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When somebody asks why you're a vegan
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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Vegan
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It sucks that lions have to kill other animals. If I had the ability to convince them of that and provide them with an alternative besides death I would. You are not a lion though so I can try to convince you, and lions do a lot of other things you would not choose to emulate.
It's also a false equivalency. What lions do is nothing compared to the enslavement and torture that happens at an unfathomable scale in animal ag. The brutality of nature is overstated in most human narratives.
TBH, I'd rather live in a meat farm and then get a bolt shoved through my skull than get fucking eaten alive even if one lasts vastly longer than the other. And living in a capitalist society, I'm already halfway there.
Which is what happens to wild prey animals if they aren't dying from some horrible parasite or didn't get impaled by a rutting bull.
The reason I mentioned wild vs livestock life is because I think people are fooling themselves when they believe the average animal who lives in the wild has a worse life than the average animal in the ag industry. You are choosing to focus on the moments before death which is just a fraction of what an animal experiences, and is assisted by natural endorphins. A life of persistent confinement, abuse, and building trauma is worse than most pain imaginable, I'd rather be flayed alive when my time comes than have to live as a typical industry pig does for even a few months.
And lets not act like livestock are even afforded a quick death, often being shipped to a remote site and corralled into a place full of the smells, sounds, and sights of death. Working in slaughterhouses often causes humans trauma and they aren't even the ones on the chopping block. And that's if you're lucky, most pigs are collectively slaughtered in gas chambers.
Enough of what was supposed to be an aside though. The point is that you can make a choice to not participate in a system of enslavement, torture, and killing. It has nothing to do with what lions do, and you wouldn't use lions to justify other awful behavior.
Even hunting is wrong. Even though it doesn't bring all of the terrible living conditions from animal ag, it's still ending lives that you don't have to. That's really the point, we have a choice, so we have a moral obligation. Taking a life when it isn't necessary for survival is wrong in most cases.
So first I want to apologize. The other vegan that was replying was being stupid and that has nothing to do with you.
Second of all: I agree that animal farming can be more humane. I know you disagree that there is any level of ethics to animal slaughtering, that's not the point. Here's the true and final difficulty that means most people will never be vegan which is that meat is super hard to avoid while simultaneously being an easy and satisfying source of calories. To cut off that meat goes against our survival instinct in the biggest way possible. People can't even punch themselves in the face very well because our body physically stops us from doing so, much less convincing us to give up the vast vast majority of our food supply and telling us instead to eat... what? Tofu? Rice and beans? You basically need to be a Michelin star chef to make something that doesn't come out like prison food for someone that needs fast, cheap, and filling food.
The morality of it will never matter, because survival is always > morality. Hungry dogs are never loyal, and people's lives, the stress, the time we have, in a society where meat and products that contain meat are the most readily available food supply will always trump that morality.
Which brings us to the main post. People know that we're eating animals. We know animals have to die for us to eat meat. And most of us who are not super sheltered, know what killing an animal looks like and means.
Vegans telling us that "they saw the videos we refuse to watch" not only doesn't address the core issue, it is condescending in the most ignorant and stupid way possible.
Truely you want to convert people? Prepare the best damn vegan meals you can and make them easily available. Make eating vegan as easy and as cheap as going to McDonald's. Vegan food can't be more expensive than meat; you've already lost if you can't do that. You're fighting survival instinct, so you have to put in similar amounts of work. Fat and sugar are addicting, so abuse that.
As for me, I'm already eating more veggies than I used to. But unfortunately where I live I can get a metric shit ton of meat for $20. That would actively be irresponsible of me to not take that deal.
As a side note about hunting: It Sucks that there are no wolves to be a natural predator for deer, but deer must have a natural predator or they kill forests. There's just no vegan friendly solution to that problem.
Saying people will only change once cheap vegan replicas of everything they eat are available is creating a Catch-22. Corporations, which actually operate on a completely selfish motive of amassing as much capital as possible, are not interested in completely veganizing the food industry. Seeing how vegans are a niche in the market and many nonvegans have an adverse reaction to food labeled vegan, vegan products are a risky prospect and generally going to cater to a select few who are able to pay high prices.
We don't need cheap vegan products to eat vegan though, and unlike the market hopefully we as individuals don't do everything for completely selfish reasons. Most of the cheapest culinary staples are vegan, cutting out animal products is actually cheaper even with all the subsidies those industries are given. You do not need to be a star chef to make tasty beans, beans have been a staple in culinary traditions for centuries.
I can agree there might be an instance where hunting as an intervention is ecological. It's interesting though that deer always seem to get brought up when we actually breed additional deer to be hunted. If we are going to be advocating for hunting deer then we should at least put an end to the breeding of deer first, which itself is vegan activism. Most people hunting deer are not doing it for ideological reasons and would be against this. Also humans are the best forest killer out there, and much of that is done in the name of animal ag. If you genuinely care about forests more than the lives of individuals I'd think you'd be advocating for natalism or at least the end of humans raising livestock.
Also many of us do not get our food from hunts, we get our food from a grocer or restaurant. So the ethics of hunting is irrelevant to most people's personal choice to consume animal products.