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Comment by tomt2323 | Hacker News Reader

I can answer this from my own experience after having been vegan for 5ish years (but I am decidedly not now). There are two things at play: the more "justified" first thing is I'm politically active and still maintain an interest in animal welfare, but I'm focusing the energy I have for activism on systemic changes and participating in/enabling mass action rather than focusing on individual choices, which often act as a release valve for important political discontent without directly confronting the systemic causes. The less noble second thing is that, given the American food supply chain, it's simply still more of a burden and less pleasant to eat vegan as well as easy to not think about when making food choices.

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Your explanation very much resembles the one I used to have for not being vegan: in hindsight, it was nothing but a way to avoid the cognitive dissonance between my belief that I was a good person and the knowledge that I simply didn’t care about veganism/vegetarianism. I’m not saying it’s the same here, but your explanation is flawed on arguably every level, I hope you take the time to think about your decision more, but congrats for your 5 years of veganism

1. “I have limited energy for activism, and I distribute it wisely”: statements like these are often untrue and a way to brush away an ethical question while continuing to appear ethical (“I fly on planes, flying on planes is bad for the planet, but X [droughts in Africa] is more critical, so I prefer to think about X than about planes”). One, willpower is probably not finite, as was found in a famous recent study (granted, I conflate willpower and energy here, but they’re quite close). Two, being vegan takes basically the same amount of effort/time/money as eating animal products for someone with no medical condition. Three (more subjective), veganism is a pretty safe bet when it comes to activism, it’s a low effort/high impact part of climate change activism, which is one of the most critical things you can pour your energy into

2. “Enabling mass action is more important than my individual behaviour”: not how the world works. In theory, you could argue for veganism, even become the most respected vegan philosopher, while at the same time eating a different animal at every meal. In practice, if you’re a “do what I say, not what I do” person, the probability that someone becomes vegan after listening to you would be pretty much 0. I also have trouble imagining why anyone would see someone like this as part of the vegan community and a worthy ally when it comes to mass action

3. “Individual action makes people think they’ve done their part and not partake in mass action”: this is untrue on many levels. Individual action is what mass action is made of and the end goal basically. Most people take the strength for political commitment from their individual everyday choices, I would even say that everyday choices are what makes political commitment inevitable. I have never met an activist who is committed only on a theoretical/group level

4. “Being vegan is a chore in America”: being vegan in a rich country is arguably the closest you’ll get to finding it easy

5. “Being vegan is less pleasant than not being vegan”: I can only assume you’re speaking about taste here, which I find weird from a former vegan. The imbalance between personal gustative pleasure and the suffering of species/ecology might be the most frequent discussion about veganism, and the one that demonstrates the most obviously to all involved that eating animal products is unethical (or at least neutral)

Well, for one, I'm not a good person and have no intention of becoming one, so no cognitive dissonance there. I agree with a number of your points, but take issue with a few.

1. Willpower and energy are finite but not fixed. Being vegan is an additional expenditure of energy. Pretending to be vegan (or publicly being vegan enough) probably would be easy to do without spending much energy and also pretty much deals with #2, but that doesn't seem to be what you want.

2. As above, this is only really a reason to pretend to be vegan. But to your point, I don't begrudge any group for being that picky about who they want engaging in action alongside them. I'm not sure that's a winning strategy, but if it gets some people engaged in action, fine, I'll just run with the more "tainted" groups. Personally, I think these sorts of individual scorecard things are good ideas to apply to friends, bad ones to apply to political allies. Obviously you disagree.

3. Yes, people who strike together, engage in demonstrations or other direct action of course have to act as individuals also in order to do that, but you already seem to understand the distinction I'm drawing here based on the way you talk about it. From there, you just have look at the many successful leaders of mass action/positive political change who had checkered lives to put the lie to this blanket dismissal. It's cool that your friends are good people, but if you all still accomplish the same amount of structural change while eating steaks, I'd be equally happy.

4. Yep.

5. It is less pleasant. It is unethical to prefer more pleasant things that come from an odious supply chain when it wouldn't require too much energy to sqitch. We agree, but this is also one of those things where #1 comes into play, as I imagine you aren't writing this from a self-sufficient commune in a hidden stateless island. If you are, awesome, but otherwise, you're implicated in a lot of unethical choices. Maybe some of which where I'm doing the ethical thing. But it really doesn't matter (beyond our ability to sleep at night) if neither of us are mounting real challenges to the structures that make ethical decisions hard and unethical ones easy.

Quick additional note on your last bit for 1- you're really kind of proving my point about individual behavioral/consumer level change acting as a release valve (though you admit it's subjective). There is no way forward on climate that isn't structural and doesn't hold powerful organizations to account. That doesn't happen through the true believers opting out. Or put another way, it is ethical to not eat meat and it relieves guilt, but the political goal should be to make it harder to eat meat and even remove it as an option.

> There is no way forward on climate that isn't structural and doesn't hold powerful organizations to account.

There is a lot of truth in that. As it is now though, some meat eaters will say that businesses need to stop murdering animals, while people controlling and working at those businesses will say that they're only doing it because people buy it. It's an easy and convenient view to hold, because it let's everyone put the blame on someone else, while not having to do anything themselves.

The companies' position would only make sense if they weren't spending so much on advertising, lobbying, and other attempts to reinforce the structures that lead to the levels of meat consumption we have now.

I'm saying it is critical for anyone who cares about this to do something. Organizing to get laws changed, subsidies stripped/rerouted, and other structural changes takes effort from everyone who has a stake in this. We just disagree on what it is that is critical to do.

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