6 ms·

Non-vegans are always trying to do this smug "checkmate vegans" bullshit. It's incredibly tiresome. There's this bizarre, illogical trope that doing some good

by TillE 8y ago

Non-vegans are always trying to do this smug "checkmate vegans" bullshit. It's incredibly tiresome. There's this bizarre, illogical trope that doing some good is pointless if you can't be absolutely, impeccably perfect in every way. Again, it's just obvious bullshit from people who don't even really believe what they're saying, they're just playing a stupid gotcha game.

shlant 8y ago
unfortunately, it doesn't just come from non-vegans. There is so much infighting within the community because so many demand "perfection" or else you are a "fake vegan".
- X6S1x6Okd1st 8y ago
  This seems to crop up all the time when it comes to idealistic movements. It certainly has happened to different forms of communism, arguably sunni vs shia, vegans being fed up with vegetarians etc I'd love to know if there is a handy word/term for this phenomenon where an odd amount of energy is spent opposing those people/views which are more similar than less similar.
  - newscracker 8y ago
    “Holier-than-thou”, perhaps, though it can be used even with people with views that aren’t similar.
  - shlant 8y ago
    it is definitely a common manifestation of human psychology and black and white thinking. Not many people are comfortable with the grey area and the morally ambiguous. People want strict rules that they can follow that gives them a measuring stick by which they can gauge their own (and others) "worthiness", "purity" or "success". If we set specific boundaries, then we can more easily judge ourselves if we succeeded/failed or others if they are in/out. This type of thinking is most commonly found in diets. We decide which foods are "bad" and which are "good" so we know whether or not we have achieved our goals. It's easier to know when you "fell off the horse" when you ate a food previously deemed "bad". It's not so easy to make judgements on ourselves and others when the rules are not so clear-cut. I think many are afraid of looking to ourselves as the deciders of our own realities/moralities. We prefer to look outside to leaders/gurus/experts to tell us what the truth is.
  - drivingmenuts 8y ago
    The first thing I thought of was "bikeshedding", which absorbs so many people in the tech industry.
  - jgwil2 8y ago
    The term is the "narcissism of small differences," coined by Freud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...
sonnyblarney 8y ago
Vegans own smug and 'ethical checkmate' inanity - the 'eco' ethos of food goes hand in hand with this, they are the same thing; don't blame outsiders. I have never in real life heard of anyone contemplating nuts and avocados as 'vegan' or not, but I hear all the time from my vegan-leaning friends about GMO's, palm oil, and everything else. Most of us just want a croissant made with butter and would like for it to work out in some reasonable way for everyone including the cow.
- vinay427 8y ago
  > Most of us just want a croissant made with butter and would like for it to work out in some reasonable way for everyone including the cow. Vegans (I don't know what vegan-leaning means, but I'm referring to most actual vegans here) want this as well. The difference is that they recognize that this is largely untenable.
  - newscracker 8y ago
    I disagree with the adjective “largely.” Vegans would not want anything to “work out for the cow” if butter from cow’s milk is the product that someone wants. It’s completely and absolutely untenable as long as the butter is a product of/from an animal. If it’s vegetable fat based butter or genetically modified yeast making milk from which butter can be made, that’s not an issue.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  I understand that you want the butter to be fine, but the dairy industry is pretty seriously abusive to animals. Just because you want that to work out doesn’t mean it’s actually ethically sound.
- kermitismyhero 8y ago
  >Vegans own smug and 'ethical checkmate' inanity I maintain that the Vegan Police from Scott Pilgrim are one of the finest satirical concepts I've ever seen in fiction.
  - 8y ago
village-idiot 8y ago
The problem is that veganism is inherently a no-compromise position, the explicit goal is no harm to animals, which makes issues like this a glaring inconsistency. Other diets such as vegetarianism are much more clearly harm minimization based, which makes it easier to deal with issues like this.
chongli 8y ago
I think that's because non-vegans think vegans draw arbitrary lines to separate themselves from vegetarians. For example, vegans refuse to eat honey (insect labour) but seem to have no issues with eating figs (which contain the remains of wasps), fruit which has been pollinated by bees (insect labour), or cashews (human suffering). In general, the ethical question of how to assign moral weight to different beings is an open one. Some people would argue that a human being has greater moral worth than an insect. Others argue that all animal lives carry equal weight with human lives (I don't know who these people are, but they worry me). Moreover, when people (unprompted) claim to be vegans in the presence of non-vegans, they are morally distinguishing themselves. It is the unstated claim "you are in my out-group" that non-vegans find so offensive. But then, a lot of people are offended when anyone they might call a friend goes out of their way to make a moral distinction, and this is not specific to diet preference at all.
