Emerald

I prefer not to respond to dishonest arguments. But I'll humor you. My response to the substance of your argument: The existence of Vegans and Veganism doesn't cause harm to culture. My honest reaction to your post: My perception is that you don't really care about the actual argument itself. Like, you don't seem to care about preserving culture in any other context. In fact, a lot of your posts are direct critiques of your own religious/cultural background. And there are certain posts where you try to go radically contrarian against cultural standards with hypotheticals around "What if we questioned social norms and dropped taboos around (fill-in-the-blank extremely taboo thing)?" So, I don't buy for a second that you're pearl clutching about Veganism undermining culture... nor do I believe you genuinely believe that it does cause harm to culture. It's pretty clear to me that you're just looking for a way to defend your own actions in your own eyes because you're uncomfortable with your own actions.

Exactly my point. People come up with these elaborate defenses to assuage their own guilt... because deep down, they know that they're not eating meat for health or to preserve culture or whatever the content of the justification is. It's all because they don't agree with their own actions. And they are shadow boxing with imaginary Vegans in their mind... that represent the way they really feel.

There's definitely a lot of delusion and self-deception happening with Aubrey. He's really creating a lot of magical thinking narratives and religious narratives to justify his own actions to himself... and then pulling others into the narratives that he's woven to deceive himself. I can see it staring with him having a problem with checking dating apps as an addiction... and wanting to stray from the relationship to get sexual validation from new partners. And instead of framing it accurately as an addiction and a boundary breech to his relationship and an unhealed part of himself, he finds a way to reframe it all and make his actions seem to him as a reflection of "greater consciousness and integrity" compared to the average person. And it allows him to bypass his own addictions and deeper seated issues that cause him to look outside of himself for validation of his worth... AND also to feed those addictions. What's a shame is that he has quite a lot of power. So, his self-deceptions have a bigger negative impact than those who don't have as much power.

And you're blaming the boringness, lack of initiative, lack of drive, lack of charm, and laziness (which are negative qualities that many men have had throughout the entirety of human history) on the fact that a percentage of contemporary men aren't consciously striving to match up to some Masculine standard? I believe that's your argument because you said, "The vikings are gone because they don't want to grow pussies" and "Nowadays it's all soy boys!" or something crazy like that. If that's your argument... rest assured, TONS of men are trying to be the same kind of hyper-Masculine guy. And it doesn't help them transcend these issues one little bit. And women are NOT interested in that hyper-Masculine guy that all these men are aspiring to be. And I've noticed that men who are the most obsessed with Masculinity tend to have these problems a lot more than the average guy who just doesn't think too much about being a manly man. The most functional men that I've come across are unapologetically themselves and don't give a rip about what's Masculine or not. And they're certainly not pearl clutching about how "There are no manly men anymore!"

100% All this obsession with Masculinity and the idea that "men aren't Masculine anymore" is just rooted in insecurity and a rejection of the value of "Be yourself" as they feel that that is not good enough. And that on its own is human and wouldn't be so bad if it weren't causing so many problems in society.... and actively exacerbating the very issues with women that these guys are having. And PsychHacks is definitely a hug box for insecure men. But anyone who takes that guy's perspectives seriously is just going to stay stuck in the same issues. I've watched a few of his videos and his formula is basically, "Here's some advice for men to show them how empowered they are compared to women. And here's some advice for women to show them how disempowered they are compared to men and how everything is their fault and how they should settle for what they can get quickly before they lose out entirely because 'high quality guys won't settle for you'." But of course, the intended target audience for the latter advice is not ACTUALLY for women at all. It's just to make men feel validated, vindicated, empowered, and right so that they get to scapegoat women and avoid facing personal responsibility for their own romantic and social issues. It's really well-encapsulated in the sentiment of blaming women's 'unreasonable standards' for the male loneliness epidemic. All blame and no personal responsibility.

@Alexop I wasn't talking about the difference between toxic Masculinity and healthy Masculinity. I was speaking to your notion of men not being Masculine enough... and how women's complaint is that men are not Masculine enough. And I was saying that "lack of Masculinity" doesn't tend to be what women complain about with regards to men's behaviors, as women don't tend to value hyper-Masculinity in men in the way that men do.

