Shaming non-vegans is not right.

[Buck Edwards]

1 hour ago, Something Funny said:

Just read the comments here, I think it's pretty obvious. A bunch of clowns with zero intellectual integrity, unable to even have a serious discussion about the topic.

And this is the spirituality/philosophy/personal development forum. Elsewhere is even worse.

Your answers are not even worth replying to, so I won't reply to them. You're always busy stroking your ego. 

Edited yesterday at 01:31 AM by Buck Edwards

[Emerald]

@Buck Edwards Have you ever personally had a Vegan get onto you about eating chicken? Or is it just the way this video made you feel?

The thing is, nobody likes to feel like they're being called out on doing something unethical. And no one likes to question the ethics of their behavior, especially when it's one as ingrained as eating.

So, Vegans feel very threatening to people for that reason, because I'd wager that over half of people already had Vegan values. They just don't live in integrity with those values.

So, the presence of Vegans in the world makes non-Vegans with Vegan values feel very defensive about their eating habits ad it draws attention to the cognitive dissonance of behaviors not matching up with values.

As a Vegan, one of the most uncomfortable dynamics is going out to eat with an animal-loving omnivore friend. Then, telling the waiter that I'm Vegan for the purposes of food modification, and then the friend going into explaining themselves to me like they're on trial as to why they still eat meat.

Always makes me feel super uncomfortable because I feel like they feel I'm judging them. But I'm really not. I ate meat and dairy for 27 years of my life.

Then, even though most Vegans are pretty non-judgmental, there's this stereotype about all Vegans being in your face about it because that's what the mere existence of Vegans makes people feel. And you can find the odd example on the internet of the judge Vegan, so it puts a face to that feeling.

I heard a statistic recently that there was a study done on people to rate how negatively they viewed different groups of people. And Vegans were the ones viewed most negatively at 74% of people having negative associations.

I think that's precisely because people who agree with Vegans deep down feel uncomfortable around people that are walking the talk. 

[Buck Edwards]

54 minutes ago, Emerald said:

Have you ever personally had a Vegan get onto you about eating chicken? Or is it just the way this video made you feel?

To be brutally frank I was shamed right on this forum and I found it brutal and pathetic. The person came directly at me and insulted me. I won't name them. But they are also on this thread. They are still throwing insults around and I don't like their overly judgemental and condescending and moral superiority tone. If you use your intuition you can find them on this thread. I just dislike that approach. Nobody likes animal cruelty and some people don't take a strong stance, I get it. But this person assumes they are intellectually and morally great and others are fools. Somebody needs to call him out, maybe vegans? 

Ever since the shaming, I feel a bit guilty and uncomfortable while eating chicken because I am constantly reminded of the shaming. This is toxic shame and what I'm suffering is toxic guilt that I don't deserve to suffer. So when I watched the video, it suddenly clicked. This is not a click bait provocative video by any means. It's a real phenomenon. Most vegans think and erroneously assume that they aren't shaming others. But it takes only one hyper vigilant Vegan to get the job done. Like in the video. 

I myself didn't realize over the years that this could be a major problem. I used to assume that non-vegans blow it out of proportion. Until it hit home. When I was personally shamed, I felt awful and insulted and just like... I don't know... How to even say this... I mean.. I felt like I'm a criminal... It's shocking what the shaming can do to one's humanity... It's traumatic and soul crushing.... I used to enjoy eating chicken so much, it's my favorite. And having the vegan (I don't even know if he is vegan but he has a strong stance on veganism and he throws insults like in this thread he is calling everyone a bunch of clowns with zero intellectual integrity, it's awful) rub it directly into my face on a previous occasion sent me into a self-guilt toxic shame spiral. I felt bad like I'm some awful person when I'm not. I care about animals too. But I can't help my diet. I want a full diet and I want to eat something that fulfills me without feeling shame.. And even if I said that I enjoy, there's nothing wrong in enjoying the food you eat. I don't have to give ambiguous explanations to why I'm eating what I am, to supposedly apologize to vegans and act like "yes I care about animals but you see I'm eating for bla bla bla reasons...." no I don't need to do that either. I can be unapologetic if I want to. Those reasons aren't necessary to satisfy my conscience or their ego. I don't need a blemish thrown at my conscience to begin with. I eat with a clean conscience and why not. It's my fundamental right to survival and nobody should have the right to shame my survival no matter how unethical they view it. I'm not robbing a bank or stealing someone's grandfather's land to sit in guilt. This shaming is ridiculous. I'm simply eating. And eating is a basic and fundamental human right. These people act like I'm eating someone's child, the guy in the video even equated animals to children, this is beyond bizarre. 

