Veganism

inb4lock

  On 7/9/2019 at 11:41 PM, brian trageskin said:

care to phrase that differently? don't get what you're trying to say.

You can say "I admit I'm a hypocrite and I don't care, therefore the moral dilemma is resolved" but someone else's brain can fail to claim that they admit hypocrisy or think that the moral dilemma is resolved which, if following your logic, would result in it not being resolved.  How can it both be resolved and not be resolved just because two people's brains are thinking different things?  The insides of your brain can't determine reality, you're confusing the map for the territory

what if i told you

  On 7/9/2019 at 11:51 PM, Zeffolia said:

You can say "I admit I'm a hypocrite and I don't care, therefore the moral dilemma is resolved" but someone else's brain can fail to claim that they admit hypocrisy or think that the moral dilemma is resolved which, if following your logic, would result in it not being resolved.  How can it both be resolved and not be resolved just because two people's brains are thinking different things?  The insides of your brain can't determine reality, you're confusing the map for the territory

dude your reasoning or your phrasing is so confused i'm not even gonna bother answering that. 

  On 7/9/2019 at 11:35 PM, Zeffolia said:

You're right but they are both real problems and should both be fixed.  But net overpopulation isn't actually an issue though, third world populations consume nothing compared to first worlders, we consume the equivalent of like 300 third worlders or something so it's much better for us to just stop doing that shit through various means, one of which being a switch to veganism and the other would require vast social revolution to fix our broken culture of consumerist worship.  Go watch a normie music video or essentially anything on TV and you'll see what I mean, that stuff has to end immediately because it's brainwashing people into higher and higher levels of consumerism, this is not an exaggeration

jesus christ are you in fact a teenager? no doubt you're competent in certain fields but when it comes to politics/sociology and philosophy, i can hear the same stuff coming out of teens mouths (not specifically this here quote, just about anything you say), and spoiler alert, i don't think their views are wise.

  On 7/7/2019 at 6:09 PM, StephenG said:

My experience has been the complete opposite - this thread for example:

Vegans - "all meat eaters are morally bankrupt pieces of shit torturing and abusing animals just to eat meat".

Meat eaters - "the arguments or underlying philosophies you're using to advance veganism don't particularly add up". 

One of those is particularly more obnoxious than the other. Most meat eaters I have met just say "I respect your choice, eat whatever you want, (please don't try to shove your moral/ethical arguments down my throat please), but I disagree". Can't say vegans/vege take the same approach often.

That has been 90% of this thread. Edit: ok, to be fair maybe more like 70%. 

Editeditedit: not intending for this to be a "vs" comment, just an observation/my experience.

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Vegans have to deal with lots of otherwise intelligent people engaging in cognitive dissonance to resolve their internal moral dilemmas as some non-vegans have said in this thread.  It can be frustrating when there's a spectrum ranging from people admitting that killing animals is wrong but saying they want to do it anyway because it tastes good, to people saying there's literally no issue with killing animals.  Then there's the "humans aren't animals" biological denialism.  Then the pet lovers who eat the dead bodies of other animals who could have easily become their pets if the culture they grew up in kept those animals as pets instead of cats or dogs.

There are countless non-arguments which which are repeated over and over again.  Even public intellectuals, both historical and modern, often have this as a big blindspot

This is one of those issues where there are few to no actual arguments against it, but currently the vast majority of the world is against it for personal reasons, so from our perspective it's a massive uphill battle for us to rectify humanity's viewpoint on the topic which we view as being quite literally on par with slavery.  I'd love for this not to be the case because meat is obviously delicious as fuck and really convenient with our current supply chain and restaurant setup, but I've yet to see a convincing argument otherwise.  

Argumentation is often completely fruitless but in this area it's even worse because it's not an abstract issue you can just have opinions on and change them on a whim, it's a massive part of human lifestyles.  So in this area even if you convince someone, quite often the best case scenario is "Okay you're right, but I don't think I can switch.  You can go ahead, but I won't" which is more annoying than disagreement, but whose solution is only really that we have to wait longer for plant based foods to taste better and become more widespread. 

