Found in the comments of a youtube vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwI6py78gsI (I didn't watch because I never watch youtube videos, only reading the comments.
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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One of my favorite facts about nature is the fact that practically nothing is vegan. Herbivores are basically constantly eating insects off of the plant matter they eat, and pretty much anything will eat eggs if they find them unguarded.
My point is that if you want to be “closer to what nature intended”, being a vegan with cheat days is probably the closest you’ll get.
Being vegan isn't about being "closer to what nature intended", it's about reducing cruelty and harm as much as practicable/possible.
Being vegan is a lot of things to a lot of people. It’s not only about animal suffering. This is true for some people but plenty of people are vegan for health reasons.
No they're on plant based diets. you don't stop using rabbit glue for health reasons, or not buy a leather couch for health reasons.
Veganism is not a diet, it is a philosophical and moral stance which necessarily includes making changes to one's diet among other things.
The dictionary disagrees with you: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vegan
ok but the vegan society, the literal originator of the word, disagrees with that.
https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism
I agree that many people view veganism as a diet, but they're wrong. It's a position of ignorance. you can probably find masses of people who understand feminism to be a superiority movement about oppressing men but that doesn't make that true.
Yeah but the difference is there is no dictionary definition that supports that definition of feminism. It’s just an interpretation. You could say the same thing about veganism as being a philosophy that animals are superior to people. That’s a more direct metaphor and you would be just as wrong, and no dictionary would agree with you.
Any “ism” will have multiple ways to define it, and those who coin a term don’t get to define its evolution. If you want to take the “GNU/Linux” approach and insist everyone else is using the word wrong then go for it. But in modern parlance, “vegan” is frequently if not almost always used to refer to the diet, whereas “veganism” does evoke the stricter definition you’re touting.
Dictionaries are just someone's attempt to record how people use words. They're not authorities on meaning, just records of use.
If someone says they're vegan you would expect them to use no animal products, including clothing, nail polish, colour pigments etc. That's not controversial, you can find shampoo and jackets marked as vegan it is a common understanding. That is just incoherent with health motivations, and indeed many "vegan for health " people do use animal products and have cheat days and crap. They aren't vegan, they're just dieting.
People call themselves lots of crap, doesn't make it true.
I absolutely hear that argument all the time though, that “our stomachs aren’t designed to eat meat so you shouldn’t”.
Personally, I have absolutely cut back on meat, especially beef, but still eat it probably twice a week. It’s a far more realistic ask than veganism, though I perhaps should’ve specified only the most deranged of vegans act like I was describing in the first place.
One of my favourite facts about people hating or finding "gotcha" moments to vegans/vegetarians is that most the time they don't have a clue why people are vegan or vege and miss the whole point.
... people are vegan precisely because they don't think we should derive our notions of morality from random observations of charismatic megafauna.
what on earth gave you the other idea? it's always carnists that are like "see you have stubby little canines, eat meat" or "see lions eat the children of a pride when they take over so we should... wait fuck I mean lions eat gazelles alive sometimes so, wait sorry I'll get it. Lions eat meat and are good role models as previously established so you should too"
🙄
it is the ideology that supports the use of other animals as raw material. The thing which means the idea of hitting a cat is probably horrifying to you but you're completely comfortable gassing a pig in order to eat their stomach fat.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnism
I'm capable of holding 2 conflicting ideas in my head at the same time without a complete mental breakdown.
but unless you're scavenging carrion they do suffer.
Hens I raise in my backyard coop and slaughter humanely when they stop laying? You're telling me they suffer?
Yep. To be clear I don't think you're a bad person deliberately abusing them but it's likely that several things are true:
they're a breed that emphasises egg laying at the expense of their health and wellbeing. Jungle fowls, the birds chickens are bred from, lay around 12-20 eggs a year. Most chicken breeds lay about 10x that. This is hard on their body and shortens their lifespan. It is cruel to breed them in the same way it is cruel to breed pugs.
As the demand for hens is much higher than roosters it is highly likely many of their brothers were killed, often moments after being born in a hatchery by a putting them on a conveyor belt that feeds them, conscious, into a blender. I wish I was making that up. Or they were stuffed into trays and suffocated in co2, not a pleasant experience either way. The blender might even be less cruel there.
Because you view them as a means to an end it is unlikely you avail them to medical care of a quality you would give a child or a pet. Also it is likely they could enjoy more life when they stop laying but you do not view them as whole beings deserving of dignity and respect, so you kill them when they are no longer productive.
