Veganism: Great lifestyle. Wretched, toxic community (mostly).
EDIT: I want to add I’m very much pro-vegan. They’re literally right. I probably will go vegan as soon as I work out a solution to my eating disorder (ARFID). You just won’t see me in any community. They just seem psychologically unhealthy.
When I was on reddit, I could not be part of the r/vegan community, it was fucked.
The community here on Lemmy was better (though I wasn’t subbed because these communities are mostly newcomers to the vegan scene coming fresh off the high of being morally superior to the carnists).
The good vegan communities were the ones focused on recipes.
If you want to discus animal liberation, good, go do that, but I don’t want to my feed to be a combination of dinner and animal abuse. I’m trying to move past that…
I hate that Vegans are defined by the psychopath edge cases.
I know 3 vegans. Two of them have cats. They aren’t delusional. They know cats are carnivores. They wish people ate more veggies. But live your life, you know?
The other vegan I know choose veganism because of serious life-threatening issues where meat was causing hospital visits. She went cold turkey and will watch you eat a steak and wishing she could do the same.
It’s fucking weird watching people shit on them. All because a psychopath on the internet speaks for all vegans and shoves broccoli into a cats mouth.
The other vegan I know choose veganism because of serious life-threatening issues where meat was causing hospital visits. She went cold turkey and will watch you eat a steak and wishing she could do the same.
That doesn’t really sound like a vegan to me, that’s just a person who is on a plant based diet. Veganism is a moral stance
I wish I knew 3 vegans (or if they tell me who they are). While I have no plans to go there, I’ve been on a kick of learning to cook for other cultures. It’s been a wonderful experience learning to prepare new foods and even helping my teens experience a much more diverse cuisine than otherwise. I’m all for learning to prepare some vegan meals, but so far just lookin at recipes online is not giving me enough “flavor”
I’m most persuaded by the environmental argument for veganism and am totally open to less animal products or fewer meat days
It’s like being a non-smoker on a party where everybody smokes. Almost nobody wants to hear that they’re doing something wrong.
Toxicity is literally in the non-vegan community, warming up the climate and all, decreasing biodiversity, mistreating and killing animals for pleasure.
You see, when you come into a comment thread defending your stance and still decide you need to act like a cunt, that’s exactly why people don’t like vegan communities.
Why not just agree and say “hey yeah, great lifestyle”?
This is everyone’s gripe from the outside. You do you, live a healthy life. Make a good case and many of us will even agree with you: it’s an admittedly healthier pick and better for the earth. But for some reason we can’t stop there, can we?
You can’t say, hey I don’t smoke, it’s not good for you, here’s a source. And then I say “Hey thanks!”. Instead, if you want to be on team vegan, we have to all agree that cigarettes are not just bad for the atmosphere and for lung health, but ALSO that smoking is innately capitalist and supports a corrupt economic structure, it’s mean to tobacco leaves, marijuana and tobacco are the same and have equal rights, using hemp is morally outrageous (just as bad as hurting tobacco leaves), and now we have to call all smokers “smokists” as if to imply that the only thing they ever breathe is smoke, that way we can really show our distaste.
There would be so many more vegans and vegetarians if the communities could just take the win of the lifestyle without requiring the morality and politics at the gate. It’s telling to me that the vegan communities that vegans like the most are on hexbear (defederated by everyone for their assholery) and vegan theory club where the mod/instance admin has a ton of comments signed “death to america” and basically requires political adherence in the comment section lest your comment be deleted.
Well, it is still affecting my planet, and that of my children and future grandchildren. So no, I will not leave it be, thank you. Also, somebody needs to step up for animals who cannot defend themselves. Therefore it is not over with ‘you do you’, it stretches further than that.
But its possible to do that without being an absolute asshole that goes for all or nothing. You eat meat once a month? Literally the same as Liver King. Its this sort of Attitude that pisses people of.
You’ve got some nerve to call me an absolute asshole and think that you’ve got the right attitude. Also, your all or nothing comparison is ridiculous, no clue where you picked that up in the limited comment I made. I dare you to come with arguments against mine instead of preconceived judgement of people who try to make the world a better place by not eating animal products.
I wasn’t calling you an absolute asshole. This was never my I tention. This was more of a general statement.statement.goes for the second part, because some vegans do be like that.
