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Veganism is Leftism
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 May 2026
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Food chain still exists, home slice, and I'm at the top of it. Doesn't change my feelings about labor rights, or housing, or healthcare. You're presenting a false equivalence argument.
You're on top of it? Because you buy factory meat in a store?
Your being dense on purpose? You think human as a specie isn't at the top? Like if we want we couldnt kill every animal specie?
We built civilization and you think we areny the apex?
So you believe in rule of the mightiest?
Can you even call yourself a leftist?
Maybe you have a point to make but this isn't it.
As i said in another comment, the way we treat animals is and should be different from they way we interact with other humans.
I dont advocate for the rule of the mightiest between humans. For animals, i think we dont have any moral obligation in the way we treat them. Doesnt mean im ok obliterated species or kill rare animal for sport, just that we are ok to eat them.
I think that way of thinking is problematic. Because you could easily swap "we have moral obligation only towards other humans" with "we have moral obligations only towards people of our own tribe / group". You can freely swap out who is in the protected in-group, and what is okay to do to the out-group as a result.
"For animals, I think we dont have any moral obligation in the way we treat them."
Yeah... Thats really fucked up thinking.
If it doesn't matter how we treat animals, why aren't you okay with wiping them out or hunting them for fun?
Think about it with a moral view. Should we kill millions of animals a year even tho we don't have to and is considerably worse for your health and to the environment?
Not quite the case. The way we in the western world consume meat is not particularly healthy. But a vegan diet is not healthier per se. You can have a pretty healthy diet that includes meat (although definitely with less meat than the average person in the western world consumes) and you can have a pretty healthy vegan diet. The difficulty with vegan diets is that humans are biologically omnivores, and while it is possible to lead a healthy vegan diet, one does have to be much more careful about their diet so that one doesn't miss any important nutrients. There's a reason the human palate is trained to like meat.
This is more an argument to reduce meat consumption than to eliminate it, something I am entirely for. Whatever food we consume, it will just about always have an impact on the environment. The question is how we can reduce that impact to a point where it is sustainable.
Idk, I never liked raw meat. You have to roast it until you taste either ash or Unami.
Jesus fuck, then you're roasting it entirely wrong.
But I like the taste of ash.
Which is why Jeff Bezos should be able to control your entire life, living conditions, reproduction, and milk you for all the money he possibly can, right? He is at the top of the food chain so you don’t get a say, and that’s good and moral. Right?
The interaction between human and human and animal and human are different.
Theres not much elso to say. What is true for how we treat animals, the fact we can eat them (in my opinion) because we are over them, doesnt reflect in how i think a human should and can treat another human. Thats it
lol why? So you can feel better about it? Which like, I get it people only have so much energy to deal with shit and if you can’t then if it makes you feel better to pretend then sure. I’m not here to make anyone go vegetarian or vegan or anything, but saying we’re the top of the food chain and that you’re a leftist is laughable. That’s some ancap shit.
It's at the top of the subjective hierarchy that you are inventing to justify your cruelty and violence. That's rationalization, that's not objective reality. That's how you cope with being a fucking monster.
We aren't talking about "we" were talking about you. Lions in general may be at the top of the food chain but an individual disabled lion isn't and is liable to get taken down by a species "lower down" like hyenas.
If you're justifying eating meat by the ability to kill another animal then unless you can prove you can kill a cow you shouldn't be eating steak.
You aren't a predator at the top of the food chain, at best you're a kleptoparasite appropriating the kills of others using money.
They can't read either. I've stated more than once in this thread that I hunt or buy locally for nearly all of the meat I consume. Let them feel superior for now. I'm hunting vegans if I ever run out of deer and feral hogs.
How is ita false equivalence to say that animal rights matter? Do sentient beings deserve to be eaten by us, simply because we have consciously decided that we want to be at the top of the food chain? Should you continue to have the highest emissions from your diet, simply because you're "at the top" of some hypothetical food chain you have no part in executing yourself?
I get that some people need to eat animal products for health reasons, but if your entire reason is "I am an apex predator" (which you're not, btw), then I don't see why you shouldn't be called out for that mentality, which is promoting a view of the world that is pretty exploitative of other living beings and environmentally damaging to boot.
Life eats life and I do not have the emotional fortitude to let that get to me. The other animals are out there eating each other alive, it's a horror show, and the expectation for humans to somehow be above and separate from nature is, imo, unrealistic.
Noone deserves to be eaten but if an animal is hungry they have every right to try and eat me and I have the right to defend myself.
YOU DON'T HAVE TO. YOU DON'T HAVE TO EAT ANIMALS. You are CHOOSING to. And you are using the fact that other animals HAVE TO EAT OTHER ANIMALS to justify it. You're not going to feel bad about your UNNECESSARY cruelty and violence simply because cruelty and violence exist in the universe? That's fucking stupid, you see that, right? Your rationalizations are transparent and the lies you tell yourself are not convincing to others!
All of the violence and cruelty that exists in the universe is unnecessary, not just mine. The universe is unnecessary, for that matter. If I decided to focus on that, I could only conclude that total annihilation is the answer to suffering and I'd rather eat chicken. It's a choice, not a lie.
I dare you to show your genuinely asinine comment to someone you respect. This is exactly the transparent rationalization I'm describing directly to your benighted face.
That's a very 14 year old understanding of nihilism.
Animals also go to war and humans have gone to war for all of their history. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive for pacifism because that's separating us from nature.