It is unlikely they are killed humanely, a humane killing is one we would be happy to use on another human as a way to die with dignity. Maybe I'm wrong but I doubt you do anything so peaceful, consentual, and gentle.
This argument could be made to promote eugenics in humans, so I'm dismissing it outright.
The chicks were purchased before they were sexed, the roosters were slaughtered for meat much younger than the hens but not in a factory.
Of course I don't give them medical aid like I would with a human child. They are put out of their suffering when their usefulness ends, just as we do with all other animals. It just so happens that animals we keep as pets are useful for emotional reasons, which continues even in sickness.
I would happily die by beheading as a form of euthanasia, as the blood loss causes near instant shock and rapid loss of consciousness. If my brain could be destroyed in the process, I would prefer that even more. Both are preferable to slowly succumbing to a painful illness, as long as I have my affairs in order. Chickens don't have affairs to worry about.The only reason we don't do that with assisted suicides in humans is because of the mess it makes.
you would be gripped by a giant with no explanation at a time not chosen by you, held down, and decapitated? I umm don't think so.
Of course you can present the most sanitised and consentual version but that is not how you treat these animals. You admit that they aren't real living beings with internal worlds like yours to you. They are things you own, machines to use up and break down.
They suffer, you might call it acceptable or natural or even noble but they suffer.
If the giant that never harmed me for my entire life, and always provided me with the sustenance and shelter I need to live one day killed me before I knew what was happening, I would have a pain-free death, yes.
You're right that they suffer. All complex beings suffer in all environments. The amount they suffer is acceptable, and their lives are short but lavish compared to what they would live in the wild, or compared to never existing at all.
Living things are just that, things. Biochemical machines that exist to transform available resources into more copies of their genome. If they show no indication of sentience, then their lives are not worth anything in their own right. You don't need to pretend I'm sanitizing anything.
You may want to look into the repugnant conclusion. That path of reasoning is very flawed.
Do you mean to say you don't think chickens have signs of sentience? I'm not following that last thing. You would be completely happy to torture them if that was so, or rather it would be impossible to torture them in the same way it is impossible to torture a rock.
No. Torture deliberately inflicts pain without providing any benefit. It is only suitable for use against sentient creatures who understand that compliance message the torture will stop. To do that to something that just thinks you're killing it and can't understand why is basically the definition of animal abuse. Non-sentience doesn't make animal abuse okay, it only makes swift and painless killings of those animals okay.
But I'm just rehashing what I've already said. You're trying to put words in my mouth. Like it or not, existing as livestock is not torture, and consuming the products of those livestock is not unethical. You just want to have someone to think less of and you choose to pretend that meat eaters are just as bad as murderers so you can place yourself as morally and ethically superior to them. Because at the end of the day, you care more about your ego than whether your campaigns actually reduce suffering of real animals that are actually being tortured in factory farms.
I think it's uncontroversial to say having your life taken away constitutes suffering, unless you're undergoing some extreme torture by staying alive, and causing suffering like that is inhumane. Just saying that you do it humanely doesn't really change anything tangibly.
It doesn't cause suffering to end a life unless that life is aware of its fate and becomes stressed out, or if that death leaves behind loved ones to grieve. Chickens don't grieve.
How are you so sure they don't grieve? They form social relationships, they defend each other, they groom each other, they cooperate. They have complex vocalisations, they warn each other even when they themselves aren't in danger.
Why are you so confident they feel nothing when a friend dies? why are you so confident they don't feel fear as you kill them?
https://www.chickenfans.com/do-chickens-mourn/
https://backyardfarmlife.com/is-your-chicken-sad/
https://bestfarmanimals.com/why-is-my-chicken-dying-everything-you-need-to-know/
https://backyardhomesteadhq.com/chicken-feelings-do-they-miss-each-other/
You wouldn't believe how quickly I found all that! The other thing is: if you applied that logic to people, it becomes problematic very quickly, and there's nothing about animals that precludes them from deserving the same hesitancy around those problems.
First paragraph, oh this is a reasonable point-
Second paragraph, this person needs therapy.
I too suggest medical intervention when someone speaks about a subject I'm not emotionally mature enough to engage with.
As a general rule as soon as you start making up words like “carnists” and trying to insert them in regular conversation, you’re probably very deep down a rabbit hole and need to strongly consider the life choices that got you there.
Sure sure, whatever makes you feel more comfortable.