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.
We ask that the you have an understanding on what veganism is before engaging in this community.
If you think you have been banned erroneously, please get in contact with one of the other mods for appeals.
Moderator reports may not federate properly and may delay moderator action. Please DM an active mod if an abusive comment remains after reporting it.
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:
- embedded images of text require alt-text
- posts with an image of text should have a transcription in the body or 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
view the rest of the comments
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.