Vegans being banned and comments being deleted from !vegan@lemmy.world for being fake vegans.
From my perspective, the comments were in no way insulting and just part of completely normal interaction. If this decision reflects the general opinion of the mod team, then from my perspective, the biggest vegan community on Lemmy wants to be an elitist cycle of hardcore vegans only, not allowing any slightly different opinion. Which would be very unfortunate.
PS: In contrast to the name of this community, I don’t want to insult anyone here being a ‘bastard’. I just want to post this somewhere on neutral ground. I would really appreciate an open discussion without bashing anyone.
PPS: Some instances or clients seem to compress the screenshots in a way they’re unreadable. Find the full resolution here: https://imgur.com/a/8XdexTm
Linking the affected users and mods: @Cypher@lemmy.world @gaael@lemmy.world @gredo@lemmy.world @iiGxC@slrpnk.net @veganpizza69@lemmy.world @veganpizza69@lemmy.vg @jerkface@lemmy.ca @TheTechnician27@lemmy.world @Sunshine@lemmy.ca @Aqua@lemmy.vg
Lol found out here that I had been banned from the community. Ty for sharing the information :)
Regarding the matter, I understand their reaction.
I’ve been interacting with some vegan circles IRL and some are more “hardcore” (not in a negative way) than others. When you consider animal exploitation as mass slavery, mass torture and mass murder, it becomes increasingly difficult to tolerate even light deviations from the all-vegan path.
This being said, I would have preferred they had a better wording for the temp ban reason than “fake vegan” by which I feel insulted and hurt.
The “all or nothing” crowd really knows how to stomp on progress, huh?
It’s like they don’t realize that by being this hostile towards any other viewpoints, they drive away people who might otherwise be interested in becoming vegan or want to learn more. All it does is harm the community in the long run, and then they wonder why there’s a stigma around vegans. That stigma then feeds into a persecution complex and that becomes a nasty vicious cycle.
Sorry but I think I disagree with that sentiment. I’d liken it to how fascists like to say that leftists annoy people away from the left; imagine thinking “well I disagree with using animals as a resource in the human endeavour but they’re just so mean/annoying/polemic that I’ll just keep doing the thing I disagree with”. It just seems childish and you should really judge a philosophy like this on its merits instead.
Is it their job to teach and convert you? Maybe they just want a space to exist in without having to work for others.
Nobody is forcing them to reply to a comment.
Plus, if they want more people to be vegan, then kinda yeah
Maybe what they want is to be left alone in peace?
I’m sure you don’t want Trump as president, it doesn’t mean you want to go around having to debate with everyone and inform them why he is bad. Sometimes you want to kick back and just say ‘Trump sucks shit’ and not have to explain yourself because you’re with likeminded company.
Right now they’re getting shit on specifically because they can’t even stay in peace among themselves. This is about one small group of vegans abusing their powers to stop respectful discussion among and between vegans.
No, banning people is silencing them. If they were replying with “Veganism rules, carnist drool” we would be discussing this here and that would be the equivalent you have described.
Are you “all or nothing” with stopping rape? Or would you be okay with some light raping happening, if the majority was anti-rape?
They clearly view this act as something as abhorrent as we would rape, so why are you surprised they don’t want to meet half way on the topic?
Dude, are you just the king of bad takes on the fediverse?
Yeah okay “anti-vegan” (what douche calls themself that), whatever you say.
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Suck my fat cock
Uh, because rape doesn’t keep people alive? Because rape hasn’t been a part of the human diet since before recorded history? What the fuck??
Take your bullshit whataboutism elsewhere. Holy shit, I have never seen such a bad take on the topic of veganism. I hope this is hyperbole and you don’t ACTUALLY think the two things are comparable.
Get a fucking grip, the point was to relate it to an act you hopefully find unacceptable. The point was to make you be able to understand how other people may view the subject, and why they would not tolerate that centrist shit.
Im not even a vegan and I can that’s a fucking weak argument, you can survive off of non-meat diets. It is not in any way required to survive.
why should survival be the standard? I want my entire needs hierarchy filled
No where in Maslow hierarchy is meat.
aesthetic needs
It’s full of butter though.
That’s an insane comparison to make. Compare it to murder if anything.
Why is it an insane comparison?
Cows, pigs, sheeps, etc. are raped (no consent) and sexually assaulted (against their will) for dairy, meat, wool…
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That’s okay. There are many people who only know their food as a bite-sized anonymous mass from the supermarket. who think that cows just give milk all the time. They don’t know how piglets are bred. That you can walk into any barn and see unfathomable suffering in every corner. Who have never heard of forceful impregnation, confinement crates, premature separation, tail docking, mulesing, torture breeding, teeth clipping, CO2 chambers, castration, steroid growth, veal crates, tethering, weaning rings, induced moulting, sheep dipping… and we haven’t even started on the illegal cruelties.
