this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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Veganism
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Predators killing prey is part of the natural order; arguing that we're worse for killing for food than any other predators is, is exactly putting us on a pedestal above every other animal. We're not some special beings above everything, where if we kill a sheep, we're somehow better or worse than a wolf doing it is.
It is not the killing for food that is the problem, it is torturing animals and the ecological impact we're causing with it. Mass producing meat, eggs, anything, by tormenting other living creatures without any consideration they're equally living beings, and destroying ecosystems for it, causing the climate to warm faster... and on top of it all - doing it all voluntarily and knowingly! That makes us monstrous on a scale no other animal has reached.
It could be argued predators playing with food is natural as well; is a cat evil for toying with a mouse? is an orca evil for playing with a seal before eating it? It's just the scope we're talking about is so, so much bigger. We're not killing things ourselves; we've pushed the murder factories out of our sight and minds, and casually consume "products" instead of thinking we're eating something valuable; something that deserves respect even when it's dead.
I have no problem with anyone eating an animal if they have not tortured it or taken part in allowing it's torture; and especially not if they're the one that killed it. That's just how it works in this cursed planet, we kill, we eat, we get eaten. I also have no problem with anyone refusing to take part in it, and considering it horrible practice; it is. It's horrendous. Life is horrible, horrible thing full of suffering and decay. If you can choose it is better for the environment and usually for your health to not kill and eat what you killed.
What I do take issue with is acting like humans are not part of the nature. We are part of it all. We're just like a wolf, or a sheep; all living, breathing things, doing beautiful things, doing horrible things. Killing and eating. All the same. You are not above (nor below) every other living animal for what you eat or what you do not, and I'm sick and tired of people pretending to argue we're worse just to put us on a pedestal, while doing nothing to actually stop the torture of animals.
Amen to all that.
If a herd of cows is well cared for and leads a happy life? And if they're one day killed painlessly, and then feed hundreds of people?
I'm not qualified to make blanket statements of ethics. Especially when some people live in parts of the world with little arable land, but many grasses that ruminants can eat and digest.
I used to eat a lot of meat. I used to not give much thought to where the meat came from. Both those things have changed as I've learned more.
I can't change the thousands of years of cattle being bred for meat and dairy. But I can choose to avoid factory dairies that treat cows inhumanely.
Should fewer cows exist in the world? Should humans create fewer cows? Yes.
But they do exist. We can't instantly change that. And some will be used for meat, we also can't change that. So we start by trying to make more intelligent decisions, reducing society's exploitation of meat animals, and helping people understand why this is good.
Obviously this has to do with more than cows, that's just one example.
Exactly this. If our choices are keeping our personal moral purity or reducing harm to minimize animal suffering and destruction of nature, I obviously choose the latter. Who cares about what's wrong or right over trying to actively stop this ecological disaster we're doing? Eating meat is socially acceptable right now, do we like it or not. Getting people to side against that is an uphill battle that won't be won by being actively hostile about it.
Appeal to nature fallacy.
If you can't transcend your worst instincts and display free will, then you don't deserve to live any better than the animals you eat. You belong in a cage, being fed slop, until all animals are freed. They are not guilty of choosing to be beasts. You are.
Did you not read what I just wrote? By claiming we are worse than any predator just because of killing for food, you are argumenting we're not part of the nature; that we're some special creature. We're not. You call animals beasts; why? What's so beastly about them that we don't have it? Are you not putting them below yourself by differentiating us to have some superior qualities? They're equal to you, to me. Having the ability to make choices that we perceive they can't doesn't give us any more or less value than they have.
Torturing on a mass scale, ignoring animal suffering, thinking we're above them, and destroying the nature while doing it, is our sin, our problem. But we have the right to kill and eat them if any predatory animal has that right too. That doesn't mean we should kill them, and that certainly doesn't mean we should torture them in incomprehensible ways we do right now. Free will is another argument entirely, but our moral concepts don't exist outside human experience. They're as real as we make them to be; but still, I am not arguing about that, I am arguing about the value of living animals and us - because you are using a quote about that as an argument.
