vegan
Please also check out vegantheoryclub.org for a great set of well-run communities for vegan news, cooking, gardening, and art. It is not federated with LW, but it is a nice, cozy, all-in-one space for vegans.
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Welcome
Welcome to c/[email protected]. Broadly, this community is a place to discuss veganism. Discussion on intersectional topics related to the animal rights movement are also encouraged.
What is Veganism?
'Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals ...'
— abridged definition from The Vegan Society
Rules
The rules are subject to change, especially upon community feedback.
- Discrimination is not tolerated. This includes speciesism.
- Topics not relating to veganism are subject to removal.
- Posts are to be as accessible as practicable:
- pictures of text require alt-text;
- paywalled articles must have an accessible non-paywalled link;
- use the original source whenever possible for a news article.
- Content warnings are required for triggering content.
- Bad-faith carnist rhetoric & anti-veganism are not allowed, as this is not a space to debate the merits of veganism. Anyone is welcome here, however, and so good-faith efforts to ask questions about veganism may be given their own weekly stickied post in the future.
- before jumping into the community, we encourage you to read examples of common fallacies here.
- if you're asking questions about veganism, be mindful that the person on the other end is trying to be helpful by answering you and treat them with at least as much respect as they give you.
- Posts and comments whose contents – text, images, etc. – are largely created by a generative AI model are subject to removal. We want you to be a part of the vegan community, not a multi-head attention layer running on a server farm.
- No brigading, either off-site or on-site. An incitement to brigade includes two elements: a call to disruptive action and a specific direction outside of this community in which to take that action. Exceptions include:
- Calls to boycott.
- Calls to in-person protest of a government, high-profile individual, or company/organization.
- Votes provided they have a sufficiently broad target audience or provably effective controls against vote brigading.
- Petitions.
- All Lemmy.World Terms of Service also apply.
Resources on Veganism
A compilation of many vegan resources/sites in a Google spreadsheet:
Here are some documentaries that are recommended to watch if planning to or have recently become vegan:
- You Will Never Look at Your Life in the Same Way Again
- Dominion (2018) (CW: gore, animal abuse)
Vegan Fediverse
Lemmy: vegantheoryclub.org
Mastodon: veganism.social
Other Vegan Communities
General Vegan Comms
Circlejerk Comms
Vegan Food / Cooking
Attribution
- Banner image credit: Jean Weber of INRA on Wikimedia Commons
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While waiting for it, the air went out of the fake-meat balloon.
To be clear, I do not think this is a good thing.
Addendum: This information is completely relevant. Downvoting inconvenient facts does not make them go away.
How is that not just a techbro problem?
Not sure I understand. My point was that fake meats were seen as a great stealth solution. If only the meat was completely realistic, meat lovers would switch to it. Like smoking and electronic cigarettes, basically. No, it was never a solution that would please purist vegans. But personally I just want people to eat less meat, even tech bros if possible. So I was hopeful.
And it turns out it's not enough. Both Impossible and Beyond are tasty and pretty damn realistic, I have tried them. But the revolution did not happen. The cost differential and dropped and doesn't fully explain it. The psychological resistance is just tougher than expected.
Solely going off their burger patties (haven't tried other stuff) I wouldn't call beyond realistic, though it is very tasty (imo moreso than actual beef). It definitely doesn't taste the same though.
I think there's also a cultural issue, some people at least here in germany still consider it weird if you order the vegan/vegetarian version of anything, especially if you aren't entirely vegan yourself. If that sort of pressure exists it's also less likely for anyone to try plant based alternatives, no matter how good.
I get that a lot. I order a vegetarian option, then immediately get asked in a confused way if I'm a vegetarian. I'm not, but sometimes I choose to not eat meat every meal.
Agreed on both points. I also found the Beyond burger extremely tasty, sort of too good to be real. The Impossible burger was more realistic but less tasty!
