Nice. I’d love to know that he suffered every injury inflicted on the wolf, but doubled.

On the one hand, I’m happy to see fellow vegans all stand up against animal abuse, even though what was done to this wolf wasn’t anywhere near the level of horror carnists inflict on factory farmed animals.

On the other hand, I’m not sure I can get on the bandwagon of inflicting double the suffering these animals experience to the non-vegans that cause it (either by doing it themselves, or paying someone else to do it for them because of their delicate sensibilities).

Firstly because I don’t think a sentient being can experience that much suffering without literally dying to shock (these creatures have their limbs ripped off, skin tore off, sit in their own shit and piss day in and day out, etc.) so doubling that and doing it to non-vegans would essentially just be the same as mass-killing non-vegans.

Secondly, I’m not sure that retributive justice is even the path. Like yes, make abuse and paying for others to abuse on your behalf illegal, no doubt. But a lot of carnists would stop if it was illegal. Only the ones that subvert the system and go to the black market to continue their abuse would have to be jailed to force them to stop abuse.

Once they’re not a threat anymore, what’s the value of inflicting more harm?

Well, I can agree with one thing in this post readily. Retribution is not justice, ever. Past that, man, there’s a lot I don’t even want to engage with here.

Retribution is not justice.

People generally aren’t comfortable engaging with content that makes them confront cognitive dissonance. It’s an extremely effective defense mechanism, and it’s how systems of oppression can be maintained for so long by seemingly rational and well-intentioned people.

Now maybe it’s not that, maybe you’ve engaged with so much vegan content and vegans are so irrational that it gets exhausting having to re-explain to them every time why they’re such massive fucking idiots. I get that, honestly, that’s how religion is for me now. After years and years of engaging with religious fanatics, it just got exhausting, and I don’t really seek that out anymore.

If it’s the latter though, and you’re just exhausted explaining your superior rational/moral position to idiot vegans, I ask you to please humor me and give me a shot.

Or maaaaaaybe I’m tired of defending myself to people looking to force a rhetoric down my throat unprovoked. I don’t claim any superiority, morally, intellectually, or otherwise. From vegans, from the religious, from anywhere else. I do what I consider ‘within reason’ for my part, and I’m happy with that. It gets annoying when people who have no idea what someone else does, how their life is, goes on to proclaim THEIR superiority.

Nobody forced you to comment or engage, that’s on you. If you’re going to continue funding abuse and torture, without taking time to reflect on whether it’s permissible or not morally, more power to you man. I know people normalize evil things, this isn’t news to me.

See, this is why most people hate vegans. You gotta dig as if that makes a difference. You act like people can’t arrive at different conclusions with the same information. You’re so bent on having the moral superiority, that your arguments just turn into shitty ad hom attacks with no substance.

People don’t hate vegans in real life, people bitch online when they’re confronted with uncomfortable facts, but in reality people think you’re virtuous and good (when really this is a misunderstanding of veganism, but whatever).

You’re just as hard-line as me, so is essentially every western person. You’re just hard-line about things you (correctly) understand are immoral. You would never compromise on rape, slavery, genocide, a half a dozen other things because you correctly understand engaging in those actions is a moral abomination. You’d likely include abusing dogs in that too ironically, but not abusing pigs.

People arrive at different conclusions, but people are often wrong. It’s wrong to pay for abuse and torture of cats, dogs, pigs, horses, humans, etc.

You’ll understand that it’s wrong to pay for dog meat. You’ll understand that gassing dogs is wrong. That’s because you were normalized In a society that doesn’t objectify dogs. Your inability to generalize that principle to other more intelligent animals (like pigs) is just a human failing, your inability to universally apply reason when it should be applied.

People hate anyone who wants to shove stuff down their throat. Religious proselytizors, people with strong opinions about meat… Rapists…

For what it’s worth, no, I don’t think it’s wrong to pay for dong meat. Our culture doesn’t like that, but some do. It’s funny how you can say our culture normalizes not viewing dogs as objects. You’re SO close to the point. Just expand that a little bit, and you’ll find that we just hit moral subjectivism.

You’re not a cultural/moral relativist. In the other comment thread I’ll explain the philosophy behind objective morality slowly by helping you build a framework for understanding how we arrive at any piece of knowledge.

In this thread I’ll take a different approach, which is to say functionally nobody is actually a moral relativist. A moral relativist would believe that in Islamic countries, it’s fine that they stone gay people to death because that’s a cultural norm they arrived at. They would believe that raping slaves in the 1840s in America was fine because that was a cultural norm they arrived at.