Alright, no harm done. Only the vegans I happen to know are very empathic people who generally care deeply about the wellbeing of animals. Therefore they themselves are hurt quite a bit in the non-vegan world they’re living in. Some of them can’t even bear to sit at the same table where someone else is eating dead animals that have had a miserable life and death. I started changing my diet due to climate and biodiversity reasons (basically out of a responsibility for future generations), but the more I learn about how poorly our massive livestock is treated, the worse it gets. It’s now to the point where this tasty lump of cheese that everyone else is seeing is smeared with blood and tears in my eyes. So I protest when vegans are being portrayed as the bad guys in this day and age.
I don’t have a problem with vegans myself. The ones I know in real life are all good persons which are capable of having a conversation that doesn’t escalate in 3 minutes. However, it happens to be that most vegans I encountered online seem to be absolute assholes, that have some sort of an all or nothing attitude. They aren’t interested in changing someone’s beliefs and habits. They want to have the moral highground and mock about everyone else. Of course industriall farming is bad, but you don’t change anyone’s beliefs by being an asshole and insulting others. And you aren’t able to change someone’s habits against their will.
It was my intention to provide some information on the subject, is that it doesn’t match your perception how you justify your dietary habits that makes it not nice to hear about it? Similar to a smoker who doesn’t want to hear how bad it is to smoke, not only for themselves but also for their environment, including health care later in life? Anyway, we’re in the middle of a worldwide climate crisis that can easily wipe out humankind, hurting innocent animals in the process, and you’re only interested if someone is being nice or not? You’re clearly missing the point here.
Of course, there’s no shortage of battles to fight. What I’m saying is take those battles to their own battleground. Climate change? Sure let’s get after it. Animal rights? Also yes, no reason for unnecessary cruelty whether you eat them or not. But if I agree to eat less meat for any reason, even if it’s the wrong reason or an incomplete reason, you WON that battle. Same if I decide I won’t drink milk, but I still want to eat fish. Or if I decide I’m not going to wear clothing made from animal products. Just take the W and keep the possibility of future conversation. You get literally nothing by saying “Aha, you agree with me, but not absolutely / for the wrong reasons, you fucking carnist” except whatever warm fuzzies it brings you. You can’t one-shot win the war with most people, so why poison the water for some narcissistic dopamine hit and prevent earnest discussion in the future?
Telling people things they don’t want to hear will never make you popular of course, but I believe in the power of repetition. I don’t do this for some dopamine fix, I’m just the guy that points at the iceberg while being called a party pooper on the Titanic. I think it is important to say so, even when people plug their ears singing lalala. Hopefully the course will change a little bit, and some people make it out on the life boats.
while you can’t prove a negative, it is possible to find evidence for a positive claim. so, very much, you don’t know that. the truest thing anyone can say is that there is not a conclusive study that supports the claim.
Even if plants might feel pain, we are certain that animals feel pain. Also if you think for whatever reason that plants feel pain, then, well, a vegan diet uses less plants because its a more efficient food source. Plants feeling pain, whether true or false, isn’t an argument against veganism in any way.
They don’t, but they also kinda do … They communicate with each other and with animals, they have different chemical reactions to different stimuli, etc. just because they’re different from you doesn’t mean they don’t suffer. Probably less than factory animals, that’s for sure, ofc. But not everyone that eats meat supports that shit.
I just want to ask for more details on the “they’re litterally right” part. Mostly cause I didn’t think the had an official organized statement to be right about. But I don’t really follow them, so maybe I’m missing something.
I will agree with you on B and C. Not so much on A. Not saying A isn’t true, just that it isn’t as simple as most people think. And probably is impossible to prove due to all the unknown side effects. An example of a side effect not related to veganism is the effect monocrop farming has on bees. Noone saw that coming until it happened. So changes to what is planted and such to support veganism could turn out to be less sustainable for reasons we can’t fathom. Similar on the “better for the planet”. We can’t really know that. So I wouldn’t put that under “litterally” right. Just probably right.
In general I think diversity is better than one thing or the other. In the US the balance is way over toward the animal side. Shifting toward less of that would for sure be good. But going all the way to no animal products will probably have it’s own issues on things.
