Emerald

I am the Vegan in question. He's trying to use your personal anecdote about going Carnivore as a way to challenge my perspective. He isn't saying that you're a Vegan. Edit: Nevermind. He is assuming you're a Vegan. He just threw me in on the reply.

My claim isn't that eating meat can never produce a positive benefit in someone's life. So, that is a strawman of my argument. People with Epilepsy or people with certain auto-immune issues where eating plants cause an auto-immune reaction might find it easier to eat an elimination diet with only meat. Also, if a person who wants to lose weight switches over to a keto or carnivore diet, they probably will lose weight because their body will be in ketosis. Perhaps it's not the healthiest way to lose weight, but a person would undoubtedly experience "a benefit" if that is their goal. And clearly if someone is starving to death, eating anything that the human body can metabolize will produce a positive benefit. So, don't strawman my argument and say I was making arguments that I wasn't. Here are my ACTUAL claims that I've made in the previous thread... 1. A lot of people (maybe even the majority of people) have Vegan values where they don't want animals to suffer and die a premature death... and don't agree that human pleasure is more important than an animal's life and well-being. But people who live a non-Vegan lifestyle who consume animals for pleasure (who have Vegan values) have to lie to themselves and go into cognitive dissonance and defense mode to defend their own choices in their own eyes. And they do so by invalidating the choices of Vegans because Vegans are the ones who are walking their own talk... and it makes these non-Vegans with Vegan values feel uncomfortable with the incongruence between their actions and values. 2. Statistically, plant-based diets are associated with better health outcomes in terms of longevity and lower risk of heart disease and stroke because meat, dairy, and eggs are linked with greater instances of atherosclerosis, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure... which means the person eating these animal products have a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. Basically, the more animal products you consume is statistically correlated with a greater risk of all-cause mortality according to many studies and meta-analyses. So, even if a person experiences a short-term benefit from going carnivore (like weight loss), it is a trade-off for having a greater risk of stroke, heart disease, and an earlier death.

I don't think it's left-wing naïveté when it comes to the wide-spread preference for regulation over Laissez-faire economics. I see it as more of a contextual preference and a recognition for a need that is missing in the current economic system, where the private sector has WAYYYY more power than the government. There are no check and balances between those two systems of power, because the government is basically and extension of the private sector and doesn't challenge it often enough. So, this preference for more government regulation is very much happening in a context where the best economic situation you can possibly have is where the government and private sector check and balance one another... but that is not happening. And so, the preference for more regulation (within the context of the current Capitalist system) is just an awareness of what is needed to balance things out.

They have been keeping the data since 1992, and it has been within a few percentage points since then. So, there's no marked change in literacy during the time they've been collecting the data. But for sure, there are unique challenges with regards to the use of technology. And certainly addiction to devices is one of those things. And I do believe that younger people will be more proficient at handling it compared to older generations... in the same way that people in my generation are better than people in my parents generation at picking out internet misinformation. The main problem that I see arising from the increase in technology is the decrease in opportunities for 1-1 socialization, as everything has moved online. But as far as intellect goes, there is no marked difference between elementary/middle/high school students I went to school with 20ish years ago, elementary/middle/high school students I used to teach 10 years ago, and my children's elementary and middle school classmates who are in school now. And I think it's important not to fall into the same trap that people from older generations always have in terms of believing the younger generation to be uniquely ill-equipped to handle the world. This is mostly because they never had an accurate whole-picture perspective of how their generation was in the first place... and so they believe the new generations to be uniquely lacking.

Yes!!!! That's the kind of ingenuity we need for the new age!