Of course you're right about the social pressure. And it's a crazy situation, given the ecological disaster that beef is. Personally I quite enjoy performatively ordering the vegan burger (I am not fully vegan) and making others squirm when they go for the beef version. I like to insist loudly that this is just my personal choice, that they should get whatever they want, no judgement. And that's true, sort of. Not gonna win any converts by browbeating people. But humans are social animals. Someone has to show the way.
Ask any vegetarian and they’ll tell you it’s absolutely delusional to believe that.
And yet venture investors put a ton of money onto the bet. Mistaken, maybe. "Absolutely delusional" - that's hyperbole.
Since apparently you think this is all a waste of time, what's your solution for getting people off meat?
Price hikes to reflect the true environmental cost of „production” and all of the humane treatment overwatch which as of now doesnt fucking exist.
You mean a tax. Yes I agree that would be the fairest solution. Let's say 1000%.
Any government that tries that will be voted out within about 3 minutes. The USA just elected a would-be dictator because inflation is 4% instead of 3%. Even if the tax is 10% you will have the farmers' lobby on your back and things will get really ugly really quickly.
There is basically no way, democratically or otherwise, in any reasonable timeframe, to get meat to the right price. You would first need to do decades of campaigning to change the narrative.
This is the rationale behind fake meat.
Veganism is not really a technology issue, it is a philosophy of minimising suffering.
Veganism does not rely on trapping carnists, it relies on convincing carnists.
Burger patty taste does not excuse genetically modifying and killing a sentient being. If vegan burger patties taste 70-90% as good as carnists burger patties, that's more than enough to live with.
Of course, improving taste can be good, but veganism is not a substitute.
Refusing veganism because vegan burger patties do not taste good enough is cognitive dissonance, ~~burger patty~~ taste is not an argument for carnism.
I told dbzer0 I wouldn't disrupt vegan spaces when he gave me an account. with that said, I hope we can continue this cordially. if at any point you want me to stop, please say so.
frankly, it is. aesthetic pleasure is one of the great reasons for living. surely, it is part of the self actualization of Maslow's hierarchy.
since carnism is so pervasive in society, we must accept that the pleasures associated with it are commonplace. to deny someone a common aesthetic experience in the name of ending carnism needs to be sold. simply saying "it's not an argument" is, ironically, not an argument.
I bet those cows wanted some parts of Maslow's needs as well.
Why is your self-actualisation more important than a cow's existence?
Taste is not argument for carnism because it isn't just to compare taste to right to exist.
I don't personally believe in rights as an external phenomenon. I believe they are a human fiction
So? Humans have the ability intentionally NOT to kill animals for consumption and the ability to make up rights.
The externality vs internality of rights discourse doesn't externalise your personhood with rights.
your first paragraph seems to imply that I respect rights as a real phenomenon. to be clear, I do not, and so all discourse built up on rights as a premise I also reject.
I don't quite follow what you're saying in your second paragraph.
Is this SovCit meeting Stirner? Do I have to say the word?
Following questions:
Do you see yourself as human?
Do you value your life and body integrity? Do you value life and body integrity of other beings, like friends?
Do you avoid experiencing violence?
I find the Socratic method annoying. please just say what you want to say.
They're trying to expose you as a hypocrite for wanting things for yourself that you don't care about others having.
That said, not valuing rights seems a bit inconsistent with Marxism. IIRC it was the socialist states that insisted that the UN Declaration of Human Rights include such things as "education" and "housing" as basic human rights. Of course, every despotic regime in the world has signed up to that, so perhaps they were just being dishonest.
I'd rather not assume they are asking in bad faith. who I am has no bearing on the truth of what I'm saying anyway.
Good faith, bad faith, that has no bearing on hypocrisy. And anybody can be a hypocrite regardless of their guiding philosophy.
You don't believe in cows' rights to, well, anything, because you don't believe in rights. I don't see you making any arguments about duties.
Hence we're left with nothing but the potential for hypocrisy based on the golden rule, which pretty much everybody accepts.
this smacks of the "veil of ignorance", and, personally, I don't find it compelling.