- fulafel 8y ago
  IME most non vegans (including me) understand why it is a useful delineation, even if we cannot precisely quantify miral weights.
- imgabe 8y ago
  > Others argue that all animal lives carry equal weight with human lives (I don't know who these people are, but they worry me). I'd consider myself one of these. All living things are equally fair game to be eaten. Obviously some carry social and legal consequences that make it not worthwhile, but ethically, we're all organic matter. Life consumes other life to keep itself going. That's how it works. I don't know why I should be concerned about a cow but not a stalk of celery. They're equally alive.
  - shlant 8y ago
    > They're equally alive I guess if you only care about the most primitive, baseline definition of "alive". I would think we had evolved beyond believing killing is killing no matter the circumstance. Do we not wish to distinguish ourselves from primal, purely survival-driven animals?
basetop 8y ago
I suspect most of the hate vegans get are from other "more pure" vegans. Purity is how vegan cult members judge each other. Not how normal minded people judge vegans. As for "some good", you might really want to get off your high horse and objectively look into the catastrophic environmental damage that a vegan diet causes. Not to mention the long term harm it does to the human body. You literally cannot survive in nature on a vegan diet. You'd starve to death. You literally cannot have a vegan diet without fossil fuel ( good luck growing avocados in alaska or NY ). You literally cannot have a vegan diet without killing nearly infinite number of bugs, worms, vermin, etc. I know truth can be triggering to a cult member, but this is agricultural and economic reality of a vegan diet. Personally, I'd love to society move to a "hunter gatherer diet" as that's the most natural, healthy and environmentally friendly diet possible. Rather the elites want to put us on a diet akin to the "vegan diet" livestock on industrial farms are fed. It's funny how industrialization is turning humans more and more into livestock. Maybe the UN will recommend troughs filled with vegetables for human beings.
- astura 8y ago
  Maybe it's changed but I was heavily involved in the vegan and vegetarian community online about 15-20 years ago and there was absolutely no purity wars. Honestly, it was quite supportive and very much "everyone does their best and everyone has different morals" kinda place. I was still a young adult back then trying to learn to navigate life in general and vegetarianism was an entirely a new concept to me, so it was helpful. But "har har, vegans are all crazy toxic assholes, amiright?" is a popular trope, no matter the factuality.
  - seba_dos1 8y ago
    As somebody who isn't a vegan or even vegetarian, but eating a mostly-vegetarian and sometimes-vegan diet, living with a vegetarian and generally being in lots of vegan-friendly places offline, I don't think anything changed - your description still seems correct to me today.
- aoeusnth1 8y ago
  Seriously, you view veganism as some kind of elite-pushed new world order way of cheapening human experience into livestock? I would think that if the establishment were interested in veganism, it would be more popular. How many billions of people can earth supported wih a hunter gatherer diet? Veganism is one of the least CO2-intensive diets possible in a modern society (https://i1.wp.com/shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/foodprint5.gif?resize=540%2C410 https://i1.wp.com/shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-content/uploads...), and if you knew any vegans personally I think they'd agree with measures to reduce the CO2 intensiveness of agriculture. I'm not exactly sure who or what you're arguing against. With regards to insects, plenty of people are interested in insect and wildlife suffering, including vegans - https://reducing-suffering.org/why-vegans-should-care-about-suffering-in-nature/ https://reducing-suffering.org/why-vegans-should-care-about-.... Under some assumptions, by reducing land & water use, veganism does reduce insect suffering somewhat. Clearly, it also reduces livestock suffering.
amriksohata 8y ago
the checkmate game is played against vegetarians too, and often there is no check, or check mate, its just claptrap as they are ill informed.
sridca 7y ago
It takes two to tango. If vegans stopped pestering non-vegans, then the non-vegans probably wouldn't care to prove the vegan's stance to be silly.

by TillE 8y ago

shlant 8y ago

unfortunately, it doesn't just come from non-vegans. There is so much infighting within the community because so many demand "perfection" or else you are a "fake vegan".

