Not at all what the meme is implying. It’s more like: “I am against animal abuse but i have been conditioned to normalise eating animals from childhood onwards. Since i can’t let go of one specific product or product group i will continue to eat it, maybe until further down the line, while otherwise cutting out animal products from my life.”
Reducing your animal product use is something that helps animals. Period. Are you interested in the welfare of animals or in feeling better about yourself because you feel morally pure?
There is a related community of people who refer to themselves as “plant-based, whole-food” eaters. I recently switched to this from a lifetime of meats and processed foods (mostly, it’s a work in progress to avoid cheat meals).
I vastly prefer the PBWF people to vegans. Less evangelism, less shaming, less zealotry… and PBWF is actually stricter than vegan. I find vegan communities insufferable but I may have found my new home with PBWF.
Yeah, I won’t start eating meat just because of a annoying person online, I just find this all or nothing attitude among vegans to be hurtful towards the cause of making people eat less meat. I probably won’t label myself, but I will continue to promote vegan/vegetarian like lifestyle.
“I don’t like that my morals are too weak to fit a morale label, so if you don’t change the label to make it less moral, I’ll be more immoral on purpose!”
What is this stupid ass stance? Are people suddenly becoming mentally 6 years old when it’s about morals?
Since when reducing 90% of their meat intake is being a hypocrite? It’s objectively reducing the suffering of animals.
I don’t eat much meat because I know that morally it’s the correct choice, but personally I don’t care for the animals that died when I do eat meat. I’m completely aware that their murder is fueling my tastebuds, and I don’t hide it. I don’t think I’ll ever go full vegan unless the food offering changes, because I personally don’t care enough for the animals. I’d say that rn I’m 90% vegetarian, meaning that I probably eat meat only once a week.
Call me whatever you will but saying that eating meat once a week is better for animals than eating it every day is objectively true, and I’m not a hypocrite for promoting the reduction of meat intake.
Idk how long you’ve been alive bilut the reduction of meta intake in Europe has been notorious in the last 20 years. The biggest impact is not from people going cold turkey, it’s from all the families that reduce their intake by half. So yeah, meat intake reduction IS having an impact.
And letting people imply that you can be vegan and eat meat will weaken the stance of veganism until it’s like vegetarianism now, with vegetarians saying that they can eat fish, or meat that they don’t buy, or insects, or or or
I get where you’re coming from, but perfect is the enemy of good enough. You can’t expect everyone to go vegan, but you can encourage people to give up as many animal products as possible.
That would already be a massive step in the right direction
You can have people understand that while eating less meat is better, it is not good enough
And if people stopped having this absurdly stupid behaviour of wanting to always look like they are perfect, they would be fine saying “yes, I know that I’m still eating bacon and that it’s immoral, but I’m working on improving and eliminating meat altogether from my diet eventually”, instead of “yeah I’m amazing because I’m vegan, but I still eat mean yknow”
I don’t know why it is so hard for people that they might do something immoral. We are in such a self-centered, obnoxious period of time that people seem to define morals on their behaviour, as long as they do something they will have to justify that it’s moral one way or the other.
I’m not a vegan because I don’t think I can be right now. Yes, it’s immoral of me to give money that exploits and abuses animals, and if and when I can I try to minimize it.
Am I going to start pretending that it’s fine? No, of course not. But not everything can be magically and instantly perfect. What matters is to admit it, which is exactly the opposite of what this post (and almost all the comments) do.
Getting the whole world on a 95% plant based diet is effectively the same as getting 95% of the world to be vegan. Which do you think is more immediately achievable when there is always this much push back from meat eaters?
You think the majority dictates whether an industry or law exists? Why aren’t private planes illegal yet? Why are we still dependant on oil? Why don’t women have the same rights as men? Why do police have juducial immunity to murder? Why does the military industrial complex exist? There are systems and forces greater than just a majority.
Excuse the idiom, but we have to boil a frog, and it’s easier to do it through slowly turning up the temp. To get someone to move to a mostly vegetarian is easier when you tell them “sure you can still eat meat.” Then, when meat isn’t a staple of the dish, it’s much easier to transition them to full vegetarianism/veganism.