You're saying that you don't consider this video to relate to our conversation? You were saying that women are complaining about men not being Masculine enough in an earlier post. And I said that women don't tend to complain about men's level of Masculinity, but about being brainwashed into terrible perspectives on Masculinity. Then, I had made a point about how men tend to value hyper-Masculinity in men... but women don't value hyper-Masculinity that much. And I gave the example of the picture of the manly man vs the picture of Ryan Gosling to show a dimension to where the male perception of what women like and what women actually like are often quite different. Then, I got recommended a video on the same topic. Point being... it's only men that are complaining that men aren't Masculine enough. Men are sufficiently Masculine in the eyes of most women. But women can have other complaints about men en masse... like being brainwashed into all the Manosphere stuff.

The algorithms must have been listening to my post earlier, as I was just recommended a video about what men appreciate about men and what women appreciate about men, appearance-wise and Masculinity-wise. And our conversation is exactly a reflection of this dissonance between what women like... and what men think that women like.

Most of the complaints that I hear women making about men are that men are being brainwashed by garbage perspectives about what Masculinity is, en masse. And it's the guys who are the most obsessed with "being Masculine", that tend to have the problem behaviors that you've described. I haven't even seen gaggles of "woke guys" having the issues you describe. In fact, I haven't seen gaggles of "woke guys" even identifying as such and banding together. You just have relatively secure guys that don't think about Masculinity very much who are just being themselves.... and then you have a bunch of guys who are all trying to be the "Manly Man" to secure the approval of other "Manly Men." And the guys in the latter group are either able to be proximal to the standard of Masculinity or are not able to do so. And the guys who are not able to do so, come across as insecure. But even guys who can ape Masculinity well enough to pass in the eyes of other men, are still operating from a place of insecurity and not being enough as they are. Even the notion of the "soy boy" is just a talking point to keep men chained to immature and unrealistic definitions of Masculinity... so as to avoid being seen as Feminine or weak in the eyes of other men. But the things that men value about men are very different from the things that women value about men. If you ask a man to point out who he thinks is the most attractive man in women's eyes, he'll pick out a guy like the top image. If you ask a woman what they find attractive, answers will vary because women's taste in men vary. But if we're going purely off of physical features and level of Masculinity, a plurality of women will probably go for a guy that looks like the average Hollywood guy, like Ryan Gosling or others who have a similar face and body structure to him, where there's a mixture between Masculine features and softer features.

For me, I need to have a deeper connection to feel an attraction that's intense enough to want to pursue. So, I'm not the best person to ask, as every guy is pretty neutral to me until deeper feelings set in. But what I would say is that I'm attracted to a guy's personality. And it is through the appreciation of his personality that I come to appreciate his Masculine energy... not the other way around. And the subtle innate Masculinity that's there isn't something that needs to be learned. It's just there in the form that it takes. The main thing is to work on yourself to subtract the barriers. But Masculinity cannot be added nor taken away, as is a core subtle essences of one's personality. But it can either be embraced or suppressed... and if suppressed, it creates lots of neuroses and insecurities. And it tends to be when guys feel like they need to match up to some kind of standard of Masculinity that they suppress their natural Masculinity because they see it as insufficient. And that creates a dynamic where the guy gets really up in his head and ideological and neurotic in his attempts to be Masculine.

Men in every era on back and back for thousands of years have said the same thing you're saying now about the current generation of men being uniquely un-Masculine. I was once reading some quotes from centuries and millennia ago that had the same sentiments as you're sharing now. But it's not true. It's just like how old people always think the young people are uniquely immature and ill-equipped to handle the world. It's a perennial human pattern. The same is true for the Masculinity crisis. It's a perennial feature of the human species. Men are often conditioned to believe in an exaggerated sense of "what Masculinity is supposed to be". And none of those expectations are realistic. So, of course "Masculinity is in crisis" because the vast majority of men can't come anywhere close to meeting such unrealistic expectations. It would be the same as every woman believing that she is required to be a super model in order to call herself a "true woman". And then, she'd look at the world and lament, "Back in the olden days, all women used to be super models with a perfect face and hourglass figure." and "Femininity is in crisis because women are uglier than the women in their great grandma's generation... and women keep getting uglier and uglier." And then, they point out some random trans man or lesbian woman and blame the problem on them for making the Femininity crisis happen. That's how unrealistic the Masculinity crisis guys sound to me. People are always thinking things are going to Hell in a hand basket in general. And one of the biggest pearl-clutches is "Oh heavens! Masculinity is under attack! Why can't we go back to a time when men were men?"

That's just your insecurity talking. There are plenty of big burly guys out there, if you like them so much.