I didn’t think the had an official organized statement
There sort of is. The term “vegan” was coined by some members of the Vegetarian Society of the UK in the 1940s (at the time veganism and vegan diet were mostly referred to by terms such as “strict vegetarianism” or “no animal food” etc.), who shortly after founded the Vegan Society [of the UK]. The latter has an “official” definition of veganism:
Of course individual vegans may have slightly different definitions, and may interpret them differently, but as a whole this seems to be a fairly accurate definition for many vegans (although there are some exceptions, e.g. people who adopt plant-based diets for (percieved or actual) health benefits, or religious reasons, sometimes (but not always) also refer to themselves as “vegans”).
As to the “literally right” part (I assume the OP was referring to veganism in general, not the specific issue of the thread), it mostly boils down to whether or not we think the statement “it is (morally) wrong to unnecessarily cause harm to animals” is correct. Since most people (with perhaps the exception of some with rare medical conditions) can survive just fine on a diet free of animal products (same goes for clothing etc.), we can conclude that it is at least unnecessary to use animal products. Thus, if we agree with the rest of the statement (i.e. that exploiting animals for their meat or other products causes them harm) we should also agree with veganism as an ethical stance. Naturally this could be discussed in much more detail and with many caveats, but for me this is more or less the core of the argument. And as it turns out, a lot of moral philosophers from different meta-ethical schools (such as utilitarianism, Kantian ethics or virtue ethics) seem to agree at the very least that the arguments in favour of veganism are much stronger than those in defense of eating meat (and particularly those in defense of factory farming). Some further reading for those interested:
Yeah, I don’t consider any moral stance to be “litterally right”. They seem like opposites to me. And clearly philosophy is by definition is a personal view point.
Thanks for the history and such. Your comment adds a lot of value to the discussion, which is great to see.
kant himself was not a vegetarian, and did not advocate for it. modern philosophers who have attempted to shoehorn animal rights into Kantian ethics are thoroughly rebutted.
I didn’t say anything about Kant himself (Kant also thought that non-human animals were basically just “things” without rationality or self-consciousness, which is however in direct conflict with the current scientific consensus. Kant still argued in favour of treating animals “humanely”, just not for their own sake). Anyway, some well-known and well-respected contemporary philosophers who argue(d) from a Kantian perspective in favour of animal rights include e.g. Christine Korsgaard or Tom Regan, and many lesser known philosophers (see e.g. here for a recent example). I also see no indication that these types of arguments as a whole are supposedly “thoroughly rebutted” (not that serious philosophy really works like that anyway). Some other philosophers disagree with some of their arguments, of course (this is normal in philosophy), and many don’t subscribe to Kantianism in the first place, but afaik most of them tend to take issue with how Kantian ethics is applied (or that it is applied) moreso than that they’re trying to defend animal exploitation as such. Either way, none of that changes the fact that ethicists have been using Kantian ethics (among many other meta-ethical frameworks, as I said before) to argue in favour of animal rights, and that there aren’t really many arguments in defense of killing animals for food (in particular in the context of factory farming) that find widespread support (among moral philosophers, that is).
The author of the article you mentioned (Alex Howe) is a good example for what I insinuated: He takes issue with Korsgaard’s argument (and, it seems, Kantian ethics more generally), but in his PhD thesis argues for granting “basic citizenship rights” to domestic animals (including farm animals), which is arguably a far more radical position than veganism, which merely posits that it is immoral to exploit (or be cruel towards) animals (e.g. as a food resource). Either way, if you have an issue with Kantian ethics and how they are applied to animal rights, I suggest you take it up with a Kantian (which I am not). And, even if I am repeating myself, none of this has any direct relevance to my earlier point, which is that many moral philosophers from many different schools of thought (including, but by no means limited to, Kantian ethics) have arrived at conclusions which are at least similar to the basic vegan stance, i.e. that unnecessarily causing harm to (sentient) animals, e.g. by exploiting them as food, is immoral.
far more kantian philosophers (or bare practitioners) reject claims for animal rights, and rightly so. mentioning kant in this context is falsely propping up the animal rights position. why not depend entirely on utilitarianism and other ethical philosophies which do support animal rights?
I probably would have been diagnosed ARFID as a kid if it was a thing back then. But switching to a plant based diet ten years ago actually made me try MORE foods. Before that, it was tea and toast for breakfast, jacket potato or chips for lunch and crisps and chocolate for dinner. Maybe once or twice I week I might boil a bit of sweetcorn or carrot to go with my lunch. So yeah, very poor diet.