On top of that, the meat industry (who is actually dictating how much meat is in the US diet) would collapse if people are eating meat less than 2 days a month.
All these examples typically don’t have a majority agreeing on it. You think that there is a majority that strongly wants to ban private planes, stop sexism, or so? Nah, most people don’t care. But veganism is actively, strongly opposed to animal abuse, so if a majority is vegan, things would change.
And I never said that people who eat meat should be bullied, my point is that eating meat shouldn’t be seen as completely fine, and especially not as compatible with veganism.
It’s like saying “yeah, I’m antifa+nazi”, it doesn’t make sense and only weakens the concept of veganism
A lot of vegans are communists too. We want human exploitation to end just as much as animal exploitation. You will normally hear that rhetoric from liberal vegan “humans are the disease” ecofascist types. Granted, you cannot live under capitalism without human exploitation. I cannot eat most if not all foods without what I consider to be effectively slavery. It drives me mad.
No human is ever treated the way animals are though. And they made the society that they’re suffering from.
And humans can communicate and know what is going on.
I think you need to look into how rare earth minerals are mined. Or how slavery works. Humans treat humans as bad as any animal if they can make a profit.
Consider that humans sometimes bully other humans to death simply for the power trip. That is some pretty horrific physiological torture.
We’re not that far from accepted child labor. Chimney sweeps. Heck there’s a chance clothes we’ve worn this week were sewn by children in a sweatshop. Or the phone or computer metals were mined with child slave labor.
This is why veganism is hard for me, it’s absolutely not possible to live a cruelty free life unless you’re living on your own land with your own spun clothes and never consuming medication (all tested on lab mice).
Drawing the “perfect line” at eating only plant based food is fine, but it’s a far cry from a cruelty free life. Folks get very serious optimizing on one dimension of cruelty (foods not being animal products) but then completely ignore everything else. And then bully others who do not do the same.
I’d rather see a universe like the OP, better to celebrate every step folks do take in the right direction, not tell them it’s not enough. Everyone should be celebrated for:
making clothes last longer
buying used clothes
keeping the same vehicle longer
choosing vegan dishes when they can
delaying PC and phone upgrades, buying used when they do
taking the bus over driving, walking instead of taking the bus
You’ve put my feelings about these sort of hyper focused movements into words very well.
There is so fucking much wrong with the world, and we should be celebrating steps in the right direction rather than playing crab bucket about what’s good enough.
The overwhelming majority of the issues in the world didn’t get this bad overnight, and expecting things to just jump straight to the end state is just silly. Especially when there are forces out there devoted to maintaining the status quo.
That, plus the overall attitude I see so often of “the only possible reason things could be this bad is because everyone else but me is stupid” drives me up a wall. That one I can chalk up to youth at least.
Sadder is that you can explore plant-based bacon options.
Sure it may take a few tries to find a brand or recipe you like. But like, I still eat bacon. It’s just not made with animal sources.
I SO missed bagels with cream cheese and egg salad. Tofutti cream cheese is garbage amd tastes like water. Daiya has a meh taste and awful aftertaste. Kite Hill is perfect (for me). And it turns out, pummeling a block of tofu and adding yellow mustard, vinegar, black pepper, and black salt satisfies my egg salad craving!
Just out of curiosity, what’s your stance then on people who cannot switch to a fully vegan diet because of health reasons? I’m always interested in hearing vegans takes on this, since they seem to vary a lot, and it’s a personal issue for me
That’s a more debatable thing. You’d have a necessity to not change, which makes it less immoral obviously, but it does put into perspective the question of the worth of a life, and whether a human life is worth a lifetime of meat eating/killing.
But that’s not the case for a huge majority of people, so I would call this an edge case which is less obvious.
Not everything is obviously good or bad, some areas are grey, but it doesn’t mean that some areas aren’t. Eating meat for personal pleasure/comfort is obviously immoral, once everyone aligns behind this we can start debating the edge cases.
Also, people like you would typically be a good reason to keep on developing cellular meat, independently from vegetal alternatives to meat.
the question of the worth of a life, and whether a human life is worth a lifetime of meat eating/killing.
