I am as confused as you are by this comment section. She’s also given statements that are anti-genocide as well. You can be opposed to multiple shitty things.

Absolutely! It’s the first community I’ve run on Lemmy, so I’ll definitely have to pull from how you post it if that’s okay.

Maybe something like: “If you like Casual Conversation instead of Competitive Ranked conversation, try !casualconversation@lemmy.world !”

Was going to start doing a few topics today, actually. Slept like garbage though so they may be… dumber than standard.

Yeah, it may be hard to set the tone at first without alienating anyone. I’m hoping that I’m up for it.

I’m okay with political and encourage it as long as people have sound reasoning to back it up.

I’ve changed my mind on many political topics after a good discussion!

To be clear, I didn’t say suffering, I said death and I was moreso referring to animals and how we survive.

You can cause death without causing suffering, and also the opposite.

First and foremost, let me say that I appreciate you actually engaging.

Now, if what I’m interpreting is correct (and feel free to set me straight if I’m incorrect), your argument stems from a moralistic one. Moralistic arguments are not solid stances to argue from; similar to a hardcore Christian seeing abortions as vile and evil because of a personal moral stance, you feel your moral position is better, therefore you look down on opposition. However that is a personal opinion and those aren’t convincing - certainly not for sensitive topics. Let’s approach the debate from a scientific standpoint.

Trying to stick to the logic of the situation, the crux of statements I’ve seen here seem to be “Being vegan is eliminating suffering and therefore should be the end goal.” Is that not correct? I’m not arguing in bad faith like many here or making a shitty “bacon = good” joke. I want to make sure you’re not being misinterpreted.

Other reasons I have seen in threads similar to this coming from the “angry vegan” side of things (and some responses to those) are:

• If you want to be vegan because you enjoy it? Go for it. That is inarguable. It’s no more or less valid than someone liking the colour red.

• If you want to be vegan because you feel it’s healthier? Rock on. Go you! You are probably correct if you monitor your diet. I would argue against it being better than a vegetarian diet however.

• If you want to be vegan because it’s easier on the environment? Well, for individuals? Yup! At the moment, you could make a good case that it would be better for the planet, but only because we’re overpopulated and statistically, being vegan is unsustainable if the entire planet were to switch tomorrow. A smarter case to make would be for a reduction in humans as being vegan is an extremely minor step of harm reduction compared to fewer people. Also, most food fed to livestock is not human-consumable and is often byproducts that would otherwise go to waste. Creating more food from waste is more efficient than discarding it.

• If you want to be vegan because you don’t like factory farms? Sure, I hate them too, however quitting animal products altogether is not a logical jump to make from that feeling. There are plenty of smaller suppliers you can procure from that do not have those issues; the more logical jump is to just not use bad providers no matter what the product. For example, I have raised bees and worked in a co-operative apiary. There was no abuse, and the likely alternative to us creating the hives was death for the entire bee community. Tell me how being vegan is better than creating my own honey and essentially creating hives and colonies from scratch, but using animal products in that instance.

• If you want to be vegan because it’s eliminating suffering (or death)? Again, kind of. This is simply making substitutions for suffering that you’re comfortable with. You can make an argument that it’s somehow lesser, but it’s bad logic and therefore a bad argument. You’re also applying your own morals (because again, this is a strictly moral standpoint) to other people, which is silly no matter who is doing it. From activists to religious extremists, your morals apply to you and only you. Do not try to enforce them on the outside world. You can argue for them, but getting mad at anyone with a differing view is silly and unproductive. As you said (and dismissed), you can lessen suffering or death, but you can not eliminate it. Your existence causes death. All existence does. Everything alive is only alive because it feeds off other living things who have their own way of existing. A suffering or death being a style you choose to not recognize is not only not a valid defence, it makes you just as guilty as those you attack. Your opposition also feel that their being is higher than those they ingest and they also do not recognize the deaths of those they consider lesser, they simply drew their line elsewhere.

And the way vegans are going about it in these threads isn’t helpful to your cause. Mindless emotion-driven downvoting does not change hearts or minds.

A better outreach for you would be to use the Food subs and post legit great vegetarian food and entice people that way. Doing it the way they are now will accomplish nothing of value. Well, unless they secretly work for a factory farm and want to piss people off so they eat more meat, in which case those psuedo-vegans are doing exactly what they should be in these threads which is mindlessly downvoting instead of engaging.

Feel free to ask for sources for any statements I made that aren’t related to personal preference. I can back up everything with peer-reviewed studies.

