4 ms·

You're missing the point. Cognitive dissonance is only to point that people are not entirely rational. For most people I know, they are vegetarian or vegan bec

by mping 10y ago

You're missing the point. Cognitive dissonance is only to point that people are not entirely rational. For most people I know, they are vegetarian or vegan because of ethics, not to be more rational with their choices. If there are any other "better" choices to do by all means go ahead. People should do what they think its best, not just talk. And if you think they are getting a "get out of jail free card", give it a try for a week and see how hard it is.

wahern 10y ago
By "easier" I meant in terms of ethics, not in terms of effort. But neither did I mean to imply that it's necessarily a cop-out to go vegan, or that people aren't making a sincere and challenging choice to do so. But consider that the poster said, more-or-less, that he couldn't even _fathom_ eating dog. It was just totally repugnant. And so to resolve his cognitive dissonance regarding his inability to differentiate eating dog meat from other meat, he decided to go vegan. In some minor but meaningful sense, that's the easy way out. Once upon a time I couldn't fathom eating dog meat, either. My point is that people assume that the _obvious_ ethical choice is to just go meatless. But do they ever even consider the polar opposite choice? I made a choice to explore and better understand my cultural prejudices by choosing to eat dog meat. How can we ever evolve our sense of what humane treatment is until we better understand our traditional as well as contemporary relationship with animals, including our inherent biases? If eating dog is viscerally repugnant, but eating a pig or cow is merely intellectually troubling, by going vegan you've done nothing to resolve a substantial aspect of your relationship to animals. There are many other aspects to going vegan, and I'm not criticizing veganism per se. I'm simply pointing out that it's an _incomplete_ choice in itself. Eating dog is also incomplete--perhaps much more incomplete. But if you can't even fathom it as an option--if your cultural prejudices are so strong that you can't even fathom they're a product of your unique cultural upbringing, rather than some divine hint to go vegan--how could you ever expect to have an objective perspective about the issue?

by mping 10y ago

wahern 10y ago

By "easier" I meant in terms of ethics, not in terms of effort. But neither did I mean to imply that it's necessarily a cop-out to go vegan, or that people aren't making a sincere and challenging choice to do so. But consider that the poster said, more-or-less, that he couldn't even _fathom_ eating dog. It was just totally repugnant. And so to resolve his cognitive dissonance regarding his inability to differentiate eating dog meat from other meat, he decided to go vegan. In some minor but meaningful sense, that's the easy way out. Once upon a time I couldn't fathom eating dog meat, either. My point is that people assume that the _obvious_ ethical choice is to just go meatless. But do they ever even consider the polar opposite choice? I made a choice to explore and better understand my cultural prejudices by choosing to eat dog meat. How can we ever evolve our sense of what humane treatment is until we better understand our traditional as well as contemporary relationship with animals, including our inherent biases? If eating dog is viscerally repugnant, but eating a pig or cow is merely intellectually troubling, by going vegan you've done nothing to resolve a substantial aspect of your relationship to animals. There are many other aspects to going vegan, and I'm not criticizing veganism per se. I'm simply pointing out that it's an _incomplete_ choice in itself. Eating dog is also incomplete--perhaps much more incomplete. But if you can't even fathom it as an option--if your cultural prejudices are so strong that you can't even fathom they're a product of your unique cultural upbringing, rather than some divine hint to go vegan--how could you ever expect to have an objective perspective about the issue?