Yes, that’s my experience. Earlier vegetarians were often rabidly vegetarian, and I think some people developed a form of PTSD and can’t get over it. But it’s also been decades for me since I’ve seen any behavior like that. But where I live, vegetarianism is now so bog standard, no one ever comments on it – negatively or positively.
As someone who also hunted unenthusiastically, that made me giggle. I grew up in a hunting culture. I liked archery. I did not particularly want to kill any animals. But skilled hunting is probably one of the most humane ways to procure food. I was taught how to do a quick, clean kill. Never actually killed anything, though. Mostly fired arrows at animal-shaped targets.
I can’t agree about limiting compassion to humans, though. I don’t tend to attribute human characteristics to animals, but I respect they have some kind of quality of life, some capacity for suffering, and all things being equal I’d rather they not suffer. But you always have to balance that against a human’s much greater capacity for suffering.
The problem for me is I really have no idea what various animals experience or how they experience suffering. None of us do. I just sort of have to guess.
Sure, and if you don’t care at all about animal suffering it’s completely a consistent position. The trouble is, very few people actually do bite that particular bullet, as I’ll elaborate shortly.
Probably not deliberate, but I’d say that’s a misleading way to put it. I would say that I don’t want to cause unnecessary suffering just for the sake of a tasty meal.
The distinction is, if I were motivated by reducing suffering in the world then I may well be obliged to tell other people what to eat. I’m not doing that.
And, if at some future time we could have lab-grown meat, I’d be fine eating that, which would of course have zero net effect on suffering.
So you don’t care about animal welfare at all?
If you met someone who tore the limbs of dogs for fun, that would be fine with you, morally neutral?
I’m not trying to tell you what to think – I’m asking is that genuinely your position?
Most calves do not end up being veal. They grow up and become steers or cows. The production of veal is quite cruel.
This is true of various other people too. We make assumptions. We don’t know whether they are accurate.
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That’s essentially Robert Nozick’s argument for vegetarianism, only his hypothetical involves smashing a cow’s head with a baseball bat.
Right, the 50% that are female can be used as replacement milking stock. But the males aren’t necessarily suitable to go to meat, (steers are specifically purpose bred) other than veal.
From Wikipedia:
Male dairy calves are often not considered useful to dairy farmers because they can’t produce milk and are sometimes not suitable for beef production. In the United States, veal calves are usually transported to auction houses, sold, and then taken to veal farms.
I have no illusions that my abstinence will have any measurable impact on the demand for meat products. But I’ve concluded that factory farming is an inherently cruel, evil industry that creates enormous suffering and misery by design. So, I will not participate.
I acknowledge I used the words “reduce suffering” when I should perhaps have been more precise. I guess there’s some reduction of suffering as a result of my choice. I no longer eat hundreds of pounds of meat. Did the meat I would have purchased just get bought by someone else? I don’t know. But the whole business is a vile, awful enterprise, and I won’t be part of it. At a minimum.
Also, I’m not sure the sort of societal transformation you describe is necessary. Lab-grown meats could be the game-changer, if it becomes cheap and delicious. People love virtuous acts that create zero inconvenience for themselves. Will it be a game-changer? I don’t know. I’m pretty sure it won’t be quick.
I think that’s commendable. I remember when “meatless Mondays” was a movement, and I think baby steps—hell, even if they’re the only steps ever taken—help. It needn’t be all or nothing.
For other adult people we have a better idea, because they can tell us, and they can write books about it, and we can think, “Yes, I’d feel similarly.”
For animals it’s trickier. For example a cat has the IQ of the average three year old. Does that mean it can suffer as much as a three year old?
This matters to me because when I’m looking at making changes to my behavior I want it to have the biggest bang for my buck. I can reasonably guess that a cow can suffer more than a fish, for example. But what about a cow and a pig? If I was going to eliminate one, which would I pick? Or a cow and a chicken? Or a fish or a shrimp? And are these differences meaningful enough to justify using this system to decide which changes to make first?
Of course capacity for suffering is just one metric. My understanding is that from an environmental perspective the best option is hands-down eliminating beef.
I can understand why some would just err on the side of caution and exclude everything equally, or not even take suffering into consideration at all, but that’s not how my brain works.
