Submitted by lettuceLeafer in Vegan
Basically everyone is in agreement that killing animals is fucked up. Especially animal agriculture. So many see eating animal products as antithetical to anarchism. Which makes sense.
So many say, I find eating meat to be unethical so I will eat more ethical products such as foraged plants. Often times there is talk about how consuming animal products props up and encourages animal agricuture so not participating is useful in stopping it.
I for one disagree with both of these reasons. I don't give a shit if my personal life is ethical or not and there is fuck all evidence that not participating in animal agriculture has a difference on how many animals are killed or treated poorly. Yeah yeah, I've see the talks about supply and demand, but economies are way more complicated than that. So complicated that supply and demand charts are so oversimplified to be useless. I've searched far and wide to find a deeper economic theorizing but can't find one. I've challenged many on raddle in the past for a deeper reason for why veganism works and have yet to find someone who has a deeper understanding than just drawing a supply and demand chart.
So why would I be vegan if I find the main 2 reasons raddlers are vegan to be silly? Because I have different reason for being vegan.
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If a world where animal agriculture is to be greatly reduced or abolished the culture around food and eating has to be dramatically changed where I live. Making cheap, easy, nutritious vegan meals can be challenging but putting in the leg work to figure it out is what is necessary if the for a people eat are to radically change. If u ask most people what they would eat if they went vegan they would have no idea. I'm still figuring this stuff out but I've made a lot of progress. As a result of this people around me learn what I eat and learn what stuff they could and probably would eat if they were to go vegan. This lowers the amount of effort and energy required to go vegan for others. Therefore helping cultivate a population who is going to be less resistant to going vegan.
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When I eat in public it silently challenges the status quo and often times makes people question systems in their mind and think slightly more radically for the moment.
I think this is a major reason why so many people are outright resistant to veganism. When they see someone eating differently it often times causes them to consider how the meat on their plate got their. It helps reconnect the animal on people's plate to something that was once alive rather than just another consumer good.
It normalized the idea in people's head and makes it seem more achievable when more people in their life are being vegan. Not eating meat laterally is proven to be something easily achievable rather than a utopian impossibility. It shows that a different world is possible and the status quo can change. (Sure this is pretty small for most of us but for most people such a radical social change really rocks how they view things.)
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It helps cultivate a culture around food where it is easier to be vegan. At most social gathering I'm the first and only vegan. If someone were to go vegan, it's way easier for them as their is vegan food provided by me and they will be challenged by the meat eating public far less as they have gotten used to me eating vegan. Social gatherings where I'm there helps get the ball rolling and makes it way easier for others to choose to be vegan. Social gatherings are honestly the hardest bit about being vegan.
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Food culture is one of th biggest obstacles to building a world with far less animal agriculture. Me taking the leap actively changes it so pursuing a world with less animal agriculture is far more attainable.
I have quite a few other reasons but those are good enough for me to be vegan.
existential1 wrote
The reason I'm mostly vegan is even more simple than this. I eat what grows and sustains itself where I live. Literally where I live. What I can gather around me. If it isn't what I can get, it's somebody nearby also selling it. Then I try to alter recipes to work in local stuff. And by local, I don't mean the industrial farm 100 miles away...I mean what I could ride a bike to within an hour.
If you start from there, and your aim to be sustainable, meat just doesn't cut it unless you're dealing with some sort of strange infestation. But even then, you can probably eat whatever that creature is eating to curb the growth curve.
The principle is simple, and it can be expounded upon quite widely.