 8 years and during that time I didn’t talk to anyone about it other than to say, “I don’t eat that.”
I say that to say this - vegans are insufferable and a large reason why I quit the community and went back to omnivore. Even after 8 years, other vegans were still ‘more vegan’ and would nitpick the dumbest stuff.
“Bro, did you eat a date? That killed a bee or something. Not cool.”
Shut up with that. Let me eat my damn fruit.
I was healthier though. But, to be fair, I was younger.
I’m a level 5 vegan. I won’t eat anything that casts a shadow.
Now it reminded me of Vladimir Sorokin’s “Horse soup”. Time to read it again.
https://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-horse-soup/#gsc.tab=0
(Reads blurb. What the actual fuck.)
I’m a level 2 proto-vegan, though it’s functionally equivalent to a level 8 in normal terms I think.
Anyway, our food is cultivated in an open source orchard (the genomes are all fully sequenced) using plea bargains with the surrounding woodland, where we encourage feral animals to aerate and urinate on the soil and we sensually assist in the procreation of the plant reproduction taking a 1%-5% crop yield over what the flies do not touch.
You know what, it’s so much easier to say you’re an omnivore and end up eating meat once a year than to say you are a vegan who makes an exception about once a year. The first label would earn you a “wait so you’re basically vegan?!” vs “you’re not vegan then and you’re a dirty cheater”.
exactly. you choose your labels to best express your positions.
Between them and Linux evangelicals, this place can be pretty annoying at times.
Spoken like a meat eating windows user
Windows eating meat user
Do you think that’s an insult?
meat eating windows user (derogatory)
Can I get this on a name tag?
No. If he wanted to insult you, he’d call you a MacOS User /s
Oh you must also be a reddit uaer… Here you go: /s
Lol pretty sure /s has been around LONG before Reddit
reddit is like 20 years old and rose to prominence in the web 2.0 boom. I’m pretty sure you’re wrong
I tried to find historical articles about it, but couldn’t find any. But I swear I used it and saw it all the way back in the AIMs chatroom dialup days
There is a wiki article about it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_indicator
I wish we could take these two comments and have them always show up on the front page.
We just want to save your code from eternal damnation
I’ve just discovered a new game: start posting how you love windows, meat and Elon, place bets who will attack you first
My money would be on Elon. Windows users and carnivores are quite common here, but hatred of The Musk is near universal.
It was honestly more fun to irk the “grammer” police on reddit using misspellings and improper vocabulary.
Hmm…
*Squints*
You done messed up.
FTFY
I see, I still giggle when I do it, on Lemmy to!
Don’t forget to support capitalism as well!
I use arch btw
You know I really hate vegans, but I FUCKING REALLY HATE Linux evangelicals, and they are FUCKING EVERYWHERE HERE.
Anyway, fuck veganism and linux
Exactly my experience. I often heard stories of vegans being like that, but I never ever saw it so I thought it was just made up to belittle vegans.
Then I joined lemmy and found out that I’m apparently in favour of massacres, slavery and rape because I consume meat/milk/eggs from time to time.
I imagine the vast majority of vegans just go about their lives and resprectfully discuss the ethics of animal consumption when the topic comes up, but these loud militant members really make vegans look bad and they sure as hell make it so that even less people consider going vegan
Yes, them calling me a rapist totally made we want to be like them and adopt their ideology.
Their strain of it appears to be poison religion like fundamentalist Christianity or Islam. A fanatic is a fanatic, whatever paint they’re dipped in. Guess they’re just trying to fill a hole in themselves.
any movement will have more or less militant members. that’s life.
I’m curious. You eat meat, but you’re not in favour of massacres. Alright, explain it to me.
I’m not in favor of it, but I’m not going to stop eating meat. The second lab grown meat is available to people in my economic tier I’ll switch exclusively to that.
I’m really hoping that lab grown meat will be available soon. I have a weird genetic issue where my body doesn’t like to absorb certain vitamins from food so I get basically nothing from raw veggies, negligible amounts from cooked veggies, and a tiny bit more from meat, eggs and dairy.
I take prescription vitamins, but according to my Dr I need to eat meat/animal products with them or risk going into a deficiency again… the last time I was deficient I had seizures and serious neurological issues.
I hate the meat industry and factory farming, but also want my brain to function and to not have seizures.
Lab grown meat will solve this dilemma for me.
I also have severe malabsorption and can’t process most veg at all. I have been told hundreds of times that I am lying, and that I don’t need to eat meat. To some of these people it is better for us to suffer than to eat meat, while they claim to subscribe to a philosophy of reducing suffering.
