I’m a native with prehistoric roots to meat eating and being part of the chain. I personally do not eat meat, but I see no moral issue with hunting in the way it’s supposed to be. Not this AR 15 hunting for trophies bullshit. I’m talking ethical, respectful, using every part in a spiritual way. No factory farming. What are most vegans views on native culture in that sense?
What’s spiritual and ethical about taking a living being’s life in 2024? There are just so many other foods to eat and ways to think about food that there just isn’t an excuse to kill animals in my books.
Spirituality doesn’t cut it for me. I’d for sure not like to be part of something like that
I think the main difference between you and the people from your prehistoric roots is that you have many other choices. You don’t have to continue to hunt down many animals, because you can choose to buy certain foods and you also have the choice to buy plant based foods.
Whenever you have the choice to buy plant based foods, there is no chance to argue that purchasing animal products in that case is somehow ethical.
The only way to defend hunting for your own survival is when you don’t live in a place where you have many foods available. Like, let’s say you are on an island where there is no shopping centre or anything. You obviously need to hunt to survive. But if you live somewhere where many plant based foods are available, saying that killing animals is justified in order to get food makes no sense at all. And is certainly not ethical (Deciding to kill an individual being without any necessity can never be ethical)
Still odd how you’re talking about people having the choice of what to eat while you reject their choice.
On the contrary. They are critiquing your choice, as you requested. And they did so quite logically too. The ability to choose your actions does not shield you from criticism.
And yes, you have far more choice in what you consume and how you live your life than someone a hundred or a thousand years ago. This means that, “well we used to live that way” is no longer a moral defense.
You respect the environment, you want to live sustainably, yes? Then how do you square that with meat eating being an order of magnitude more harmful to it? It takes far, far more land and resources to support one meat-eater compared to one plant-eater. Surely the land has suffered enough?
I guess I can’t expect any sort of empathetic understanding of native culture from colonizers. Funny thing is I agree with you 90% of the way, but since I don’t conform 100% to your view, you hate me. There’s a word for that, starts with Fasc… Ends in an ism
Bro. Nobody hates you. Nobody has made even the slightest comment about you. Nobody has made even the slightest threat against you or your lifestyle. You openly asked a bunch of people what they thought about your lifestyle and then got defensive when they criticized it. Vegans not liking that you eat meat is worlds apart from facism, and you know that.
Not trying to start a fight, just curious. If you (vegans) already know we (meat eaters) don’t care, why would you keep pursuing that line of argument?
At least for my part:
For the same reason I try to fight against injustices for people?
Why do I, as a male, condemn sexist behavior and fight against it? Why do I, as a teacher, stand in for the rights of my students when they get wronged? Why do I, as a human, hate to see other people fighting?
It’s a mixture between empathy and a feeling of justice.
I just dislike unjust behavior - and for me, animal cruelty is unjust.
Sounds like you should be working on laws to restrict meat eating. That’s typically how we handle injustices on a society wide scale.
You can’t work on laws to restrict meat eating without getting the public onboard first. Our democracy is flawed, sure, but we don’t live in an autocracy. Vegan activists do work day in and day out on lobbying for legislation. California just the other day banned octopus farming.
But that worked because the public was broadly onboard with it because of the recent public understanding of how intelligent octopodes are. If California somehow passed a restriction on meats like pork, beef, chicken, etc., then the entire state would immediately riot and kick the legislature out, completely undoing the restriction.
Good point.
May I ask this… Would you decide to gradually change your lifestyle to a less cruel one when the vegan arguments seem to be correct or would you rather wait for a law against eating meat?
Me personally? I don’t care about cruelty, so what would get me to change is a law that says I must. Or legal/economic incentives.
I do care about the environment, so I don’t eat beef. But that’s not common. Most people who don’t care about animal cruelty also don’t care about the environment.
A lot of vegans are environmentalists too, and so it caught my eye that you specificied beef. If you’re interested in an easy way to dramatically drop your environmental impact relative to the effort, trying out plant milks can be a great way to go about it. The dairy and beef industries are heavily intertwined, and from an environmental standpoint, dairy milk stands head and shoulders above plant ones in terms of emissions, land usage, and water usage. I would say that plant milks offer a better experience than dairy milk even completely disregarding the ethics and the environment, so it could be worth your while.