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I guess I can't speak for the movement as a whole, but the vegan/vegetarian activists I know aren't very pragmatic. they tend to take a very all-or-nothing approach to convincing people.

I guess this is a personal moral failing, but I just can't commit to never ever eating meat, cooking with butter, etc. what I can do is stuff like saving meat for special occasions (or when I'm served it at someone else's place), and substituting olive oil for butter. the two things I have a really hard time cutting back on eggs (such a great way to get protein in the morning) and milk for my coffee.

anyways, I feel like "consume less" is a much easier message to sell than "consume none". I wonder if it wouldn't be more impactful to convince a large group of people to consume less than to persuade a small group of die-hards to abstain altogether.

Then again, the very statements of "we should eat less meat" or "animal cruelty" seem provocative to most people regardless who utters it. Any time those phrases rear their heads they seem to ignite a bunch of defensive hysterics.

Just like our enlightenment values such as liberty and reason, all progress on this issue certainly does depend on human conversation. However, I'm wary of tasking a single group of people to usher us into an enlightenment. I also think it's all too convenient to go "well, vegans should improve their marketing if they want me to change."

The thing is, we don't need vegans to convince us. They didn't invent animal ethics, they are merely the first practitioners. It wasn't the first human to rethink the ethics of rape or slavery that convinced everyone else nor had to.

We humans came up with animal ethics, slavery ethics, women suffrage ethics, liberalism, and everything else from first principles.

A first principle of animal ethics isn't vegan voodoo, it's "why should a sentient being be grown and killed for my pleasure?" After all, we already hold that standard for other humans and, for most people, even our pets. It's a small leap of reason to extend the courtesy to other animals.

call me cynical, but in my view humans rarely do anything for strictly moral reasons, at least not at scale. laws and customs are motivated much more by pragmatism (hard to have a flourishing society with frequent random killings) or at least reciprocity (I'll agree not to do X to you or people you care about as long as you agree to the same for me). modern democracy is an efficient system of control; it doles out enfranchisement just fast enough to prevent violent revolt.

bit of a tangent, but I think this explains a lot of why we don't see much progress with animal rights. exploiting them is pragmatic, and we can't negotiate with them. even if we could, what concessions could they offer? for the minority who currently care, the only viable strategy I see is to make veganism "cool" and to make it easier to join the club (ie, not demand total abstinence).

The problem is equating "progress" with doing less of something that historical progress has allowed more of. This is where part of the modern "progressive" movement runs into a bunch of walls, because it's actually calling for regression. Less travel, less fun, less food, less family, less space, less comfort.

If you want to continue progress on an issue you care about, you have to tie it into actual material progress. Don't try to ban things or turn them into moral dividers, try to make better things.

Try Just Egg who knows you may even like it.

Alot of this stuff is decadent navel gazing.

Why is it virtuous to breed olives for a human purpose? Why is it immoral to be in a symbiotic relationship with a cow, which wouldn't exist without it?

Perhaps our bovine friends would be able to roam freely, if only we didn't isolate them from their habitats by growing vegetables and grain.

Just eat what you want.

> We use ethical justifications (or avoid them) that we don't use anywhere else.

I don't really agree with that. We don't use those ethical arguments when it comes to conduct that has a direct, near-immediate effect on other humans, and we give a handful of animals we have particularly positive feelings about a partial exception, but we do use them basically everywhere else.

> "But it just feels too good to give up! XD" or "But if I stop, everyone else is still going to do it, so why stop!" aren't arguments we'd level at the carnal pleasures of rape

These are exactly the kinds of things people say about why they still fly numerous times a year for leisure, why they're driving a large vehicle they don't need, and basically every other area where what people recognize as the ethical or societal ideal doesn't match up with how they want to behave.

Most people recognize it's not compatible with their ideals, but the vast majority still choose to do it anyway.

I think that is a reasonable clarification.

Of course, my point is to line up things where there's a short thread from our pleasure to another's immense suffering (rape, death, squalor) and how eating certain animals is the odd one out in our zeitgeist.

The only reason "well I like it" isn't enough to tip the scales on joy-riding our SUV or visiting family by plane or buying some child-labor Nikes is that the impact of the event can't actually be observed nor can we run the equation equation at all. And even if we could observe it, it's possible that the effect is so tiny that we can still largely justify our single trip or shoe purchase in a way that we can't justify raising an animal to adulthood in squalor just to feast on its muscles during a 20 minute meal.

There's always a spectrum of trade-offs at play when it comes to ethics. Ants are my favorite animal but knowing I'm going to step on 20 of them on my way to enjoy a single beer at the bar doesn't keep me home bound.

The question of ethics is surely to maximize the wellbeing of sentience and minimize suffering, so it's inherently a curve of trade-offs in a finite universe. It's hard to find a nihilist who really thinks that the optimal point on the curve is the elimination of all life.

So, barring that, we're left with the impossible task of balancing impossible equations like whether a lifetime of flying home from Christmas produces more wellbeing in the world than suffering. However, some questions are much, much easier than others.

> I myself drink milk and eat meat while acknowledging the obvious moral superiority of veganism.

There's no moral superiority of veganism. Vegans eat more animals than someone drinking milk or eating a steak. They just eat parts smaller animals like insects, rodents, etc ground up during harvesting.

Instead of getting your information from silly "documentaries" or vegans who've lived their privileged lives in cities, try going out to a farm.

Is it moral to spray insecticide to kill a gazillion insects? Set up traps to kill/hurt/shock animals from your vegetation? Is it moral to kill a gazillion rodents, insects, etc to harvest vegetation? Keep in mind that no vegan meal is devoid of animals. Everything from spaghetti to salads have animals parts in it.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/health/insect-rodent-filth-in...

