Attention vegan activists! QUESTION YOUR PARADIGM

[montecristo]

7 hours ago, Nivsch said:

Artificial "meat" from cells, tough it can't be healthy, because its artificial, is an acceptable way to spread veganism through altough there is better ways - natural foods.

But saying that we need animal agriculture and to keep some of the cruelty to animals sorry i disagree with that.

 

but what if animal agriculture was a key way to solve climate change? What would you then do with those animals? Not allow humans to eat them?

Also not sure if you're aware but none of the plant foods you see in the grocery store are natural.

 

Edited September 2, 2019 by montecristo

[Nivsch]

7 hours ago, montecristo said:

but what if animal agriculture was a key way to solve climate change? What would you then do with those animals? Not allow humans to eat them?

Also not sure if you're aware but none of the plant foods you see in the grocery store are natural.

 

Hunting is natural but animal agriculture in high scales in its organaized or industrial way is an interruption for the natural balance. You can't fix natural problems with artificial steps. Its unhealthy and only create more problems in the system. 

[Scholar]

Before talking about adopting new paradigm's, make the exercise and try to debunk the "new paradigm" as well as you possibly can.

 

You will not get a healthy perspective by just jumping around and trusting what people say. "Oh look, here someone is debunking veganism!"

Well, have you checked whether someone has debunked the debunking of the "older paradigm"?

 

https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/04/allan-savorys-ted-talk-is-wrong-and-the-benefits-of-holistic-grazing-have-been-debunked.html

 

Ask yourself this, have you even attempted to do research into whether Allan Savory is full of shit or not? If not, why would you not have done that if you seek to be unbiased? Why did you accept his opinion as fact without truly checking whether it is the case?

 

Apply your skepticism equally will be emotionally taxing. If it is not, you are doing it wrong.

Edited September 2, 2019 by Scholar

[Girzo]

It doesn't really matter whether this TED talk is truthful or not.

The presented method is not how we get our meat today, so you still need to curb your meat-eating at least until there is some environment-friendly alternative IN WORK. A theory that is not being even implemented is not enough to devalue going vegetarian/vegan.

[Scholar]

13 minutes ago, Girzo said:

It doesn't really matter whether this TED talk is truthful or not.

The presented method is not how we get our meat today, so you still need to curb your meat-eating at least until there is some environment-friendly alternative IN WORK. A theory that is not being even implemented is not enough to devalue going vegetarian/vegan.

Also notice how it is not even attempted to find a "holistic" solution that does not involve animals. The is a very disingenious way of comparing the worst kind of plant agriculture with some sort of ideal utopian animal agriculture.

If we were to be unbiased we would compare the worst plant agriculture to the worst animalagriculture. Without question we will find the worst animal agriculture to be by far worse.

Then we can continue and compare the best possible plant agriculture to the best possible animal agriculture.

 

Also, if anyone here is worried about lacking nutrients, just eat mussels. They are environmentally friendly (possibly even environmentally benefitial), most likely not sentient and probably even healthier than beef.

[montecristo]

@Scholar Yes, shellfish are golden, they are even more nutritious than ruminant animal muscle meat, contain most if not all the nutrients that plants do not and are not "fed" anything as they are filter feeders, they take in nutrients from the surrounding seawater. I think shellfish solve many of the drawbacks of strict vegan diets.

That slate article is interesting but clearly biased and funded by the Kellog foundation, as in breakfast cereals...

Were the great plains of the U.S a healthier ecosystem before or after we exterminated millions of bison along with their natural predators and replaced it with corn, soy and wheat?

I more than anyone I know personally have laboured under the emotionally taxing process of challenging my worldview and open-mindedly considering disparate opinions. But of course I can't post all of the resources I have considered on this forum right now, that would be asking people to drink from an information firehose, I dont point to these videos as conclusive proof of anything but rather neat and tidy packets of information for us to discuss here.

@Nivsch in my OP I mention that CAFO feed lot operations are pure devilry but if you look into the work of Joel Salatin you'll find that his methods are on a pound for pound basis as productive as those industrial farms whilst mimicking nature, moving the animals with seasonal rhythyms the way that predators naturally drive movements of herds. It's really quite elegant how he does things.

