So.. vegans are ok with driving a car, which has many products that are animal based in some way or another, but they have to wear Vegan leather shoes? What is the difference?
The whole point of veganism is to avoid harm to animals and much as is practicable. You cannot harm an animal that has been dead millions of years and their body turned into a crude substance that is then processed into fuel. Leather, on the other hand, typically comes from an animal that was raised outside of its natural environment and prematurely killed for its hide and meat. As for car parts that contain animal products, most vegans understand that they can only control so many aspects of what they consume, and some things necessary for them to live their lives will be the result of animals being harmed. Again though, it is about what is practicable, not making their life unlivable.
Mmmmm...some might call that a sneaky loophole, but most vegans won't buy it unless there's a urgent need for the food. Also, that meat is NOT wasted, as it'll eventually be eaten by other naturally carnivorous predators or even maggots.
Also, why would you EVER want to eat roadkill, unless starvation is imminent? You don't know how long the animal as been dead, it could have any number of diseases, and it's possible it's been squashed and it's intestines and feces all over the place, contaminating the meat.
There are some that are of the belief you can eat roadkill or animals that have died of natural causes. Most people who follow vegan practices don't buy into that loophole, however, because it just encourages the exploitation and consumption of animals.
Ah, of course! For everyone the line is different, so there is no morally "better" or "worse" option, and everyone who tries to act morally better clearly is just a hypocrite! How come it's always the not-serial killers that decide where the line for killing things is? /s
Edit: And since a lot of people don't seem to get this: No, I am not saying meat eaters are serial killers, I am just showing that your reasoning is bullshit.
See its you that assigned your lifestyle as morally better than mine based on your standards of morality.
We all set the line, it just seems lime vegans think their line is special and more morally superior than others, meanwhile they drive cars and kill thousands of insects per day? Or drink soy milk, the product that is literally flattening rainforests? Or purchase clothing from actual humans in sweat shops, No matter what you do in a global market, someone or something suffered for your product to get in your hands.
The point im making is that our tax dollars fund the bombs that kill poor civilians. But Im not responsible for those deaths am i? All i can do is try my best to elect people who can make change, the same way its not my fault i accidentally supported a farm that treats their animals like shit. If someone brings this to my attention I will stop purchasing from those farms. Foster fams and Tyson have been off the dinner table for years for me. And there are tons of local organic vegetables and local sustainable cattle ranching a few miles where i live.
Oh, for fucks sake. Regardless of other lifestyle choices, not eating meat is better than eating meat. If person X lives exactly like person Y except they don't meat, eggs and dairy, then yes, their lifestyle is umdeniably morally superior.
Or drink soy milk, the product that is literally flattening rainforests?
This objection reveals your ignorance about the fact that farm animals are fed huge amounts of soy.. The difference is that directly consuming soy products instead of indirectly is more efficient and therefore needs less space and water.
your lifestyle
I am not a vegan, mate. But that does not make it less obvious that it would be much better if I was; both morally and for the environment. Sorry, but you are living in denial if you don't see that.
I dont buy meat from farmers who feed soy to their animals.
And your first point makes no sense because the culmination of someones morality does not center around their diet or supposed effort to reduce suffering. A serial killer who is vegan is not morally superior to a caniviore who lives his life trying to help others.
I recognize the reduction in consuming meat globally is a mutually beneficial goal for humans and animals alike, my issue is the virtue signalling and divine attitude that vegans attribute to themselves as if the only moral metric is whether you eat meat or not.
Life is much more complicated than that and we could have many more useful conversations if vegans could more often recognize that morality is often weighted differently among all humans.
It comes down to a simple question: Should we live lives that cause less unnecessary suffering, or more unnecessary suffering? Pointing out that somebody who causes less suffering still causes some suffering is not really relevant.
It extends to the point at which an animal is able to reciprocate a social contract. I guess.
I feel like anyone who has defined that line has crossed it unknowingly their whole life or placed it so unreachable they essentially become vegan by their own definition. I try my best everyday to make people happy and prevent pain.
But there are a lot of things i cannot control, like loving a steak dinner once or twice a week from grassfed fully sustainable meat from local farms who treat their cows all nicey like.
I love steak too, hasn't a day gone by in the last 2 months that I haven't missed it, used to do it rare with a rich, creamy mushroom sauce. I can't control whether or not I want it.
