Want a possible explanation? General happiness is fueled by consistently spending effort towards your long-term goals, and seeing these goals advance. Such goal

Want a possible explanation? General happiness is fueled by consistently spending effort towards your long-term goals, and seeing these goals advance. Such goals must be something you can imagine, something that requires effort, and something you can more or less quantify. Savings, paying off mortgage, gardening, you name it. When you deprive people of such goals, they start looking around for other things satisfying these criteria. Veganism is spending effort towards reducing animal suffering. It's a noble goal, except it's virtually impossible to quantify. You can sort of proxy it into converting other people to your beliefs (that creates tension), or by finding products that claim to be aligned with your values, but generally you will still be less happy than someone taking care of their own farm animals and seeing them every day. And the latter type will seldom consider veganism, because they are already happy with their current goals.