Even my mum, who was quite against my diet change at first, had to admit that it was the best thing for me. You tend to become more aware of what you’re eating in terms of nutrition.
Also a lot of my physical and mental health problems eased up. I used to find it very difficult to eat breakfast if I had to wake up early, I’d feel sick and struggle to swallow food, I don’t know why exactly, but after I switched, I can eat at 5 in the morning, no problem.
I’m not vegan (I eat a fish finger or two now and then, maybe 3 or 4 times a month), but yeah definitely I feel better in both mind and body since cutting out dairy and eggs (I know for a fact eggs were triggering my anxiety and low mood, dairy was the physical).
Here in the UK, it’s much easier to follow a plant based diet in recent years. On the negative side, there’s a lot more vegan junk food and highly processed meat alternatives available now.
The key to enjoying a plant based diet is to appreciate plant foods for what they are. Don’t think that you need to replace your meat with a fake meat. It’s more costly too.
Veganism: Great lifestyle. Wretched, toxic community (mostly).
EDIT: I want to add I’m very much pro-vegan. They’re literally right. I probably will go vegan as soon as I work out a solution to my eating disorder (ARFID). You just won’t see me in any community. They just seem psychologically unhealthy.
As a vegan, can confirm.
When I was on reddit, I could not be part of the r/vegan community, it was fucked.
The community here on Lemmy was better (though I wasn’t subbed because these communities are mostly newcomers to the vegan scene coming fresh off the high of being morally superior to the carnists).
The good vegan communities were the ones focused on recipes.
If you want to discus animal liberation, good, go do that, but I don’t want to my feed to be a combination of dinner and animal abuse. I’m trying to move past that…
Sounds like someone should start a recipe only sub
[email protected]
Good for y’all.
What is your best breakfast recipe that isn’t oatmeal?
The texture horrifies me, but it seems to be the go-to these days.
I like peanut butter toasts, but my son is allergic to peanuts and coming to that age where he touches everything. So I need to find alternatives.
I highly recommend scrambled tofu.
By the name, I assume that it is similar to scrambled eggs, but with tofu?
I’ll look into that. Thanks
I hate that Vegans are defined by the psychopath edge cases.
I know 3 vegans. Two of them have cats. They aren’t delusional. They know cats are carnivores. They wish people ate more veggies. But live your life, you know?
The other vegan I know choose veganism because of serious life-threatening issues where meat was causing hospital visits. She went cold turkey and will watch you eat a steak and wishing she could do the same.
It’s fucking weird watching people shit on them. All because a psychopath on the internet speaks for all vegans and shoves broccoli into a cats mouth.
I’m not judging vegans. I’m judging vegan communities. Big difference.
That doesn’t really sound like a vegan to me, that’s just a person who is on a plant based diet. Veganism is a moral stance
I wish I knew 3 vegans (or if they tell me who they are). While I have no plans to go there, I’ve been on a kick of learning to cook for other cultures. It’s been a wonderful experience learning to prepare new foods and even helping my teens experience a much more diverse cuisine than otherwise. I’m all for learning to prepare some vegan meals, but so far just lookin at recipes online is not giving me enough “flavor”
I’m most persuaded by the environmental argument for veganism and am totally open to less animal products or fewer meat days
It’s like being a non-smoker on a party where everybody smokes. Almost nobody wants to hear that they’re doing something wrong. Toxicity is literally in the non-vegan community, warming up the climate and all, decreasing biodiversity, mistreating and killing animals for pleasure.
You see, when you come into a comment thread defending your stance and still decide you need to act like a cunt, that’s exactly why people don’t like vegan communities.
That didn’t seem particularly cunt-ish to me.
Yeah I don’t get all these crazy harsh responses to this particular comment.
They specifically responded to someone who has dietary issues and tried to make them feel bad for something OP didn’t choose.
Literally no reason to add the last part except to make themselves feel superior.
You just can’t help yourself can you?
Why not just agree and say “hey yeah, great lifestyle”?
This is everyone’s gripe from the outside. You do you, live a healthy life. Make a good case and many of us will even agree with you: it’s an admittedly healthier pick and better for the earth. But for some reason we can’t stop there, can we?