I was shamed, maybe it doesn't appear a lot to that person or other people on the forum, but personally it harmed me badly. To the point I have trouble eating meat. Now this is real issue that I've only begun to experience once it happened to me. I know now and  understand why people view vegans negatively and why such an uproar against vegans exists on YouTube and the internet. It makes sense. Maybe they were shamed too in similar ways? Then their outrage is perfectly legit. It feels like being encroached upon on our fundamental right to eat what we want to eat and what feels healthy to us. Yes as non-vegans we are aware of the slaughter industry and the animal cruelty issue, we aren't ignorant clowns and buffoons trying to outrage vegans. We are just simple people and doing things that people did for thousands of years. Shaming is not the way to make a point, maybe there are other solutions that might come up in the future to reach a middle ground. But if such problematic (I will call them problematic because they shame non vegans) vegans continue to do what they are doing, the whole veganism movement will suffer badly and get ridiculed and probably not set out to achieve whatever they want. Their failure or success is not my concern to be honest, but their tactic is. It's not fair to use this tactic, I don't know why they assume it will work. If it has worked and some people converted to vegan, then it's no different than cult or religious abuse, because religious people use similar moral shaming tactics for conversion. 

I think I can care about animal cruelty in other ways too. Like not wanting elephants to be used in circus or monkeys treated brutally in Thailand for tourist pleasure. Or pets being abandoned in America every year. Or crocodile farming for Hermes handbags which is absolutely absolutely cruel. And a luxury vanity dumbfuck handbag is not basic survival so the luxury  company Hermès needs a serious banning. Issues like that. 

I even put the person on my ignore list to not have to read their comments. But it's still triggering. 

By the way, I was a vegan especially for ethical reasons. I tried being a strict vegan for a year and then I gave up because my weight dropped and I began experiencing some health issues. After that I switched back to eating meat again and those problems went away. I feel much better now and I regularly consume chicken as usual.. I just don't want to eat it with guilt. Because that won't be healthy for my mental health. 

This thread is both for personal reasons as well as to raise awareness about how vegans shaming non vegans is quite harmful mentally and not to be taken lightly and why people critiquing their approach on the internet, YouTube are actually legitimate in their frustration. 

It looks like I wrote this post out of anger, but realistically it's out of deep frustration. 

 

Edited yesterday at 03:42 AM by Buck Edwards

[aurum]

Much of this will be solved as lab grown food evolves out of its infancy.

 

[Something Funny]

@Buck Edwards  I have NEVER shamed you or anyone for eating meat. I DARE you to show me a quote where I am shaming anyone for eating meat. I only ever called you out for the dishonest, nonsensical things, that you are saying.

You now being paranoid about eating chicken because you can't handle your own mind is not mine responsibility.

1 hour ago, Buck Edwards said:

This is not a click bait provocative video by any means

This is literally a clickbait, troll video. It is literally called "Eating meat in front of vegan protesters", with a laughing emoji, and it is posted on the channel with random trashy videos. Like what are you even talking about? Where did you even find it?

Maybe if you stopped consuming brain rot content like this, you would feel better.

Like I've said, zero intellectual integrity. Just spinning bullshit and playing victim.

[Quader]

What bothers me most is that people aren't respecting plants for their livelihoods at all. It's like plants are not alive with feelings and all the while cute critters are lil humans (akin to pets, children). Even rocks deserve this reverence. We are so attached to what we identify with (can we recognize a face?) we're cherry picking what deserves sanctity. The issue is with the wanton cruelty perpetrated by factory farming. Waste, neglect and disrespect. Harvesting animals doesn't have to be so disgusting and savage. This is a recent invention 

[Something Funny]

2 minutes ago, Quader said:

Harvesting animals doesn't have to be so disgusting and savage. This is a recent invention 

It does and it is not.

3 minutes ago, Quader said:

It's like plants are not alive with feelings and all the while cute critters are lil humans (akin to pets, children).

No, plants or rocks don't in fact have feelings the way animals do.

4 minutes ago, Quader said:

What bothers me most is that people aren't respecting plants for their livelihoods at all.

So what solution did you come up with? Did you transcend eating food all together and instead found a way to sustain yourself with just air and sunshine?

[Emerald]

@Buck Edwards I can see why that's distressing. People who care about animals who aren't Vegan have a lot of unconscious inner turmoil buried under lots of different beliefs that enable them to maintain the status quo without becoming viscerally aware of the contradiction between their actions and values.

And when someone challenges a non-Vegan who has Vegan values but who's not yet in a mental space where they're ready to make a change, it brings to the surface a lot of really uncomfortable feelings that can be quite overwhelming.

And that person can start to feel a lot of shame and like they're the bad guy. And it produces a tendency to go into defense mode and to try to find reassuring narratives that show why Veganism is wrong/short-sighted/impractical/bad/unhealthy/etc. and that the status quo is okay.

But you're not a bad person for not being Vegan. It's just that you might be a bit out of integrity with your own values and the commenter you mentioned probably drew your attention to the typically unconscious feelings of internal contradiction of being a non-Vegan who cares about animals.