X6S1x6Okd1st 8y ago
This seems to crop up all the time when it comes to idealistic movements. It certainly has happened to different forms of communism, arguably sunni vs shia, vegans being fed up with vegetarians etc I'd love to know if there is a handy word/term for this phenomenon where an odd amount of energy is spent opposing those people/views which are more similar than less similar.
- newscracker 8y ago
  “Holier-than-thou”, perhaps, though it can be used even with people with views that aren’t similar.
- shlant 8y ago
  it is definitely a common manifestation of human psychology and black and white thinking. Not many people are comfortable with the grey area and the morally ambiguous. People want strict rules that they can follow that gives them a measuring stick by which they can gauge their own (and others) "worthiness", "purity" or "success". If we set specific boundaries, then we can more easily judge ourselves if we succeeded/failed or others if they are in/out. This type of thinking is most commonly found in diets. We decide which foods are "bad" and which are "good" so we know whether or not we have achieved our goals. It's easier to know when you "fell off the horse" when you ate a food previously deemed "bad". It's not so easy to make judgements on ourselves and others when the rules are not so clear-cut. I think many are afraid of looking to ourselves as the deciders of our own realities/moralities. We prefer to look outside to leaders/gurus/experts to tell us what the truth is.
- drivingmenuts 8y ago
  The first thing I thought of was "bikeshedding", which absorbs so many people in the tech industry.
- jgwil2 8y ago
  The term is the "narcissism of small differences," coined by Freud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...

sonnyblarney 8y ago

Vegans own smug and 'ethical checkmate' inanity - the 'eco' ethos of food goes hand in hand with this, they are the same thing; don't blame outsiders. I have never in real life heard of anyone contemplating nuts and avocados as 'vegan' or not, but I hear all the time from my vegan-leaning friends about GMO's, palm oil, and everything else. Most of us just want a croissant made with butter and would like for it to work out in some reasonable way for everyone including the cow.

vinay427 8y ago
> Most of us just want a croissant made with butter and would like for it to work out in some reasonable way for everyone including the cow. Vegans (I don't know what vegan-leaning means, but I'm referring to most actual vegans here) want this as well. The difference is that they recognize that this is largely untenable.
- newscracker 8y ago
  I disagree with the adjective “largely.” Vegans would not want anything to “work out for the cow” if butter from cow’s milk is the product that someone wants. It’s completely and absolutely untenable as long as the butter is a product of/from an animal. If it’s vegetable fat based butter or genetically modified yeast making milk from which butter can be made, that’s not an issue.
TaylorAlexander 8y ago
I understand that you want the butter to be fine, but the dairy industry is pretty seriously abusive to animals. Just because you want that to work out doesn’t mean it’s actually ethically sound.
kermitismyhero 8y ago
>Vegans own smug and 'ethical checkmate' inanity I maintain that the Vegan Police from Scott Pilgrim are one of the finest satirical concepts I've ever seen in fiction.
- 8y ago

village-idiot 8y ago

The problem is that veganism is inherently a no-compromise position, the explicit goal is no harm to animals, which makes issues like this a glaring inconsistency. Other diets such as vegetarianism are much more clearly harm minimization based, which makes it easier to deal with issues like this.

chongli 8y ago

I think that's because non-vegans think vegans draw arbitrary lines to separate themselves from vegetarians. For example, vegans refuse to eat honey (insect labour) but seem to have no issues with eating figs (which contain the remains of wasps), fruit which has been pollinated by bees (insect labour), or cashews (human suffering). In general, the ethical question of how to assign moral weight to different beings is an open one. Some people would argue that a human being has greater moral worth than an insect. Others argue that all animal lives carry equal weight with human lives (I don't know who these people are, but they worry me). Moreover, when people (unprompted) claim to be vegans in the presence of non-vegans, they are morally distinguishing themselves. It is the unstated claim "you are in my out-group" that non-vegans find so offensive. But then, a lot of people are offended when anyone they might call a friend goes out of their way to make a moral distinction, and this is not specific to diet preference at all.

