Venting Do you ever think about how vegans are right to be angry?

[surewhynot]

When I went vegan for 3 months I wasn't angry. Got guilted into eating meat again when the holidays came around.

 

[Doctors HATE them]

"Animals eat each other in the wild"
That's a bad thing. Getting eaten alive hurts. It doesn't matter whether it's natural or not.
Why does this matter? It is a simple fact of nature. The entire reason that pain exists is because the prey should try to not get hunted. And the entire reason that hunger exists is to continue the cycle. Do you think otherwise? If so, why? The pigs are meant to feel pain. We protect our young just because they're humans, because we want our society to thrive. We are greedy.


"Does that make lions evil"
No because they don't have the capacity for ethics. If they did then the best course of action (seeing as they're carnivores) would be to willingly die out so as not to hurt any other animals.
Think about why ethics exists for a moment. I am interested to see what answer you come up with. Maybe it differs from mine, and that is fine. I just want to see why you think human ethics should be applicable to animals. There are no wrong answers :)

"But if predators didn't exist, nature would fall apart"
Yes but they do exist and likely aren't going anywhere. It's not feasible to completely get rid of suffering but we can absolutely minimize it by not constantly making animals just to kill them later.
The same is true for non-vegetarian humans :) For the most part at least, in the foreseeable future.

"Vegan products too expensive and ostracizes poor people"
They're usually cheaper tbh but if you can't afford them, don't go vegan. As long as most people go vegan it'll be a net positive.
I actually agree with this. I often find vegan products to be cheaper. I don't specifically buy meat since it doesn't matter to me, I suppose it depends on how important meat is to the person.

"What if it's your religion/culture to eat meat?"
Your religion/culture is responsible for countless deaths and you should stop adhering to it.
To countless deaths of animals. We still haven't gotten to the explaining why killing animals is bad.

"What if someone is stranded in the jungle and has to in order to survive?"
Weigh your options. Try to mathematically figure out if your life more valuable than the animals that feed you. It might be more ethical to just die.
Can you really mathematically compare your life to an animal? Is there really such an objective metric? I love math, and I'd love to see the math you come up with. Please show me why you think that mathematically my life may be worth less than the ones of countless animals, or of countless humans.

I think that the most important factor is how important is your life to you? Are you selfish enough to kill animals for your own gratification to satisfy your tastebuds? Are you selfish enough to kill them whenv forced to for survival? Or are you selfless enough to sacrifice yourself instead? Can these really be weighed, and one be determined as objectively better? Maybe. Maybe if you have a goal in mind. Maybe, if that goal is that humans thrive in society, you make murder illegal, and the death of humans heavily frowned upon. Maybe if your goal is for animals to thrive, you will view ethics differently. I want to be wrong, because it is interesting to understand a more correct perspective, so if you think I am wrong, feel free to enlighten me with your correct perspective :)

Sorry I took so long to see this. I believe that happiness is the ultimate and only good and that unhappiness is the only bad. I believe that happiness (satisfaction, pleasure, fulfillment, etc.) is a tool of evolution that rewards behaviors that typically lead to a higher chance of survival and that unhappiness (pain, discomfort, stress, etc.) punishes behaviors that typically decrease chances of survival. I believe that that this is how we are biologically programmed and that it is the core of all of our behavior.

I believe the same is true for animals. Even though I don't believe all animals experience emotions in the exact same way as a human, I think the dog equivalent of happiness is comparable to human happiness for example. I believe that animals that do not experience these feelings are only as consequential as the effects they have on animals that do experience those feelings. For example, if a mosquito can't feel pain or satisfaction or stress or anything like that, then I would say that it's only purpose is to provide happiness to something like a frog. If a mosquito does feel happiness and/or unhappiness, then we should maximize mosquitoes' happiness and minimize their unhappiness, but only if it is beneficial to things that can feel happy or unhappy as a whole. By that I mean that if the existence of mosquitoes is good for frogs, but hurts everyone else, then mosquitoes should not exist. We should also work within the realm of what is feasible. For eaxmple, we can't get rid of ants, both because it could cause more unhappiness than happiness, and because we literally have no effective method. Basically, we should do what's possible and not try to achieve perfection because that might not be possible. This is hard to measure, but that leads to my next point.

It is hard to measure good vs bad, but I don't think it's impossible. Plus, even if we never get all the way there, I think we can at least get closer to a perfect mathematical model for it. I think the main reason we find it so difficult now, is because we've run away from such a difficult question for much of human history, but given time, we can come closer and closer to finding to a mathematical model.

As for your point about non-vegetarian humans, my goal isn't perfection; as nice as that would be. My goal is just making the world better.

Sorry for my aggressiveness in my post. I was angry at the time of writing.

