Veganism: low vs high perspective.

[Majed]

Veganism - the low perspective: 

-Think that morality is objective and that killing animals is inherently wrong.

-Focuses on activism and converting the whole world to veganism, instead of prioritizing wisdom, sense making and understanding. 

-Low cognitive complexity, think in black and white, tribal identity formation. 

-Turns veganism into a religion, in group vs out group thinking. 

-Absolutistic. Doesn't recognize the existential dilemmas humans and other biological creatures are placed in for survival. 

-Focusing on winning the argument and not on truth. 

-Doesn't see the problems with ideology, and doesn't recognize veganism as a privilege for the wealthy, well educated, and healthy elites. 

-Only focused on animal exploitation, and doesn't see the underpinning root cause of many atrocities.

Example : vegan booty

Veganism - the high perspective: 

-Realizes nuances, and that people who are meat eaters are meat eaters by necessity or lack of education and inquiry. 

-Realizes veganism as a construct, and that it is a spectrum, not just black and white, in group bias of you're either vegan or an animal abuser, for example being a pescatarian or vegetarian is better than being a meat eater, even though it is not the same as veganism. 

-Understand the existential reason for evil, being God and infinity. 

-Focuses on wisdom, sense making, truth, understanding and the greater jihad, instead of the lower jihad. 

-Realizes morality being relative, and a construct of the mind to help it survive. 

-relativistic, understand that there are edge cases, like for example people who cannot afford a vegan diet, or don't have the luxury of being vegan, or people with medical conditions where they cannot abstain from consuming meat and animal products... 

-High cognitive complexity. 

Example: Daniel schmachtenberger 

 

[aurum]

Good breakdown. More thinking like this about this debate.

We could also add to the high perspective list systems thinking. One should see the complex feedback loops that lead to veganism or not veganism.

[Leo Gura]

Yes, nice distinguishing.

Although in general, any kind of veganism is a higher perspective than the default of eating whatever tastes best.

Veganism requires a development of empathy and selflessness which does not exist by default. But then this can bring with it a moral righteousness and crusading, which is low.

Edited yesterday at 03:43 AM by Leo Gura

[Buck Edwards]

23 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Veganism requires a development of empathy and selflessness which does not exist by default. But then this can bring with it a moral righteousness and crusading, which is low.

A non-vegan omnivore diet is an optimal diet. I should not have to sacrifice my health for veganism. Makes perfect sense. 

[Thought Art]

@Buck Edwards i don’t think this is true. 
 

Bryan Johnson for example is vegan. He spends 2million a year on his health. 

Though, everyone is different.

[Princess Arabia]

Her shirt reads "eat pussy, not animals". What is a cat but an animal. Hehe. 

[Buck Edwards]

6 minutes ago, Thought Art said:

@Buck Edwards i don’t think this is true. 
 

Bryan Johnson for example is vegan. He spends 2million a year on his health. 

Though, everyone is different.

You don't need rocket science to figure out that a non-vegan omnivore diet is the most optimal diet for humans. It's simple. It's a balanced diet and animal protein is an absolute must. 

We are omnivores for a reason. 

 

Edited yesterday at 04:16 AM by Buck Edwards

[Emerald]

Sometimes I feel like this lower vs higher perspective thing (while indicating something that's true in the absolute) can be a way to ignore embodied heart-based wisdom by writing over it with a disconnected intellect-based rationalization that is meant to maintain homeostasis.

I notice this can often be a problem on this forum in particular. Everyone's always looking for the superior intellectual framework. But many miss what really matters.

And the servant becomes the king and the king the servant.

And doing this intellectual trick can be used as a way for a person to hide their embodied heart wisdom from themselves through a series of abstract higher truth intellectualizations.

And they can use these higher truth intellectualizations to poke holes in Veganism so that they don't have to become conscious of the incongruence between their actions and their heart-wisdom.

And they can maintain the status quo without sensing their cognitive dissonance.

And this doesn't just happen with Veganism. I've seen people do it with other harm/suffering related topics as well.

But Veganism is a good example to use because most people aren't Vegan.

Like if you're a human being and you say "There's a reason for evil to exist because the nature of God is infinity... which includes suffering." or "Morality is relative."

These statements are true in the absolute.

But people can use these absolute higher truths to rationalize away their heart wisdom. 

But if we were a cow at slaughter, we would not be able to ignore the heart wisdom.

It is only from the armchair of privilege that we can intellectualize with the taken for granted solace that we will not be on the chopping block in this life.

[Buck Edwards]

@Emerald do you also feed only vegan food to your children? 

[Emerald]

Just now, Buck Edwards said:

@Emerald do you also feed only vegan food to your children? 

