Comment on "Being vegan is unnatural"
Senal@programming.dev 6 hours agoand then , once they acknowledge that ?
The reason i ask is that I’ve never heard an opinion from someone with the viewpoint it seems you hold talk about what they’d think in that situation.
and my follow up would be to ask why meat and not electronics (explained below) or textiles or megacorps ?
In general i struggle with why people place these ethical and moral rubicons in the places they do (i do mostly understand why the lines exist)
I mentioned in another comment about the horrific shit that goes in to basically all electronics (there are numerous documentaries and articles on the horrors of cobalt mining for instance) and it seems odd that people are ok with that but not the meat industry, or perhaps fine with both of those but draw the line at baby animals.
Again, i understand why the lines exist, it’s the seemingly arbitrary nature of where they are placed for different circumstances that eludes me.
I’m asking so i can gather opinions enough that hopefully i can understand, eventually
bearboiblake@pawb.social 6 hours ago
Honestly, if someone is truly aware of the horrors of the animal agriculture industry and is totally fine with it, I would be very, very surprised. I have never experienced anyone who genuinely thinks it’s okay. Most people take the position of, “yeah, it’s really terrible and I don’t like it, but…” which I have to live with because that’s most people, but even most of the people who agree it is terrible don’t really know the full truth and often they don’t want to let themselves find out, because they know in their heart if they truly understood how horrific the industry is, they would feel terrible every time they ate.
If someone genuinely thought it was OK, I would assume that they’re a sociopath. Not even in a bad way, necessarily, I have friends who are sociopaths, but I think that’s basically the only way you can lack the empathy.
For the follow-up question, there are a few reasons, I’ll outline a few of them, happy to discuss further, if you have questions then let me know.
I’m not saying that vegans shouldn’t advocate for ethical manufacture and disposal of electronics, I believe wholeheartedly that we should. But it’s impossible to have an entire industry for making baby animals, fattening them up, and slaughtering them so that we can make money from people who wish to consume their corpses. It is fucked up on the face of it. Melting metal, pouring it into moulds to make circuitry, etc. doesn’t hurt anyone directly, it’s capitalism and the drive for maximal profits which cause issues in electronics. I’m a huge proponent for the abolition of capitalism for this reason too.
Hope this helps <3
Senal@programming.dev 5 hours ago
It does and your points are valid, but i’ll respond to a couple if you don’t mind.
As would i (outside of the sociopath possibility you also mention) , i was thinking more along the lines of people who fully understand and then accept it as something they can live with.
The comparisons of the meat industry to electronics i mostly agree with, except for this last part, not because it’s incorrect as such, i just didn’t provide enough context.
I mentioned electronics because it’s easy for people to at least shallowly understand how much they use them, what’s not so obvious is the horrors of how they are produced, in a similar way to how people as a whole don’t really understand how the meat industry is run.
Long before the metal pouring and assembly you have the rare earth elements industry that uses horrific limb-removing slave work camps to extract these minerals. it’s not all of them, but it’s significantly more than zero.
There are also cartel like warlords involved in some of the extraction sites.
Think of it as a similar situation to conflict diamonds, but more entrenched and critical to nation state interests.
I mentioned cobalt because it’s the easiest to find credible documentaries, reports and discussions about, but it’s not just cobalt.
Honestly a lot of the big industries are supported by modern day slavery and inhumane conditions or experimentation, i would also assume that extends to the non-human animals as well but i can’t honestly speak to that.
Textiles (clothes, shoes, trainers), agriculture (avocado’s have cartels because of course they do, coffee), pharmaceuticals, non-meat food (chocolate for example).
I keep coming back to the phrase “There is no ethical consumerism under capitalism” which aligns with your stance on the abolition of capitalism, but i tend to think of it as there is no ethical consumerism in general (at least right now) because i can’t think of a way we could ethically overcome the sheer density of population using the level of logistical technology we have available and that’s not even taking into account the (subjective) apparent nature of how human’s deal with such large populations.
But me not being able to see how we make the jump from now to a post scarcity, fully equitable society is almost certainly just a failure of my imagination.
My main question is how do people seem to be able to decide they can live with limbless kid electronics but slave labour clothes are too far, cartel avocado’s are an unfortunate necessity but meat is monstrous.
I understand that not all of those things are equal and battles need to be picked but it doesn’t seem like the subjective severity is the deciding factor and how are the battles picked.
iamthetot@piefed.ca 5 hours ago
I’m not okay with basically anything that occurs under capitalism, but I have limited time on this earth and I have to pick and choose my battles.
bearboiblake@pawb.social 5 hours ago
Sure, and that’s totally valid, nobody is saying you need to become an animal rights activist. I think everyone should try their best to live their values, and that’s what I do. It’s not about a quest for perfectionism or anything like that, just trying our best as little humans with limited power to make the world a better place.