And shaming tends to backfire because it hits people with this awareness before they're ready for it. So, it's not a good rhetorical tactic to shame people unless they're already teetering on the edge of Veganism... and even then, it's not very effective and can backfire.

When I first went Vegan, I had to deal with a lot of these uncomfortable feelings because I had to face with the reality that I'd been living out of alignment with my values for 27 years. And the dietary change gave space for those intellectual contradictions and the emotions they hid from me to make themselves known without any intellectual defense or cognitive dissonance on my part.

And for about a week or two after I went Vegan, I felt really emotionally terrible because I couldn't unsee what I'd seen in myself. I also watched Earthlings, which was God-awful.

So, that brought things really front and center to me to see how out of alignment my actions had been, as I cannot even watch animals be slaughtered on a computer screen without feeling totally traumatized and upset at how the world is.

But I don't agree with using any kind of insults or shaming to convince people to go Vegan because people have to be in alignment to make that kind of change, and no amount of shaming will change that. It will just prematurely make a person become aware of all those unpleasant feelings and they'll feel like the bad guy... and then feel the need to defend their identity of goodness, which is a fundamentally human thing to do.

But going through the posts on this thread, there are more anti-Vegan judgments than anti-omnivore judgments because Veganism is the minority stance. Some of the insults that I saw were things like the "spiritual ego" and "Stage Green oafs" and "those morons" and "Typical Vegan. They should have their own children" and "makes them look like a cult" and "misanthropic".

But these judgments don't really bother me because I understand why people are saying these things... which is the same reason I used to say things like this before I went Vegan.

And I currently feel a sense of alignment with my actions in this area of life. I've thought deeply on this choice. So, no amount of Vegan shaming is going to make me feel bad and reconsider because I feel solid in my values.

So, it might be uncomfortable but this dynamic may have brought to your awareness a shakiness in your own value system. If you felt solid, the shaming probably wouldn't bother you so much and would just be mildly annoying.

That said, he shouldn't be doing that if he wants to be effective in his activism.

Edited yesterday at 05:44 AM by Emerald

[Quader]

22 minutes ago, Something Funny said:

No, plants or rocks don't in fact have feelings the way animals do.

So what solution did you come up with? Did you transcend eating food all together and instead found a way to sustain yourself with just air and sunshine?

The solution is to embrace what it means to be an animal instead of resent it. There'll be plenty of time to not be a consumer of nature. We are supposed to take from the earth what we give back, when we ourselves are eaten and released back to the earth. It comes from our poo, our sweat, our energy. Before we die, and after. But it will all be released and returned in a different form. 

The issue with cruelty is valid,  and I support the notion of being a responsible waste not want not citizen. But there's a lot of $$$ that says things could be done more efficiently otherwise. When there were no supermarkets we ate what was on our plate, or starved. You are so far away from that reality it has clouded your judgement. 

[Something Funny]

4 minutes ago, Emerald said:

And shaming tends to backfire because it hits people with this awareness before they're ready for it. So, it's not a good rhetorical tactic to shame people unless they're already teetering on the edge of Veganism... and even then, it's not very effective and can backfire.

 

5 minutes ago, Emerald said:

That said, he shouldn't be doing that if he wants to be effective in his activism.

Once again, I did not shame anyone for eating meat or not being vegan. And I am not even trying to be an activist. 

When she talks about me shaming her, she is referring to this thread:
 

She got upset because I've called her "but you are hurting plants. " argument stupid. Which, to this day, I think is one most stupid and hypocritical arguments you can ever use. I don't care if you are vegan or not, but this argument makes me want to facepalm myself into anther universe.

[Emerald]

28 minutes ago, Quader said:

What bothers me most is that people aren't respecting plants for their livelihoods at all. It's like plants are not alive with feelings and all the while cute critters are lil humans (akin to pets, children). Even rocks deserve this reverence. We are so attached to what we identify with (can we recognize a face?) we're cherry picking what deserves sanctity. The issue is with the wanton cruelty perpetrated by factory farming. Waste, neglect and disrespect. Harvesting animals doesn't have to be so disgusting and savage. This is a recent invention 

Factory farms don't waste anything. They sell all sellable product because it's how they make money. They use every part of the animal. It's just a myth that they don't.

And they're operating off of razor-thin profit margins and are subsidized by the government to stay in business because it's so difficult to run the business in a way where it turns a profit.

But yes, harvesting animals is inherently savage. There isn't a nice way to do it. Even the Halal method is a slitting of the throat. That's as nice as it gets, and having your throat slit is a violent death.

Don't believe me? Look at videos of cows and pigs being killed in the "humane" way.

Also, the plant and rocks thing is a common defense for an omnivorous diet, but probably the silliest and most dishonest one because no one who says it actually believes it when the rubber meets the road.