I know it's counterintuitive, but a person eating a steak is eating less animals than a vegan eating a salad. A salad contains thousands of animals parts in it.

> Our eating habits are deep cultural traditions that don't budge in the face of even the most agreeable arguments to change them.

Our eating habits are derived from our biology and environment.

> "But it just feels too good to give up! XD" or "But if I stop, everyone else is still going to do it, so why stop!" aren't arguments we'd level at the carnal pleasures of rap

It's not only that it feels good, it's that it's the optimal diet for humans. A vegan diet is a suicide diet. No human being can survive, let alone thrive on it. That's why all vegan diets is supplemented by pills.

The best diet for humans, animals and the environment is the hunterer gatherer diet. Unfortunately, that isn't possible with modern civilization. So the current industrialized omnivore diet is the best we can do. If you truly want to destroy the environment and animals, then industrialized veganism will do that.

I doubt this actually holds, because thermodynamics. Since meat animals neither photosynthesize nor can they convert energy from plants with 100% efficiency, eating meat means you just indirectly eat even more plants.

Also, it's sophistry. We could farm people and kill them for meat by the same argument kill less animals by the numbers.

> I doubt this actually holds, because thermodynamics.

I trust vegan thermodynamics as much as I trust vegan logic, vegan honesty or vegan diet. So if I am a bit skeptical, I hope you understand.

> Since meat animals neither photosynthesize nor can they convert energy from plants with 100% efficiency, eating meat means you just indirectly eat even more plants.

Because humans can convert energy from plants with 100% efficiency right? Humans are much less efficient than herbivores. So using your logic, we are back to eating herbivores. Sorry.

> We could farm people and kill them for meat by the same argument kill less animals by the numbers.

"it's sophistry"

"The best diet for humans, animals and the environment is the hunterer gatherer diet. Unfortunately, that isn't possible with modern civilization. So the current industrialized omnivore diet is the best we can do. If you truly want to destroy the environment and animals, then industrialized veganism will do that."

If you truly care about the environment and animals, then go live a hunterer gatherer life. It's the absolute best diet you can have for the environment and animals. If you hate animals, environment and humans, be a vegan. I know your lack of nutrient has robbed you of your ability to concentrate and think, but try your best. Even a vegan suffering from vegan mental fog should be able to understand why the hunter-gatherer diet is so good for the environment and animals.

Who do you think harms the environment more? A privileged virtue signaling vegan consuming a globalized industrialized vegan diet or a native living off the land? Which do you think is responsible for more pollution, oil use, animal deaths, etc? The privileged virtue signaling vegan.

The phrase that jumps to mind is "Nobody committing atrocities thinks _they_ are a monster."

For the sake of accuracy of the inconvenient truth, let's remember it's not just about drinking milk, but also consuming all the products that use milk as ingredient. Want to stop the suffering of cows? Kiss cheese, yogurt and butter goodbye.

Given that 65% of the world's population [1][2] experiences lactose intolerance post-infancy, maybe this wouldn't be such a bad thing.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance#Epidemiolo... [2]https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/lactose-intoleran...

Cheese and butter have very little lactose, and yoghurt has only a quarter of lactose content of milk. In many human populations without lactose tolerance, preparing these was actually a way to consume milk they couldn’t drink directly.

They still do have lactose though. I’m lactose intolerant and even a little butter used for cooking causes me to bloat up and gain 5-10 lbs within 30 minutes.

Some cheeses are supposedly lactose free, but seem to cause the same effects.

That’s highly unusual level of intolerance. A whole cup of butter contains only 0.1 g of lactose, and since cup of butter is 1500-2000 calories, in a typical meal that includes butter you’ll consume much less than that. If you just use 1-3 tsp of butter for frying, and then don’t consume everything you cooked, you’ll be consuming less than 1 milligram of lactose. For comparison, most people with lactose intolerance can consume around 10 grams a day, that is, 10 000x times as much. What you describe looks more like allergy than regular lactose intolerance.

Could it have been that lactose intolerance was developed by the various diets in Asia and not by a natural evolution of humankind universally? Because that's exactly what your second link states - that people from the West are less lactose intolerant compared to people from the East.

Lactose intolerance in adulthood is the default for most/all mammals. There is some subset of humans who grew to depend on drinking milk from cows who have adapted to continue producing lactase for their entire lives, but this has no spread to all humans.

Of course. And just think of all the free labor that will evaporate if we abolish slavery; kiss your cheap and cotton-comfy textiles goodbye!

But that's just a justification from carnal pleasure, the same reasoning people have uttered over maintaining their harem of enslaved concubines.

That "but it tastes/feels so good" carries any water with anyone is one of my lamentations. I was with you when you said milk, but giving up yogurt and cheese? That's just too much pleasure to lose!

If that argument works with dairy, why doesn't it work with rape and sex slavery? Or keeping a Gattaca clone alive so you can enjoy some spare organs?

Though I don't think we actually believe this argument when we use it, it's so indefensible. I think we usually come up with kneejerk decisions and then make a bunch of splashes trying to justify it, perhaps without even realizing that the decision was made before the rationalization.

> If that argument works with dairy, why doesn't it work with rape and sex slavery? Or keeping a Gattaca clone alive so you can enjoy some spare organs?

Because cows aren’t humans? I don’t think this is the gotcha you think it is.

> I myself drink milk and eat meat while acknowledging the obvious moral superiority of veganism.

In my moral belief system, the highest good is human pleasure and thriving. Eating meat and using animal products and using animals for research advances that.

Veganism tries to sacrifice human pleasure and thriving, and is therefore morally inferior.

The highest good or the only good? Do you actually try an quantify the suffering of an animal on a farm and make an honest comparison to the pleasure a human gets from eating them? Do you also support torturing animals and bestiality with the same justification?