Nobody actually believes these things, they just use the abstract concept of subjective morality to justify whatever current atrocity they fancy indulging in. For past atrocities that no longer interest you, there’s no moral subjectivism.

People obviously have preferences and tendencies, but sometimes those preferences are wrong. Raping slaves, stoning gays, etc. are not sometimes right based on some subjective collective framework for understanding interactions. Again, I’ll explain the actual philosophy behind this in the other thread, but in this comment I’m just pointing out how nobody actually functionally thinks this way.

And in that other thread I made a simple rebuttal to that view. There are certain things that almost every culture has arrived at as “wrong”. This is the closest thing to moral objectivism as you can get. So, all of your examples here, raping, slavery, killing gays. Notably, they’re almost always crimes against PEOPLE. This is because morality is a system, for humans, to be used for the benefit of humans.

Morality only exists because of the social nature of humans. If we lived entirely alone, we’d just do whatever we want. Because humans don’t function very well like that, we have a series of standards, mostly brought about by the simple idea of empathy for the position of another human. I can put myself in this spot, and it sucks. I don’t want that to happen to me, so I can’t let it happen to anyone else.

Humans, and animals, worldwide have agreed that it’s permissible to eat other species of animal. It’s simply nature. Where we run into issues, and where I think you DO have a moral leg to stand on, is the absolute worst slaughterhouse conditions, factory farms… The “hunter” in this post. People who kill animals to excess, often without intention of actually using the meat. That’s just wasteful and causing suffering for no reason. This is why I said I advocate for reduction of meat use, for sourcing your meat when possible.

Let me pose you a couple of scenarios. What do you think about a subsistence hunter, who lives off the land. Someone who hunts, yes, but uses as much of the animal as they can?

Second scenario, a survival situation. Someone who has been left in an unfortunate situation, where they’re hungry, about to starve, and they happen upon a deer or rabbit they can hunt.

In both of these scenarios, if you believe that morality is objective, then both people are in the wrong. The first shouldn’t use any part of any animal ever, and the second should just die. If morality is objective, and eating meat is objectively wrong, both of the above scenarios are in the wrong. I don’t think you believe that, though. At very least the second scenario, I don’t think any reasonable person would believe the person is in the wrong for killing an animal so that they might survive.

I will admit that there is one angle that I could be swayed on. I’ll give you moral objectivism, if you also give up that morality is relative, as opposed to absolute. Perhaps you can say with certainty that a specific scenario is right or wrong, even if they both include something that is normally morally wrong, such as eating meat. In which case sure, you can make a claim about objectivity, but we still fall flat on the epistemological side. I don’t know the situations of most people who eat meat, and thus I cannot make any kind of true moral claim.

It all boils down to, let people live their lives as long as they’re not doing something completely insane like this person did. You can make the sacrifices it takes to not eat meat, good for you. Others aren’t in that situation for any of a number of reasons, and I’m not going to try to claim superiority to them. If you want to actually spread your gospel, because that’s what it is, then do so with grace and dignity, not vitriol and venom. You might actually change some minds.

I made a simple rebuttal to that view

My guy, I didn’t even express my view yet when you made that comment. This really comes across as bad faith, because I even expressly said I was going to express my view (future tense). Sometimes it’s okay to actually have a discussion and not try to dismantle the other person’s view before they even had a chance to express it

In both of these scenarios, if you believe that morality is objective, then both people are in the wrong

That’s a crude reduction. If you have conflicting wrongs (e.g a human dies or a rabbit dies), then you choose the one that is less wrong, because you have no other option. This isn’t a moral question, it’s a functional one with a very basic moral consideration (is a human worth more than a rabbit). It should be obvious to you by the very existence of people who abstain from animal products that modern western society is not the kind of place where we’re constantly choosing between the life of a pig and a life of a human.

I’ll give you moral objectivism if you also give up that morality is relative

This should stay in the confines of the other thread, because like I said I didn’t even express my view before you made this comment or the other one. I gave you a chance to express your view, and once you have a chance to understand and internalize mine, then you can try reframing this in that thread, though I think you’ll understand why this doesn’t make sense after you read my other comment.

let people live their lives as long as they’re not doing something completely insane like this person did.

Exactly, and to be more specific, what you mean by “completely insane” is “morally unjust” and I entirely agree. Let people live their lives as long as what they’re doing isn’t morally unjustified.