Yeah, it’s frustrating to say the least.
If I went vegan I’d probably suffer a very slow, agonizing death from my brain going haywire and seize until I go into psychosis and die. If my body could take it I’d probably be a vegetarian and eat only local eggs and cheese, but it’s a bad idea according to my doctor. It sucks.
Dam, man, that sucks. Hey, quick question, if they made lab grown human meat, would you try it?
Grown from my own cells? Fuck yes.
What about someone else’s? My body sucks I don’t want to eat any part of it
With consent, and with cells from someone I know/love - Sure!
This is how you get prions…
Absolutely! I’m hoping it’s available soon since it’s more ethical than my current options.
Edit - missed the human part lmao. I would probably try it if it hurt no one and was offered to me
Ah, so you’re saying you don’t like it, but you find it an acceptable sacrifice to make in exchange for yummy food?
100% yes. I am fully aware that being vegan is, in my opinion, the more ethical option but I can and will continue to eat meat because 1 it’s cheap, it’s plentiful, I know how to and can cook with it well and because yes it tastes so fucking good. I don’t mean this as a 3edgy5me thing but fuck me I love a nice ribeye stake with butter and garlic cloves and a baked potato.
Okay, but you have to know about plant-based steaks and vegan butter. And of course you know about vegan garlic and vegan potato, because all garlic and potato is vegan. What’s the extra cost of a vegan steak compared to an animal steak in your area? In mine it’s around 3 dollars.
I have never seen a plant based stake at my local grocery stores. The next time I am there to pick out a stake, I will also look and ask specifically for a plant based one, and I will try it. But I have had other stuff like plant based burgers, and while they are ok, they just can’t hold up to the taste of a meat burger.
I’ve tried plenty of different plant based meat substitutes and so for, not one of them can hold a candle to the real taste. Like, it is not even close in my opinion. I can see the market for it, but plant based diet can be incredible when not trying to impersonate meat. Like lentils with curry. Not meat required and super tasty.
So would argue that meat substitutes are the wrong way to go if you want to eat tasty non meat stuff.
I’m not vegan but I eat plenty of incidentally vegan meals, and all of the best ones have been the ones that weren’t trying to imitate another food. They just can’t get the texture right and I’d rather not eat some squishy disc of beans and wheat while trying to convince myself it’s a burger. It’s not. I know it’s not and pretending doesn’t make it any more of one. Give me a good soup or curry or pasta dish instead.
Plant-based meat tastes like what vegans think meat tastes like. I’d much rather eat the vegan foods that are prepared without imitation ingredients.
Never fails in a discussion about how fundamentally shitty vegans are that there will be a ton of vegans invading the thread to prove the point definitively.
I stick with Margaret Cho’s advice on vegans from her Assassin tour back in 2005:
And especially, especially, don’t fuck with vegans. Do not look vegans in the eye. If you get into an argument with a vegan, say “I’m wrong” and run away as fast as you can. Do not fuck with vegans because they will fuck you up…BECAUSE THEY’RE HUNGRY.
Every vegan I have met is one form of little bitch or another, without exception
Inflammatory prejudices are only bad when others have them. They’re definitely the hateful ones, so lets spread some hate about them.
I haven’t given out a quarter of the verbal abuse that has been heaped on me by people who feel morally superior over their diet.
I’m sorry to hear that. The thing is, you mainly hear from those who are the most vocal, and those tend to be the most angry and therefore unreasonable. And those probably had their fair share of verbal (and/or physical) abuse from meat eaters, as vegans are hated on by a much, much larger part of society than the other way around. (That doesn’t justify their hate, of course)
It’s all a self reinforcing dynamic of groups riling each other up, unfortunately.
Look, I really dgaf about all of you ‘no really guise veeegans are nice!’ when my entire life has been episode after episode of the opposite.
the vast majority of vegans are not represented by a tiny segment that has found lemmy.
If Lemmy had its version of r/atheist users, they’re either vegan, Linux obsessed, or politics obsessed.
Hey. Do you have time to talk about our lord and saviour, Linus Torvalds?
Oh yeah, I love Linus Tech Tips, it’s one of my favorite YouTubes.
Savior? Do you mean Terry Davis, AKA King Terry the Terrible?
It would have to be the Linux crowd, just by force of numbers.
oh there’s a shitton of r/atheists here too, and some are supermods.
Vegans being annoying was a thing awhile ago, but they really chilled out. This is a smaller band of die-hards.
“Chilling out” is of course a terrible metric when animal abuse is on the line but being good to animals would make you vegetarian, not vegan, and yet that was never where the righteousness was coming from.