For this reason I completely reject the entire concept of angry vegans being some annoyance.  Especially in the thread literally titled "Veganism" which people can freely refrain from clicking on.  I'm skeptical of the idea that nice little conversations which end with "oh that's okay, feel free to keep giving your money to slaughterhouses perpetuating this massive ethical violation, I don't mind" will switch anyone's minds better than discussions which attempt to actually convey the enormity of the issue.  I quite literally want factory farming to become illegal, starting with a removal of all government subsidies and a replacement to plant based food subsidies, so it's not a nice little discussion but rather a political movement to rectify an evil perpetuated by the current setup of our society.  If you were born into a vegan culture you would be vegan so claiming it's a personal choice, while true, is a bit disingenuous - it's more of a social condition than that, which many anti-vegan arguments even admit when they claim how hard it will be to switch and how it's too late.  It's not.  We have to switch, humanity will continue for billions of years if we play out cards right, so it's essential to get this right to avoid multi-planetary enslavement and slaughterhouses.

  On 7/10/2019 at 12:07 AM, brian trageskin said:

dude your reasoning or your phrasing is so confused i'm not even gonna bother answering that. 

jesus christ are you in fact a teenager? no doubt you're competent in certain fields but when it comes to politics/sociology and philosophy, i can hear the same stuff coming out of teens mouths (not specifically this here quote, just about anything you say), and spoiler alert, i don't think their views are wise.

I'm not a teenager.  Are you denying that mass media propagates consumerism?  Go turn on a TV and it's a bunch of commercials telling you to buy useless shit you don't need.  Go turn on a 200m view music video and it's a big advertisement for brand name clothes.  Don't play dumb here and also don't be ageist.  Mass media is the biggest propaganda machine we have in our society and you can bet your life that it's being used to propagate consumerism, and a lot of people fall for it.

The wording of my post you're replying to is very clear I don't know why you don't understand it.  I even re-worded it in multiple ways for you.

yes, mass media is a propaganda machine. yes, loads of people fall for the ideas the media propagate. what's the profound view you're trying to communicate via this thread? 

you're not ok with the way things are. you're not ok with 'first-worlders' eating meat without guilt. i get it. you gave your opinion, with condescension and arrogance. the view you express is as profound and interesting as the ones teenagers do, imo. 

  On 7/10/2019 at 12:09 AM, Zeffolia said:

The wording of my post you're replying to is very clear I don't know why you don't understand it.  I even re-worded it in multiple ways for you.

i'm not gonna bother. my english is limited anyway so i won't waste time on this.

i'll just say i think you don't get i only represent myself so your 'unresolved dilemma' stuff is just you not getting this fact. 

  On 7/10/2019 at 12:45 AM, brian trageskin said:

yes, mass media is a propaganda machine. yes, loads of people fall for the ideas the media propagate. what's the profound view you're trying to communicate via this thread? 

you're not ok with the way things are. you're not ok with 'first-worlders' eating meat without guilt. i get it. you gave your opinion, with condescension and arrogance. the view you express is as profound and interesting as the ones teenagers do, imo. 

i'm not gonna bother. my english is limited anyway so i won't waste time on this.

i'll just say i think you don't get i only represent myself so your 'unresolved dilemma' stuff is just you not getting this fact. 

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Who's using the terms profound and interesting except you?  They are influential and important, but if you even mention them in passing you're insulted as being a teenager by brian tregaskin apparently.  I wrote single digit number of sentences about the topic on this page because it was relevant to a discussion with StephenG that you weren't even involved with.  I think you need to rethink some things and I'm no longer responding to your trash starting now

there's no way english is your first language, is it? cause i still have a hard time getting the meaning of certain things you say. 

anyway i'm out to eat steak.

  On 7/10/2019 at 1:04 AM, brian trageskin said:

there's no way english is your first language, is it? cause i still have a hard time getting the meaning of certain things you say. 

anyway i'm out to eat steak.