In this state of blissful ignorance, you might regard someone who associates eating a steak with rape as crazy.
I used to be like this too. And to be honest, there are times when I wish I could return to it and just dismiss vegans with a downvote as exaggerating and annoying.
Nah murder can be done for good reasons, so it wouldn’t be seen the same. It needs to be something abhorrent.
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Debatable.
One of my best friends is a long-term vegan. He generally avoids telling people because he so strongly hates being lumped in with this crowd of asshats.
Not a lot of 100% vegan grocery stores, where do they get their food?
EDIT: It’s pretty telling that everyone is reading this as an excuse to keep murdering instead of accepting that murder is part of being alive. “Life feeds on life.” It is not pretty, it is ugly and dark. What should be taken away is a greater respect for all life and an understanding of what we’re taking when we feed on life. It should be used as a pretext to respect all life and do your best to reduce harm to all life. Whatever life you’re taking should be considered valuable and a sacrifice made. (Mass deforestation to make way for agricultural farming doesn’t just hurt trees, it hurts the animals that live in them and among them, for instance. A soybean farm doesn’t have the same ecological importance as an old growth forest, sorry.) The fact that this view is seen as a reason to kill more instead of kill less and have respect for the life you take is pathetic.
But keep ranting to me in your total misread of what I’m saying.
Just popping in to say the main reason that attitude is dumb because there is no such thing as moral absolutism.
Do we consider antibiotics exploitative to penicillin? Do we cry over every breath we take in which our immune system automatically murders billions of bacteria?
Just because plants don’t have faces like ours and don’t look like us and don’t scream when we kill them killing plants is fine somehow. They’re all alive, you’re still killing life, and in our great inhuman lack-of-wisdom we’ve decided that if it doesn’t have a brain and consciousness like ours, then it most not have consciousness and thus it’s okay to murder and exploit them.
Just call me the fucking Lorax. Who speaks for the trees, dude?
Anyway, no such thing as moral absolutism and these people will continue to climb higher and higher on their holier-than-thou-mountain only to become caricatures of a real person.
Isn’t it pretty apparent?
If it can feel pain and suffer it shouldn’t.
Bacteria do not have the capability to feel suffering. They cannot even feel.
Plants and fungi, despite their increased complexity, do not have the capability to suffer either.
The entire point of the field of ethics and half the field of philosophy is to reduce suffering. Torture is bad because it causes suffering. Killing is bad because it causes suffering. Slavery is bad because it causes suffering. Rape is bad because it causes suffering. Abuse is bad because is causes suffering.
Veganism extends this to animals who are capable of suffering in ways identical to us humans. It also raises important questions: Would it be ethical to treat aliens the same way humanity treats non-humans? What if the aliens are sufficiently stupid, yet still capable of civilization? What if they’re smarter but live in solitude? Why exactly is it unethical to kill severely mentally disabled people? Is it just because humans view themselves as superior to every other living being in the universe?
I believe veganism is the objectively moral choice. Still, I’m not vegan for various reasons. But I don’t have any qualms with admitting my behavior is objectively wrong.
this is just a lie. one type of ethical study, utilitarianism, is focused on that. many ethical theories don’t regard suffering at all, or only as a facet of some other concern.
I’d argue minimizing suffering is basis for all ethics, just that they are achieving it in different ways.
Deontological ethics in a vacuum cause more suffering than utilitarianism. Yet (most) deontological philosophies seek to achieve as much good as possible - and therefore minimizing harm. Kant’s categorical imperative is - as a layman - just a formalization of: “Do what is good for you AND others. Don’t do what is good for you but bad for others.”
And I believe if you ask an ethics board at a why something was not permitted, you will always get the result: “Causes too much harm”. This happens despite them being allowed to evaluate based on many different philosophies.
I know very little ethics systems that don’t inevitable lead to a society with less suffering if strictly followed by most. Although that might just be because society as is is objectively unethical.
all divine command theories only incidentally reduce harm, and only sometimes. and kant (like all deontologists) is not concerned with outcomes, only the correctness of the action.
From my limited knowledge, Kant was concerned with rationality first and foremost. But suffering just happens to be one of the most irrational things there is. In no world is there ever a benefit to increasing suffering because if you apply this universally you too would experience increased suffering which is irrational.