 

[Touhou]

I'm a Social Darwinist & I believe in survival of the fittest. I simply care not for animals' feelings.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Yes and no really. Yes- it's despicable what we do to animals (and each other.) It's pretty hypocritical to say you care about animals and the environment and then simply tuck into a meat feast- sort of knowing where it came from- likely factory farming but trying to block that out of your mind. I feel bad that I'm only vegetarian and not vegan but obviously not bad enough to go the full distance. I think it HAS to be personal choice at the end of the day. I went vegetarian because I chose to- not because anyone pressured me into it.

I do understand why they feel more righteous and feel like they have the right to bully people. Still- ultimately- we didn't choose to be alive. We have to eat to survive. We can minimize the damage we do but even plant crops mean the destruction of animals habitats. Given the choice- I think most of us here would choose to be dead and not destroying anything anymore- but that's made especially difficult for us. Yes- we can try to make better choices but to sustain those choices- I think they need to be of our own volition. So- I'm not sure getting angry and trying to make people feel guilty is all that effective.

 

[AlbigenseanGhoul]

I'm not vegan myself, though I intentionally eat very little meat and am very sympathetic to the cause. I think the reason vegans are perceived as "angry" is because for most it is a moral issue. If you believe "eating oranges" is inherently immoral, you're not likely to be alright with the entire world eating oranges, or worse, insisting you are wrong for not doing that. On the other hand if one thinks eating oranges is a perfectly normal and harmless thing and does it every day, and somebody says it's immoral, it is very common for one to be offended even when no offense is meant.

Though there are some weird myths out there, like that being vegan is expensive. I've spent the last 2 weeks only eating veggies and fruits due to circumstances and it costed me less than 10 dollars. Living in smaller cities and avoiding industrial food also helps.

 

[istheretrulyalife?]

Meat eater here (omnivore since I eat both meat and vegetables/fruits because they are healthy) vegans can believe what they want. At the end of the day, I don't care.

I'm not gonna write an essay on how eating meat is good, because people are allowed to control their diet. It's when they try to force it on people (and their pets!!) is when i get angry.

Dogs and cats are carnivores, forcing them to eat plant based products starves them. I know not every vegan does that but there is a disturbing trend among vegans doing that.

Also, my sister wanted me to eat my burger outside her home because she was vegan... go figure.

 

[SexyIncél]

I just had to help with a rat infestation right now. One poor little guy died in a rat trap. Death may have been fairly quick. There was no obvious struggle, so he didn't have access to his limbs. In the best case, he maybe lost consciousness within some seconds (up to 6), and unconscious activity after a minute. But I don't know if it's the best case. I only hope that shock knocked him insensible/confused

He was a handsome little guy, I guesstimate between 0.7 to 1.5 years old. His fur was clean. I treated his corpse respectfully. I wondered if he was decent to other rats

---

I'm currently vegan, because some friends are vegan, and it's an easy way to reduce their suffering and increase pleasure. People make jokes about this reason, but I'm upfront about it. Most importantly, people learn by doing — I don't have to fully understand it upfront. Fancy theory can follow practice. And anyway, reducing suffering to animals sounds like a no-brainer to me, as long as my nutrition is reasonable

Emotions? I don't feel many about this. There's other things we can do to save other animals, like not damaging our shared environment. Then again, I wasn't thrilled to see spilled meat on the ground today. That's some animals' muscles. Wasted

Ditto beggars (probably homeless) I passed today. Their finite lives. Wasted

Omnivore/carnivore culture is also weird. Some are angry too. I was never a big fan of eating meat, though I ate some mostly for nutrition. Whenever I was invited to a steakhouse, people tried humiliating me for asking it well-done. Frequently they bragged about loving it bloody, "I want to hear the steak moo". Their eyes always glinted, clearly excited. I'd ask them if they got a primal energy from it; I never felt it. They said yes

 

[Praestat_Mori]

I'm wondering how many vegans have pets at home (especially cats and dogs). Does a vegan really think that the meat cats and dogs eat every day was raised and slaughtered in a more human way than the meat we humans would eat? I respect everyones decision to live vegan/vegie/meat-eater whatever. But to say I'm vegan because I don't want animals to suffer is questionable when a vegan/veggie buys meat for their pets.

 

[SexyIncél]

I'm wondering how many vegans have pets at home (especially cats and dogs). Does a vegan really think that the meat cats and dogs eat every day was raised and slaughtered in a more human way than the meat we humans would eat? I respect everyones decision to live vegan/vegie/meat-eater whatever. But to say I'm vegan because I don't want animals to suffer is questionable when a vegan/veggie buys meat for their pets.