"appeal to hypocrisy" is a logical fallacy. it's logically fallacious because a murderer can say "murder is wrong" and the truth doesn't change based on who is saying it. it's a form of ad hominem, and I am reticent to accuse someone of bad faith based on insinuation.
You seem to be downvoting my comments. I don't debate with people who think my views are worth nothing.
I don't care for debate at all, and I'm not voting at all.
have a nice day
OK apologies for the false accusation. You too.
I can want equality and freedom without inventing rights.
with all due respect, we have no evidence of a cow's need for self actualization. we can't even point to evidence of self awareness.
That's all fine and I basically agree. But I think you need to be aware that you're essentially talking to yourself. In your view, taste comes second or third among your priorities. Again, I somewhat agree. But this is just not the way most people see things. If we want to convince them, we have to acknowledge that fact. And you say explicitly that you do want to convince them.
I want to convince them and not trick them into a situation.
Yeah, vegan patties are tasty, if have no choice but to live vegan now is not how any of this works. This might be a joke colleagues or friends tell each other, but the argument and emotional belief system of its speaker is incomplete for veganism.
Veganism is one of the most binary philosophies - there are no consistent half-vegans.
This sounds like a prescription for a religion more than a diet.
Being religious is fine. The problem is that this approach is clearly not going to be effective at getting people to eat less meat.
"Veganism = Religion" is a thought-terminating cliché, a knockout argument.
There are no unfalsifiable entities (i.e. gods, prophets) in the vegan philosophy.
Veganism is not a diet, it is an ethical philosophy and way of life.
I'm not against vegan burger patties, their development and further market penetration. The absence of vegan burger patties on the other hand would not end veganism or rob it of any argumentative strength.
Again: I don't question the arguments in favor of veganism, I agree with them (I have better things to do than come here to piss off vegans). I don't question your right to treat your diet as an "ethical philosophy and way of life", i.e. something very close to a religion (it sounds like Buddhism).
I'm saying: what is the best way to get the most people - including techbros and everyone else - to eat as little meat as possible? If you care about ending animal suffering and saving the environment as much as you seem to do, then you should be interested in the answer to that question. It sounds to me like you're more interested in just holding the moral high ground personally. Would be delighted to be wrong.
My opposition to techbros in the vegan context stems from the argument that posits tasty vegan burger patties specifically or "artificial meat" generally as some sort of prerequisite for personally adopting veganism.
Once artificial meat is ready, I'm going vegan. - This is a moving-goalposts argumentative fallacy.
My opinion is that the best way to get a maximum of people to eat less meat is to convince them of/for veganism, because once a critical share of a society actually holds a opinion, society-wide change can ~~will~~ happen more rapidly and somewhat spontaneously. Society-wide change can then render carnist behaviour (i.e. animal product production chain, hunting etc.) impossible, undesired, deviant or illegal.
This social tipping point isn't possible IMO, when the people behaving plant-based are not actually vegan (i.e. convinced by the vegan philosophy).
A coherent and well-articulated philosophy.
And also hopelessly idealistic, I would say. There will never be more than a small minority of people prepared to change something as crucial to their self-image and group identity as food for the sake of ethical considerations alone. The evidence to the contrary is just not there. People don't care, or don't care enough. Even educated people in rich places, let alone the up-and-coming masses in the wider world.
IMO there are precisely three things that might precipitate change: taste, cost, and (distant third) healthiness. I.e., the only things the vast majority of people care about when in the supermarket. Hence the promise of fake meat. It may never be tastier or healthier but if one day it is literally, say, 30% cheaper then we might have a game-changer. At which point, lots of animals will be spared suffering and the environment can take a breather. Although personally I have a terrible suspicion that even this won't be enough and that lab meat will be only thing to pass muster.
Your approach of fostering a nebulous social movement that will spontaneously sweep all before it, well, again, I would love to be wrong but the evidence is pretty clear that it's not coming and won't come. And in the meantime, the animal suffering and environmental destruction does not relent.