You have TERRIBLE gaydar! These guys probably are "the vikings" on every other day but Halloween. They're just secure enough in their Masculinity to have a good laugh. Clearly, this is two men being funny and dressing up like Red Hat Ladies. And I would bet money that they're probably straight guys. If you didn't know, Red Hat Ladies are groups of older ladies that galavant around the town together in groups wearing purple outfits and red hats (or red outfits with purple hats). If I had to guess, they're just a couple guys dressing up like that to be funny. I can't imagine that ACTUAL drag queens would dress up like a bunch of old Red Hat Ladies... especially noting the lack of cosmetics. Here's some pictures of what these two are dressed up as...

Hamas is considered a terrorist organization because it does terror attacks on behalf of a non-sovereign group of people and not as an extension of an official military of a sovereign state. The IDF isn't considered a terrorist organization because the atrocities the IDF commits are supported by an official military of a sovereign state. That's really the main real distinction between a group classed as a terrorist group and an official state-sanctioned group that's committing atrocities. So, it's not about the degree of ruthlessness that makes a group a terrorist group... it's the fact that it's not associated with a sovereign state's official military. That's why terrorist groups tend to spring up in power vacuums as the "Shadow military that comes in when a people doesn't have an actual military". The oppression of a sovereign state over a non-sovereign people is the perfect breeding ground for terrorist groups to form. And these groups tend to be quite violent, ruthless, and extreme.

@AION @SwiftQuill It's unwise to succumb to victim's mentality. And the narrative in this video just takes men's insecurities and feeds them right into a victim's mentality narrative, where these insecurities can never be properly resolved. With victim's mentality, a person scapegoats and villainizes an individual or group (in this case, the scapegoated group is women) and blames them for their problems. This enables the person in victim's mentality to avoid taking personal responsibility for their own issues by giving them a person or group to blame and shovel off responsibility onto. But it also enables them to engage in the "drama triangle story" (of victim, hero, villain), where they play the role of victim and cast the scapegoat (in this case women) as the villain. And then, they crusade as the hero by doing villainous things to try to harm or defeat the scapegoat/villain. And people who don't like engaging in drama will notice this going on and will be intuitively repelled from the person who's engaging in the victim narrative.

I'm a woman, and that was my response to it. And I don't necessarily buy that Audrey Marcus or his wife are more conscious than the average person who's into spirituality. They are just a bit insightful, attractive, and well-branded to fit a certain model of it. But regardless of how insightful a person might be, it doesn't mean that they can't consciously or unconsciously manipulate their partner into an open relationship by reframing it in a spiritual rationale. Personally, I'm fine with people being polyamorous, if they're really upfront about it and every partner they're with is truly on board. Just don't reframe it as something else to trick your partner and the world into thinking it's something totally different.

The difference is that you were making claims that weren't backed by evidence and stating them as the truth. And I was pushing back on you for doing that because there is no evidence for them. There is scientific evidence that plant-based diets are associated with lower risk of heart disease, stroke, and all-cause mortality compared to omnivorous diets. And that is why I personally believe the Vegan diet is the healthiest, because I define health in terms of longevity and the minimization of the risk of the biggest killers. So, my extrapolation based in my personal definition of "healthy" (which is not itself a scientific claim) directly relates back to the evidence that exists. But there is no scientific evidence that suggests that there's significant degrees of dietary diversity, such that a sizable percentage of the population can't go Vegan without compromising their health (which is your extrapolation). That is just a guess that is based in your own ideas that you came up with in your mind. It isn't extrapolated from actual evidence... but from anecdotes and hypotheses you hold about the topic of dietary diversity. Actual evidence that would support this claim would be like if a sizable percentage of people were shown in studies and meta-analyses to not be able to extract nutrients from plants... or there was evidence in studies and meta-analyses that supplementation with B12 didn't work in a sizable percentage of people. But no such evidence exists. The best evidence you gave for your claim is that a sizable percentages of Vegans were deficient in a particular nutrient in certain studies. But that only supports the claim that "A sizable percentage of people approach the Vegan diet improperly." It doesn't support the claim that, "A sizable percentage of people can't go Vegan without compromising their health because of dietary diversity." And that's why I'm pushing back and giving counter-arguments on what you've been claiming... as your extrapolations about dietary diversity preventing a large percentage of people from going Vegan aren't based in any evidence.

Again, I'm not making any sweeping claims about Veganism other than what's represented in the current scientific literature... which associates lower risk of heart disease and stroke with plant-based diets. But I'm sure that processed Vegan food causes health problems in the same way that processed food does in other contexts. Either way, I'm not making health claims... just debunking health claims that have no evidence.