Those things are real and unique to this era compared to eras before it. And they present real social and emotional challenges. And you can notice that children and teens struggle more with social skills. But there have always been and will always be literacy struggles among a percentage of the population as innate aptitudes vary. Go back 10, 20, 30, 40+ years and you will find tons of high schoolers who read at an elementary school level. It's not a new phenomenon at all. With regard to the literacy levels of 12th graders who are deemed "proficient" at reading based on NAEP standards... the percentage of proficient readers has stayed pretty steady within a few percentage points of the 40% mark. (They've been taking this data since 1992 and the graph is posted below). It may be shocking to acknowledge for those who haven't worked in education who first enter the profession and see how many kids really struggle. And this may cause these unseasoned teacher to assume it must be something environmental or circumstantial that's causing the issue... as that is a more comforting story that feels like it has a solution. But people struggling with reading proficiency is nothing new. And the phone and new tech is a good scape-goat to blame for those problems... just as the tv was blamed in previous generations. Even reading itself was blamed for all manner of problems, prior to the tv. And I don't buy for a second that the current youth generation is less equipped than previous generations to learn or handle adult challenges... with the exception of building in-person social relationships. Older generations always believe the younger generation is going to hell in a hand-basket.

While I'm sure that kids are struggling attention-span-wise... the literacy issues are certainly not a new phenomenon. I was a teacher 10 years ago (and a substitute teacher prior to that)... and there are and have always been a sizable minority of high schoolers that still read at an elementary school level. And that is NOT typically because of external factors. It's just that there's a high degree of variability relative to innate skills and aptitudes relative to particular subject matters. I've worked with very dedicated students that had to work the butts off to get a D. And I've worked with slackers who skate by with As. So, these issues have always been going on. And these same narratives keep framing the current youth as uniquely harmed and stunted by the culture have always been going on since humanity has been around. But the reality is that there have always been kids who leave high school not knowing how to read very well... and there always will be. There are certainly improvements to be made. But we should get really realistic about what peoples' capabilities are without scapegoating a whole generation. It would be like if school was centered around how well people played basketball and always had been. And then, there would be all these articles like "Did you know there are kids leaving high school that don't even know how to do a lay-up?!?! It must be because of smart phones!" But the reality is that there would be short people (like me) who would just never get very good at basketball no matter how hard we tried. And there always had been... and these same alarmist generation-scapegoating narratives have been used on back and back and back.

Just screwing around with the semantics of what war means to justify the suspension of Habeas Corpus and undermining the rights granted in the Constitution. I wonder if he believes what he's saying or if he knows he's bullshitting.

My husband, my kids, and I sometimes joke that, in the future, you will be able to eat lab-grown "self-burgers". Just take a sample of your own DNA... give it to the lab-grown burger company... they create a custom batch of self-meat from the DNA... and bon appetit! We even came up with a business concept called "love burger", where you and your significant other can create lab-grown "self-burgers" and then eat each other on special occasions like Valentine's Day or wedding anniversaries. Cue the puking cat image! But in all seriousness, there probably will be a market for lab-grown exotic meats... like lions, zebras, elephants, and other animals. And if someone really wanted to... rats could be on that list.

No need to apologize. It can be hard to differentiate actual Neo-Nazis from the run-of-the mill conservative now-a-days because a lot of Neo-Nazi talking points have gotten normalized and picked up by center-left liberals, moderates, and center-right conservatives who don't know they've been influenced by Nazi propaganda. But there are tells when someone literally is a Neo-Nazi and not just someone who's been influenced by their talking points if you know what to look for.

I've seen his posts around before, and they're always just literal verbatim Neo-Nazi propaganda.

100%

I've seen that guy's posts before. And he is literally a Fascist and is espousing literal Neo-Nazi propaganda. And I mean that simply as a matter of fact and not as a judgment or way of slinging mud at someone who I disagree with. He may deny it and "hide his power level" and claim to be a run of the mill right winger. But he genuinely agrees with Fascism. So, you're not going to talk him out of liking it when Kanye says "Heil Hitler" or other pro-Nazi stuff, because he is pro-Nazi. Keep in mind that Fascists and Neo-Nazis (like Kanye and the other poster) are anti-Israel and anti-Zionist because they are antisemitic. They don't actually have a principled stance against the genocide or ethnic cleansing that the Netanyahu's government is responsible for. They just want Jewish people to be on the receiving end of the genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Thank you. It's important to keep getting people to face with the truth of how they actually feel about their own choices. People lie to themselves when they are out of integrity with their own values. I did the same thing until I went Vegan 9 years ago, where I was always justifying my own actions through rationalizations of futility, like "It doesn't matter anyway because animals will still die." And the biggest challenge around making the shift is to recognize my own power and the fact that I had been choosing a course of actions that was partially responsible for bringing about outcomes that harm animals that I did not want to happen. I just denied my own power by rationalizing that small power was the same as no power. And that way, I could avoid taking responsibility for my own choices. More than any kind of rationale as to the benefits of abstaining from eating meat and dairy is the ability to get someone to face squarely with the truth of their own values and feelings.