This happens to me, too. I’ll order beyond-beef tacos one day, and then bbq-pork sliders the next. Because those are the dishes I felt like eating at the time. I like food. To me, a Vegan dish is no different than a Hawaiian dish. It’s just another cuisine. Enjoy the variety!
Just curious. How do you know humans have a greater capacity for suffering?
A big part of suffering is physical pain, and as long as I’m willing to assume other humans are not p-zombies, it seems pretty clear at least that mammals are in the ballpark same level as homo sapiens. They exhibit all the signs of agony with no particular reason to pretend.
And indeed it even follows for many kinds of psychological trauma; mammals often show a great deal of distress in the kind of situations that humans also find distressful.
Now of course it’s true that the set of mentally painful experiences is greater for a human than an animal, and that’s part of why I value human life higher.
But it doesn’t work the opposite way; animals having a subset of mental trauma doesn’t make the animal suffering negligible enough to sacrifice them on a daily basis.
It is difficult on the edges, I agree. But I go with the latter thing you said; that I err on the side of not causing suffering.
Making a division on the basis of an analysis of suffering I would find to be a consistent position; if someone were to say they eat X and not Y because X doesn’t suffer, then that’s fine IMO.
But saying essentially “I can’t say it’s not wrong, but since I can’t draw the line anywhere, I’ll continue making no change at all” is a deflection in my opinion, whether you are conscious of that or not.
I don’t take any joy from this, btw. I don’t want to be the spoilsport saying people can’t eat delicious pork ribs, or they have to feel guilty every time.
That’s why outside of a specific discussion like this, I don’t mention it.
I don’t think that’s universally true. My understanding is that a lot of the male dairy calves are shot at birth, and others are raised for beef. I don’t mind either of those outcomes. What i mind is individually crating a baby herd animal, and not letting it either move or cuddle with other cattle. That puts them under so much stress that their immune system is impaired, and they need massive doses of antibiotics just to survive.
I don’t mind killing and eating baby animals, it’s the way the US veal industry treats them that bothers me. And i think it’s improving, but i stopped following that issue several years ago.
Yeah, I’ll never be perfect, in this or anything else. I’ve tried impossible meat, and it doesn’t really do it for me. But i expect that lab-grown meat mostly will, and I’m looking forward to that. I expect my dead-animal intake to drop a lot when lab meat becomes widely available, assuming it’s any good.
Yeah, like that’s gonna happen in my lifetime.
Well, I’m not sure if you were reading my posts upthread but I’ve been steadily reducing meat consumption over the last few years. Lately I’m considering reducing it further as I plan to take Buddhist precepts next year, and that in the very least requires careful consideration of what I’m eating. So what I’m actually doing is contemplating change, and the start of that is figuring out where to start. I’ve never succeeded in making drastic changes in anything, so what this might look like is starting by eliminating beef, and then pork, and then poultry, over a longer period of time. I suspect I would continue eating seafood because I really do have physical problems without any animal protein whatsoever, even when my macros are good. But I haven’t decided yet.
Because humans can think in lots of complex ways that other animals, because of their brain structure, cannot. And it is my belief that about 80% of suffering is thinking. The higher the capacity for abstract thought, the higher the capacity for suffering. The higher the capacity for rumination, the higher the capacity for suffering. My take on animals is that they more or less get on with life when something bad happens to them. Humans have a hard time moving on from even the smallest injuries.
This doesn’t mean that animals can’t suffer at all, and some of them can even be depressed, and they can be made generally fearful by repeated abuse. But they don’t have the cognitive capacity to develop an entire narrative around what victims they are and how unfair life is, the way humans can. They don’t have a god or gods to lose faith in, a worldview to shatter, or the capacity to write entire books about how rough they’ve had it.
That doesn’t mean their suffering isn’t important. It’s just qualitatively different.
Not to say it’s wrong, but a true vegetarian (maybe vegan) who eats Impossible burgers or other meat resembling products(I saw meatless Taco meat today🤔) aren’t they lusting for meat?
If you ascribe to a religious group, say Buddhism wouldn’t it be sinful? I don’t know, do Buddhist have sins?
Ah. I did read your posts but wasn’t mentally matching the names to the posters. Fair enough, and your position on this makes a lot of sense to me.
So what? The key tenet of vegan was never ‘dislikes meat’.
It is not a ‘gotcha’ to point out that some vegans think meat is tasty.