But they are scientifically accurate beliefs. They are true.

Emotionally, plant communication is awesome. Simultaneously factory farming also sucks.

Getting mad at a poster because you draw an uncharitable conclusion from the beginning of a post chain is extreme.

Understood! Wasn’t trying to be a dick, just adding clarity if needed.

What I’ve stated is not baseless. There are many sources and studies claiming how plants communicate via root systems, pheromones, and other mechanisms (some we’re discovering continually). As someone who worked in forestry (and lived on a non-corporate farm that produced mostly alfalfa), it’s somewhat more apparent once you’re there and present in that world.

To quote myself on another thread:

I trust you know how to use search, but some brief citations: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/plants-feel-pain.htm https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/24473/20191218/a-group-of-scientists-suggest-that-plants-feel-pain.htm

You can find many more if you look. We’ve known for quite a while that trees do this, and fungi are absolutely notorious for this. Speak to a botanist (or read the articles above) and they’ll tell you that plants respond to warnings from their peers about dangers, brace for pain, and signal pain to others. To be clear they don’t seem to feel pain (but keep in mind that they said this for years about crustaceans as well, but it was simply because we didn’t know how they functioned well enough) - not understanding the pain does not mean there is no pain.

Life for some organisms means death for others. Period. You can not avoid it on a micro or macro scale, all you can do is change WHAT you kill.

Plants are cool as hell though I suppose that understanding the above means that it can fuck with the worldview of vegetarians, and nobody likes that. If you disagree, please be respectful and let me know what your reasoning is.

Most likely they’ll continue to heavily downvote me when I describe the complex communication systems plants and fungi have.

So I know this isn’t going to be popular, but… I lived in Saudi Arabia at 14. White people were targeted for kidnapping and rape continually, and no, not only women. Men too.

I myself was very close to having both happen multiple times and escaped by pure panic and luck. My father and I were nearly killed by police with assault rifles because they wanted a bribe from my Dad. We were forced to drive into the desert at gunpoint to a “second location.”

This was not unusual for the expats.

I also went to school in Cincinnati and had the shit beaten out of me multiple times because I was white.

Racists no matter who they are racist to are fucking gross and I’m sorry you had to go through what you did. Please don’t think your experience applies worldwide though. Being white, gay, black, brown, trans, or damn near anything in some places is fucking dangerous.

Why? Having correlary traits in common with someone doing something dumb isn’t embarrassing.

Andrew Tate doesn’t make me embarrassed to be a man, he’s just embarrassing himself (and anyone who chooses those views are doing the same). We are individuals.

This is a really well-put description. Having pride in the color of your skin is fucking stupid and applies to everyone.

Pride is for achievements.

Skin color is not something anyone achieved (and no, paying for aesthetics is not an achievement either).

It’s social media. People really like to hit the “fuck you” button and not discuss anything.

You have to put yourself in their position though. If they commented anything and didn’t just casually dismiss, that would mean they’d have to think. Thinking is hard. Don’t do that to them.

Edit: They also really hate having the above pointed out, but never argue with it.

That might be what you wish they are learning, but I assure you that’s not the case. There may be more of those Highway blocking protests that you’re thinking about, but you’re simply hearing about them spread across many, many locations. They are not occurring frequently enough in one location to warrant a change to the way people commute. I have never even heard of anybody linking those two points together before.

If they’re blocking a highway, it’s not like you can just see the protest up ahead and turn off instead instead of choosing to be stuck. Often they are held in the middle of long stretches where they will trap as man cars as they are able on both sides.

And the lesson most people learned from COVID was that there was absolutely no reason why we couldn’t work from home. Although I could potentially see a link between working from home and, when the time comes to replace the infrastructure, replacing it with something more environmentally sane… but they’d have to convince big business owners to not force people to come into work for no reason, and good luck with that.

It seems like there’s a lot of wishful thinking to get from “those protesters are blocking this street” to “man, we should completely redo the entire infrastructure of North America because of these protests.”

My favorite Star Trek game of all time was the video board game with the Klingon host. I had everything from the Nightmare games so this was the next logical step and we loved it to even though it was cheesy as all get out.

No matter the outcome of this, nobody is learning that lesson from this demonstration.

If you want to take a (more obvious) environmental bent, this is a terrible idea for them to do because all they’re doing is causing vehicles to have to run substantially longer.

Well that’s a terrifying prospect if you have any sort of opinion outside of the groupthink.

Counterpoint: They used to be able to memorise the works of Homer.