I don’t think this is a coincidence. You could create a deontological philosophy that bases everything on irrationality and it would remain consistent if viewed through the lens of itself. Irrational maxims lead to contradictions, meaning this philosophy too is irrational and contradictory - which is consistent if you seek to apply irrationality universally.
Why didn’t Kant come up with the inversion of his philosophy if it remains consistent? I’d argue because it would have lead to maximizing suffering which (mostly) nobody wants.
you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Indeed, I have not studied philosophy and have only received an introduction and high-level overview from school. Which is why I’m continuously stating that I am far from an expert in regards to ethics and philosophy and this is more of an amateur reading.
So if I understand correctly, a cow can be killed with a gun to the back of the head painlessly and its death prevents hunger for an entire family for the winter so killing it is ethical. Got it.
Again, I’m not vegan nor particularly experienced in vegan arguments but there is clear suffering here:
Edit: Also, I’m not really trying to justify eating animals. TBH I’m ironically more sympathetic to Vegans due to me being a hunter. Frankly I think meat eaters should have to participate in the harvesting of an animal you eat at least once before age of majority. That would at least confer appreciation for some of what is involved.
There are various more - and far better articulated - reasons why killing is bad by the way. Here are some: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/67606/why-is-murder-wrong
Still, I believe it is hardly possible to reliably kill without involving suffering anywhere.
Though I would consider hunting to be the most ethical variant. It’s not even a battle when factory farming exists.
no, we don’t. we don’t even know if they understand personal mortality
We know several intelligent animals have some sort of concept of death because they are capable of mourning. This doesn’t prove they understand personal mortality but it proves that they understand the mortality of others to some extent which is a necessity for understanding your own.
My argument why cows do not want to die is a basic evolutionary one:
Individuals that do not want to die are more likely to reproduce than one’s that want to die. It is therefore likely that cow populations today largely do not want to die.
Also, being neutral to the concept of death - or even not knowing about it - implies the absence of a wish to die. If cows do not even understand personal mortality they do not want to die.
they’re provided, veterinary care, protection from the elements, protection from predators, drinkable water, space to graze, and opportunities to socialize. it’s not imprisonment.
Those have nothing to do with imprisonment.
If I locked 10 people in a room and regularly gave them food and water they would still be imprisoned because they couldn’t leave.
We know humans suffer from imprisonment and we accept since the mid 20th century that this applies to all humans. It’s not a big stretch to assume imprisonment causes suffering for animals as well.
Besides, most cows on the planet have literally nothing of what you described. Except maybe drinkable water and protection from predators.
you can’t prove this
When talking about suffering, I am generally speaking of “pain, as processed by a nervous system”.
At least for bacteria, their structures are simple enough to be understood to a large extent by humans. We know chemical reactions cannot suffer and we know proteins cannot suffer. Due to the simple nature of bacteria, it is highly doubtful that they are capable of suffering since all “processing” occurs through varying level of chemicals and minerals.
But I cannot even prove that rocks do not suffer, therefore it is worthless to prove the absence of suffering. Rather, the ability to experience suffering must be proven.
FWIW I don’t think you need to define suffering so narrowly to make an argument for veganism or vegetarianism. You can accept that plants do feel suffering and still do it. Because the amount of plants that get killed per kilojoule of energy in beef (feeding the cows) is way more than the amount of plants killed per kilojoule of directly eating plants.
you got there eventually.
This take is a big fucking YIKES from someone who claims to care about living things.
Just saw your comment, I meant it in terms of that the absence of something is often impossible to prove, therefore it is a worthless metric. The metric that should be looked at is whether something is showing indication of suffering.
I couldn’t even prove humans are capable of suffering either. You can prove that pain manifests itself through activation of certain brain regions but that doesn’t prove the existence of suffering. It’s like trying to prove that the color red is accurately visualized in your brain.
I care about people.
Oops, I meant the person you were responding to, sorry buddy. I’m on your side here. I’m sorry I wasn’t more clear.
The fact that they compare other living things to rocks… just… wow. I edited it to make it more clear who I was referring to. Once again, my bad and I’m sorry friend.
if you define it in a way that specifically precludes other creatures, that seems biased. you don’t know how a single-celled organism might be able to suffer. that doesn’t mean that they can’t.
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you can’t prove this
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I will not debate about whether animals, plants and bacteria suffer the same way.
This is an argument I’ve heard time and time again from the antivegan crowd and imo falls into the “at best very uninformed, more likely troll” category.
I’m anti-vegan and i agree with your point.
Plants feel pain too so it’s okay to stab babies. There’s no difference between pulling a potato out of the ground and punting a chihuahua over a fence! :)
If you disagree with that, you must be a moral absolutist.