You can make sacrifices it takes to not eat meat

Veganism isn’t activism. It’s not a sacrifice. Or I’ll put it another way, it’s only a sacrifice in the way that not raping is a sacrifice. I have a biological urge to eat and have sex, and I want to engage in these acts in a consensual way. Some people might view consent here as unnecessary, and that you should just follow your biological urges and take what you want so long as nature allows it. As I understand it, that’s a disgusting and incorrect way to go about the world.

I propose we simply keep this to one thread from here out, then. It’s hard to keep track of when anything is posted when it’s back and forth in two threads, and if you’re going to accuse me of arguing in bad faith because of that, then keep it to one.

This will be my last reply to this thread.

Veganism isn’t activism. It’s not a sacrifice…

This is the only part of this I want to really engage with.

I would buy that it’s not a sacrifice, for someone raised in a culture that values not eating meat. If you’re raised from birth to simply eat a vegan diet, you’re right - that’s just life.

It becomes a sacrifice when you ask someone raised in a society that DOES eat meat, for say, 40 years, to not eat meat. You’re asking them to completely change one of the biggest facets of day-to-day life, their diet. I was raised in America, in a family that ate meat 3 times a day. All of my favorite foods have (well, had) meat as the primary ingredient. All of the things I know how to properly prep? Meat-based. You bet your ASS it takes sacrifice to go from meat daily to anything else, just like any other diet change takes sacrifice.

I’m not saying that because woe is me. It’s a sacrifice that is worth making, if not for the moral element, then for the ecological element. It’s also not one I intend to make further sacrifices for. My efforts in changing my diet, the willpower that I can expend doing so, can be better used elsewhere, both for my benefit and society as a whole.

THIS is what I mean when I say that half-measures are fucking great. You can get people on board with half-measures. It’s hard to get anyone on board with a strict all-or-nothing. And, from my perspective, any reduction in meat consumption is undeniably a win. Let’s celebrate wins, instead of obsessing over losses, eh?

I admit, I’m less interested in the moral objective vs moral subjective argument we have going on. Were running into unknowables, and we clearly have a different belief on those unknowables. That’s fine. I’m interested in action. I’m interested in what sort of impact my actions, my rhetoric, have on the world and views of those around me. Those are similarly unknowable, but they have real-world effects, versus just “idk, mortality.”

Agreed on the first part, one thread sounds fine.

I just want to say I was a meat eater for my entire life too up until being a vegan. I wasn’t raised vegan, my family wasn’t vegan, nobody around me was vegan. I still don’t hold that it was a sacrifice. Even if you lived in a society where everyone raped (sounds far fetched but this was allowable 150 years ago to your “property”), it’s not a sacrifice to forego those urges and not engage in what’s been normalized. It’s the bare minimum moral requirement.

Except that it is a sacrifice. Period.

If every person around you is at a BBQ enjoying a fantastic rump roast, and all you got is some… I was gonna say Cole slaw, but that isn’t even vegan usually… idk lettuce? This is EXACTLY my point. It’s a sacrifice because you don’t participate the same way. You don’t get to enjoy the same food, one you may have loved initially. People will be asking you why you aren’t eating. People will be making snide remarks. All of this is friction you do not have to go through, ergo it is a sacrifice.

It may be one that’s worth it -for you- to make. It may be one that brings -you- more joy than the pain it causes. But to pretend it’s not a sacrifice is just… Wrong. A lot of people won’t get that same enjoyment, and a lot of people will feel a lot of pain.

And, the uncomfortable truth I KNOW will be jumped on and attacked - yes, unfortunately, if you live in a society where rape is the norm, to not rape is a sacrifice. Let me state again that sacrifices can, and often should, be made, particularly to lessen human suffering.

The cool thing is, in BOTH of these cases, you can make that sacrifice easier for others by just being decent. Live your life, make the sacrifices, and encourage those around you to make whatever small sacrifice they can, heap praise on them for that, and just… Let the other bits go. Eventually, enough people will make enough sacrifices that society as a whole is different. That’s where we are today, or at least the direction we’re moving in, with things like unconditional support for SA victims and things like the MeToo movement. We’re making it easier for every individual to “sacrifice” so that progress actually happens.

Good on you for choosing the path you have. It’s a good one, just try to be empathetic of those around you. They have different struggles and different priorities, and they may not be in the position to make that sacrifice.

I won’t be offended if you don’t reply to this, partially because we both want to focus on the other thread, but mostly because this is an argument of semantics, which is just us trying to align on the way we use words, and not actually a discussion about something important like what’s right or wrong to do.

