Antinatalism and veganism

[sadsoul]

Many antinatalists are also vegans which makes sense since antinatalism and veganism are both about preventing suffering. Antinatalism is about preventing suffering by not giving birth and veganism is about preventing suffering by minimizing harm done to sentient beings who are already alive. What irritates me is that there are many natalist vegans who love spouting pro-life platitudes. I feel like if you want to prevent suffering it is illogical to be a natalist in the rough world that we live in. Another thing is that if you're an antinatalist it would be illogical not to be a vegan, since the animal industry arguably creates the most suffering on this planet.
Here I have to criticize myself. I'm an antinatalist but not a vegan. I know that consuming animal products is immoral but I still do it. It's a really bad habit and habits are difficult to change, especially those that are seen as perfectly normal by society. But I not only don't have the willpower to change my diet, I also fear that my family would ridicule me...for being against the torture and killing of trillions of sentient beings...lol.
I guess the only good thing is that when I'm dead I won't contribute to any suffering anymore. Killing myself is the most vegan thing I can do lol.

 

[worldexploder]

I agree with the Efilist standpoint that veganism and antinatalism should go hand in hand. I failed miserably at the vegan part. Inmendham made a great point that non-human animals harm other non-human animals more frequently than human animals harm non-human animals. Harming any sentient creature is ethically wrong. Without humans, animals will still suffer.

 

[Red star]

"killing myself is the most vegan thing I can do" lol wow youre right, they should get on board with this.

We make an alliance with them and then they help us advocate for legal suicide : P

 

[sadsoul]

Inmendham made a great point that non-human animals harm other non-human animals more frequently than human animals harm non-human animals. Harming any sentient creature is ethically wrong. Without humans, animals will still suffer.

I agree. Non-human animals are cruel to each other all the time, sometimes not even for survival purposes (think about a cat playing with a mouse). The sad thing is that we can't tell non-human animals "Hey, what you're doing is cruel, please stop that". The only way to eliminate all suffering would be to eliminate all life. And now think about how that sounds to a pro-lifer. Advocating for life extinction makes you sound like a genocidal maniac, and the problem is that your cause can be co-opted by fascists who just want to oppress minorities and violently reinforce the status quo. And another problem is that imposing death on other beings would be anti-choice and I think most of us here are pro-choice, we don't want to force something upon anyone because we respect the (relative) freedom of everyone to make their own decisions.

It's just really sad that animals are so cruel to each other and often need to be in order to survive. Think about it...hurting other sentient beings. To survive. I mean how fucked up is that, the survival instinct makes animals do horrible things and for what? Temporary pleasure which is far outweighed by all the pain and when you're dead you won't even remember the pleasure you experienced.

I hate watching documentaries about animals/nature. They always show animals being hunted, killed and eaten by other animals. Watching those animals struggling for their lives is really heartbreaking. How can you watch something like that and be like "yeah well, that's just nature ) whatever )))". How can you be so disconnected that you don't feel empathy for other sentient beings? I guess because allowing yourself to feel empathy would make you feel bad and you would realize how horrible nature really is. Also you become very desensitized the longer you live in this violent society/world.

Anyway, I didn't want to rant but yeah, I feel like this needed to be said.
So to sum it up:

Fuck you, nature.

 

[weedoge]

I agree. Non-human animals are cruel to each other all the time, sometimes not even for survival purposes (think about a cat playing with a mouse). The sad thing is that we can't tell non-human animals "Hey, what you're doing is cruel, please stop that". The only way to eliminate all suffering would be to eliminate all life. And now think about how that sounds to a pro-lifer. Advocating for life extinction makes you sound like a genocidal maniac, and the problem is that your cause can be co-opted by fascists who just want to oppress minorities and violently reinforce the status quo. And another problem is that imposing death on other beings would be anti-choice and I think most of us here are pro-choice, we don't want to force something upon anyone because we respect the (relative) freedom of everyone to make their own decisions.

It's just really sad that animals are so cruel to each other and often need to be in order to survive. Think about it...hurting other sentient beings. To survive. I mean how fucked up is that, the survival instinct makes animals do horrible things and for what? Temporary pleasure which is far outweighed by all the pain and when you're dead you won't even remember the pleasure you experienced.

I hate watching documentaries about animals/nature. They always show animals being hunted, killed and eaten by other animals. Watching those animals struggling for their lives is really heartbreaking. How can you watch something like that and be like "yeah well, that's just nature ) whatever )))". How can you be so disconnected that you don't feel empathy for other sentient beings? I guess because allowing yourself to feel empathy would make you feel bad and you would realize how horrible nature really is. Also you become very desensitized the longer you live in this violent society/world.