You wouldn't even be capable of staring at your own navel this hard if your ancestors hadn't taken to eating our furry neighbors. And you have no idea the emissions caused by my diet, but since I hunt the majority of my meat I'm actually reducing the emissions of local deer herds and hog sounders in my area. I do not participate in beef farming at all, but mostly because I find it to be boring of flavor and overly expensive, not out of any moral obligation.
I am not an apex predator? Sure, I'm an omnivore. Now, however, if I am not at the top of the chain, how about you tell me what might be hunting me?
"im physically capable of making other creatures suffer therefore it's acceptable for me to do so". Aight dude. Clearly there's no changing your mind, but for those looking - this mindset is the same as people who sexually assault women.
Whoop, there it goes. Right out the window.
Corporate chain still exists home slice. And I’m at the top of it. Doesn’t change my feelings about exploiting you, not giving you proper social safety nets or healthcare.
Might makes right is a shit argument.
You don't control my food, kid. Hell, you don't control my water. You might control a couple types of fuel I utilize, but if I can't get those anymore then that's not really a problem either because society has already collapsed, and I still have fuel that you never controlled. And I will still eat, have water, have shelter, and I already live without doctors. I am capable of full self sufficiency. Are you? I have serious doubts. You don't have an argument. Go eat some kale that has to be shipped from mexico.
You’re absolutely right. You currently can choose to do all of that.
But just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should nor that doing the thing is the right thing to do right ?
You can also just as easily choose not to inflict violence and cruelty on those who can’t defend themselves.
Yeah, that's why I have human children locked in my basement that I sometimes eat the flesh of. It's not immoral, I'm just above them on the food chain.
Just becuase you're so poor that when you cherry-pick policies to support because they would benefit yourself most of those policies happen to be left-wing, that doesn't make you a leftist.
You're the one throwing labels around. I'm just me. I'm not much for emotions, nor empathy. I have a moral compass that works well enough for me and that's honestly as far as I care about the subject. I don't kill for entertainment or trophies. I hunt at least 60% of the meat I consume. When I purchase it, I try to buy from small farms directly. I grow much of my own veg, too. Does that matter in any real way? Unlikely.
Little vegan children might be delicious, but I wouldn't eat one raised on the trash the city folks eat. There, are you properly outraged by my callousness?
I wonder what leftist values you think you can express without empathy. Like, honestly, why do you even give a single fuck about this entire thread, you're not in this picture at all.
"Might makes right. Taking the body of a vulnerable individual is just how I roll. I don't see how that has anything to do with decency and mercy!"
You could have just said, "Hi, I'm the meme."
Decency and mercy are when I place my shot to dispatch an animal to reduce its suffering as much as possible. So, sure whatever makes you feel superior, but you need to understand that you are the meme here.
Okay. I appreciate that you do that.
Have you considered that to reduce the animals suffering as much as possible you could just… not shoot it? And then to on about your day doing literally anything else that makes you happy?
I’m not going to disagree with you that “but meat tastes better”. Or that hunting is fun and there’s an emotional connection that hunters can get to it.
But you can literally do anything else other than inflict violence and cruelty on those weaker than you. It’s a choice.
It's a choice I'm ok with. But hunting is not fun. It's work done for survival, just like gardening, which I also do. I minimize the cruelty by having good aim that I have put a lot of effort into learning and practicing. I'm unmoved by your limp wristed pacifism. I provide for myself and my family, how much of your food do you grow? All your food travels by diesel truck or worse. You are not better than me, and your diet likely has a more negative impact on the environment.
In point of fact, the environmental impact of shipping plants hundreds of kms is an order of magnitude less than the impact of consuming local meat.
Oh man. I could go on again about how it’s not because you can inflict violence that you should and that you’re justified doing so because you can. I’ve already mentioned that in the other reply to you.
So there are two more points I’d like to make.
Do you think there’s a possibility you’ve been propagandized to the point where critique of meat eating feels like a personal attack? Because if you notice I’ve been nothing but cordial to you while both your comments you tried to do personal attacks. “Go eat kale”, “limp wristed pacifism”, neither are accurate. But would you examine why you feel like resorting to that?
veganism is indeed much better for the environment. Cows are extremely thermodynamically inefficient. If you’re vegan you plant something you eat it and you get the calories you need. For animal farming you have to plant a bunch feed the cow. Plant more feed the cow. Do it for years and then kill the cow. Any argument of efficiency is an argument for veganism. Not against it. So no. Eating meat has a much worse quantifiable impact on the environment. Most studies put it at 10 to 20 times worse. Very easy to look up if you care enough.
And if you reply to this “what about hunting”, “what about roadkill”, “what about them natives” which are the usual retorts. I’d say who cares about any of that. That’s not even a rounding error in the total meat consumption we do as a species and total amount of unnecessary cruelty we inflict on animals.
Please feel free to elaborate on this obvious nonsense.
What part confuses you? I didn't stutter.
So your entire philosophy that justifies needless violence, cruelty to a vulnerable individual, despoiling the environment, and exploiting people doing traumatic jobs because they would starve homeless otherwise, your ENTIRE argument can be expressed in one glib, garbled, arrogant sentence. Hey, if that's all you got, then that's all you got; that in itself is the answer. But if you're trying to show how you can do these things and also embody leftist values, you're failing, and no amount of bluster or irony can change that.
I think you're a leftist when it comes to labour rights, housing, and healthcare for humans. I also think you're in favour of imprisonment, forced labour, and a might-makes-right worldview justified by the appeal to nature fallacy, all of which are traditionally associated with fascism. In short, I think you're a very complex individual with a wide range of political views on different topics.