Yes, this paradox is the root of it, I think. Is it ethical for me to live while that requires killing a lot of something else? I don’t think there is any “right” answer since it all depends on what you consider to be worth more (which is also why opinions on this are interesting). I guess generally people don’t tend to say you should kill yourself if you end up in a situation like this, since it could happen to anyone with some really bad luck
Other than survival needs, nothing warrants killing and eating sentient beings, in case you were suggesting otherwise. And if you were, then your morals are completely fucked up.
Interesting question, if everyone stopped consuming beef and dairy tomorrow, what do you think the industry would do with the cows that no longer generate product but do still cost a lot to feed and house?
Animals are bred then killed for meat. All those animals that you mentioned are going to get killed. If the meat industry crashed and they killed all the animals, it would effectively end in fewer deaths as (I can’t believe I even have to write that down) killing generations and generations of animals is worse than killing a single generation of these same animals
Nothing says that the industry would kill them, they could release them or whatnot, and as the previous point mentioned it would never kill as much as if the industry continues
What farmers do is unrelated to consumers. If I tell you that if you don’t buy my slaves, I’ll kill them, are you the murderer if you refuse? Of course not, that’s stupid.
Nothing prevents governments for getting involved, which would be another way to prevent the killing
Are you really trying to pretend that killing and eating animals is okay, because else we would kill animals?
Seriously, if you’re going to debate in bad faith, at least put some work in your fake arguments.
“I’m against animal abuse, except when I like their taste”
Not at all what the meme is implying. It’s more like: “I am against animal abuse but i have been conditioned to normalise eating animals from childhood onwards. Since i can’t let go of one specific product or product group i will continue to eat it, maybe until further down the line, while otherwise cutting out animal products from my life.”
Reducing your animal product use is something that helps animals. Period. Are you interested in the welfare of animals or in feeling better about yourself because you feel morally pure?
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All or nothing, got it, I won’t be vegan then.
There is a related community of people who refer to themselves as “plant-based, whole-food” eaters. I recently switched to this from a lifetime of meats and processed foods (mostly, it’s a work in progress to avoid cheat meals).
I vastly prefer the PBWF people to vegans. Less evangelism, less shaming, less zealotry… and PBWF is actually stricter than vegan. I find vegan communities insufferable but I may have found my new home with PBWF.
Highly recommend.
Yeah, I won’t start eating meat just because of a annoying person online, I just find this all or nothing attitude among vegans to be hurtful towards the cause of making people eat less meat. I probably won’t label myself, but I will continue to promote vegan/vegetarian like lifestyle.
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And never will be. But I guess I don’t care anymore about that label.
And because of that I also don’t have to care anymore about what I eat. So I can eat everything again. Thanks for making that clear to me.
This is obviously worse for animals, but only the real vegans care about that I guess🤷
“I don’t like that my morals are too weak to fit a morale label, so if you don’t change the label to make it less moral, I’ll be more immoral on purpose!”
What is this stupid ass stance? Are people suddenly becoming mentally 6 years old when it’s about morals?
Always have been.
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The point is that it’s still less animals than if someone was eating a full non-vegan diet. You seriously can’t be this dense.
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I’m fine with that, but I was trying, but now I see that it doesn’t matter, so I won’t keep trying.
Obviously? Did you genuinely read the mastodon post in the picture as saying “You can be vegan and eat bacon”?
I mean sure. But it’s better than continuing to eat all meat.
ye shaming people always works
And hypocrisy always leads to change.
Since when reducing 90% of their meat intake is being a hypocrite? It’s objectively reducing the suffering of animals.
I don’t eat much meat because I know that morally it’s the correct choice, but personally I don’t care for the animals that died when I do eat meat. I’m completely aware that their murder is fueling my tastebuds, and I don’t hide it. I don’t think I’ll ever go full vegan unless the food offering changes, because I personally don’t care enough for the animals. I’d say that rn I’m 90% vegetarian, meaning that I probably eat meat only once a week.