Anyway, I didn't want to rant but yeah, I feel like this needed to be said.
So to sum it up:

Fuck you, nature.

I see it differently. There's no way we can get in the minds of these animals but the cat playing with the mouse does so out of instinct. The mouse probably also only feels fear in a strictly programmed survival instinct way rather than truly comprehending what it means to feel pain and then die.

There's no way to understand the qualia of animals and its a pretty interesting topic, personally I find it very hard for something to be labelled as cruel if it cannot KNOW that it is being cruel. In this sense you could compare the predatory creature to a natural disaster, is nature cruel just because it causes suffering? No of course not.

I have a great interest in nature and taking care of animals exactly because they can't comprehend things for themselves. Giving them a life of what we think would be luxury is one of the best things we can do for such naive creatures. I even love watching those kinds of documentaries, yet I still feel sympathy for the creatures. Feels like watching myself when a pack of wolves chases a deer into a lake to drown or something, then by sheer chance the wolves leave for something else and the deer goes to live another day.

I get what you're saying about nature and stuff, hope I don't seem contrary just providing another viewpoint.

 

[hunter_lewis]

I'm a vegetarian myself but not an antinatalist. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with having kids. Just because we suffer, doesn't mean that everyone does and most people don't end their life by ctb. If someone has the desire to have kids and it is not obvious that the kid is going to suffer horribly, it is morally acceptable in my opinion. My spiritual beliefs also play a strong role.
I'm also okay with killing animals for food. The issue is that they should have a good life and not be abused by humans. I oppose the use of animals in entertainment, in testing and in the clothing industry such as fur for example.
So no, you don't have to be a vegan to be antinatalist or antinatalist to be vegan.

 

[hunter_lewis]

I agree. Non-human animals are cruel to each other all the time, sometimes not even for survival purposes (think about a cat playing with a mouse). The sad thing is that we can't tell non-human animals "Hey, what you're doing is cruel, please stop that". The only way to eliminate all suffering would be to eliminate all life. And now think about how that sounds to a pro-lifer. Advocating for life extinction makes you sound like a genocidal maniac, and the problem is that your cause can be co-opted by fascists who just want to oppress minorities and violently reinforce the status quo. And another problem is that imposing death on other beings would be anti-choice and I think most of us here are pro-choice, we don't want to force something upon anyone because we respect the (relative) freedom of everyone to make their own decisions.

It's just really sad that animals are so cruel to each other and often need to be in order to survive. Think about it...hurting other sentient beings. To survive. I mean how fucked up is that, the survival instinct makes animals do horrible things and for what? Temporary pleasure which is far outweighed by all the pain and when you're dead you won't even remember the pleasure you experienced.

I hate watching documentaries about animals/nature. They always show animals being hunted, killed and eaten by other animals. Watching those animals struggling for their lives is really heartbreaking. How can you watch something like that and be like "yeah well, that's just nature ) whatever )))". How can you be so disconnected that you don't feel empathy for other sentient beings? I guess because allowing yourself to feel empathy would make you feel bad and you would realize how horrible nature really is. Also you become very desensitized the longer you live in this violent society/world.

Anyway, I didn't want to rant but yeah, I feel like this needed to be said.
So to sum it up:

Fuck you, nature.

I do not think that animals in nature suffer all the time. They have a good, natural life and are outside and amongst their kind. If they are killed by another animal, their death is quick. Animals are kind to each other compared how we treat each other and other living creatures. Being killed by a lion is kinder than starving to death. And a lot of animals have very easygoing dispositions-animals in zoos that are still wild don't routinely murder their keepers. For example, orcas at Seaworld are mostly well behaved even though they suffer every day and are inbred.
Any kind of perversion that is feasible is done with animals. Rabbits have their limbs twisted and broken and then put into casts so their bones grow the wrong way. They are strapped into harnesses and have poison acids dripped into their eyes. That is called a Draize test. Animals for meat are raped by a human, have their calves taken away, and then are kept in feedlots where the feces smell so bad and there is so much ammonia that the animals get eye problems. They are hit and pushed into the slaughterhouse. Foxes are skinned alive for their fur. And I don't even want to start on how humans treat each other. Suffering is just a part of life, but eliminating life itself is not the solution. Even though I am sick, and at some point I will ctb, I never want to stop existing. I believe in the afterlife and cannot wait to be a human again or on the other side after death. In our society, we are kinder to dogs than to humans-if they suffer, we put them to sleep, but if you are a human and in chronic pain, they send you to the asylum for being suicidal. How is this acceptable? To me, death is nothing but a transition into peace and the ultimate act of liberation for my soul.