I realize the extent of damage that has been done to the environment by man, but if our species is to persist we will have to do something about it and whatever that is will be inherently unnatural. It seems there isnt any going "back to nature" at this stage anyway. Ideally we should all just die so the planet can regulate itself properly again.

[Scholar]

1 hour ago, montecristo said:

@Scholar Yes, shellfish are golden, they are even more nutritious than ruminant animal muscle meat, contain most if not all the nutrients that plants do not and are not "fed" anything as they are filter feeders, they take in nutrients from the surrounding seawater. I think shellfish solve many of the drawbacks of strict vegan diets.

That slate article is interesting but clearly biased and funded by the Kellog foundation, as in breakfast cereals...

Were the great plains of the U.S a healthier ecosystem before or after we exterminated millions of bison along with their natural predators and replaced it with corn, soy and wheat?

I more than anyone I know personally have laboured under the emotionally taxing process of challenging my worldview and open-mindedly considering disparate opinions. But of course I can't post all of the resources I have considered on this forum right now, that would be asking people to drink from an information firehose, I dont point to these videos as conclusive proof of anything but rather neat and tidy packets of information for us to discuss here.

Can you explain how specifically that article is biased? Just claiming it's funded by Kellogs and they are biased is not an argument. That just allows you to be biased, you can dismiss any evidence by virtue of it being funded by a company who possibly could be interested in certain results. Who else would fund these studies?

Allan Savory has no self interest and is not biased at all as a researcher whose livelihood depends on his pet theories?

 

What was the case before the U.S basically destroyed the entire ecosystem for animal agriculture does not tell us about whether grazing cows can save the environment, whether there are no better solutions or whether it would be even worth it considering the moral implications of slaughtering billions of cows "to save the planet".

 

You made claims here that you think the vegan diet is probably not healthy for you, by that virtue alone it is likely you have a bias towards justifying animal agriculture so that you can sustain your own health to the detriment of the cows who will be slaughtered for you.

Edited September 2, 2019 by Scholar

[montecristo]

you make very good points but these things apply to everyone, kellog and savory alike. Self-bias is permeated throughout any and all of these theoretical endeavors.

And yes of course I am biased towards slaughtering those cows and biased toward everything else that aids in my survival, otherwise I'd be dead.

[SerpaeTetra]

On 9/1/2019 at 2:31 AM, montecristo said:

Exactly my point! You just havent been exposed to differing viewpoints on this subject, we're all aware of paradigm lock within the domain of science arent we?

I can't argue much with you on the animal rights thing

omnivores do experience deficiencies due to several factors, the animals they eat are not raised on their natural diets and environments in addition to dishonoring the animal by throwing away 80% of it and only consuming the muscle meat.

my direct experience plus the fact that im a caucasian person who's ancestors evolved in a northern latitude tells me I cannot be healthy without eating animals.

 

How long did you try vegan for?

[montecristo]

@SerpaeTetranever was totally vegan, but never had any animal food aside from milk and chicken/turkey muscle meat until I was about 12 because my dad had a belief that animal foods were toxic and unhealthy. I always struggled with myriad health issues thyroid, psoriasis, shingles chronic fatigue degenerative joints to name a few. I tried many of the interventions that you hear about in the mainstream, juicing, supplements, yoga etc.and nothing made even the slightest difference.

Every single one of these conditions dramatically improved only after I massively increased the amount and diversity of animal foods in my diet at the age of 23. Including organs, cartilaginous tissue and shellfish and quit eating wheat corn soy vegetable oils and the like.

Edited September 3, 2019 by montecristo

[Shadowraix]

On 9/1/2019 at 4:15 PM, Nivsch said:

Artificial "meat" from cells, tough it can't be healthy, because its artificial

This doesn't really seem to be an acceptable reason. Artificial holds no grounding on how healthy or unhealthy something is. The deciding factor is how well we can make it in comparison.

While the food department is more complicated we've perfected other processes like synthesizing diamonds which are identical to natural diamonds.

On 9/1/2019 at 1:58 PM, Moreira said:

Synthetic meat is a  processed food, that means some nutrients get degraded in the process and toxic ones can appear, like histamine, for example

Processed food is another buzz word like artificial which automatically puts bad impressions on people. Its important to be nuanced when talking about specifics. Not all processing is bad. Depends how it is processed.