fulafel 8y ago
IME most non vegans (including me) understand why it is a useful delineation, even if we cannot precisely quantify miral weights.
imgabe 8y ago
> Others argue that all animal lives carry equal weight with human lives (I don't know who these people are, but they worry me). I'd consider myself one of these. All living things are equally fair game to be eaten. Obviously some carry social and legal consequences that make it not worthwhile, but ethically, we're all organic matter. Life consumes other life to keep itself going. That's how it works. I don't know why I should be concerned about a cow but not a stalk of celery. They're equally alive.
- shlant 8y ago
  > They're equally alive I guess if you only care about the most primitive, baseline definition of "alive". I would think we had evolved beyond believing killing is killing no matter the circumstance. Do we not wish to distinguish ourselves from primal, purely survival-driven animals?

basetop 8y ago

I suspect most of the hate vegans get are from other "more pure" vegans. Purity is how vegan cult members judge each other. Not how normal minded people judge vegans. As for "some good", you might really want to get off your high horse and objectively look into the catastrophic environmental damage that a vegan diet causes. Not to mention the long term harm it does to the human body. You literally cannot survive in nature on a vegan diet. You'd starve to death. You literally cannot have a vegan diet without fossil fuel ( good luck growing avocados in alaska or NY ). You literally cannot have a vegan diet without killing nearly infinite number of bugs, worms, vermin, etc. I know truth can be triggering to a cult member, but this is agricultural and economic reality of a vegan diet. Personally, I'd love to society move to a "hunter gatherer diet" as that's the most natural, healthy and environmentally friendly diet possible. Rather the elites want to put us on a diet akin to the "vegan diet" livestock on industrial farms are fed. It's funny how industrialization is turning humans more and more into livestock. Maybe the UN will recommend troughs filled with vegetables for human beings.

astura 8y ago
Maybe it's changed but I was heavily involved in the vegan and vegetarian community online about 15-20 years ago and there was absolutely no purity wars. Honestly, it was quite supportive and very much "everyone does their best and everyone has different morals" kinda place. I was still a young adult back then trying to learn to navigate life in general and vegetarianism was an entirely a new concept to me, so it was helpful. But "har har, vegans are all crazy toxic assholes, amiright?" is a popular trope, no matter the factuality.
- seba_dos1 8y ago
  As somebody who isn't a vegan or even vegetarian, but eating a mostly-vegetarian and sometimes-vegan diet, living with a vegetarian and generally being in lots of vegan-friendly places offline, I don't think anything changed - your description still seems correct to me today.
aoeusnth1 8y ago
Seriously, you view veganism as some kind of elite-pushed new world order way of cheapening human experience into livestock? I would think that if the establishment were interested in veganism, it would be more popular. How many billions of people can earth supported wih a hunter gatherer diet? Veganism is one of the least CO2-intensive diets possible in a modern society (https://i1.wp.com/shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/foodprint5.gif?resize=540%2C410 https://i1.wp.com/shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-content/uploads...), and if you knew any vegans personally I think they'd agree with measures to reduce the CO2 intensiveness of agriculture. I'm not exactly sure who or what you're arguing against. With regards to insects, plenty of people are interested in insect and wildlife suffering, including vegans - https://reducing-suffering.org/why-vegans-should-care-about-suffering-in-nature/ https://reducing-suffering.org/why-vegans-should-care-about-.... Under some assumptions, by reducing land & water use, veganism does reduce insect suffering somewhat. Clearly, it also reduces livestock suffering.

amriksohata 8y ago

the checkmate game is played against vegetarians too, and often there is no check, or check mate, its just claptrap as they are ill informed.

sridca 7y ago

It takes two to tango. If vegans stopped pestering non-vegans, then the non-vegans probably wouldn't care to prove the vegan's stance to be silly.