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Comment by anotherturn | Hacker News Reader

To make a dent I suspect becoming a vegetarian isn't enough - you'd have to become an effective-evangelical vegetarian.

So, given that fear and shock tactics are failing - how do I convince the world (or a sizeable portion of it) to become vegetarian?

I heard a podcast recently about a guy working to produce real meat from plant matter. This would probably be an effective solution.

By spending time otherwise used for side projects perhaps I could help bring the cost of production down to below that of animal-meat? Know of anything I can work on to help?

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I'm a vegetarian myself, although for another reason: I don't want living beings to be tortured and killed for my food.

But I find is that vegetarian propaganda is many times so disgusting and based on lies that it's probably going to turn people away from vegeterian food. Some vegeterians and vegans are obnoxious bigots and their efforts are generating opposite result - people start hating vegeterians and vegeterian food.

So I don't evangelize vegeterian. Besides, my reasons are too complex for most people to understand: "But chicken and cows were created for us to eat! They are not suffering!".

Although, male calves are killed in milk production. Dairy cows cannot produce thousands of liters of milk without living a short life. Chickens that produce eggs were bred into monsters that can't live long.

I do not think any hate is rational and believe that any kind of vegan propaganda is beneficial to the cause.

Fossil fuels are nothing compared to nitrite waste.

I've noticed that when you blame people for something (eating meat, for example), they're not going to listen, it's causing opposite reaction - to defend and continue doing the same thing.

So, maybe it's possible to persuade people to stop eating meat, but it requires much wisdom and patience... I don't really try. When my friends ask me, I answer politely, but it's very hard, because when I say: "I'm do not want to kill living beings for food because they're suffering" it's already sounds like I'm blaming them. :(

Dito for me (although I personally take the climate influences more as a reason than the ethics). The interesting thing is that, if someone finds out by chance that I'm a vegetarian, they always ask me for the reason. At times I almost suspect they expect some moral lecture just to be able to oppose it.

Something in human nature just seems to force us to dig trenches that way.

Also, there are the moments when you as the vegetarian get lectured on how "it's natural" to eat meat when in my area, some 50-60 years ago, you would have been inredibly rich or lucky if you got one piece of meat each day. Go figure.

I know. Lately I've been realizing the enormity of the fact that of all the planets we've found this one is the only one where life flourished.

How then can we possibly take the killing of life so lightly?

It's the mass extinction event that we've created that really grinds at me. All these amazing species of flora/fauna erased from the universe to make our lives a little more convenient.

It is unrealistic to expect that any one person could convince a sizeable portion of the world to become vegetarian, but simply by being one you can influence others without being evangelical. I would not have become a vegetarian without the passive influence of friends who demonstrated that it was possible (and easy!), without actively encouraging me to switch. Being a vegetarian also reduces the amount of meat consumed by people who I cook for, or who prepare food for a group that includes me.

I was vegetarian for about 6 years but didn't have quite the same experience as you (in the early 2000's). By and large I was met with incredulity or confusion. Top Gear using the word "Vegetarian" as an insult didn't help matters either :p

I think someone would see more success convincing people to eat less meat rather than eat no meat. e.g., make red meat a special occasion thing rather than an almost nightly occurrence.

This could work a little at a personal level, but any larger campaign is going to come up against industry groups with more funding and no financial reason to care about much of the environment.

I don't know about the US, but in Australia, there are very strong campaigns promoting lamb consumption, for example. It's tied very effectively, through marketing, to our national identity as part of Australia Day.

"eat less meat" has been tried and doesn't appear to work that well.

In the US, there are lots of industries in which producers of beef, eggs, pork have to pay $$ to a marketing board that buys advertising. Needless to say, they won't buy advertising that says "buy higher quality X" or "eat less X!" The government is for it and the courts have upheld being forced to pay into it, so, there you have it.

The best way to convince a large number of people is to write an emotionally powerful novel or screenplay. Fictional characters are by far the most powerful role models in society, so tell that story.

People are quick to forget though? I can't think of a film or book that brought some ethical misstep to the fore and changed human behavior en-mass over the long term?

Edit:

I guess religious texts could be used as a counterpoint.

[ I have no idea why people are downvoting me, so I'll just remove this comment. ]

I think you missed the point of the comment... "fear and shock tactics" have been applied to me wrt climate change, vegetarianism, etc. But all they seem to have done is desensitize me. Hence my saying that they do not work.

I'm exploring whether there are things that I (and the rest of the HN audience) can do to make a dent. Right now my measure of effectiveness and productivity is almost exclusively related to dev work. It'd be worthwhile to find a way to expand this to include more nebulous objectives - and having some practical things to work on seems a step in the right direction?

I wasn't suggesting fear and shock tactics, and I agree that they don't work. My suggestion was quite different.

You seem to have redacted your comment - but if I recall correctly your suggestion was to go ahead and evangelize but asserted that I would fail because I mentioned "shock and fear tactics"?

Fear and shock dont work. Shame is the solution. Work to make bad actions socially unacceptable.

Kind of like the star rating system from Black Mirror?

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