 

[sadsoul]

I see it differently. There's no way we can get in the minds of these animals but the cat playing with the mouse does so out of instinct. The mouse probably also only feels fear in a strictly programmed survival instinct way rather than truly comprehending what it means to feel pain and then die.

There's no way to understand the qualia of animals and its a pretty interesting topic, personally I find it very hard for something to be labelled as cruel if it cannot KNOW that it is being cruel. In this sense you could compare the predatory creature to a natural disaster, is nature cruel just because it causes suffering? No of course not.

I have a great interest in nature and taking care of animals exactly because they can't comprehend things for themselves. Giving them a life of what we think would be luxury is one of the best things we can do for such naive creatures. I even love watching those kinds of documentaries, yet I still feel sympathy for the creatures. Feels like watching myself when a pack of wolves chases a deer into a lake to drown or something, then by sheer chance the wolves leave for something else and the deer goes to live another day.

I get what you're saying about nature and stuff, hope I don't seem contrary just providing another viewpoint.

I do think you can call animals/nature cruel since it's just another way of saying suffering is being caused by something/someone. And I think it is obvious that animals do suffer and suffering is bad. They might not give themselves TED talks about the philosophy of death at 3am, they might not understand pain and death the way we do, but they do suffer. And that I think is what matters.
Let's say we develop sentient artificial intelligence. We could say "Well, these are just machines, they don't really understand their own condition like humans do". I feel like this would be human supremacist thinking and it would limit our compassion for those AIs because we think of them as 'less'. And the same thing is true for non-human animals. They experience suffering in their own unique way and I think we shouldn't downplay their suffering just because we don't understand how they experience things.

Anyway, that's just my opinion, thank you for sharing your viewpoint.

 

[weedoge]

I do think you can call animals/nature cruel since it's just another way of saying suffering is being caused by something/someone. And I think it is obvious that animals do suffer and suffering is bad. They might not give themselves TED talks about the philosophy of death at 3am, they might not understand pain and death the way we do, but they do suffer. And that I think is what matters.
Let's say we develop sentient artificial intelligence. We could say "Well, these are just machines, they don't really understand their own condition like humans do". I feel like this would be human supremacist thinking and it would limit our compassion for those AIs because we think of them as 'less'. And the same thing is true for non-human animals. They experience suffering in their own unique way and I think we shouldn't downplay their suffering just because we don't understand how they experience things.

Anyway, that's just my opinion, thank you for sharing your viewpoint.

I suppose I see being cruel as more of an intentional thing. We perceive things doesn't make them so all the time ><

 

[sadsoul]

I do not think that animals in nature suffer all the time. They have a good, natural life and are outside and amongst their kind. If they are killed by another animal, their death is quick. Animals are kind to each other compared how we treat each other and other living creatures. Being killed by a lion is kinder than starving to death. And a lot of animals have very easygoing dispositions-animals in zoos that are still wild don't routinely murder their keepers. For example, orcas at Seaworld are mostly well behaved even though they suffer every day and are inbred.
Any kind of perversion that is feasible is done with animals. Rabbits have their limbs twisted and broken and then put into casts so their bones grow the wrong way. They are strapped into harnesses and have poison acids dripped into their eyes. That is called a Draize test. Animals for meat are raped by a human, have their calves taken away, and then are kept in feedlots where the feces smell so bad and there is so much ammonia that the animals get eye problems. They are hit and pushed into the slaughterhouse. Foxes are skinned alive for their fur. And I don't even want to start on how humans treat each other. Suffering is just a part of life, but eliminating life itself is not the solution. Even though I am sick, and at some point I will ctb, I never want to stop existing. I believe in the afterlife and cannot wait to be a human again or on the other side after death. In our society, we are kinder to dogs than to humans-if they suffer, we put them to sleep, but if you are a human and in chronic pain, they send you to the asylum for being suicidal. How is this acceptable? To me, death is nothing but a transition into peace and the ultimate act of liberation for my soul.

I also don't think that animals in nature suffer all the time and that animals who live in nature often have it much better than animals who live in captivity. But just because living in nature is better than living in captivity doesn't mean it's good.