You can’t say, hey I don’t smoke, it’s not good for you, here’s a source. And then I say “Hey thanks!”. Instead, if you want to be on team vegan, we have to all agree that cigarettes are not just bad for the atmosphere and for lung health, but ALSO that smoking is innately capitalist and supports a corrupt economic structure, it’s mean to tobacco leaves, marijuana and tobacco are the same and have equal rights, using hemp is morally outrageous (just as bad as hurting tobacco leaves), and now we have to call all smokers “smokists” as if to imply that the only thing they ever breathe is smoke, that way we can really show our distaste.
There would be so many more vegans and vegetarians if the communities could just take the win of the lifestyle without requiring the morality and politics at the gate. It’s telling to me that the vegan communities that vegans like the most are on hexbear (defederated by everyone for their assholery) and vegan theory club where the mod/instance admin has a ton of comments signed “death to america” and basically requires political adherence in the comment section lest your comment be deleted.
Well, it is still affecting my planet, and that of my children and future grandchildren. So no, I will not leave it be, thank you. Also, somebody needs to step up for animals who cannot defend themselves. Therefore it is not over with ‘you do you’, it stretches further than that.
But its possible to do that without being an absolute asshole that goes for all or nothing. You eat meat once a month? Literally the same as Liver King. Its this sort of Attitude that pisses people of.
You’ve got some nerve to call me an absolute asshole and think that you’ve got the right attitude. Also, your all or nothing comparison is ridiculous, no clue where you picked that up in the limited comment I made. I dare you to come with arguments against mine instead of preconceived judgement of people who try to make the world a better place by not eating animal products.
I wasn’t calling you an absolute asshole. This was never my I tention. This was more of a general statement.statement.goes for the second part, because some vegans do be like that.
Alright, no harm done. Only the vegans I happen to know are very empathic people who generally care deeply about the wellbeing of animals. Therefore they themselves are hurt quite a bit in the non-vegan world they’re living in. Some of them can’t even bear to sit at the same table where someone else is eating dead animals that have had a miserable life and death. I started changing my diet due to climate and biodiversity reasons (basically out of a responsibility for future generations), but the more I learn about how poorly our massive livestock is treated, the worse it gets. It’s now to the point where this tasty lump of cheese that everyone else is seeing is smeared with blood and tears in my eyes. So I protest when vegans are being portrayed as the bad guys in this day and age.
I don’t have a problem with vegans myself. The ones I know in real life are all good persons which are capable of having a conversation that doesn’t escalate in 3 minutes. However, it happens to be that most vegans I encountered online seem to be absolute assholes, that have some sort of an all or nothing attitude. They aren’t interested in changing someone’s beliefs and habits. They want to have the moral highground and mock about everyone else. Of course industriall farming is bad, but you don’t change anyone’s beliefs by being an asshole and insulting others. And you aren’t able to change someone’s habits against their will.
(Except you’ve already proved their point in other comments, and even jumped to conclusions because you need to feel better than everyone)
You could step up for animals while still being a nice person - it was your decision not to.
It was my intention to provide some information on the subject, is that it doesn’t match your perception how you justify your dietary habits that makes it not nice to hear about it? Similar to a smoker who doesn’t want to hear how bad it is to smoke, not only for themselves but also for their environment, including health care later in life? Anyway, we’re in the middle of a worldwide climate crisis that can easily wipe out humankind, hurting innocent animals in the process, and you’re only interested if someone is being nice or not? You’re clearly missing the point here.
Of course, there’s no shortage of battles to fight. What I’m saying is take those battles to their own battleground. Climate change? Sure let’s get after it. Animal rights? Also yes, no reason for unnecessary cruelty whether you eat them or not. But if I agree to eat less meat for any reason, even if it’s the wrong reason or an incomplete reason, you WON that battle. Same if I decide I won’t drink milk, but I still want to eat fish. Or if I decide I’m not going to wear clothing made from animal products. Just take the W and keep the possibility of future conversation. You get literally nothing by saying “Aha, you agree with me, but not absolutely / for the wrong reasons, you fucking carnist” except whatever warm fuzzies it brings you. You can’t one-shot win the war with most people, so why poison the water for some narcissistic dopamine hit and prevent earnest discussion in the future?