I don't know do you really care about nature or animals, but at least stop actively harming their cause by virtue signaling and confirming people's negative feelings about vegans by acting like a prick online. You can just hate humans and say so; this is the internet, you can say whatever and you can get into arguments without having to pretend there's some nobler cause for it. Who am I to judge, when I'm taking part in this discussion as well? It's not like I personally have much love towards humanity either.
Animals have sex with each other, too. Do you have that right? Or do you admit that knowledge comes with responsibilities? One or the other, can't deny them both. And for the record, I do think animal agriculture requires rape, so this ad absurdum isn't coming out of left field.
Of course we have responsibilities; but those are set by us - if I say something is terrible, that too must come from the perspective of human morality, since good and evil are human concepts as well. These things don't exist in nature, but we do. It is completely arrogant of us to think we'd have some sort of privilege to see ourselves separate from nature, or to know what is best for other beings, just because we are capable of what we call morality. We can live by our values and by our responsibilities, but thinking that having those somehow gives us rights over nature or more value than animals, is what has basically led to this twisted system in the first place.
On rape I somewhat disagree; it is not a necessary part of animal agriculture - but it sure as hell is a part of our industrial farming, part of the torture we're doing. And we do have sex with each other all the time just like animals, otherwise humans wouldn't exist. Or are you talking about bestiality? That is usually an abnormality among mammals in general, so that can be used to support the argument that what we're doing and allowing to happen is terrible.
You're complaining about thinking humans have rights over nature, while defending acting as though humans have rights over nature. Humanity is the only species to raise animals in captivity for slaughter. The only species to forcibly impregnate livestock. The only species to operate slaughterhouses. The only species to trade corpses for currency. These are crimes against nature no other animal engages in. No animal should engage in them. It's uniquely evil.
The life of a human has no greater value than a chicken. There are 34.4 billion chickens in the world. If I could snap my fingers to kill all humans and set all chickens free, even knowing there would be mass starvation, I would still do it, because the math still favours letting the chickens live. They would not continue to be bred and slaughtered in such numbers for your McDonald's nuggets.
My point is that we are part of nature, and thinking that we and our actions are somehow separate from it, animals, the ecosystem, all that, is what has caused this whole disgusting way we are causing mass extinction and immeasurable suffering, and thus can't be the solution to it. Sure we physically dominate the planet now and have power over almost all animals, but that doesn't make us different from them or separate from the ecosystem, plenty of species are dominant in their environments. Something is not unnatural just because only we are doing it (and we're not in fact even the only animals doing this! for example farmer ants farm aphids; but that is irrelevant here); plenty of species do things that are unique to them.
Animal husbandry itself doesn't require rape nor even killing the animals kept; we are perfectly able to keep chickens for eggs, bees for honey... Even cows can be kept for milk without raping them or taking the calves away too young - unless you think animals breeding is somehow unnatural, which I doubt. All this can also be done without making the animals grow unhealthy in the multiple ways we are still continuing to do. But none of this can be done without torture on an industrial level. None.
The sad fact is that even many wild species live longer in captivity when kept in proper conditions, because nature is not "nice". Nature is not some ideal magical place where every animal lives happy and healthy; the fate of any of us in the woods is basically to be either killed by a predator, dying of illness, or starving to death. If that is fine, how is keeping animals close to us in well conditions - healthy, not starving, being able to fullfill their instinctual needs - somehow worse? We're killing and eating them, sure, but that's no different from the fate of them being eaten by a predator; we're then just taking that place in the natural chain. That changes when we intentionally pervert the process and make their lives torture, forcefully create absurd amount of animals just to torture them even more, even intentionally breed them to be unhealthy monstrosities whose short lives are suffering from beginning to the sad end. Keeping and killing anything while causing maximum amount of suffering certainly is a crime if anything is!
And pretending that animals already bred to be dependant on humans would be better off if all humans died, is frankly intellectually lazy. All the chickens we're farming now will die no matter what; pitting them living in torture and dying to be food against them dying of starvation is an argument stemming from hatred towards humans, not from saving the chickens. In no way should we continue like we are doing right now, and focusing on "human kill, human bad - you bad!!!" is at best unhelpful in trying to change the already very hopeless situation for the better.