I'm the only Vegan in my house.

I went Vegan after both of my kids were born. But if my husband and I were both Vegan when we had kids, then I'd have probably wanted to raise them Vegan from the get-go.

But I would not interfere with the status quo and upend their person sovereignty in those choices.

The way that I see it is that I'm able to have a much more positive and long-lasting impact on them by simply modeling the behavior and allowing them to behave in the way they're used to.

[Princess Arabia]

She says trillions of animals gets abused, tortured and murdered each year. If they weren't used as food then that leaves trillions and trillions and trillions x ten more animals in the world to feed, maintain and looked after. Idk, I don't buy into this stuff. I think they could be a bit more humane in how they treat the animals but rearing them for food should be ok. People have healthy chickens in their yards for food but they still slit their throats when it's time to eat them. There are way more animals than people and these animals still need to be fed and most cannot feed themselves. There's work, time and energy that has to be put into raising farm animals.

[RightHand]

This topic is confusing me.

[Emerald]

Just now, Princess Arabia said:

She says trillions of animals gets abused, tortured and murdered each year. If they weren't used as food then that leaves trillions and trillions and trillions x ten more animals in the world to feed, maintain and looked after. Idk, I don't buy into this stuff. I think they could be a bit more humane in how they treat the animals but rearing them for food should be ok. People have healthy chickens in their yards for food but they still slit their throats when it's time to eat them. There are way more animals than people and these animals still need to be fed and most cannot feed themselves. There's work, time and energy that has to be put into raising farm animals.

The reason why we have billions (though probably not trillions) of these animals in existence at any given time is because we continuously breed them into existence specifically for the purpose of consumption.

So if we imagine a theoretical world where humans totally abstained from all animal agriculture and no one consumed animal products, that means that there would be no profit incentive to breed so many of them into existence. And farmers simply wouldn't breed them.

And there are Vegan activists who have framed how we could taper that number down over time while allowing them to live out their lives. I don't recall the specifics of it though because it's been a while since I looked at it.

[Princess Arabia]

4 minutes ago, Emerald said:

The reason why we have billions (though probably not trillions) of these animals in existence at any given time is because we continuously breed them into existence specifically for the purpose of consumption.

Well, yeah, this makes sense and I didn't think of that. There wouldn't be that many if they weren't being bred for food and consumption. 

[Yimpa]

10 minutes ago, RightHand said:

This topic is confusing me.

Try consuming some Neo-Advaitan meat:

https://vegconomist.com/interviews/mooji-meats-ribeyes-most-popular-intricate-meat-flagship-product/

[Emerald]

Just now, Princess Arabia said:

Well, yeah, this makes sense and I didn't think of that. There wouldn't be that many if they weren't being bred for food and consumption. 

Yes, exactly. And it tends to be that the types of animals we consume from factory farms are bred to be domesticated and cannot live in the wild. 

Like broiler chickens were selectively bred (during a contest that many farmers participated in back in the 50s) to grow extra large to produce more meat. 

But it's very unhealthy for the broiler chickens. And they don't live very long. And they certainly couldn't live in the wild.

It's a little like how we bred pugs to suite human aesthetic tastes. But they have all sorts of health issues because of the selective breeding.

[Leo Gura]

42 minutes ago, Emerald said:

It is only from the armchair of privilege that we can intellectualize with the taken for granted solace that we will not be on the chopping block in this life.

From the armchair a serious mind can intellectualize that it could easily be on the chopping block in this life.

Mind can be used.

Mind can be misused.

Edited yesterday at 05:07 AM by Leo Gura

[Emerald]

Just now, Leo Gura said:

From the armchair a serious mind can intellectualize that it could easily be on the chopping block in this life.

Only if an alien race comes down and starts farming humans for meat and milking them.

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, Emerald said:

Only if an alien race comes down and starts farming humans for meat and milking them.

Nope.

It's easy to see. People just don't want to look at it because they have other agendas.

Edited yesterday at 05:10 AM by Leo Gura

[Emerald]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

Nope.

It's easy to see. People just don't want to look at it because they have other agendas.

Explain a bit more. Do you mean the metaphorical chopping block? If so, yes we could end up in situations that induce suffering because someone is exploiting us.

But if you mean literally... it's highly unlikely for a human being to be raised in a factory farm and slaughtered. That's pretty obvious.

That said, you could empathize deeply and imagine being farmed. You could watch Earthlings. And that's what would awaken some of that heart wisdom I was talking about. 

But you could potentially be trafficked or put in a concentration camp or in a prison with not human rights... which is possible for humans to experience. People experience it all the time.

So, we can be exploited and killed... just not usually in the same exact way.