Quite a bit of their content is antagonizing and alienating. What a shame.
I like how they expect everyone to share there ethical views. Fun fact: most people don’t.
‘Plant based’ was a rebrand of veganism because of what vegans did to veganism.
In 5+ decades of living I have never once met a sane vegan, not once.
And I’ve met hundreds…
For the most part, the “unreasonable vegan” stereotype comes from two places.
There’s a 3rd source: Trying for 3 decades to have a reasonable conversation with one, with hundreds of attempts made.
I’d be interested in seeing a trace of one of those conversations.
No you wouldn’t, they never go anywhere except to heated exchanges of unpleasant labels.
There’s really no use in talking to them, nor anything to be learned or won. It’s just losses for everyone.
I am a vegan. Is this conversation unreasonable?
Are you talking to the same person, or the same few people, repeatedly? There certainly are people out there who just are unreasonable. You can’t expect individuals to change.
Otherwise, I guess (and I admit that this is biased in my favor) that you simply disagree with each other at a foundational level, and that’s causing you to talk past each other.
I think that most people don’t really know how to discourse with people who have differing ethical foundations, because it can lead to situations where a person who meets all the societal criteria of a “good person” is nonetheless committing (according to whatever ethical precepts) a horrible crime. But, in this context, accusing someone of committing a horrible crime is not unreasonable; in fact, it’s too reasonable; it involves prioritizing reason over tact and politeness.
Roughly 10% are repeat conversations, though I’ve rarely had a contact be kept past 3 exchanges, and not a ‘few’ people by any metric.
I appreciate how you are trying to make this a ‘both sides’ thing, but it really isn’t and I have no way of imparting 30 years of frustrating experience in a way you will find meaningful.
Since you claim to be a reasonable vegan, then maybe this is the best place for this:
What are your plans for all the currently living domesticated animals if, hypothetically, meat eating is made illegal?
Have you ever considered that being raised by humans for consumption is literally the most wildly successful species survival strategy that natural selection has ever thrown up? Literally no wild animal thrives as well as a cared for domesticated example, and domesticated animals released in the wild have an abysmal survival rate. (it is literally animal cruelty to release most domesticated animals into the wild, with the exception of pigs. They can re-adapt no problems)
Meat is one of the most nutrient dense foods out there and is likely the entire reason we were able to develop these incredibly energy and nutrient expensive brains, have you considered what the long term species ramifications are for us if we choose to stop a standard practice that has been with us since before our species was even human yet?
What is your stance on pets?
Do you not think the critical need for specific supplements to maintain good health is a sign that the diet was never intended for our normal operation?
I would like to hear your opinion on parents raising their infants to be vegan from birth.
These are the questions I would usually ask to vegans I meet in the world and online. Most responses are immediate verbal abuse and a refusal to continue communications.
I sincerely hope you are a better person than that and I can FINALLY have this discussion start to finish.
I haven’t here advocated for making meat-eating illegal. If nothing else, at the current moment, that’s infeasible for a number of reasons, and even if it became mostly feasible, there would probably always have to be some exceptions (e.g., people who have very specific dietary requirements, although maybe lab-grown meat could plug that hole?).
That said, thinking purely hypothetically, I recognize two likely endgame scenarios.
This is completely irrelevant. For me, veganism is basically just what happens when you take utilitarianism and extend it to include the experiences of non-human animals. I care about individuals. I don’t care one whit about species per se.
I’ll take both of these at the same time, because my thoughts on them are basically the same.
We were not designed by a god. We were not “intended” for anything. Evolution has no normative value. To believe that it does is pseudoscience (or, perhaps, pseudo-philosophy).
People who argue that veganism is “unnatural” are arbitrarily picking out one out of the innumerable ways that the lives of humans today differ from those of the past. If I suggested that we ought to revert to being subsistence hunter-gatherers in Africa living in groups of ~100 people, you would call me insane. So the mere fact that something is different from the conditions in which we evolved means absolutely nothing.
The question is simply this: can we reduce suffering? If we can, we should, regardless of how “unnatural” the solution is.
If you can provide me a scientific argument against veganism in principle, that would be worth considering. Merely gesturing at the need for supplementation says nothing to me. If it works, it works.
I haven’t figured this one out for myself yet. I think the anti-pet people have compelling arguments, and I have a lot of cognitive dissonance over that fact.
This one I’m not sure about, at least right now, simply due our lack of knowledge. My guess is that it’s theoretically possible to raise an infant as a vegan without any problems, but that it’s more difficult to do it right. I don’t know if I’d trust myself to do it. I think this is a problem that will require a lot of studies to figure out, but I also think it’s worth figuring out.
