Comedy video about going vegan that has a positive message I think people who care about animal welfare and the environment should be adopting more.
Good on them for… immediately going back to eating meat the first second the month is over?
Yeah, he did go vegetarian afterwards, but…
I knew a lot of people in my lifetime who went cegan or vegetarian and went back sooner or later. I couldn’t even imagine.
It’s a bit for the video. Kinda seemed to me like he wouldn’t have even done it otherwise.
But this is kinda the reason I wanted to post this. Will people want to become vegan if their curiosity and progress towards consuming less animals is met with hostility? I personally don’t think so.
its not just less but type. I would rather have 5x as many people stop eating beef than 1x going vegan. Granted its more an environmental concern over a sanctity of life one.
Good on them for making progress and for making sure they have no regrets. There is too much harm in the world for you to deny yourself things that you’ll miss in order to prevent some of it. Better for you to be happy and well-motivated to join in solidarity with other animals.
(Denying others things, or better yet changing the arrangement of society so it isn’t subsidized, doesn’t take the same kind of willpower).
Are you vegetarian? Because only a vegetarian would think that.
Nope. It took a while, but my diet has become vegan while barely exerting willpower.
I suppose I am a herald of the end-times. The days that a vegan diet can be used to demarcate a subculture built around self-deprivation are numbered. As vegan products get better and animal products get fairly priced, more and more mainstream people will be vegan while being foreign to your ways.
You stand at a crossroads. Do you embrace them in their reduction in harm to animals, do you resent their ease and question their commitment because of it, or do you move off into some kind of hyperveganism which is even more challenging?
Personally this last one seems like a good fit for y’all. Maybe, when the time comes, you could migrate the subculture to require only eating food grown in an enclosed sterile environment, so no animals are killed tilling the soil for soybeans and wheat, and so you don’t eat millions of nematodes and water bears and other microbial animals when you eat a raw salad leaf?
That’s up to you and your conscience, though.
I purposefully portrayed it a bit harsher, because of their own framing.
Sure, it’s a step in the right direction, and I’m all for that, but their own reasoning doesn’t make much sense. I don’t want to cite the whole video here, but they mention so many points for why you should go vegan, and even dispute some that would argue against it, they even say that they don’t have that “craving” for meat or milk any more. They don’t even especially like the burger they ate after the month is over, but still decided that they have to do that, on the exact second the month is over, even though they went out for dinner before, and include it in the video - what kind of attitude is that? Is this all a game to them to produce content?
Heck, he even mentions, that one of the things that would make going vegan easier is for more people to go vegan.
And he even mentioned that industrial livestock farming is one of the most cruel things we do to animals, he mentions that cows are one of the main reasons of the huge environmental impact of our food production, etc (I’m getting tired of having to repeat all this all the time, he even summarizes all of this very well in the video). From that point of view, vegetarians are not really much better than omnivores.
Better for you to be happy and well-motivated to join in solidarity with other animals.
This is exactly one of the points why vegetarians and vegans are not “friends”. Abusing and exploiting animals is not really “joining in solidarity” with them.
\rant over
but their own reasoning doesn’t make much sense
Of course it doesn’t. They’re a non-vegan with empathy talking about animals. Why do you sound surprised?
Better for you to be happy and well-motivated to join in solidarity with other animals.
This is exactly one of the points why vegetarians and vegans are not “friends”. Abusing and exploiting animals is not really “joining in solidarity” with them.
Your friends are already evil. You are evil. I am evil. We all deliberately cause harm, knowingly or unknowingly. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. If you can’t be friends with evil people, you are either lonely or hypocritical.
One of the lighthouses in my activism is Daryl Davis, a black man who befriended Ku Klux Klansmen and got them to leave the Klan. People often stick to convictions out of community or habit, and living in a community where we accept each other’s shortcomings and help each other become better is much more effective than any sort of moral condemnation. As long as everyone inside and outside the community can enforce their personal boundaries.
You’re right that vegetarians aren’t in solidarity with animals, but that doesn’t mean we should never be in solidarity with them. Of course, don’t have solidarity when a vegetarian makes animal product pancakes in a vegan kitchen; but when they do reduce their consumption, why not be their friend and cheer them on? You are better at it than them, but so what? Does a parent look down on their child for not being able to ride a bike?
Just be nice for fuck’s sake.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
If people would really live by this, then why even do anything “ethical”?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate on him (I don’t really have the impression that I hated on him at all, that was criticism at best) for going vegetarian, I even said earlier that it’s a step in the right direction. If this would have been a video on him going vegetarian, I wouldn’t have bothered much. Sure, from a general outside view, vegetarian is better than omnivore, but - again - in the context of the video, he himself shows why there’s not much difference between the two.
Also this is not about me, it doesn’t even matter whether I’m vegan or not. Don’t worry, I don’t go around judging people by what they eat, “some of my best friends are vegetarian”. But those people usually don’t put videos of their eating-habits out there. I’d just have preferred some deeper introspection.
If people would really live by this, then why even do anything “ethical”?
Because you care for people and want to cause them no harm, or at least less? I don’t understand what you mean by the question.
Also this is not about me
I’m sorry, but it is. I have been responding to your response. The response you chose to write. You even recognize the irony of saying “some of my best friends are vegetarian”; some part of you sees you’re doing the same sort of backpedaling that other people saying “some of my best friends are X” are doing.
So how about you and the part of you that chose to put that statement in quotes continue this conversation? That part of you is on to something, and they know you better than a random person on the internet ever could.
Are you now just arguing for the sake of arguing?
Your friends are already evil. You are evil. I am evil. We all deliberately cause harm, knowingly or unknowingly. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
If people would really live by this, then why even do anything “ethical”?
I don’t understand what you mean by the question.
That was a response to your “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism”. With your current response even contradicting your previous statement, i.e. “Because you care for people and want to cause them no harm, or at least less? I don’t understand what you mean by the question.” <- see. There are ethical ways to live/consume in capitalism, not everything is about greed. There is a choice. Which is what vegetarianism and veganism are explicitly about. If you really lived by “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism” then there would be no rationalization for being vegetarian or vegan.
Also still - this whole discussion can be had without going into who I am or what I do. My comment is about the video, in which he went vegan for a while, then decided to eat meat again the first second the time is over, without taking a minute to think about what he did the last month. That section where they were eating the burger could as well have been a discussion about how their month went, and how and why they continue from there. That’s a criticism that can come from anyone, no matter whether they are vegan, vegetarian or omnivore. I never claimed anywhere that I’m vegan or not, it’s irrelevant for this discussion.
Please look up how “no ethical consumption under capitalism” is used in other contexts, because you’re clearly not willing to take my comments in good faith and it would be a shame if you brought this aggressive ignorance to other conversations.
