I think the problem isn't that we eat meat. It's that we torture the animals and have them live in deplorable conditions before we eat them. If we all hunted or raised our own animals or had the animals live in decent conditions it would be less of an issue for most REASONABLE vegans and vegetarians.
I used to be vegan and vegetarian a decade so I get it a bit.
I hated it when anyone would bitch about other people's food choices, but then complain when they did the same to them for their food choices.
Both sides I mean. I had some non-veggies once they found out I didn't eat meat would attack me for it. When I did start eating meat again some vegans and vegetarians would attack me for it.
So we domesticated fire, that's one step out of the swamp and steppes.
Then there was agriculture and animal husbandry, we became sedentary.
Writing developed, accelerating growth in the arts, math and engineering, the sciences... we had domesticated knowledge and memory - data storage.
Before we knew it, the printing press popped up and soon after we domesticated something abstract and invisible, awesome and truly fundamental - electromagnetism. That's is the big game changer right there.
We have figured out our physical place in the universe.
We can image distant supermassive black holes, we have mapped the farthest, faintest reaches of the visible universe using the oldest light there is - the Cosmic Microwave Background (which started out as orange light 13.7 billion years ago).
We are now in the process of harnessing sunlight and the wind; the genome; we can now even perform data operations using quantum superimposed electron states, harnessing the subatomic wave function itself.
Surely we can now domesticate cruelty-free protein chemistry. So many steps away from the swamp and steppes already, so far we can't turn and go back again. What's one more step?
The survival of the fittest narrative was debunked almost as soon as it existed, and that debunking is what forms the ideological basis of mutual aid. That people continue to spread this toxic misinformation over a century later is a testament to the unfortunate tenacity of lies.
Even in the most brutal depths of the natural world, cooperation is still the overarching basis of ecosystem health. It's known in Permaculture, for instance, that too much competition results in resource depletions.
A vegan ethic is inline with a growing awareness and need for us all to learn to expand our capacities of empathy and compassion, from those who are most like us, to those who are most unlike us.
On the topic of wilderness areas, vegans are divided on what the right approaches are. Some of us compare natural biomes to sovereign nations - while we dislike the harms that occur in those places, we feel a need to allow other species their independence to have their self-determination, if for no other reason than the fact that nature is the basis of maintaining a habitable planet, and interference in ecosystems should only be done with the utmost care.
But there are other vegans who do believe strongly that we should be intervening in wild places as well, with the goals of eliminating predation all together, and managing wildlife populations in more ethical ways.
Humans "i dont rape because i respect other humans". Meanwhile nature ....
And in before "but i need to eat", you dont need to eat animal products. You can have a healthy life with a vegan diet, arguably an even healthier life. And to go back to my original point, just because you need to cum, doesnt mean that you have the right to cause suffering and death to other sentient beings.
I had thought that veganism was more of a beliefs thing: to not eat products of exploitation, but then I heard the honey thing. The honey thing might be just from an overbearing vegan, or I just don't know the details, but beekeeping just looks so peaceful
As much as I admire the morality and overall health of vegetarian/vegan folks, I would also super respect anyone who got all their protein by monstering whole live mice that they caught by hand.
Where we came from is less important than where we are going. The problems with veganism are not that they don't eat animals, in fact I don't think the problem is with veganism at all but with moral imperatives in general that promote black and white, oppositional political positioning. But moral imperatives are one of the most popular and effective rhetorical methods to make a point (and split opposition) so we are just kind of raised in it. If you're someone who has strong opinions you learn to express them in a certain way.
But veganism is good, but primitivist "return to nature" types have a dubious track record aka they tend to be chuds or on their way to chuddening. "Retvrn to the past" is a conservative talking point, but what separates us from nature is capitalism, not veganism.
Not a vegan, but I don't think I've ever heard a vegan say that. We've all watched nature shows. Rationale is usually a little bit deeper. Overconsumption, abuse of animals in meat/dairy industries, responsibility of humans to aim for a higher level of morality than animals, etc. Sure some go overboard, but I wouldn't underestimate the complexity of the thinking behind it.
There are too many people for us all to hunt our own meat, and the same amount of farmland that can feed x amount of livestock can feed significantly more people than the livestock would.
It's way easier for me to have a vegetarian diet when I'm eating at home. At restaurants the vegetarian options almost always contain the one thing I'm allergic to, so I often have no choice but to eat meat when I go out.
And the angel of the lord came unto me
Snatching me up from my place of slumber
And took me on high and higher still
Until we moved to the spaces betwixt the air itself
And he brought me into a vast farmlands of our own Midwest
And as we descended cries of impending doom rose from the soil
One thousand nay a million voices full of fear
And terror possessed me then
And I begged Angel of the Lord what are these tortured screams?
And the angel said unto me
These are the cries of the carrots, the cries of the carrots!
You see, Reverend Maynard
Tomorrow is harvest day and to them it is the holocaust
And I sprang from my slumber drenched in sweat
Like the tears of one million terrified brothers and roared
"Hear me now, I have seen the light!
They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul!
Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers!
So, after reading a lot of the comments, I figured I’d offer my two cents:
What I eat depends on what I feel I need at the moment a lot more than what I’m in the mood for. And because of this, I try to eat as healthily as possible and as a result- it usually ends up being on the vegetarian side of things. Think pastas, fruits/veggies, etc. Occasionally though, it’s a burger, or something else that is meat-based.
What I don’t do however, is spend any time at all being concerned with what others choose to eat, and that is because it has no relevance to me whatsoever.
For the life of me I cannot understand why this is a thing that matters so deeply to so many people when there are FAR more important things to worry about.
If vegans don’t want to eat meat, who cares? They are happy living their life this way. Leave them alone about it. It’s their choice, their diet- and none of your business.
If someone wants to eat a steak, who cares? They are happy living their life this way. Leave them alone about it. It’s their choice, their diet- and none of your business.
The sooner we all stop actively participating in the habits and interests of others unsolicited, the sooner we can start taking on some of the things that actually matter.
/rant.
EDIT: Realizing now the mistake one makes when trying to remain neutral in a discussion where vegans are involved. I really tried to be neutrally supportive of one’s dietary choices, and I remain so, but man… these few people are making it difficult to not see how people can find them obnoxious.
I’m sorry I really didn’t want to be made to feel this way for having tried to make a civil statement of opinion.