Coming back to my 4 claims... I made no such extrapolation jump. So, you are arguing against a strawman of my position, which you keep doing. Stick to arguing against my ACTUAL claims. My claims are... People lie to themselves to justify their choices when those choices are out of integrity with their values. Anecdotes aren't scientific evidence. A diet that minimizes animal product intake is associated with a lower risk of heart disease, stroke, and all-cause mortality. There is no evidence that "40% of people can't go Vegan without compromising their health." And if that were true, it would be represented in the evidence that exists... and the WHO and ADA would not deem well-planned Vegan diets as nutritionally adequate without. You have to actually argue against the points that I'm making... as opposed to assuming my point and arguing with that. Keep in mind, I have engaged in this argument, not to make my own claims of truth... but to push back on you making wide-sweeping evidence-less claims about Vegan diets like "40% of people can't go Vegan without compromising their health" or "Vegan diets are nutrient deficient." But you keep arguing with me as though I'm making claims about something I am not... as though I am the one that began making claims like "Vegan diets are the superior diet," which I do personally believe is true because of its association with longevity, but never claimed or argued as that would also be a wides-sweeping claim about a diet that doesn't involve real scientific statistics. Instead the reality is that Vegan diets are associated with lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, lowers risk of heart disease and stroke, and lower risk of all-cause mortality. And this is why I personally believe that Veganism is the superior diet. But I would never claim "Veganism is the superior diet" because that is just an extrapolation from the evidence about heart disease and stroke. So, in this context, I have never claimed that Veganism is the best diet or anything like that. I was just pushing back on your claims, which are evidence-less. I was not making a health claims about Veganism beyond the fact that it is associated with greater longevity compared to animal-product-based diets... but I was pushing back on your lack of evidence as you were saying things that aren't true about Veganism. My main point is and has always been that, "Non-Vegans who have Vegan values who eat animals for pleasure and convenience tend to go into cognitive dissonance to hide their true motives from themselves and to avoid facing with the reality that their actions don't match their values." And unsubstantiated health claims like "Veganism is a nutrient deficient diet" is one of the defenses that non-Vegans with Vegan values tend to use to explain away their own actions to themselves to assuage that cognitive dissonance. That's why I'm simply making counter-claims to your arguments... as I do operate from the assumption that you personally need to believe that Vegan diets are nutrient deficient to explain to yourself why you're currently eating meat and dairy when you (if you're not dealing with food scarcity) don't need to in order to survive. But of course, that's just an assumption based on what I know about human nature. And people who have been Vegan before tend to hold the tightest to their defenses because they have become aware of their values enough to make a big change earlier on.

The issue is that these kinds of "be more masculine" types of advice and alarmist "society is going to hell in a hand-basket because men aren't men anymore!" narratives, tend to add to men's difficulty with adjusting socially... as it is a bunch of neurotic guys trying to intellectualize what it is to be Masculine... as opposed to simply operating from their own sense of sovereignty. It's like so many men are trying to compete to be the same exact guy as opposed to just being themselves. And it scares women away because a lot of these guys start adopting narratives that over-emphasize the gender difference in their own minds and treating women like mysterious aliens from another planet.... which adds more to the neuroticism. I notice over the past 10 years since all these narratives have gone online is that young women generally have soured more and more on men because of the proliferation of all the Manosphere nonsense. And interacting with a guy who isn't brainwashed by it is refreshing. Even I, as a woman in my mid-thirties, can feel a bit put off... despite having tons of friendships with plenty of normal guys and having had relationships with guys who are normal with regard to their relationship to their Masculinity. Like honestly, what kind of woman do you think would be interested in a guy who believes he should "treat her like a child?" And whether that is spoken or not, there are always tells. And they betray the immaturity of the guy in question. If I look at the most socially adjusted guys who have the healthiest relationships with women, it's men who don't over-focus on trying to be Masculine. But the loneliest and least socially well-adjusted guys tend to over-focus on it. And you'd be wise to avoid taking advice from men who don't have the type of relationship with women that you want to have. Like, Leo has learned a lot about the attraction phase to get over the challenges of being a late bloomer (which makes him relatable to men who struggle with initiating attraction with women)... but he doesn't have much relationship experience and doesn't have many insights about how to interact with woman on a human-to-human level. And the frameworks he operates off of will likely prevent him from being able to sustain a longterm relationship because of how he views the relationship between men and women.