Call me whatever you will but saying that eating meat once a week is better for animals than eating it every day is objectively true, and I’m not a hypocrite for promoting the reduction of meat intake.
Idk how long you’ve been alive bilut the reduction of meta intake in Europe has been notorious in the last 20 years. The biggest impact is not from people going cold turkey, it’s from all the families that reduce their intake by half. So yeah, meat intake reduction IS having an impact.
By the way, where is the hypocrisy in the post?
no, it’s not. even being vegan doesn’t reduce the suffering of animals.
Your stance will lead to more animal abuse instead of less, exactly as explained in the post
And letting people imply that you can be vegan and eat meat will weaken the stance of veganism until it’s like vegetarianism now, with vegetarians saying that they can eat fish, or meat that they don’t buy, or insects, or or or
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I get where you’re coming from, but perfect is the enemy of good enough. You can’t expect everyone to go vegan, but you can encourage people to give up as many animal products as possible.
That would already be a massive step in the right direction
You can have people understand that while eating less meat is better, it is not good enough
And if people stopped having this absurdly stupid behaviour of wanting to always look like they are perfect, they would be fine saying “yes, I know that I’m still eating bacon and that it’s immoral, but I’m working on improving and eliminating meat altogether from my diet eventually”, instead of “yeah I’m amazing because I’m vegan, but I still eat mean yknow”
I don’t know why it is so hard for people that they might do something immoral. We are in such a self-centered, obnoxious period of time that people seem to define morals on their behaviour, as long as they do something they will have to justify that it’s moral one way or the other.
I’m not a vegan because I don’t think I can be right now. Yes, it’s immoral of me to give money that exploits and abuses animals, and if and when I can I try to minimize it. Am I going to start pretending that it’s fine? No, of course not. But not everything can be magically and instantly perfect. What matters is to admit it, which is exactly the opposite of what this post (and almost all the comments) do.
Getting the whole world on a 95% plant based diet is effectively the same as getting 95% of the world to be vegan. Which do you think is more immediately achievable when there is always this much push back from meat eaters?
What?
If 100% of people eat 5% meat, meat consumption continues.
If only 50% (or even less) of people are vegan, meat production gets banned.
How can you believe it would ever be the same? The world cannot be reduced to a single percentage, this argument is really absurd.
You think the majority dictates whether an industry or law exists? Why aren’t private planes illegal yet? Why are we still dependant on oil? Why don’t women have the same rights as men? Why do police have juducial immunity to murder? Why does the military industrial complex exist? There are systems and forces greater than just a majority.
Excuse the idiom, but we have to boil a frog, and it’s easier to do it through slowly turning up the temp. To get someone to move to a mostly vegetarian is easier when you tell them “sure you can still eat meat.” Then, when meat isn’t a staple of the dish, it’s much easier to transition them to full vegetarianism/veganism.
On top of that, the meat industry (who is actually dictating how much meat is in the US diet) would collapse if people are eating meat less than 2 days a month.
All these examples typically don’t have a majority agreeing on it. You think that there is a majority that strongly wants to ban private planes, stop sexism, or so? Nah, most people don’t care. But veganism is actively, strongly opposed to animal abuse, so if a majority is vegan, things would change.
And I never said that people who eat meat should be bullied, my point is that eating meat shouldn’t be seen as completely fine, and especially not as compatible with veganism. It’s like saying “yeah, I’m antifa+nazi”, it doesn’t make sense and only weakens the concept of veganism
So what about the post do you disagree with?
But also a lot of vegans: “I am against abuse, but only if it is against animals. I don’t care about humans”
A lot of vegans are communists too. We want human exploitation to end just as much as animal exploitation. You will normally hear that rhetoric from liberal vegan “humans are the disease” ecofascist types. Granted, you cannot live under capitalism without human exploitation. I cannot eat most if not all foods without what I consider to be effectively slavery. It drives me mad.
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Yeah, it’s a problem.
No human is ever treated the way animals are though. And they made the society that they’re suffering from. And humans can communicate and know what is going on.
I think you need to look into how rare earth minerals are mined. Or how slavery works. Humans treat humans as bad as any animal if they can make a profit.