I think, with no offense meant to you, that you need to work on your own English then.  While there are a few grammatical errors in my posts, none of them are serious enough to make them incomprehensible.  My English is fine whereas you've claimed in this thread that English isn't your first language, so I don't know why you're critiquing the English of other people

And I doubt you're actually going to eat steak, you're probably just trying to be a funny douchebag with your steak comment.  Next time you eat steak you should have to kill the cow yourself in hand to hand combat with no weapons in an enclosed area.  Good luck

i asked my gf if she would switch to a vegetarian diet with me (I'd be returning to it, she's always been an omnivore) and she flat out said no. kinda bummed out as I've been slowly reducing my meat intake for a while and will probably continue to dial back more, idk what we're gonna eat together. 

fwiw, zeff, i do try to be thoughtful about what i eat. I don't do well with raw roughage and greenery (vata dosha here), and occasional lean meat honestly does make me feel better mentally and physically. Nutritionist recommended. It's not that I want to cause harm, or have never thought about the 'who's for dinner' dilemma (farm kid, I've definitely met my food before). I'm trying. Maybe not hard enough, but at least it's on my mind most days and I am sincerely working toward a less harmful lifestyle. I'm a little frustrated at your tone in a lot of these posts, it just seemed like you were belittling everyone, hence my last rather aggressive comment - i do get it, it's a right PITA to have the same argument over and over, but man you really aren't treating anyone as a potential ally. People on the fence kinda shut down or dig in when they're attacked, but they can sometimes be persuaded if heard out or given a legit chance to hear the positives of veganism. Please don't reply to this with an attack on my morals, i know where you stand and just wanted to give a bit more context so you can stop saying things about my "lukewarm uselessness" lol

@Zeffolia i now get what you meant in your previous posts:

when faced to an ethical issue, the way your conscience deals with it has no impact on the matter at stake. only actions can influence reality. therefore, me overcoming the "moral dilemma" by consciously repressing it and sticking to a double standard philosophy doesn't change the fact that there's a moral issue. correct me if i got it wrong. 

if that's what you meant, my view is that the moral issue disappears as soon as you apply that double standard philosophy. it becomes others' problem. and it seems to me that that's where you and others in this thread fail to understand certain moral stances.

for my part, i see moral issues as internal obstacles. if your conscience doesn't identify internal obstacles, you don't have a problem. others have. which doesn't mean that your behaviour is necessarily good, that's a secondary matter that you (zeff) focus on when i consider it irrelevant because of that fundamental stance. 

your whole philosophy on the topic at hand is that the unnecessary consumption of meat is an absolute moral wrong and people should care enough to stop supporting the unnecessary 'torture' of animals. that is, imo, a really childish way of dealing with things because you expect everyone to share your view, like you're universally right, when you fail to recognize that people will think whatever they want and act accordingly, that doesn't make moral stance or their behaviour necessarily right or wrong, just like you're not necessarily right or wrong.

your intellectual kryptonite here is the double standard stance. you assume that all people should agree to treat animals in a more 'humane' way, and when people disagree with that, you're like 'nothing justifies having double standards, you have a moral responsability etc.'. the thing is a double standard needs no justification if people accept it (just like nothing needs justification when accepted, it's that power and consent shit once again). the vast majority of humans accepts it and couldn't be happier to be allowed to eat meat. maybe the moral of the story here is that your moral universalism is completely unadapted to the situation, besides being one hell of a stupid philosophy imo. 

correct me if i'm wrong. 

  On 7/10/2019 at 4:35 AM, luke viia said:

i asked my gf if she would switch to a vegetarian diet with me (I'd be returning to it, she's always been an omnivore) and she flat out said no. kinda bummed out as I've been slowly reducing my meat intake for a while and will probably continue to dial back more, idk what we're gonna eat together. 

 

fwiw, zeff, i do try to be thoughtful about what i eat. I don't do well with raw roughage and greenery (vata dosha here), and occasional lean meat honestly does make me feel better mentally and physically. Nutritionist recommended. It's not that I want to cause harm, or have never thought about the 'who's for dinner' dilemma (farm kid, I've definitely met my food before). I'm trying. Maybe not hard enough, but at least it's on my mind most days and I am sincerely working toward a less harmful lifestyle. I'm a little frustrated at your tone in a lot of these posts, it just seemed like you were belittling everyone, hence my last rather aggressive comment - i do get it, it's a right PITA to have the same argument over and over, but man you really aren't treating anyone as a potential ally. People on the fence kinda shut down or dig in when they're attacked, but they can sometimes be persuaded if heard out or given a legit chance to hear the positives of veganism. Please don't reply to this with an attack on my morals, i know where you stand and just wanted to give a bit more context so you can stop saying things about my "lukewarm uselessness" lol

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I think you're taking my posts too personally.  I guess I called you lukewarm useless in a past post, but I don't really remember this or associate any negativity to you.  It would have only been a reply to a stance you took.  And if people shut down that's their fault, I'm sure some Nazis shut down when confronted about concentration camps.