Too much intellectual fodder here about how men and women ought to be that doesn't reflect the way that real men and women relate to each other in the world. But the intellectualization is just there in lieu of actual human-to-human connection... and it gives the sense that Masculinity and Femininity are under attack. But these energies are subtle to begin with. The discomfort just comes from people who get attached to the notion of Masculine and Feminine expressions being stark and extreme... as opposed to subtle and woven into a very ordinary fabric. People want extremes... but the reality is not extreme. I think everyone should just stop trying to be Masculine or Feminine and just allow whatever happens to be there to be there. These are innate essences that come together in unique ways in individuals... and they come through much more potently if you stop trying. And the more your mind constructs an image of the "the way that men ought to be", you will try to shove yourself in that box and stunt yourself... and stop the synergy between your Masculine and Feminine side. I notice that it's the men who worry the most about "being Masculine", tend to have the shakiest relationship with their Masculine side. Whereas more mature guys tend to give off a more effortless subtle essence of their unique Masculine and Feminine combination. And in naturally Masculine men, it comes through as mostly Masculine with a little bit of Feminine... a little bit like how a pinch of salt draws emphasis to the sweetness of a dessert. But that isn't something the mind can do through trying to match up to arbitrary ideas of Masculinity.

It's fine to use anecdotes as personal inspiration to inform your own decisions. I personally get really inspired when a person adopts a whole food plant based diet and experiences better health outcomes and bloodwork. But that doesn't constitute proof if I were trying to make wide sweeping claims about the health of plant-based diets... like if I were to claim, "Veganism is the healthiest diet." To have valid proof for the overall health of diet, you really have to look at studies and meta-analyses... because you can never account for all personal anecdotes that exist on the planet. And if you try to use personal anecdotes as evidence to claims about the health of any diet (or lack-there-of), there is a de facto cherry picking because you simply cannot view every single anecdote that exists. And the vast majority of the time, people are naturally going to try to find anecdotes that support their own claims and ignore the ones that don't. And even in the minority of times when someone is trying to be even-handed and pick from a wide variety of anecdotes, they still aren't going to get any valid evidence of the overall health of a diet that way because there are SOO many anecdotes that exist that weren't examined. But with something like remote viewing, if it does exist, I don't necessarily believe that it could be studied with the scientific method since it is tied to the subjective experience of a particular person. With things like that, I prefer to remain agnostic and open-minded. Like, I've experienced out of body experiences, since I was 13 years old. And I've sometimes been able to go places in these experiences. And I would imagine that remote viewing has to do with that. So, I know that it's possible phenomenologically as an experience that people are capable of having. What I don't know (and don't believe I will ever know) about my out of body experiences is... 1. If I was perceiving something that exists in some objective consensus reality of its own. OR 2. If it is an objective consensus reality.... whether or not it's the one that I typically inhabit or if it's some other dimensional aspect of this reality. OR 3. If it's just a really real feeling experience that happens purely in my own mind. So, I don't know. And I don't believe that I'll ever know the truth of whether remote viewing is real or not. But I remain open-minded because of the experiences that I've had. Either way, I don't believe that science can study it. So, I don't expect any scientific evidence to the effect. So, the only choice is to go off of personal anecdotes because there is no objective empirically observable evidence. But you won't find me making any claims of truth or falsehood, because I have no evidence to verify nor falsify the possibility of remote viewing. Also, I like the picture. I reminds me of the Wizard of Oz... with the scarecrow and the Emerald city and some Wicked Witch of the West vibes about the outfit I'm wearing.

