What strikes me as particularly weird is that I have a vegan friend who made a point of saying “I’m not going to tell someone else they shouldn’t eat meat.” I don’t actually know what she meant by that—whether she honestly didn’t think it was her business, or whether she simply had observed that telling people they shouldn’t eat meat has the opposite intended effect—they get pissed at you for telling them what they should and shouldn’t do, and either ignore you or eat more meat just to spite you.
If she meant the latter, I agree. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten someone else to become Vegetarian, but the approach that seems to produce most.… “respect” I guess is when I:
a) Make an effort to point out that I will have a hard time eating at a particular restaurant or event because of few vegetarian options. I say this as matter-of-fact-ly as I can. When people go “wait what?” I say “yeah I’m vegetarian” without attaching any particular judgment to it.
b) when/if people ask “why,” I focus almost entirely on reasons to cut back on meat that are [i]entirely in humanity’s best interest.[/i] Most people are vaguely aware that there are “health reasons”. And in fact, a lot of people say with hopeful looks “for health reasons, right?” because I don’t sound judgy, and they have assumptions that the health-vegetarians are cool whereas the ethical-vegetarians are judgmental jerks. What people DON’T usually realize how bad the meat industry is for humanity as a whole (by way of the environment).
c) when I get to the ethical concerns, I focus specifically on factory farming. I’m not 100% sure how I feel about the absolute moral weight of animals who are killed humanely for food, but letting people feel like there’s SOME way to ethically eat meat makes it feel less like I’m attacking them (even if that ethical way will almost never be relevant to the food that they’ll have access to).
People SHOULDN’T need more reason than “animals are raised in cages, given growth hormones to the point where they can barely walk, left to sit in their own feces and then killed.” But the magnitude of that reason is such that most people can’t process it. So it’s pretty convenient that there’s plenty of other good reasons to help open people up to the idea.
I… don’t see a quantification in his comment, and so I’m not sure how you’re so confident he’s misjudging it. The only implied one is “not worth the pleasure of eating meat,” which strikes me as plausible.
It’s actually even less than that: my implied quantification is “significant enough that you should at least make an attempt to study the issue before coming to a conclusion that you are acting correctly.”
Well, as thew cows we currently need for meat alone produce about 18% CO2 equivalent gases, that’s about 1⁄2 to 2⁄3 what traffic produces, it is an issue. It would remain an issue if we would go the zero-CO2 route through a thought-through nuclear option. It will become more an issue as traffic and heating/cooling gets improved through technology, but as more people get richer, the meat-consumption increases.
ETD: see this line as deleted. kept for history.
Well, these are just the facts. Judge by yourself.
I don’t mean to imply that I disagree; what you’ve said sounds plausible enough to my admittedly rather uninformed mind.
I appreciate facts (especially ones that come with citations). But your last line is unnecessary and snarky. Either (a) you’ve given us enough facts that we can come to a reasonable judgment without needing anything further, or (b) you have not. If (a), then why the final sentence? If (b), then why refer to what you’ve said as “the” facts?
Well, it seems that “just the” does not have the same softening tone in English than “lediglich” in German, and “judge by yourself” is somehow negatively associated. Wieder ins Fettnäpfchen getreten.
What strikes me as particularly weird is that I have a vegan friend who made a point of saying “I’m not going to tell someone else they shouldn’t eat meat.” I don’t actually know what she meant by that—whether she honestly didn’t think it was her business, or whether she simply had observed that telling people they shouldn’t eat meat has the opposite intended effect—they get pissed at you for telling them what they should and shouldn’t do, and either ignore you or eat more meat just to spite you.
If she meant the latter, I agree. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten someone else to become Vegetarian, but the approach that seems to produce most.… “respect” I guess is when I:
a) Make an effort to point out that I will have a hard time eating at a particular restaurant or event because of few vegetarian options. I say this as matter-of-fact-ly as I can. When people go “wait what?” I say “yeah I’m vegetarian” without attaching any particular judgment to it.
b) when/if people ask “why,” I focus almost entirely on reasons to cut back on meat that are [i]entirely in humanity’s best interest.[/i] Most people are vaguely aware that there are “health reasons”. And in fact, a lot of people say with hopeful looks “for health reasons, right?” because I don’t sound judgy, and they have assumptions that the health-vegetarians are cool whereas the ethical-vegetarians are judgmental jerks. What people DON’T usually realize how bad the meat industry is for humanity as a whole (by way of the environment).
c) when I get to the ethical concerns, I focus specifically on factory farming. I’m not 100% sure how I feel about the absolute moral weight of animals who are killed humanely for food, but letting people feel like there’s SOME way to ethically eat meat makes it feel less like I’m attacking them (even if that ethical way will almost never be relevant to the food that they’ll have access to).
People SHOULDN’T need more reason than “animals are raised in cages, given growth hormones to the point where they can barely walk, left to sit in their own feces and then killed.” But the magnitude of that reason is such that most people can’t process it. So it’s pretty convenient that there’s plenty of other good reasons to help open people up to the idea.
This is called leaving a line of retreat, and it’s a very good strategic consideration within a disagreement.
Not nearly as bad as you seem to think it is.
I’ve voted this down because it lacks helpful information or reasons. This topic can turn uncivil, or at least useless, rather quickly.
Applied ethics is often a mindkiller.
I… don’t see a quantification in his comment, and so I’m not sure how you’re so confident he’s misjudging it. The only implied one is “not worth the pleasure of eating meat,” which strikes me as plausible.
It’s actually even less than that: my implied quantification is “significant enough that you should at least make an attempt to study the issue before coming to a conclusion that you are acting correctly.”
Well, as thew cows we currently need for meat alone produce about 18% CO2 equivalent gases, that’s about 1⁄2 to 2⁄3 what traffic produces, it is an issue. It would remain an issue if we would go the zero-CO2 route through a thought-through nuclear option. It will become more an issue as traffic and heating/cooling gets improved through technology, but as more people get richer, the meat-consumption increases.
ETD: see this line as deleted. kept for history.
Well, these are just the facts. Judge by yourself.
Voted down because of the last line.
I don’t mean to imply that I disagree; what you’ve said sounds plausible enough to my admittedly rather uninformed mind.
I appreciate facts (especially ones that come with citations). But your last line is unnecessary and snarky. Either (a) you’ve given us enough facts that we can come to a reasonable judgment without needing anything further, or (b) you have not. If (a), then why the final sentence? If (b), then why refer to what you’ve said as “the” facts?
Well, it seems that “just the” does not have the same softening tone in English than “lediglich” in German, and “judge by yourself” is somehow negatively associated. Wieder ins Fettnäpfchen getreten.
Yes, “these are just the facts” usually indicates strong disapproval of anyone who doesn’t agree.
No, not that I know of.
Thanks for the pointer.