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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting how strong peer pressure is in groups like vegans to continue to press someone in to a lifestyle that clearly is not to their best interest.

It reminds me of religious cults, and other 'us or them' styled groups.

Very scary.

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If you identify 'progressivism', 'environmentalism', etc., as lineal descendants of ecumenical Protestant Christianity—that is, when you see them as essentially religious movements—it is easy to understand the emergence of vegetarianism and especially veganism: they are the exact analogues of religious dietary laws. Hinduism has a prohibition on the consumption of beef and other meats, Judaism has kosher, Islam has halal, and progressivism has vegetarianism/veganism. In all cases, the purpose of dietary laws is the same: they are hard-to-fake demonstrations of piety.

> It's interesting how strong peer pressure is in groups like vegans to continue to press someone in to a lifestyle that clearly is not to their best interest.

Given the levels of obesity in developed nations you could argue that just about everybody is being pressed 'in to a lifestyle that clearly is not to their best interest'.

> It reminds me of religious cults, and other 'us or them' styled groups.

I really don't think it is fair to generalise from a single blog post. It really feels like you are drawing on a collection of stereotypes about what you consider to be 'weird people' for this to have such an impact. Or do you have any other examples you can share with us?

She even says that she and her family has received threats!

What would make someone do that simply because the lady has started eating meat?

It's psychologically complicated but it has to do with people telling you that you yourself are living a lie, and exposing that lie. That ties right in to 'ego' and self preservation.

People do not like to have their core beliefs challenged in a credible way.

Yes. It's strange that people really think that what they're doing isn't connected in a way with their self-esteem, especially if they claiming all the time that they're doing it only for a better world.

Wouldn't it be funny, if at the end there's no much difference between the SUV driver and the vegan.

I think people buy large SUVs under the false assumption of crashworthiness. For the price range they could have gotten sedans of similar prestige.

And of better crash-worthiness!

If one single story like this can challenge someone's confidence on their veganism then obviously they are quite insecure about their position. Similarly if one single story like this is given such a high level of prominence (was top on HN no less) by the majority who have an opposing view then surely this also indicates a certain insecure desire for any scraps of evidence to support ones position. No?

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