Veganism is a choice that I have made to stay in integrity with my own values and to honor my own boundaries because I want to utilize what little power I have to reduce suffering... not a coping mechanism to deal with shame. And everything you've written here is a coping mechanism through which to defend your own dietary choices (to yourself) and to discredit the values and choices of Vegans, so as to make your perspective "correct" and their perspective "incorrect" in your own eyes. And you wouldn't need to do all this Veganism invalidation, if you felt your actions were truly in integrity with your values. You just want to feel better about your choices, so you have to rationalize yourself that Veganism is delusional, a coping mechanism, wrong, unsustainable, unhealthy, unspiritual, unnatural, harmful, etc. Non-Vegans do this type of rationalization all the time to invalidate the choices of Vegans to get comfort from their own cognitive dissonance. It's trying to convince everyone that Veganism is wrong because they can't handle the fact that some people choose Veganism and that it is a valid choice that comes from deeply held values and not some pathology. Also, you can find plenty of anecdotes of people quitting all sorts of diets. Like, I could find videos of people quitting a whole food omnivorous diet or a Keto diet or the Carnivore diet in favor of a Vegan one and reporting feelings so much better and healthier. But these anecdotes don't mean anything about the actual health and sustainability of the diet itself. Plus, people who quit Veganism tend to want to invalidate Veganism itself as "unhealthy" or "unsustainable" because they have Vegan values... but have chosen to abandon living by those values. So, it is precisely people who leave behind a Vegan diet who have the most incentive to create narratives around the Vegan diet being unhealthy and to seek validation from people who will tell them, "Don't worry. It's obvious that the Vegan diet is unhealthy and unsustainable. You're correct for changing your diet." But it's just the same kind of rationalization to assuage guilt and to go unconscious to the misalignment of values that people who have never been Vegan before have... but on steroids, since that person has already become conscious enough of their values to make the choice to go Vegan in the first place. So, it takes a lot more mental gymnastics to assuage the guilt and cognitive dissonance for people who go Vegan and then quit. They have to find a way to put the toothpaste back in the tube. But in terms of ACTUAL research that's been done (of various studies and meta-analyses)... plant-based diets are associated with healthier BMIs, lower cholesterol, and lower instances of heart disease and stroke (the number one killers). So, there is no science backing up your assertion that Veganism is unhealthy or unsustainable. It is just an incorrect assumption that you must hold onto to justify your own actions to yourself.

I'm not making the claim that a cow should get more rights within the context of a human society than a human has... and that is a straw man of my position. My argument is that the life and well-being of a cow should be treated as more important than the fleeting pleasure the human feels while they're consuming the cow for pleasure. Like, if it were like "Either this cow will be killed or this human will be killed."... by all means... kill the cow if those are truly the only options. That's why I have no problem with people eating meat or animal products to sustain life IF it's really necessary to sustain life. And I believe that all animals get to prioritize the life of one of their own species over the life of that of another. So, I have no problem with humans considering humans more important and killing other species of creatures to save and/or sustain a human life... any more than I have a problem with bees stinging another creature they believe to be a threat to their hive or a lion eating an antelope. A species prioritizing others of its own species is just part of the circle of life... and projects no false hierarchies of importance onto nature. My issue is when human beings operate as though they are superior to other creatures in some absolute way. And because of this grandiosity and illusion of human exceptionalism, they feel their own fleeting sensory pleasures are more important than the entire life of another sentient being... or even the well-being of the eco-system itself.

