Why I'm proud to be a vegan

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/why-im-proud-to-be-a-vegan-20160113-gm4t63.html

by apsec112 • 11 years ago

9 16 11 years ago

smh.com.au

Personally I avoid moral and ethical discussion because I think it takes real discipline to create a convincing, general, elegant, and accessible moral framework by which to convince others, and I don't think anyone has a go-to framework yet.

In fact, I think having a framework for anything is uncommon and difficult (concurrency and parallelism, cognitive science, causal learning, math). The consequence of discussing without a framework is that we're really just thinking about what we want, and working backward to find any reason for it, unwilling to just say "It's what I want."

I've yet to meet a vegan that provides me a framework with accessibility and clarity, and this article is no exception. I don't even have a moral or ethical framework for myself yet, because I know it must be incredibly hard, and I feel like embarking on a search for one would be like wasting one's mathematical career on P ? NP. I'm not a philosophical genius. I'm just a person with feelings.

With morality and ethics, it's either you already agree with my values or you don't. It's nigh impossible for me to persuade you in the value of Jesus the Christ. You would expect me to solve some unsolved philosophical questions with clarity and accessibility, and I likely wouldn't even scratch the surface of the problem.

I don't think any vegan is about to come out with a blockbuster theory that smashes through the philosophical community, building general consensus. In the meantime, they're just having feelings like I do, and trying to find justifications for them post-fact.

Do you already have the same feelings as I do? Great. Now we can make some arguments about achieving our mutual feelings. But I'm not going to pretend that it's some conclusion of a logical foundation.

zurn3• 11 years ago

I think this desire is a case of the best being the enemy of good.

The ethical case for veganism is accessible for people who accept the rather mainstream premises that we have man made climate change and unethical treatment of production animals, and working against them is the ethical thing to do.

threatofrain4• 11 years ago

If you're talking about climate change, it seems quite distracting to think about animal suffering. The focus then should be on making food production more ecologically sound. It would also follow that if we make animal suffering ecologically sound, then we shouldn't care as much anymore, and instead redirect society's very finite energy and attention to other issues.

This is like when people argue that death penalty is bad because it's so expensive. Then it would follow that their argument becomes disarmed if we make the death penalty cheaper. Somehow it feels like they were really arguing that death penalty is evil, but they came up with a logistical argument. Logistical arguments have logistical solutions. This is a consequence of working backward from a feeling they wanted to justify -- the problem framing and solution are orthogonal to what they really want.

If we were to talk about climate change or ecological damage, our focus should really be on energy and pollution from industrial and transportation output.

I also think my point stands that I haven't heard of any clear and convincing moral or ethical framework for veganism. You're building a sideways case for climate change.

erdeszt• 11 years ago

Even if I'd have a moral framework to start a discussion upon I wouldn't be able to convince you to stop eating meat because it was not a choice you made based on facts and rational arguments but something you've born into. Unless you find the moral values yourself you'll be eating meat forever.

threatofrain4• 11 years ago

That's exactly my thinking about moral and ethical argumentation. If we already share the same values, lucky for us, we have a foundation to build upon. If not, oh well, let's look for areas we can agree upon.

I think moral consensus is successfully used when the right historical moment has come along, and the tipping point has come to the old moral majority. Obama has made a similar point in his recent arguments about gun policy, stating that for some issues, there just isn't the moral consensus to do pragmatic work.

The likelihood is that one cannot build a bridge across values, and that values are axiomatic. Either you accept them or you don't. But if you built a blockbuster theory that built consensus in the philosophical community, those effects would probably begin to ripple outward. I think that's incredible work.

voidr• 11 years ago

Detractors of veganism often like to tout the fundamental right of personal choice: "I respect your choice to be vegan, now respect mine to eat meat". What such proponents are failing to consider is that when a personal choice has a victim, it is no longer just personal. Just as it is morally bankrupt to have the opinion that women are inferior to men, it is equally unacceptable to subject a living, feeling, and consciously aware animal to death, just so your personal choice can be satisfied. So, the next time you think to ridicule a vegan, consider that it is people like vegans who have led the charge for every great inequality that the world has ever seen. People who weren't prepared to let morality be obscured by the status quo. Without people like vegans, we would still be living in a society where women could not even vote.

The author is trying hard to convey the supremacy of vegans over the rest of humanity.

You know somebody is just trying to stir up a flamewar when they bring sexism into the mix for no good reason.

Carnivores eat other animals, are they immoral beings? Is nature immoral then?

Contrary to what the author is trying to make you believe, by definition being a vegan is a personal choice, and nothing more.

If you care about animals, you should support PETA.

If you want to personally protest against the horrible treatment of animals on a lot of the farms, choose to buy free range products.

If you just want to be vegan, fine, do that and respect that not everyone is like you(the same thing vegans ask) and a lot of people prefer that juicy meat.

cholantesh• 11 years ago

I'm not a vegan and I think the article is self-aggrandizing fluff. However, this rhetorical question you pose:

Carnivores eat other animals, are they immoral beings? Is nature immoral then?

is one that has been addressed by vegans for a long time, usually on the basis of biology (carnivores are literally incapable of extracting nutritional content from plants, where we generally have that choice), intelligence (some animals are just as intelligent as young humans), and moral agency (the question of whether animals have it). I'm not saying I agree with these arguments, but they exist, and are worthy of discussion. Peter Singer's Animal Liberation is the work that explained these ideas best, much better than I could. I think it's a great read.

xlm1717• 11 years ago

If I understand correctly, this line of reasoning states that because animals can't make the choice, we can't make it for them (we could feed them all kibbles if we wanted), but since humans can make the choice, then we should make that choice for all of them.

k__• 11 years ago

I always find moral based decisions questionable.

If you're vegan because of some practical reasons, like you think it's healthier, or because it is uneconomical to raise animals to eat them, why not.

But if you simply think "vegans are the true moral bastions of society" like the text says, you're no better than any religion on the planet.

pigpaws• 11 years ago

I eat animals and wear their skin. Get over it you pretentious cunt.

herval• 11 years ago

"Vegans are often ridiculed, abused and written off as self-righteous extremists who like nothing more than to push their "beliefs" upon others."

..."vegans are the true moral bastions of society."

Hmmm.

Why I'm proud to be a vegan

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