Telling people things they don’t want to hear will never make you popular of course, but I believe in the power of repetition. I don’t do this for some dopamine fix, I’m just the guy that points at the iceberg while being called a party pooper on the Titanic. I think it is important to say so, even when people plug their ears singing lalala. Hopefully the course will change a little bit, and some people make it out on the life boats.
Have you stopped to think that plants also suffer stress when being picked?
It’s kinda one-faceted to just ignore that suffering while focusing on other suffering don’t you think?
True ethical consumption doesn’t exist the way you have it defined.
Yes. And they don’t
you can’t prove this
And you can’t prove it either. provide some evidence for your claim (that isn’t some unrelated study misinterpreted by silly news anchors)
while you can’t prove a negative, it is possible to find evidence for a positive claim. so, very much, you don’t know that. the truest thing anyone can say is that there is not a conclusive study that supports the claim.
Even if plants might feel pain, we are certain that animals feel pain. Also if you think for whatever reason that plants feel pain, then, well, a vegan diet uses less plants because its a more efficient food source. Plants feeling pain, whether true or false, isn’t an argument against veganism in any way.
the crux of the argument that they might feel pain is not that it is wrong, but that it is inevitable, so it cannot be wrong
They don’t, but they also kinda do … They communicate with each other and with animals, they have different chemical reactions to different stimuli, etc. just because they’re different from you doesn’t mean they don’t suffer. Probably less than factory animals, that’s for sure, ofc. But not everyone that eats meat supports that shit.
The plants communicate for survival because of natural selection, not because they are avoiding pain
In this case, no, they were not right, as they were suggesting feeding cats a vegan diet, which is the opposite of being right.
I just want to ask for more details on the “they’re litterally right” part. Mostly cause I didn’t think the had an official organized statement to be right about. But I don’t really follow them, so maybe I’m missing something.
Veganism is, in fact:
A. Far more sustainable.
B. Perfectly healthy.
C. Completely possible to adapt to.
Veganism, without a doubt, would be better for the planet, and probably better for humans. I simply don’t like the communities.
I will agree with you on B and C. Not so much on A. Not saying A isn’t true, just that it isn’t as simple as most people think. And probably is impossible to prove due to all the unknown side effects. An example of a side effect not related to veganism is the effect monocrop farming has on bees. Noone saw that coming until it happened. So changes to what is planted and such to support veganism could turn out to be less sustainable for reasons we can’t fathom. Similar on the “better for the planet”. We can’t really know that. So I wouldn’t put that under “litterally” right. Just probably right. In general I think diversity is better than one thing or the other. In the US the balance is way over toward the animal side. Shifting toward less of that would for sure be good. But going all the way to no animal products will probably have it’s own issues on things.
There sort of is. The term “vegan” was coined by some members of the Vegetarian Society of the UK in the 1940s (at the time veganism and vegan diet were mostly referred to by terms such as “strict vegetarianism” or “no animal food” etc.), who shortly after founded the Vegan Society [of the UK]. The latter has an “official” definition of veganism:
Of course individual vegans may have slightly different definitions, and may interpret them differently, but as a whole this seems to be a fairly accurate definition for many vegans (although there are some exceptions, e.g. people who adopt plant-based diets for (percieved or actual) health benefits, or religious reasons, sometimes (but not always) also refer to themselves as “vegans”).
As to the “literally right” part (I assume the OP was referring to veganism in general, not the specific issue of the thread), it mostly boils down to whether or not we think the statement “it is (morally) wrong to unnecessarily cause harm to animals” is correct. Since most people (with perhaps the exception of some with rare medical conditions) can survive just fine on a diet free of animal products (same goes for clothing etc.), we can conclude that it is at least unnecessary to use animal products. Thus, if we agree with the rest of the statement (i.e. that exploiting animals for their meat or other products causes them harm) we should also agree with veganism as an ethical stance. Naturally this could be discussed in much more detail and with many caveats, but for me this is more or less the core of the argument. And as it turns out, a lot of moral philosophers from different meta-ethical schools (such as utilitarianism, Kantian ethics or virtue ethics) seem to agree at the very least that the arguments in favour of veganism are much stronger than those in defense of eating meat (and particularly those in defense of factory farming). Some further reading for those interested:
Yeah, I don’t consider any moral stance to be “litterally right”. They seem like opposites to me. And clearly philosophy is by definition is a personal view point. Thanks for the history and such. Your comment adds a lot of value to the discussion, which is great to see.
kant himself was not a vegetarian, and did not advocate for it. modern philosophers who have attempted to shoehorn animal rights into Kantian ethics are thoroughly rebutted.
