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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.)

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

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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.

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moonlune wrote

I don't really believe in the "because of supply and demand", anymore, and figured out I'm vegan because refusing meat makes me feel good.

That being said, I'm guilty of using the "supply/demand" argument myself when evangelizing.

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zoom_zip wrote

it makes me so fucking angry when people are like “it won’t make a difference to the world so i’m gonna carry on eating meat.” like every action you take in life has to be scientifically proven to either collapse capitalism or be worthless. you know what it will make a difference to? you. yourself. choosing not to eat meat might not be a hammer blow to the animal agriculture industry, but it is still a conscious choice that you make to not contribute harm to other living sentient beings.

all we can do in this life is take responsibility for ourselves and our own actions, and be accountable for the choices that we make and the things that we do. recognising that eating meat is fucked up, but continuing to do it because you don’t think your personal choice will have any world shattering impact is just a bullshit mental hoop that people jump through to justify continuing to enact harm.

/rant

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moonlune wrote (edited )

“it won’t make a difference to the world so i’m gonna carry on eating meat."

yet you recycle your trash. checkmate atheist.

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zoom_zip wrote

recycling doesn’t make a difference to the world so i just dump my trash directly into the river

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lettuceLeafer OP wrote

Tbh, I might prefer that to actual recycling. People have to deal with their trash rather than having it being dumped in a place out of sight out of mind. The results would be similar but people would then have the physical reminder of the consequences of trash.

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lettuceLeafer OP wrote (edited )

like every action you take in life has to be scientifically proven to either collapse capitalism or be worthless

No it just has to be proven that it has some positive gain. I have yet to see any evidence that choice in what u buy at a grocery store reduces animal suffering. I'm not asking to collapse capitalism I'm asking for any evidence that it causes any material change no matter how small.

but it is still a conscious choice that you make to not contribute harm to other living sentient beings.

But eating meat doesn't cause any harm to sentient beings. They are already dead.

I gave my reasons for being vegan as in the future in might have a slight chance to maybe help reduce animal suffering by a bit in the future. Im not sure where u got this whole I will only be vegan if it collapses capitalism.

I guess it's a typical argument so I should have clarified that that's not my position.

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zoom_zip wrote

sorry, i wasn’t really responding to your post. i was responding to the ghosts of vegan arguments past

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lettuceLeafer OP wrote

Oh, ok I get it now. No need to be sorry. Carnists can be kinda annoying so I get the rant.

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kin wrote

Well, I didn't want to answer this by the time bc I am still walking towards a nihilist perception of moral and veganism. Our cheese lettuce dying debate made me think, even if superficially, in how veganism is an ideology infused with some liberal creed. I think we both agree on the rejection of consumerist activism and voting with your dollar, and the idea of impacting the system by using it's own rules (boycotting, stealing, demanding new products, etc) is close to be no vegan.

I am very attracted to the idea of challenging Carnism as the status quo, and challenging too the idea on Anthropocentrism (and sometimes zoocentrism). I never was a big theory reader but I feel that here I will need to start a journey to understand more of my own position. Your rejection of stablished morals is one of the things that made me interested in your views too, I only hold veganism as a choice bc I "know" it is the right thing (not very helpful statement).

Your first point is something that I can relate to the concept of "food deserts" and how we were stripped from more traditional native food cultures in exchange of "fast food nuggets" and food-industry-that-do-not-ressemble-a-kitchen. And like you said, challenging someone eating habit and not giving a real practical alternative will only alienate these people from reconnecting with their food source, knowing that meat come from a living being, etc. For me this idea and eating local, like existential1 said, is the road for creating a good food culture around our friends and community.

The alienation from food and food sources is one of the thing I worry when challenging vegan consumerism, and the critique I hear that veganism is a urban modism provokes me. Many of our civilization lives in cities and never even grew a crop or a fruit tree, they never had to kill a chicken or deal with animal husbandry, maybe I am strayin for a anticiv critique here, but for me they go together imo.

My dealings with not eating meat started as repeating a behavior that I thought was aligned with my personal politics. I never had the dislike for the meat taste and since I started vegetarian there were periods where I rejected the whole thing.

One of the ideas from a nihilist perspective I saw is to put veganism not as a passive moral struggle, but a negation to participate in the system, a form of opt-out like squatting and rent. And to be honest if I could have the option? Unironically Photosynthesis.

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lettuceLeafer OP wrote

never was a big theory reader but I feel that here I will need to start a journey to understand more of my own position

Honestly I haven't found any vegan theory to be helpful. I find that trying to create my own type of veganism based on my values independent of current vegan status quo is helpful. Being critical of carnism and veganism and trying to take the bits I like is helpful. Tho I wish u luck in trying to find helpful theory. It wasn't really useful at all in my experience tho.

I "know" it is the right thing

I used to do veganism bc it was the right thing. At some point I rejected the idea of it being the right thing and just kept doing it out of convenience. Now I have a good reason to do it. See I'm very greedy and want to limit societal constraints on myself to have a better life. A society where the populace doesn't value allowing autonomy to living things it doesn't value is quite harmful to me. A world where people don't justify taking away living things autonomy is a world where I am far less likely to have my autonomy taken away. And even if many still want to take my autonomy growing the amount of people who are proactive in preventing other living things from loosing their autonomy is a world where I am more secure. I.e. more people to help defend my own autonomy.

I think veganism would only be an opt out of the system if their food was produced themself or anarchistically. And since I consider all killing or taking of animal products to be a reproduction of capitalism this opt out could only be done if vegan. But I don't think being a vegan dumpster diver or a vegan grocery store shopper counts as opting out.

Other than those 2 gripes I have I agree..

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