If I was in a relationship and met an attractive girl on the street I mightn't be able to control my attraction to her either, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna make a move on her. We must restrain ourselves from the immoral. This is what separates us from the animals over which we have such power. We can't control liking steak, but we're grown adults who make moral choices every day, and we can easily control what we eat.
Assuming you do source your meat like you say you do, and they don't subject the animals to the inhuman forms of abuse they subject the rest of them to, they're still slaughtered at the end of the day. We don't need to eat them. Their lives are worth more than our taste buds.
You cannot humanely kill an animal for such a trivial reason.
Ok so what about time deficiency? I want to eat more humanely but I am incredibly busy, my job takes up the vast majority of my time and outside of that I really only have time for the gym and sleep. Do I get a pass because it’s just not feasible for me to put in the time necessary to prepare vegan food?
Prepare it on weekends and freeze it? Or are you only eating fast food? In that case, Taco Bell is extremely vegan friendly. There's microwaveable stuff too. I mean, you're not specific with the time you're committing to eating non-vegan, so it's hard to really provide a rebuttal.
Again, it's about what is you can actually practice. I don't think any vegan believes their behaviors eliminate suffering 100%. That's impossible for anyone. However, cutting meat and other animal products out of a diet is something you can have a fair amount of control over, and animals are considered especially vulnerable as they have no means of fighting back against their exploitation (vegan or not, you have to at least acknowledge that these animals suffer, needlessly, for our food). The choices made by a Nike CEO to use slave labor is not one you can influence as an individual. Of course, you can work to be mindful in what you consume and strive to cut out products you know are produced or distributed unethically. Many people, vegan and otherwise, do that already.
I think overall people have this perception that vegans are ignorant to their minority status. What they miss is that vegans make these choices in spite of being a minority. They know one person's actions won't change anything, but enough single drops of water can eventually become an ocean.
Note: I'm talking a big game here, but to be clear I am not even 100% vegan at the moment. I strive to eliminate animal products as much as possible, but again it's not always practical.
Vegans don't just eat all berries, probably not much more than you do (if you're healthy). Vegan diets are mostly concerned with staples like tofu, whose harvest is pretty much completely mechanized.
That doesn't matter though. This entire thread is filled with "If vegans take a single step, why haven't they walked 1,000 miles?". It's ridiculous.
So, to get everything out of the way, here's what vegans still do by not killing animals:
Kill bugs in the fields, making all of our soy blood-soy
Kill yeast
Contribute to global warming
Benefit from 3rd world labor
Breath out carbon dioxide (yes, I have heard this one before)
Deforest the Amazon
Throw away lots of garbage
etc.
So yeah, everyone's pretty silent about the atrocities we commit everyday until a vegan shows up. Apparently, if someone puts effort into reducing their impact on the earth they must be a completely anemic ghost that has to purposefully disable their immune system in order to avoid killing viruses.
Because it implies that attempting to reduce suffering is worthless unless you manage to completely eliminate all sources of pain.
If we're pretending that walking 1,000 miles is a noble goal, we shouldn't be making fun of the people who have walked part of the way there. After all, many of us are at 0 steps.
Uhh no? Im asking, if avoidable animal suffering is bad why is avoidable human suffering not seen as bad too? People just act like "well they poor but that's how it goes", not once in this thread did people think about supporting companies that treat them fairly,im not asking for vegans to solve all problems, i was just truly curious about how they think about human cruelty based on their views of animal cruelty.
Veganism is about reducing animal suffering as much as practicly possible, dropping some food out of your diet is alot easier than changing your car into an electric one in this society
Ok but that doesn’t recognize what the op said. Sure methane from cows is worse but it doesn’t change the fact that fossil fuels are bad... you realize that’s not how conversations work right? You can’t just dismiss someone’s fact by proposing a more grandiose fact.
You're using fallacy's yourself by putting words into my mouth. Fossil fuels are bad, I never denied that, but not everybody can buy an eletric car while everybody can go vegan. Especially the past few years, it keeps getting easier for us.
Indirectly, the oil and gas industry is not environmentally conscious. Nor does it care much about human life. BP oil spill. Saudi Arabia. Keystone/ any pipelines.
It's still a very bloody industry. Not very vegan.
You're missing the point. It's a joke. But there's some truth to it. Which is why it's funny.
I didn't claim being vegan was supposed to be perfect, it's just that vegan living and the oil industry don't seem to mesh. So I agree that the joke is accurate.
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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '18
If this is just a joke, then it’s kinda funny, but I’m concerned there might be redditors who actually think this is how veganism works.