I didn’t say anything about Kant himself (Kant also thought that non-human animals were basically just “things” without rationality or self-consciousness, which is however in direct conflict with the current scientific consensus. Kant still argued in favour of treating animals “humanely”, just not for their own sake). Anyway, some well-known and well-respected contemporary philosophers who argue(d) from a Kantian perspective in favour of animal rights include e.g. Christine Korsgaard or Tom Regan, and many lesser known philosophers (see e.g. here for a recent example). I also see no indication that these types of arguments as a whole are supposedly “thoroughly rebutted” (not that serious philosophy really works like that anyway). Some other philosophers disagree with some of their arguments, of course (this is normal in philosophy), and many don’t subscribe to Kantianism in the first place, but afaik most of them tend to take issue with how Kantian ethics is applied (or that it is applied) moreso than that they’re trying to defend animal exploitation as such. Either way, none of that changes the fact that ethicists have been using Kantian ethics (among many other meta-ethical frameworks, as I said before) to argue in favour of animal rights, and that there aren’t really many arguments in defense of killing animals for food (in particular in the context of factory farming) that find widespread support (among moral philosophers, that is).
I knew youd reference korsgaard. but her view is far from mainstream and incisively dismantled in Why Kant Animals Have Rights?
The author of the article you mentioned (Alex Howe) is a good example for what I insinuated: He takes issue with Korsgaard’s argument (and, it seems, Kantian ethics more generally), but in his PhD thesis argues for granting “basic citizenship rights” to domestic animals (including farm animals), which is arguably a far more radical position than veganism, which merely posits that it is immoral to exploit (or be cruel towards) animals (e.g. as a food resource). Either way, if you have an issue with Kantian ethics and how they are applied to animal rights, I suggest you take it up with a Kantian (which I am not). And, even if I am repeating myself, none of this has any direct relevance to my earlier point, which is that many moral philosophers from many different schools of thought (including, but by no means limited to, Kantian ethics) have arrived at conclusions which are at least similar to the basic vegan stance, i.e. that unnecessarily causing harm to (sentient) animals, e.g. by exploiting them as food, is immoral.
far more kantian philosophers (or bare practitioners) reject claims for animal rights, and rightly so. mentioning kant in this context is falsely propping up the animal rights position. why not depend entirely on utilitarianism and other ethical philosophies which do support animal rights?
animal rights are simply incongruent with Kantian ethics, no matter how many academics attempt to make tenure on claiming otherwise.
I’m on a similar train. Once I get over myself, I’m going vegan.
I probably would have been diagnosed ARFID as a kid if it was a thing back then. But switching to a plant based diet ten years ago actually made me try MORE foods. Before that, it was tea and toast for breakfast, jacket potato or chips for lunch and crisps and chocolate for dinner. Maybe once or twice I week I might boil a bit of sweetcorn or carrot to go with my lunch. So yeah, very poor diet.
Even my mum, who was quite against my diet change at first, had to admit that it was the best thing for me. You tend to become more aware of what you’re eating in terms of nutrition.
Also a lot of my physical and mental health problems eased up. I used to find it very difficult to eat breakfast if I had to wake up early, I’d feel sick and struggle to swallow food, I don’t know why exactly, but after I switched, I can eat at 5 in the morning, no problem.
I’m not vegan (I eat a fish finger or two now and then, maybe 3 or 4 times a month), but yeah definitely I feel better in both mind and body since cutting out dairy and eggs (I know for a fact eggs were triggering my anxiety and low mood, dairy was the physical).
Here in the UK, it’s much easier to follow a plant based diet in recent years. On the negative side, there’s a lot more vegan junk food and highly processed meat alternatives available now.
The key to enjoying a plant based diet is to appreciate plant foods for what they are. Don’t think that you need to replace your meat with a fake meat. It’s more costly too.
Sorry for the essay. Good luck!
According to people following the carnivore diet, they’re wrong.