You're shifting the goal posts. That isn't what you said in your original post. In your original post, you said that the existence of Veganism is an "insult" to thousands of years of traditions and "throws them away" and that that's specifically why you're not a Vegan. And that is quite a different claim to "We will never have a Vegan world due to the existence of culinary traditions." It was very much a justification for your own choices by framing Veganism as "bad because it's a threat to culture"... and not a neutral impersonal statement of how a "Vegan world won't happen because of culture". --- But to your goal-post-shifted point, I suspect that the realization of a "Vegan world" is one that will happen through technological developments regarding lab-grown meat, dairy, and eggs and not through the universal practice of Veganism. But despite a "Vegan world" not being something that will happen in our lifetimes, one can always choose to reduce harm now by going Vegan and taking a small chip out of the profits of the meat and dairy industry. And one can choose to live in integrity with their values even if it isn't going to solve the whole problem. Most Vegans aren't Vegan because they believe that the whole world will go Vegan and the idea that Veganism is going to solve the whole problem. Instead, they look to neutralize their own participation in a system that they disagree with... and for Vegans who are also animal rights activists, they try to persuade others to do the same. Think of it a bit like this story... "A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. People watched her with amusement. She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t save all these starfish. You can’t begin to make a difference!” The girl seemed crushed, suddenly deflated. But after a few moments, she bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied, “Well, I made a difference for that one!"

That's a very optimized and logical way of going about communication as it gets directly to the point and there's no extra fluff. And that is precisely why it's such a foolish and unwise suggestion.

I suspect that AI will impact human industries in the same way that the invention of the camera in the mid-1800s impacted the art world and the way we collectively think about art. Basically, it will eliminate many industries that are about meeting an objective need that a computer can do better and faster with... and it will bring even more meaning and value to things that are more about human-to-human subjective needs that can only be met through human actions and interactions. Prior to the invention of the camera, art was mostly a matter of practical importance where wealthy people could pay an artist to render their portrait or a still-life of the objects they own to showcase their wealth. Of course, there were always more conceptual artists like Hieronymous Bosch and Giuseppe Arcimboldo (both painters from the 1500s) who were very ahead of their time. But the vast majority of artists were hired as a means of "being the camera before the camera" for wealthy patrons. Then, when the camera was invented in the 1800s and became popular, many working painters abandoned painting in favor of photography because it was an easier and faster way to do the same job. But then, with the artists that stayed in the field, there was the birth of Modern Art... and so many different creative deviations from what was before. And over the course of the next century (from around 1850s to 1960s) you got art movements like Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Fauvism, Dada, Abstract Expressionism, The Bauhaus Movement, Photo Montage, Trompe-l'œil, Kitsch, etc. This is when we started to ask questions like, "What is art?" or "Why do humans make art?" I suspect the invention of AI will cause us to question, "What is labor?" and "Why are humans moved to labor?"

It's actually a really common defense that meat eaters use to justify their dietary choices to themselves. Like, "How selfish are you for prioritizing the life of a cow over the life of a carrot? Shame on you for not being conscious enough to see that those two things are no different?" But deep down, they know it's a bullshit argument that they themselves don't even agree with.

Are you making the claim that, if you went Vegan personally, it would undermine all these culinary traditions? Or are you making the claim that you disagree with adopting Vegan diets because it will eventually lead to some pattern or another of undermining culture? Either way, both of these perspectives are clearly empty defenses that you've given as there is no threat that Veganism is going to wipe out cultural practices... and also no one even challenged you on your choices. You're just using these as shields because you feel guilty and needed to come up with a narrative to square the circle of your own cognitive dissonance.

I don't feel shame about being alive, though I would like to lessen the impacts of suffering that my lifestyle causes. I just don't want sentient beings to suffer and have a premature death... as I have a strong visceral reaction to it and a sense that I want to make it stop. It's a bit like if you're watching a really gory horror movie and you squirm and hide your eyes because you don't want to see such a tragedy happening and you're hoping that the victim will be okay. The main difference is that the horror movie is real in this case. Can you not understand how a person might have such a reaction that doesn't come from shame... but instead comes from empathy and the ability to feel the feelings of others who are in pain? Is that really too abstract of a concept for you to consider that someone might recoil at such things and change their own behaviors as a result?