Consider that humans sometimes bully other humans to death simply for the power trip. That is some pretty horrific physiological torture.
We’re not that far from accepted child labor. Chimney sweeps. Heck there’s a chance clothes we’ve worn this week were sewn by children in a sweatshop. Or the phone or computer metals were mined with child slave labor.
This is why veganism is hard for me, it’s absolutely not possible to live a cruelty free life unless you’re living on your own land with your own spun clothes and never consuming medication (all tested on lab mice).
Drawing the “perfect line” at eating only plant based food is fine, but it’s a far cry from a cruelty free life. Folks get very serious optimizing on one dimension of cruelty (foods not being animal products) but then completely ignore everything else. And then bully others who do not do the same.
I’d rather see a universe like the OP, better to celebrate every step folks do take in the right direction, not tell them it’s not enough. Everyone should be celebrated for:
You’ve put my feelings about these sort of hyper focused movements into words very well.
There is so fucking much wrong with the world, and we should be celebrating steps in the right direction rather than playing crab bucket about what’s good enough.
The overwhelming majority of the issues in the world didn’t get this bad overnight, and expecting things to just jump straight to the end state is just silly. Especially when there are forces out there devoted to maintaining the status quo.
That, plus the overall attitude I see so often of “the only possible reason things could be this bad is because everyone else but me is stupid” drives me up a wall. That one I can chalk up to youth at least.
This is the perfect comment! Thank you for putting it so eloquently!
Do what you can, when you can. I’m not perfect by any means, but I am continually pushing myself to do better.
Sadder is that you can explore plant-based bacon options.
Sure it may take a few tries to find a brand or recipe you like. But like, I still eat bacon. It’s just not made with animal sources.
I SO missed bagels with cream cheese and egg salad. Tofutti cream cheese is garbage amd tastes like water. Daiya has a meh taste and awful aftertaste. Kite Hill is perfect (for me). And it turns out, pummeling a block of tofu and adding yellow mustard, vinegar, black pepper, and black salt satisfies my egg salad craving!
Smoked tempeh makes for a good bacon. There are other options too, but this one is my favored.
Just out of curiosity, what’s your stance then on people who cannot switch to a fully vegan diet because of health reasons? I’m always interested in hearing vegans takes on this, since they seem to vary a lot, and it’s a personal issue for me
That’s a more debatable thing. You’d have a necessity to not change, which makes it less immoral obviously, but it does put into perspective the question of the worth of a life, and whether a human life is worth a lifetime of meat eating/killing.
But that’s not the case for a huge majority of people, so I would call this an edge case which is less obvious. Not everything is obviously good or bad, some areas are grey, but it doesn’t mean that some areas aren’t. Eating meat for personal pleasure/comfort is obviously immoral, once everyone aligns behind this we can start debating the edge cases.
Also, people like you would typically be a good reason to keep on developing cellular meat, independently from vegetal alternatives to meat.
Yes, this paradox is the root of it, I think. Is it ethical for me to live while that requires killing a lot of something else? I don’t think there is any “right” answer since it all depends on what you consider to be worth more (which is also why opinions on this are interesting). I guess generally people don’t tend to say you should kill yourself if you end up in a situation like this, since it could happen to anyone with some really bad luck
you don’t know what others need
I know that most humans are not unable to survive without meat, it’s basic biology and nutrition.
survival needs are the very bottom of the hierarchy
What are you even talking about?
Other than survival needs, nothing warrants killing and eating sentient beings, in case you were suggesting otherwise. And if you were, then your morals are completely fucked up.
Maslow
Ah yeah so you are indeed talking out of your ass
most people don’t do that, anyway. but you’re asserting this without evidence, so it can be dismissed without evidence as well
Interesting question, if everyone stopped consuming beef and dairy tomorrow, what do you think the industry would do with the cows that no longer generate product but do still cost a lot to feed and house?
Mull that one over
They would stop breeding new cows into existence.
“Mull that one over” :')
This argument is so bad I have to answer.
Seriously, if you’re going to debate in bad faith, at least put some work in your fake arguments.