There's also considering lab grown meat will be more sterile and have less chances to contain harmful ingredients. Most of our meat people eat is already processed! 

Now lab meat doesn't technically contain all of the fat and connective tissue etc that lab meat does and so there is an argument of a lack of nutrients there that would need to be supplemented into it. As well as taste and texture problems. But this seems to be paving a bright future to not needing to give up meat and reduce killing animals.

 

[montecristo]

@Shiva I truly wish this were true in my case, but sadly it isnt. I was sick literally my whole life and eating animal foods saved me, it's not like I didnt jump from diet to diet, intervention to intervention along the way either.

I take detailed notes on what I eat/my habits and how those things affects my physiology and have been doing so for quite some time and the animal foods had a dramatic effect on my physiology for the better. 

Chocolate diet sounds like an elimination diet/fast which of course could be beneficial in the short term.

To say that all the plant foods we have access to now that have been bio-engineered over millenia are adequate without animal foods is to dismiss the complexity of biology and evolutionary adaptation. Reductionist hubris in my opinion. You said "for the first time in human history"  this is my point, it's unnatural.

I do my level best to not contribute to the misery and devilry that is present in the current paradigm of industrial farming. And again the impulse behind veganism is beautiful and noble I just think it lacks nuance.

Civilization and manmade things are the meta-disease here people wake up!

 

[pluto]

This guy is a good example of a successful vegan activist. He's one of the only few who thinks critically and applies common sense and reason and doesn't reactively judge or put others down.

 

[Scholar]

56 minutes ago, Shiva said:

@pluto Thanks! I really learned a lot watching this guy "debate". Remarkable how he manages to make a strong point while keeping calm and easy in debates that are becoming more and more heated.

To this day, watching street activism of vegans and vegan debates is the best study of spiral dynamics I have found. You can just see the limitations of blue and orange so clearly, and how they will weazel and squirm to uphold their own value structure over that of compassion and reason.

[montecristo]

Hasnt anyone  noticed the overwhelming evidence coming out that points to wellness being found in mimicking ancestral diets and lifestyles?

I think it will require major gene therapy to make veganism viable generationally for humans. Technology got us into this modern mess, hopefully it can get out of it as well.

[Scholar]

47 minutes ago, montecristo said:

Hasnt anyone  noticed the overwhelming evidence coming out that points to wellness being found in mimicking ancestral diets and lifestyles?

I think it will require major gene therapy to make veganism viable generationally for humans. Technology got us into this modern mess, hopefully it can get out of it as well.

Veganism is not a diet, it is an ethical stance. It states that it is immoral to exploit animals if it is not necessary.

 

A vegan for example would, if it was required to eat meat to survive, do his utmost best to choose to consume products which cause the least amount of damage and harm, namely things like mussels and various insects. He would also view it as an imperative to create a substitude for meat like lab grown meat.

 

He would not make excuses to favor his current consumption habits. Also, ancestral diets would be replacing animal meat with insects, as that is what the human species has evolved to consume, like any other primate that exist in nature.

We have evolved specific enzymes to digest insect exoskeletons, which are still present in the modern human. There is absolutely no need for gene therapy, all there is a need for is a change in consciousness and a resulting effort to create products which suit our needs without harming other beings in the process.

That is entirely doable, but not in a culture which views animals as products. We have gone from house-sized computers to computers which fit into your pocket in a matter of a few decades. With the same kind of investment into innovation we would solve all of these ethical and environmental problems in maybe even a shorter amount of time. But there is no grand investment, because most people would rather spend their time justifying why it's fine to holocaust the animals instead of finding solutions to counteract it. The fatalist is born from comfort and an inability to change his character.

Edited September 9, 2019 by Scholar

[montecristo]

@Scholar I like the insect/shellfish angle. I think that is a far more reasonable approach to living a more peaceful existence than hardcore veganism.

There are technologies that exist right now which turn food waste into insect biomass, hundreds of tons of insect biomass that is dried and crushed in order to feed to farmed fish, chickens and pigs serving as a replacement for fishmeal input. Is it more ethical to let the food waste rot or to recycle it into usable protein?

Hypothetically assuming ruminant animal agriculture is a key solution to climate change what would you say about not eating those animals? Is it ethical to deny impoverished humans that meat and offer them big bags of UN grain instead that clearly are nutritionally inadequate?