I'll ask vegans I know! I don't have pets, I'm too irresponsible haha

Yeah, if we google "vegan pets" we see big ol' lists of herbivorous pets. And people with cats are very careful to justify the ethics of it

Now, we gotta remember that veganism's definition is about doing it "as far as possible and practical". Probably no one can be 100% extreme vegan. So suppose you have a cat you rescued at a shelter. Should we believe mainstream rags that report cats can eat vegan? Probably not! That's a bold claim, and we'd better see more evidence. And many vegans say just that — to be responsible for the cat's well-being. Tricky case

btw many vegans prefer calling them "companion animals". Same with me; when I took care of them (before eating vegan), I never liked calling them "pets" that people own. But pedants piss people off, so I say "pets" here

 

[endless_worry]

I have been researching and talking with vegans for about a year and a half and I have mixed feeling about both the philosophy and the diet (the philosophy will be a blanket statement based on the vegans I have personally talked to in person and on the net and from blog posts and websites I have read, but honestly, I find most of the opinions to be universal).

The diet, for the most part, I can agree with. From most of the studies I have seen, the diet is absolutely the most healthy diet you can follow. If you are interested in such a thing it can add great health benefits, but also reverse health ailments and add years (even a decade) onto your lifespan. However, the Mediterranean diet, which includes seafood and some lean chicken in small portions has been shown to have similar benefits. And despite the fear mongering that a lot of vegans like to spout about meat eating (like it causing cancer), a lot of that information is exactly that- fear mongering. The main study that showed that 'meat causes cancer' specifically states that no evidence was found that meat caused cancer and that the additives added only to processed meat caused cancer. So meat like red meat, and especially lean meat like chicken, are shown to be fine as part of a well balanced diet. Obesity and being unhealthy in general are what cause disease.


Now onto the philosophical side. This is the part I really can't stand. Why? Because vegans seem to believe that everyone should jump on the bandwagon and follow this lifestyle because it is the end all be all of moral aptitude. I personally believe that people should have the right to choose which causes are important to them and work on themselves and helping the world and/or community as they see fit. No one can do everything, obviously. For example, if someone volunteers their time once or twice a month packaging care packages (food and necessities) for the homeless and delivering them, that is what they view as the more important moral use of their time and energy. They consider a human life in need of food and necessities more important than that of an animal being slaughtered. I have seen the argument repeatedly by vegans of 'well they are a human, they should be able to do for themselves'. As someone with chronic illness and mental illness and that is here on a suicide board, I can assure you that is not always the case.

Not eating meat is about ending animal suffering. But the vegans I have asked about doing things to reduce human suffering say that is not their platform. Me personally— I have conditions that allow me to rarely leave the house and participate very little in my community. You wouldn't know it by this post, but I have been vegan (in diet, not philosophy) for going on 6 months. I try not to shop and buy things that I believe are made by these 'sweat shops' we have been hearing about. Those cheap websites like wish, temu, and whatever the other big one is, I can't remember the name off the top of my head because I never use it. But I also don't buy the expensive brands known to use sweatshops like Nike and adidas. I also buy all my produce from locally sourced farms that I personally know and have some connection to the community. I am also hold a huge objection to most imprisonment and the death penalty. Point being— when asking vegans about these issues, I am met (again) with 'not my platform' or 'these are just whataboutisms and deflection of the issue we are talking about'. Yet the same can't be said for them accepting that other people have their own moral code and should be able to choose their own moral standing on which issues are important to them.

I have also seen a lot of hypocrisy by vegans. You can see it here. They won't eat meat and will admonish anyone else for doing so, but will gladly jump on their cell phones, which are made using animals products, to tell you not to eat meat. They will tell you they absolutely need a cell phone to survive in today's society. Maybe that's true. Use it for work. Use it to call 911 if you need to. But that doesn't mean you 'need' it to scroll message boards bitching out people for not following your lifestyle. Do you also 'need' a tv or PlayStation? Are you boycotting the film industry for using gelatin to make movies? Do you ever go to the theater to see movies? If you ask these questions, you will get the response 'it is about reducing the death of animals, not eliminating it and not eating animals is the best way to reduce the most deaths' which to me is the best way to say 'it's the easiest way to reduce deaths and keep me comfortable at the same time.'

I actually could go on (and talk about how vegan studies are just speculation and not based in fact and how there are studies that prove that vegan waste is more harmful to the environment) but I'm almost at 1000 word count so I'll stop for now.

*edit— actually I just came back to say— as someone on a suicide board trying to find the easiest, most painless way to kill myself, I will say that this is the absolute one reason I believe anyone should consider veganism, especially being in our situation. If you can not consider for yourself just pulling the plug in the most accessible way because it might hurt, then you should at least consider how an animal might feel.

 

[icanfeelthesoil]

Let me address the main argument I hear:
"Animals eat each other in the wild"
That's a bad thing. Getting eaten alive hurts. It doesn't matter whether it's natural or not.
"Does that make lions evil"
No because they don't have the capacity for ethics. I

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