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Having personally known several perfectly normal and sane vegans, maybe your “reasonable conversation” is a bit more combative than you believe. Vegans are just normal people. Some will be crazy. Some will be normal. If your experience with your hundreds of vegans you’ve met is 100% unreasonable, then you’re definitely the problem. Someone choosing to avoid animal products for personal health or environmental reasons, or any other personal reason, is inherently not unreasonable. They might be unreasonable if they try to force their ideas on others, but defending their own choices isn’t unreasonable. Tone down your confirmation bias and aggression, and you might find that just like every large enough group, people are still people and they vary.
Edit: for the record, I’m not vegan.
Yep, that’s always the response. 'it’s not the inherent radicalism of vegan ideology that is the problem, but the fact that you didn’t talk nice to them (which I am assuming because I wasn’t there).
Reported and blocked.
What radicalism? What part of that ideal is radical? Also, a bizarre reaction. “My beliefs were challenged in the slightest, therefore this person must be silenced.” Weirdo.
Calling a group of people insane is so cool and good 👍🏻
I’m not vegan. But I find it very shady to talk shit about people like this.
Some seeming innocent ideals breed significantly more fanaticism across all class and culture lines, we should all have learned that by now.
I have met 1 and married her. But yo be fair she is just vegetarian whi developed a dairy allergy knocking out the non veg part of her diet
Makes a dumb good steak too
I have to admit, diet restriction vegans (and not the ones that just think meat is icky and can get a doctor to sign off on it) do not fall into the general stereotype but then only one of them ever had a chance to speak to me and she would sneak chicken occasionally so I don’t really consider her vegan as such. Also she was a work associate and I normally never bring up the subject in the office.
There may be reasonable vegans out there, and I have actively sought them on forums and IRL through school clubs and protests. I have never IRL raised my voice, never used a derogatory label harsher than ‘leafeater’ and that only once. Yet I am so ridiculously burned out by the arguments and harsh words I’ve endured that I’m done holding any hope out any longer.
I call those ideolgical vegans and yes they drive me nuts too
In respect for your wife and those like her, from now on I will try and use ‘ideological vegan’ to describe the specific subgrouping.
Thanks for being the one sane person in this thread.
You sound like what I like to call a “debatist.” No one wants to be challenged on their personal choices. You don’t seem to be approaching this concept with an open mind. Can you define what makes anything they say unreasonable? I am not vegan, but I can recognize, definitively, that veganism is better for the environment (by far), healthy (if you make sure you’re getting all the nutrients you need, just like any diet), and less cruel to animals. You can choose to disagree that those conclusions mean you need to cut out animal products, but those aren’t opinions up for debate. Farming meat is far worse for the environment, vegan diets are perfectly healthy, and obviously, killing animals isn’t something the animal wants.
Again, you can disagree with their conclusion that those reasons mean you shouldn’t eat animal products, but denying that they’re true is like denying climate change. I’m not vegan, so clearly I didn’t come to the same conclusion, but I’m not trying to purport that anyone that does is somehow unreasonable.
Yet that is what every vegan does to carnists, in many cases very viciously. I am NOT going up to vegans and telling them to stop being vegan, nor am I judging them for their dietary choices. I ask them questions like ‘What would be your plans for all the current living domesticated animals in the hypothetical situation where eating meat is outlawed?’ and they flip their shit on a regular basis. I go out of my way to present everything I ask as neutral as possible but all my effort has never once mattered.
I think you are attributing human qualities to nonhuman consciousnesses. There’s a lot of evidence that the concept of death doesn’t even exist in most animal minds, as well as the fact that animals in the wild suffer FAR more disease, discomfort, illness and death than domesticated and cared for livestock.
That isn’t even a real word… I’m sorry I can’t take you seriously anymore.
Factually incorrect and anecdotal
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8602129/
Good read, though anyone that’s seen a pet mourn their owner or their friend knows that’s not true already.
It’s a portmanteau of debater and statist. Frankly, I don’t care what you think about me. You’re clearly biased beyond any reason as to the motives of others, to the point of making false blanket statements about entire groups. Any time someone says “all _____ are _____,” there is a problem and they should be questioned. Did the vegans you approach solicit your question? If they did not, then mind your own business. If they did, and “flip their shit,” (X to doubt on the reliability of this narrator) then that one person had an issue. The sheer fact that you can easily find very chill vegans online or irl without much effort means you’re a statistical anomaly, an asshole, or misrepresenting the truth.
Crazy, I know tons of vegans and never met an insane one.