If someone offered you $1000 to stab a stalk of broccoli or to stab an animal, I guarantee that you'd choose to stab the broccoli (unless you're a psychopath and like stabbing animals for fun) and you wouldn't even feel bad for stabbing the broccoli. And you'd probably think the people who choose to stab the animal over the broccoli are psychopaths.

So, I'm sure that you intuitively understand the difference between sentient and non-sentient life.... and living things with a nervous system that can feel pain and living things with no nervous system that can't feel pain.

 

[Something Funny]

@Quader so basically your solution is to do nothing really but to act spiritually superior to everyone else?

If the issue of cruelty is valid, what did you personally do about it? In what ways do you make sure that animals and plants that you eat are treated without cruelty and with respect? How exactly do you act from your place of pure, unclouded judgement?

9 minutes ago, Quader said:

But there's a lot of $$$ that says things could be done more efficiently otherwise.

How? Please share with us your superior vision of the world.

 

[Emerald]

8 minutes ago, Quader said:

The solution is to embrace what it means to be an animal instead of resent it. There'll be plenty of time to not be a consumer of nature. We are supposed to take from the earth what we give back, when we ourselves are eaten and released back to the earth. It comes from our poo, our sweat, our energy. Before we die, and after. But it will all be released and returned in a different form. 

The issue with cruelty is valid,  and I support the notion of being a responsible waste not want not citizen. But there's a lot of $$$ that says things could be done more efficiently otherwise. When there were no supermarkets we ate what was on our plate, or starved. You are so far away from that reality it has clouded your judgement. 

Factory farms are not part of the circle of life. 

And if we all hunted our food and consumed the same level of meat that factory farming currently enables us to, every land mammal would be hunted to extinction in a very short time frame.

Also, if someone literally has no other option but to eat meat, then I don't have a problem with it.

I disagree with people eating animals for pleasure and convenience and habit... but not for ACTUAL survival. 

But most privileged modern folk are not in that position. And a whole food Vegan diet is cheaper than a whole food diet with meat, dairy, and eggs.

So my perspective is that our greater levels of privilege and power behoove us to take on greater levels of responsibility. And the prevalence of the Vegan diet shows how far we've grown as a species in terms of infrastructure and technology.

 

[Something Funny]

[Quader]

15 minutes ago, Something Funny said:

@Quader so basically your solution is to do nothing really but to act spiritually superior to everyone else?

How exactly do you act from your place of pure, unclouded judgement?

Quader: $$$ says things could  be done more efficiency  otherwise

How? Please share with us your superior vision of the world.

 

I meant that efficiency when viewed in terms of profit claims no responsibility outside of earning profit. The money leads astray any concept of something that could be more important (like sustainability). I'm talking about the way things are right now not what my notion of a solution could be because I just don't have one, otherwise it would be done. There is peace to be found in reconciling the gritty life factors as to why it has lead to current circumstance.  

Having your cake and eating it too is not something to be shaming others for, unless you want them to follow your superior spiritual ideals. There is a distinct difference between being sour of the current state of affairs and being understanding of why it is that way. 

@Something Funny

 

[Something Funny]

2 minutes ago, Quader said:

I'm talking about the way things are right now not what my notion of a solution could be because I just don't have one, otherwise it would be done.

No, you said that you are botheres by the way people treat plants. How they also have feelings and deserve respect to.

Please advise in what way is your treatment of plants (and by extension animals, since you advocate for everyone being treated with equal respect) different from other people's.

[Quader]

24 minutes ago, Something Funny said:

You realize the robots got their jimmies rustled because they were being treated like a rock, right? If you punished the earth based on it not having feelings its prototypical life blood would be destroyed. We're made of rocks and minerals dude. I'm just saying this compassion of life can expand in scope genuinely, there is note and appreciation to be found.. rocks being important is not moot.

In regards of how to treat plants, tread lightly. Open your eyes. Take a responsibility to learn what grows in your backyard and the wondrous medicine and nutrition can be found at arms reach. I'm not the poster boy of this ideal, but it's a good place to start and everyone starts somewhere.

I'm not bothered by plants and I care more about animals. I'm trying to address a bigger issue that isn't limited to what we personally can or cannot relate to on a surface (face) level. 

Edited yesterday at 06:51 AM by Quader
Responding to additional comment, Typos

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

6 hours ago, Something Funny said:

Why? According to who? What's wrong with treating animals as children?

I don't know, do as you wish😄 doesn't matter, just a silly observation. Just think it tells you something about the human psyche and how it likes to find the things it lacks somewhere else

Don't forget about those 5 micronutrients btw😄

[Something Funny]

@Quader got it

[Something Funny]

4 minutes ago, NewKidOnTheBlock said:

Don't forget about those 5 micronutrients btw😄

Don't forget to check your cholesterol and take your heart medicine.