You’re entirely ignoring the connotation of the word sacrifice. The connotation of sacrifice is so powerful, it’s mentioned in some definitions, e.g:

“A sacrifice is a loss or something you give up, usually for the sake of a better cause”

I wouldn’t call not raping a slave a sacrifice, even though (to use your words) “you don’t participate the same way, you don’t get to enjoy the same [biological pleasures], one[s] you may have loved initially. People will be asking you why you aren’t [satisfying your primal desires]. People will be making snide remarks. All of this is friction you do not have to go through, ergo it is a sacrifice”. Yet, in common English, it’d be ridiculous to say someone who stops raping their slaves is sacrificing something, because it heavily implies that they’re giving something up for the sake of some grand cause, when really all they’re doing is not engaging in morally reprehensible behavior. It’s not virtuous to not inflict suffering, it’s a moral obligation.

It may be something you say at a technical level given some definition you find, but if you’re actually out with your friends, and someone mentions “oh did you know [some slave owner] stopped raping his slaves because he found religion?” you wouldn’t unironically say “damn what a sacrifice”.

And my point is, those things may be absolutely massive for one person, enough that they’d rather just go with status quo, instead of trying something else. Be the light that lets them see outside of status quo.

Done with this thread, forrealz this time.

I’ll probably keep replying as long as I have something to say, I’m not offended whichever way you decide to go on it lmao

If I lived in the 1850s, I would not have been able to settle for half measures for slavery. There were people who advocated for reform in slavery, e.g make it illegal to physically assault your slaves (similar to wage slaves), those people were in the minority but they existed.

If I was talking to a slave owner, and he started talking about half measures, how he treats his slaves with dignity, works them 10 hours a day and lets them have 5-6 hours to themselves everyday, how he never physically abuses them and let’s the slave families stay together, and how he advocates for reform in slavery to make physical abuse illegal, I would still say what he’s doing is a moral abomination, and say that he has a moral obligation to free his slaves. I’d still be an staunch abolitionist.

Man, I’m fine with wherever you want to reply. I just don’t want another misunderstanding based on the multi threaded nature of our conversation. I’ll assume we’re both arguing in good faith, and go from there.

Half measures are what led up to the civil war and eventually abolishing slavery, and later, the civil rights movement. We didn’t just go to war with ourselves overnight, it took a lot of discourse. Starting with (as much as you can define a starting point) a few people operating a network to liberate people, to some areas not extraditing slaves back south. I admit this isn’t my area of expertise, but it’s still pretty clear. Progress came from people starting with small steps, going “oh hey, this actually isn’t bad, in fact it’s pretty good” and going from there.

We can look back at the people of the past and say they’re abominations, but that’s just coming from the privilege we enjoy today. If you were ACTUALLY in that position in the past, in all likelihood it’d be a lot murkier, I think. You’d probably still be an abolitionist, sure, but you’d necessarily have more nuanced of a view.

Humanity is society. One person, no matter how much vim and vigor they approach the task with, can’t change the giant ocean liner that is human society. You need more people, and you win more people by asking little of them, slowly. Eventually that builds up into a civil war, or a MeToo movement. The alternative is a dictatorship, and I don’t think we need to go down that hypothetical, do we?

Sure, I’d have a nuanced view as an abolitionist, just like I have a nuanced view of veganism.

The only way to truly eliminate all forms of animal suffering you contribute to is to end your own life, but nobody has a moral obligation to commit suicide (this is actually an axiom, sentient beings have a right to life). So what you’re actually obligated to do is not participate in suffering in ways that are possible/practicable. Like people need to drive to work to survive, tires have animal products in them and we currently have no alternative to move 15 miles in 30 minutes that doesn’t use some animal product.

The areas vegans operate in are the areas where there exist actual alternatives. Food, clothing, hygiene, etc.

It’s not actually just universally immoral to have bread with milk in it. If you’re starving in the middle of the desert, and someone hands you a glass of milk and some cheese, you don’t have an obligation to starve yourself (again, because you have a right to life).

What you are obligated to do is when you’re in the store and staring at 2 different brands of bread and one of them has baby cow juice and the other one doesn’t, you take the one that doesn’t. Not as a form of harm reduction, but because it’s not permissible in that context to demand that sort of suffering from a cow just for convenience or taste (a lot of people aren’t familiar with how cows even work, there are people who genuinely believe dairy cows exist for example, as in cows that just always produce milk from the point of adulthood).