How can we as god maximize love? sounds like a tricky design challenge that to me doesnt look like veganism

 

[Scholar]

4 hours ago, montecristo said:

@Scholar I like the insect/shellfish angle. I think that is a far more reasonable approach to living a more peaceful existence than hardcore veganism.

There are technologies that exist right now which turn food waste into insect biomass, hundreds of tons of insect biomass that is dried and crushed in order to feed to farmed fish, chickens and pigs serving as a replacement for fishmeal input. Is it more ethical to let the food waste rot or to recycle it into usable protein?

Hypothetically assuming ruminant animal agriculture is a key solution to climate change what would you say about not eating those animals? Is it ethical to deny impoverished humans that meat and offer them big bags of UN grain instead that clearly are nutritionally inadequate?

How can we as god maximize love? sounds like a tricky design challenge that to me doesnt look like veganism

 

You are still not viewing this from the perspective of the animals, which is the entire point of veganism.

 

I would frame the question in the following way:

Do you believe it is justified to farm, exploit and kill animals to create food that is nutritionally more adequate?

Do you believe it is justified to farm, exploit and kill animals to contribute to a solution to climate change?

 

I don't think it is, especially not in the real world, where ruminant animal agriculture is most likely not a key solution to climate change and where veganism is not a diet but an ethical stance. Again, the key here is to create a change in consciousness so as to value the existence and consciousness of animals in a way that is removed from human bias. The insect/shellfish angle is only a temporary approach until we find solutions like synthetic meat and only if it is truly the case that we cannot thrive on a plant exclusive diet. Obviously the transition between our current exploitative culture and a future culture which does value all life will be full of moral grey areas and dilemmas.

That is insignificant to you. What you have to ask yourself is why you think the cow is so much less worth of a free life than you are? Why does your consciousness devalue the existence of these beings? Would you want to be the countless of cows that are put into a slaughterhouse so that some humans could feel a little bit more energetic and healthy? You need to start looking at this from the perspective of those you are exploiting, instead of finding justifications to continue this exploitation.

Only that will increase your consciousness and thus your "love". Once your consciousness will increase, the solutions you will seek will be very different from the solutions you are currently seeking. You will be far less comfortable making the statements you are making right now.

 

You might start looking at it this way:

"We as human beings have destroyed nature, we as human beings have enslaved other groups of people. We are contributing to climate change.

Why in the world would we think that we can now use cows, who have absolutely nothing to do with this at all, to exploit and kill so that we can solve the problems that we have caused? Why would we think it is justified to use a species that is completely innocent in this so as to solve a problem that we have created?

That is completely insane, if anyone should suffer for what we did, it should be us, not random cows who don't even realize what climate change is.

What would be just is to have the cows roam our farmlands and restore it without exploiting and killing them. To have them restore the farmlands completely naturally, without killing or controlling them. By instead taking care of them, by rewarding them for their restorative work instead of taking their lifes. And we, the humans, should carry the costs of that. Tax the shit out of animal agriculture, put a tax on all products which exploit animals. Use said taxes to fund restoration of farmland."

You would go from "How can I justify killing cows for food?" to "How can I possibly come up with ways so that cows don't need to be killed, but I still fight climate change and thrive nutritionally?".

You can put effort into each of these inquiries and you will find answers. Your level of consciousness determines which question you will ask.

Edited September 10, 2019 by Scholar

[montecristo]

@Scholar

that was a fabulously articulate answer thank you.

tbh I agree with you, the human race SHOULD genocide itself, and it will likely be gods will to do so in the form of catastrophic ecological disaster, this in order to maximize love.

youre absolutely right, I am not viewing this from the perspective of the animals. I am viewing this from the perspective of the human race, same as the cows view things from their perspective, same as every single living things that must destroy and consume other life in order to live.To persist in my bias is the highest form of love my level of consciousness can muster at this point same as the rest of humanity. I am compelled to resist the diminishment and genocide of humanity until my last breath, unless of course I become enlightened, but as of now this is where I am at, for better or for worse.