  On 7/10/2019 at 1:19 PM, brian trageskin said:

@Zeffolia i now get what you meant in your previous posts:

when faced to an ethical issue, the way your conscience deals with it has no impact on the matter at stake. only actions can influence reality. therefore, me overcoming the "moral dilemma" by consciously repressing it and sticking to a double standard philosophy doesn't change the fact that there's a moral issue. correct me if i got it wrong. 

if that's what you meant, my view is that the moral issue disappears as soon as you apply that double standard philosophy. it becomes others' problem. and it seems to me that that's where you and others in this thread fail to understand certain moral stances.

for my part, i see moral issues as internal obstacles. if your conscience doesn't identify internal obstacles, you don't have a problem. others have. which doesn't mean that your behaviour is necessarily good, that's a secondary matter that you (zeff) focus on when i consider it irrelevant because of that fundamental stance. 

your whole philosophy on the topic at hand is that the unnecessary consumption of meat is an absolute moral wrong and people should care enough to stop supporting the unnecessary 'torture' of animals. that is, imo, a really childish way of dealing with things because you expect everyone to share your view, like you're universally right, when you fail to recognize that people will think whatever they want and act accordingly, that doesn't make moral stance or their behaviour necessarily right or wrong, just like you're not necessarily right or wrong.

your intellectual kryptonite here is the double standard stance. you assume that all people should agree to treat animals in a more 'humane' way, and when people disagree with that, you're like 'nothing justifies having double standards, you have a moral responsability etc.'. the thing is a double standard needs no justification if people accept it (just like nothing needs justification when accepted, it's that power and consent shit once again). the vast majority of humans accepts it and couldn't be happier to be allowed to eat meat. maybe the moral of the story here is that your moral universalism is completely unadapted to the situation, besides being one hell of a stupid philosophy imo. 

correct me if i'm wrong. 

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You still are making the same claim, that you can just ignore an ethical issue and it goes away, and that animals deserve no ethical consideration for their suffering.  If that's your claim you have to contend with a bunch of other implications, like the fact that we are animals and that you therefore claimed we deserve no ethical consideration so this means someone's allowed to come kill you for meat right now and they committed no ethical wrong as long as they deny in their minds that it's bad according to you.  Unless you want to add some details to differentiate us from them, but they will only be the standard things like "humans are more intelligent" which lets you still kill retards, or "humans can use abstract reasoning" which doesn't include intelligent animals like bees or chimpanzees then, or "humans can follow social contracts" which still lets you kill retards, etc.  Your view is fundamentally flawed as far as I can tell

  On 7/10/2019 at 5:24 PM, Zeffolia said:

"humans can follow social contracts" which still lets you kill retards, etc

na this one I don't think is as easy to break as we have gone trough over and over.. easier way to attack it is that you'd have to admit that your morals are not based off suffering at all which most ppl (including brian since this is where his "consious hypocrisy" comes from) aren't comfortable with

  On 7/10/2019 at 5:24 PM, Zeffolia said:

You still are making the same claim, that you can just ignore an ethical issue and it goes away, and that animals deserve no ethical consideration for their suffering.  If that's your claim you have to contend with a bunch of other implications, like the fact that we are animals and that you therefore claimed we deserve no ethical consideration so this means someone's allowed to come kill you for meat right now and they committed no ethical wrong as long as they deny in their minds that it's bad according to you.  Unless you want to add some details to differentiate us from them, but they will only be the standard things like "humans are more intelligent" which lets you still kill retards, or "humans can use abstract reasoning" which doesn't include intelligent animals like bees or chimpanzees then, or "humans can follow social contracts" which still lets you kill retards, etc.  Your view is fundamentally flawed as far as I can tell

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ethical issues are human considerations that only exist in the mind of those who invest in them. if you don't feel concerned by something it's a non-issue. a problematic aspect is not an objective property a thing has, that's just your relationship with it. so yeah, ethical issues are empty shells that only exist to those who invest in them. just because they exist in your mind doesn't mean you have access to an objective reality that's undebatable. 