 

[weedoge]

Maybe a way I see it is that biological programming of nature could be cruel, but the conscious animal itself is just a product of nature and does its best with the genes and intelligence it is equipped with. There's no way my animals are cruel even if they've done cruel things. Sorry to be pedantic!

 

[sadsoul]

Maybe a way I see it is that biological programming of nature could be cruel, but the conscious animal itself is just a product of nature and does its best with the genes and intelligence it is equipped with. There's no way my animals are cruel even if they've done cruel things. Sorry to be pedantic!

Ah yeah that makes sense. You can probably apply this to humans as well. We do cruel things because our genetics/personality/personal history/environment tragically cause us to do these things, but that doesn't mean we're cruel beings. It just means that certain circumstances make us do cruel things.

But of course we can also do very nice and kind things, it's important not to forget that. And for many people the kindness they experience is enough to keep them going. I am happy for those people, but not everyone is in that situation.

 

[hunter_lewis]

I also don't think that animals in nature suffer all the time and that animals who live in nature often have it much better than animals who live in captivity. But just because living in nature is better than living in captivity doesn't mean it's good.

Sure, but certainly the answer to this dilemma cannot be just not living at all? It is one thing to be born and then to decide that you don't want it, but another to just cut life entirely. Then you eliminate all the good things in life as well.

 

[sadsoul]

Sure, but certainly the answer to this dilemma cannot be just not living at all? It is one thing to be born and then to decide that you don't want it, but another to just cut life entirely. Then you eliminate all the good things in life as well.

Of course you would also eliminate the good things, but if the bad things outweigh the good things then it's a sensible sacrifice. And if you don't exist you can't be sad about the good things not existing anymore.
But don't get me wrong, I am not saying we should eliminate all life, I'm pro-choice after all. I just think that life is very risky and humans have a far greater capacity to feel pain than to feel joy so why not avoid the risk of suffering by not existing at all?

 

[SomeGuyDK]

I agree. Non-human animals are cruel to each other all the time, sometimes not even for survival purposes (think about a cat playing with a mouse). The sad thing is that we can't tell non-human animals "Hey, what you're doing is cruel, please stop that". The only way to eliminate all suffering would be to eliminate all life. And now think about how that sounds to a pro-lifer. Advocating for life extinction makes you sound like a genocidal maniac, and the problem is that your cause can be co-opted by fascists who just want to oppress minorities and violently reinforce the status quo. And another problem is that imposing death on other beings would be anti-choice and I think most of us here are pro-choice, we don't want to force something upon anyone because we respect the (relative) freedom of everyone to make their own decisions.

It's just really sad that animals are so cruel to each other and often need to be in order to survive. Think about it...hurting other sentient beings. To survive. I mean how fucked up is that, the survival instinct makes animals do horrible things and for what? Temporary pleasure which is far outweighed by all the pain and when you're dead you won't even remember the pleasure you experienced.

I hate watching documentaries about animals/nature. They always show animals being hunted, killed and eaten by other animals. Watching those animals struggling for their lives is really heartbreaking. How can you watch something like that and be like "yeah well, that's just nature ) whatever )))". How can you be so disconnected that you don't feel empathy for other sentient beings? I guess because allowing yourself to feel empathy would make you feel bad and you would realize how horrible nature really is. Also you become very desensitized the longer you live in this violent society/world.

Anyway, I didn't want to rant but yeah, I feel like this needed to be said.
So to sum it up:

Fuck you, nature.

Sorry for incoherence, I am drunk, but feel like I need to reply.
6-7 years ago I was looking at effective ways to better the world. I was introduced to the idea, that nature might be bad for the first time. It shattered my world completely, and I have been a shadow of my former self since then. Admitting to nature being bad, goes against the values humans need to believe in to feel content in the world. So I am not surprised people will go to great length to praise nature. Another aspect is, that nature is largely beautiful for us to look at. Passing by a forest in a comfortable train coach is an enjoyable experience, but being an animal out there probably isn't. If it is a pleasant experience the population of that animal will grow until the animal will live in scarcity and suffer. Especially R-selected animals.

In regards to the post. I am an anti-natalist vegan, but I am not sure how effective being vegan is. Animal production lowers the wild animal population, which would have been there otherwise. It really depends if smaller animals are conscious or not and how much they feel pain compared to bigger animals. Also veganism is associated a lot with nature conservation, so promoting veganism promotes natural suffering, possibly. There's a lot of possible future scenarios, where we re-engineer the world to reduce suffering. I don't think it will ever happen though, humans have too many flaws, we are only effective at short term solutions.