You can’t be obligated to do something you’re incapable of doing (this is why it’s not immoral for lions to eat meat, they lack the capacity to act as moral agents). You are however obligated to not demand or inflict suffering.

Obligations or rights sometimes conflict. You have a right to life, but you also have an obligation to not inflict suffering. This is where morality gets harder and we can actually have interesting discussions about how to behave.

What’s deeply uninteresting though is when obligations or rights don’t conflict. Someone wants bacon because it’s tasty, but it requires the inflicting of massive amounts of suffering. This isn’t a complicated calculus, there’s one obligation (don’t inflict suffering), you have the ability to change it, and it doesn’t conflict with your own right to life. Vegans live and exist healthily (all major medical associations in America and Europe have consistently found that veganism is healthy at all stages of life, pregnant, baby, elderly, normal adult, whatever).

Cool, we’re getting to some common ground. This is the approach to animal consumption reduction that I can get behind.

I can agree with just about everything that you posted here, with the only difference being a matter of scale. I consider going against the grain that is the conditions within which you were created and brought up to be something that a lot of people realistically cannot overcome, without so much effort. Some of it is ignorance, some of it is just familiarity, and some of it is that people have priorities other than this thing.

Another angle to consider is the economical angle. Typically vegan items are SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive, or require significant effort to source, such as driving further, which may cause more damage than just eating the milk toast. This is the essence of what I’m trying to get at. It’s very rarely point for point the same, just one is vegan and one is not. If it was, then yes, you can hold the high ground over someone who chooses the one that isn’t vegan.

Ideally, we’d all live off the land, eating sustainable food sources. If you eat meat, it’s something you killed and prepared yourself. In lieu of ever getting to the point where the majority is doing that, though, we instead can choose to make small changes incrementally. Eat meat once a week, or even day, if you used to eat meat for every meal. Get used to sourcing your meat when you choose to eat some. Opt for a vegan, or at least verifiable, option when you can. One day, with enough people doing this and letting go of those attachments, societally, we may have some kind of meat revolution.

No, you misread or misunderstood some of what I was writing. Veganism is not an approach to reduce consumption as far as you feel like, it’s an approach to reduce consumption as far as possible. Those are two very different things. Do you honestly not understand the difference?

Typically vegan items are SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive,

Common talking point, actually false. 5 years ago it was kind of true if you were talking purely about substitutes (e.g replacing beef with beyond meat), but that is no longer true, and beyond meat is vastly more expensive than rice and beans. Like orders of magnitude more expensive. The cheapest food on the planet, by a metric fuckload, is vegan food. Even with the government providing billions of dollars of subsidies for animal flesh.

The entire economic angle is not an actual sticking point for non-vegans, it’s not why you choose to partake in consuming tortured animals. This one actually frustrates me a bit, because there are people who actually do have economic problems, and they generally complain about the price of meat, eggs, and milk. They don’t complain about the price of lettuce, beans, or rice.

Ideally, we’d all live off the land, eating sustainable food sources. If you eat meat, it’s something you killed and prepared yourself.

Inflicting suffering for pleasure is not ideal. I don’t understand what axioms you’re taking that justify taste pleasure over the life of sentient animals.

And we’re back to the moral absolutism and posturing. This is getting old. I’m not a vegan. I do not aim to be. If you are, then fine. That’s your call. I see the difference between an absolute hard-line stance of all meat and animal byproducts are wrong, and a stance that aims to reduce use as much as is realistically possible. And you yourself have said that there are scenarios where killing and eating an animal is ok. We’re splitting hairs here trying to figure out which it is.

We both, as far as I can tell, want better conditions for animals. This is the common ground I was speaking of. I’m just not willing to say that anyone who doesn’t share my specific views is morally bankrupt as you seem to be. There exists a bunch of nuance around the subject that you seem not to want to engage with, as much as you claim I don’t want to.

Look, you keep not eating meat. That’s great, a wonderful thing to aspire to. Personally. If you come swinging at people in just a normal thread, proclaiming your moral superiority, don’t be surprised when people think you’re a hard ass with no empathy for anything outside your rather small world view. Much like penises, though, things like that are best left in pants unless someone asks specifically.

I’m done with this, we’ve circled the bases a few times and we’ve ended up going through the same cycles like, 4 times. The thread is getting cumbersome and I am having a hard time physically reading it on my device. Good luck on your quest. If it’s one to change others, I advise a bit less harsh of a stance. And if it’s personal, maybe keep it that way.