Humanity should be the focal point because we are the highest leverage point for good AND evil as the dominant species in addition to the fact that humanity has the highest potential for increases in consciousness compared with all other life forms on the planet. To find a real solution people need to be offered choices that are compatible with their respective levels of development, unless of course we dump a bunch of acid in the water supply hehe. 

If we look at the long arc of justice we will see that much suffering was required to arrive at any of the good things we now enjoy as a society. It seems there is always balance, for example, capitalism in the modern era has simultaneously been the greatest force for good AND evil the world has ever seen.

When you walk into a grocery store, the people in possesion of those resources actually want you to eat the food. In a less developed state people would simple hoard whatever resources they had excluding everyone else. Yet the current paradigm was only made possible by the destruction of countless lives and ecosystems.

the morality of all these systems ccontinually folds back in itself making it almost impossible to nail down what is truly moral in a given situation. Maybe that sounds like a cop-out but then again maybe not.

[flume]

 

On 02/09/2019 at 2:34 PM, Girzo said:

The presented method is not how we get our meat today, so you still need to curb your meat-eating at least until there is some environment-friendly alternative IN WORK. A theory that is not being even implemented is not enough to devalue going vegetarian/vegan.

+1

On 02/09/2019 at 2:51 PM, Scholar said:

Also notice how it is not even attempted to find a "holistic" solution that does not involve animals. The is a very disingenious way of comparing the worst kind of plant agriculture with some sort of ideal utopian animal agriculture.

+1

On 03/09/2019 at 8:04 PM, Shiva said:

On any diet, people report dramatic improvements of their health, no matter if it is vegan, carnivore, paleo, keto or whatever. I even read an article a while ago about someone who cured his diseases on a chocolate diet.

Why is that? - Well, I think in most cases it is because previously those people ate the really crappy standard diet. So, if your default diet is so poor, no matter what you do, it can only improve, even on a freaking chocolate diet.

+1

@montecristo
You find arguments and videos like this on all sides. People are different. Not every vegan thinks ‘if everyone just went vegan, all would be fine.’
A vegan diet needs to be properly planned. It doesn’t work for many people because they have no idea what they’re doing. They eat some fruit for breakfast and a salad for lunch and think that’s balance. Sooner or later you run into health problems if you don’t meet your nutritional or caloric needs, no matter the diet.

There’s an argument to be made that, for a healthy eco system, we might need to keep some farmed animals but sure not that amount. If we want farming to be a closed cycle again, where one things feeds the other and we’re not relying on mono culture and pesticides, there could still be some animals. But you wouldn’t need nearly as much as we do now and people would need to cut back on their consumption a lot.
Meat is a luxury item. My grand parents ate meat once a week. That’s the scale we’re talking, not several times a day which is the case for a lot of people today.

Also, your appeal to nature fallacy doesn’t really work here. Just because you think it’s unnatural doesn’t make it bad - it’s called evolution.
It’s also unnatural to sleep on a mattress. The solution isn’t always to go back.
I have a tendency to defend ‘natural’ things as well though… It’s a bit tricky. I ask myself then: Is it really bad for people or am I just resisting change?
30 animals are killed every second in the US alone. That’s not ‘natural’. Can you imagine the amount of energy that takes and the waste it produces?

In my personal life I’ve only seen people becoming better when going vegan. I think we can agree that most people benefit from eating more fruits an vegetables and less white flour and sugar. Don't worry about veganism, worry about the amount of junk food that is ruining people's health.

And if it's different for you and you can't go vegan, good on you for finding out. There"s an ethical argument to be made but hey, you need to survive, no? If you have time and money to think about those things you’re already very lucky. Make the best choice you can with the information and means you have. Try to find a balance between self (health) and others (animals, environment). Then help others do the same.

Going vegan isn't the end goal, it's a starting point. There’s a lot of other things you can do.
But then again, diet is one of the biggest contributors to environmental change and we have A LOT more say in it than in other topics.
You literally vote for the kind of world you wanna live in every time you go to the grocery store.

Everyone cutting down on meat would make a much greater impact than another 2 percent going vegan I think.
It doesn’t have to be so black and white.
No one argues that it wasn’t necessary to eat mean for human life to evolve but we now move beyond that.
Actually, about 20 percent of humans don’t consume meat (in India for ex.) and they sure aren’t the unhealthiest.

Just my two cents.
Now someone call me out on all my biases