btw i never said that animals don't deserve our consideration, i said it's our will against theirs. and our collective will, in terms of majority, is to eat their meat. we know we make them suffer yet we choose to do so, cause double standard. completely amoral.

also, just because we too are animals doesn't mean the rules that apply to us must apply to them. we don't have that responsability. we'd have it only if we chose (or if we were forced to do so by people who are in a position of power) to give up our double standard. 

i don't need to justify why i have that double standard because eating meat is legal. you're wasting your time if you think i need to philosophically justify why i distinguish humans from animals. 

Didn't you just do that?

  On 7/10/2019 at 6:42 PM, darreichungsform said:

Didn't you just do that?

at no moment did i justify why i distinguish humans from animals. that's not my focus here.

What is your focus then?

  On 7/9/2019 at 11:22 PM, Zeffolia said:

Modern society likely would not exist without human slavery, they were the work force of our species for thousands of years, allowing the eventual creation of upper classes immune from physical work who could spend their time on intellectual tasks which otherwise would not have been tackled yet.  Does this make it okay?
 

Lol, how does eating a fish or a rabbit to survive compare to the slave trade? Congratulations you've been brainwashed mate. You're in cuckoo land. 

Guarantee you if we were lost in the wilderness with me, and had days of no food and you were eating nettles and I caught a big fat salmon....you know what I can't be bothered with this bullshit lol. Actually I'd probably cook and eat you first, less hassle than catching a fish.

How does eating a rabbit in a survival scenario compare to eating chicken breast from the supermarket because yoi feel like it?

  On 7/10/2019 at 7:00 PM, darreichungsform said:

What is your focus then?

my point is that eating meat is morally consistent with double standard politics. arbitrary discrimination is only an issue to those it applies to and those who feel sorry for them. 

  On 7/10/2019 at 6:36 PM, brian trageskin said:

ethical issues are human considerations that only exist in the mind of those who invest in them. if you don't feel concerned by something it's a non-issue. a problematic aspect is not an objective property a thing has, that's just your relationship with it. so yeah, ethical issues are empty shells that only exist to those who invest in them. just because they exist in your mind doesn't mean you have access to an objective reality that's undebatable. 

btw i never said that animals don't deserve our consideration, i said it's our will against theirs. and our collective will, in terms of majority, is to eat their meat. we know we make them suffer yet we choose to do so, cause double standard. completely amoral.

also, just because we too are animals doesn't mean the rules that apply to us must apply to them. we don't have that responsability. we'd have it only if we chose (or if we were forced to do so by people who are in a position of power) to give up our double standard. 

i don't need to justify why i have that double standard because eating meat is legal. you're wasting your time if you think i need to philosophically justify why i distinguish humans from animals. 

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"ethics as a topic doesn't exist because I can choose to ignore it"

"you're wasting your time if you think I will elaborate on my points instead of just stating them, the points are obvious"

  On 7/10/2019 at 7:09 PM, beer badger said:

Lol, how does eating a fish or a rabbit to survive compare to the slave trade? Congratulations you've been brainwashed mate. You're in cuckoo land. 

Guarantee you if we were lost in the wilderness with me, and had days of no food and you were eating nettles and I caught a big fat salmon....you know what I can't be bothered with this bullshit lol. Actually I'd probably cook and eat you first, less hassle than catching a fish.

Nobody's talking about survival scenarios, it's the factory farm industry and their animal disassembly lines that are the issue, it's a pretty massive distinction

  On 7/10/2019 at 7:25 PM, brian trageskin said:

my point is that eating meat is morally consistent with double standard politics. arbitrary discrimination is only an issue to those it applies to and those who feel sorry for them. 

 

 

You're just making up these terms and stating them as if they're real.  What is "double standard politics" and why does it justify eating meat?  Are you seriously still saying as long as you ignore something in your mind it's not real anymore?  The qualia of these suffering animals are real even if they are physically inaccessible to us, just as yours are real.

i didn't say ethics is a non-topic, i said you don't have the authority to decide whether people should feel guilty or not for eating meat. your opinion is not based on undebatable concepts.