First off, I went Vegan when I was squarely in the working class... working for $12 per hour as a substitute teacher and my husband was a server at a restaurant. So in a first world nation, you need not be super wealthy to go Vegan. In fact, a whole food Vegan diet is cheaper than a whole food diet that includes meat, dairy, and eggs. It's just that an unhealthy processed Vegan diet is more expensive than an unhealthy processed omnivorous diet... and the cheapest diet possible is the unhealthy processed omnivorous diet. But the whole thing with Veganism is specifically about abstaining from meat and dairy when you don't need it to sustain life. So, I see Veganism as a dietary and lifestyle choice that is only available to people who are in a well-resourced enough and technologically developed enough society to exercise that level of compassion with their choices. And I see the increase in the commonality of Veganism as a wonderful fruit that grows from the tree of collectively moving up the Spiral Dynamics spiral towards a more loving, connected, and compassionate world. And I see it as a great privilege/responsibility combo for people who are living in well-resourced, technologically developed societies where we have the means to consider the impacts of our choices... and therefore a responsibility to consider the impacts of our choices. But it's always some middle class person form a wealthy nation arguing against Veganism like, "Veganism is only those with a cushy modern lifestyle who don't have to worry about eating meat to survive.". And I'm like "Yeah, that's you buddy!"

I'm sure he's genuinely a Nazi/Nazi sympathizer. But it's really clear that he's just doing this to be a spectacle as he knows it will drum up controversy and get the spotlight on him. He's like a little kid that acts up in class to suck up all the attention in the room

Certainly, there are many Vegans that operate that way.... as anything can be crafted into an identity of goodness. (Yet again, even being an anti-Vegan can be crafted into an identity of goodness... and you see tons of anti-Vegans building an identity out of their opposition to Veganism.) But personally, I really don't care that much about Veganism as an identity... as I tend to have a lot of the culture's negative associations with Veganism and it isn't something I broadcast unless I'm being directly challenged on it or if I need to tell a server at a restaurant about it... or if I'm arguing on the internet about it. Like, when I think of the word Vegan... I too think of a pretentious person who only eats artisanal foods and who gloats about their lifestyle. This is in spite of being Vegan and knowing many Vegans who aren't like that. It actually makes me cringe a little if people were to perceive me that way. The reason why I went Vegan is watching videos of animals being slaughtered and abused in the meat and dairy industry and having a visceral response to the suffering. Then, I became viscerally aware of how my actions were incongruent with my values. And I realized that, if it weren't for the dirty work being done for me outside of the scope of my awareness, I would not be okay with harming or killing animals to continue eating meat if I didn't absolutely need it to sustain my life. I just have a really strong reaction to the suffering of sentient beings... both human and non-human sentient beings as I see that they are capable of suffering. Like, the other day I was mindlessly scrolling on Instagram and I ran across this video that I first mistook as a video of a frail new-born baby bird resting in someone's hand. But when I watched it for a little bit longer, the person holding the bird balled up some kind of food (maybe bread?) in a tiny ball and opened the bird's mouth and shoved it down the bird's throat and then pinched the throat a little bit down and down and down to make sure that the bird swallowed the bread. And I was like... is this person trying to feed the baby bird? Or is this person stuffing the bird to eat it? And I eventually realized that the person was stuffing this frail, near-death bird and that they were about to eat it alive... similar to how in some cultures, octopus is often consumed live. Then, I imagined myself as this frail bird... powerless and my importance negated, with my suffering and frailty being exploited and demoted in importance in favor of a more powerful being's momentary desires. And then I started feeling this sense of injustice but with no authority figure to stop in to assure me that what is happening to me is wrong as reality just is and there is no absolute sense of right and wrong. And then it's like a "What if the law of the jungle is what is moral and correct?" and "What if badness is good and goodness is bad?" And it creates this sense of chaos of tumbling end over end in a meaningless unjust universe where there is no way to say in the absolute sense "This is wrong." And that is true. A serial killer could come and torture and kill you and all your family members... and even that would be just a matter of perspective to determine what is right or wrong. Certainly, there have been eras where the just thing under the law would be to kill many innocent people. Then, the only way to sit in my own sovereignty and to find a center point within the chaos is to realize the truth is "From my perspective, exploiting the suffering of animals for pleasure is wrong." And in order for me to feel anchored into my own subjective truth and subjective sense of justice, I have to bring my actions into alignment with those values. Otherwise, I just feel out of integrity and unstable in myself.