Go back and take a look at our conversation. I've been quite consistent and reasonable in my arguments. My reason for arguing with you initially is because you were making some broad-sweeping claims about the health of Vegan diets that were unsupported by the evidence that exists. The claims were... Vegan diets are not nutritionally sufficient. 40%+ people can't go Vegan without compromising their health (which you later walked back) The way that bell-curves generally work is evidence that supports the idea that "40% of people can't go Vegan." And I was telling you that there is no such evidence... and that you're pulling those claims out of thin air. And at a certain point, you were arguing that personal anecdotes are a viable form of evidence that are on equal ground to studies and meta-analyses. And claiming that I was engaging in scientific dogma and being "radical" and not being holistic enough in my epistemology for not seeing anecdotes as real evidence. And of course, I couldn't let you get away with that. My claims have been quite simple. And I've been very consistent about them. Non-Vegans who care about animals and who don't agree that human pleasure/convenience is more important than an animal's life, often use a variety of different defenses to assuage the cognitive dissonance they have around taking actions that aren't aligned with their own values. And they often don't even truly believe the defenses they're giving. Personal anecdotes don't constitute valid evidence for sweeping claims about a the health of a diet or lack-there-of because you could collect just as many positive personal anecdotes that support any diet and just as many negative personal anecdotes to discredit any diet. The consumption of fewer animal products and more plants is associated with lower risk of heart disease, stroke, and all-cause mortality according to thousands of studies and cross-referenced into many meta-analyses. If it were true that 40% (or even a much smaller percentage) of people couldn't go Vegan without compromising their health, there would be evidence to that effect... and the WHO and ADA would not have deemed a well-planned Vegan diet as an adequate diet for all phases of life if people were at such a great risk for malnutrition on a Vegan diet. Those are literally the only claims of truth that I've made in this whole thread. And there is nothing radical about them. And #2 and #4 are indisputable facts. And #1 is a common observation that I've seen with regard to how others and myself have rationalized animal product consumption. And #4 is a logical extrapolation based on what I know about how health organizations operate (with their priority being general public health) and the evidence that's currently on record regarding the human diet. And my whole reason why I'm arguing these things is to keep people honest, by pointing out when they're using selective science denial mental gymnastics to hide from their real motives for eating animal products from themselves.

100% All the people on this thread that want to provide personal anecdote videos as proof of the claim that "Veganism is unhealthy" would not be consistent if I produced the same (or greater) number of personal anecdote videos about people having great results and clearing up health problems on a Vegan diet or of people having health problems on Carnivore, Keto, or the omnivorous diet. And it's extra frustrating that they're gloating and believe they're slam dunking the argument with their anecdotes... and doing mental gymnastics that "real holistic thinkers recognize the value of anecdotes."

It's a pretty basic component of human nature to go into cognitive dissonance whenever one takes actions that are against their own values. And people who care about animals but also contribute to their suffering and death through their lifestyle choices on a purely voluntary basis, have a variety of different ways to deal with that cognitive dissonance... which involves coming up with all sorts of defenses... often ones that they don't believe in themselves. And they will quickly abandon a defense once it doesn't work and try to find another to hide behind. Here are some common defenses that non-Vegans with Vegan values give to square the circle in their own mind... "Veganism is unhealthy." "But plants are also alive! And yet, you're fine with eating them! So, Vegans are hypocrites." "Existing as a human being harms the environment. So, going Vegan is self-negation tantamount to suicide." "Some people need to eat meat to survive because of food scarcity!" (employed by people who aren't dealing with food scarcity) "Veganism is an insult to traditional culture." "But how will we grow enough plants to feed everyone?" (This one is my favorite because 80% of crops are grown to feed livestock... and it takes 16 lbs of grain to produce one pound of beef. And as soon as people realize that this argument is in favor of Veganism because Veganism requires fewer crops to be grown compared to an omnivorous diet), they immediately ditch their concern about "How will we grow enough plants.") "The Bible says it's okay to eat meat." "It's unnatural not to eat animals." "Human beings are superior to animals, so eating them is justified." "Animals shouldn't have the exact same rights as humans." (when the argument is that animal life should be prioritized over human pleasure... not that animals should have the same rights) "The same number of animals will die whether I eat them or not." (This appeal to futility was my justification prior to going Vegan.) "But what about field deaths?" (when more field deaths happen because 80% of crops are grown to feed livestock) "Domesticated animals would go extinct if we didn't breed them for food." "Domesticated animals would over-populate if we didn't kill them for food." "Humans are at the top of the food chain. And animals' purpose for existence is to be eaten by humans." "Other animals, like lions, also eat meat. So, why don't you have a problem with lions eating meat when you do have a problem with humans eating meat." "I only eat grass-fed livestock. So, I'm not being cruel." "I only eat halal meat. So, I'm not being cruel." "Vegans are just trying to virtue signal and be superior. So, Veganism isn't anything to be taken seriously." "Veganism is for rich people." "You will never save all the animals. So, what's the point in trying?" "One person going Vegan won't make a difference." These are really common anti-Vegan arguments that all Vegans hear ad-infinitum. The trick is to realize that the people who are arguing with you don't disagree with you.... they disagree with their own actions. And they're scrambling to find a good defense to quiet the cognitive dissonance. If you were really interested in questioning the philosophy of Veganism, then you should at least understand how people react to it.