You’d be surprised how many people don’t make the connection that nonhumans aren’t just flesh robots. Also a basic syllogism:
- Causing unnecessary suffering is wrong
- nonhuman animals are sentient, the things we do to them cause them to suffer in huge numbers at an industrial scale
- it’s unnecessary to eat them, we can thrive on a plant based diet (in fact, the environmental impact of animal ag means we’re making ourselves less likely to thrive in the future if we keep eating them)
- therefore, eating them causes huge amounts of unnecessary suffering
- therefore, eating them is wrong
Ok, but. I would still eat a dead human pretty readily if they didn’t taste like veal, so. Not to mention, my overly-literal ass can confirm from everything I know of every area of medicine and mechanics, we definitely are meat robots, yes. The distance as a consumer helps, but if I had to kill something myself, all it would take is getting hungry enough. An empty stomach knows no morality.
I think you’re underestimating how little emphasis most really place on this over making their own survival as simple as possible. Myself and others are not unaware that dying is painful or we’d likely be kept in a room somewhere, and acting otherwise is infantilzing.
Deriving enjoyment from being talked down to is so far from the norm it’s a distinct fetish, so it rarely accomplishes more than making the target dig in their heels. It’s by far the main reason that every time a vegetarian/vegan is at all vocal, they tend to get laughed out of the room.
Unless they’re six, people already know animals suffer and they eat them anyway. It’s just what they’ve always done, they already know it’s available and delicious, and it’s easier not to change anything more than they absolutely have to.
So make the change simple. The empathy route isn’t playing to strengths, here, the way just getting someone to try and hopefully integrate vegetarian meals would.
Horrendous? Yes. Also true. Mostly what people do is suck. If you want someone to do something for you, make it worth their while.
I have no moral problem eating a human or nonhuman if they’re already dead. Kinda weird but whatever. The issue comes when you are the one who took their life from them without consent.
We’re meat robots worth moral consideration, because we’re sentient. If a metal robot was sentient they’d be worth moral consideration as well, since they could experience what was done to them.
We’re a social species, i think it’s worth voicing dissent. Let them know that what they’ve been doing should change and that other people think they’re doing something terrible. Get them to reflect on it more deeply and see if they’re really ok with hurting others for the sake of convenience and taste and if they are, they should know that about themself rather than living in ignorance
I have no moral problem eating a human or nonhuman if they’re already dead. Kinda weird but whatever. The issue comes when you are the one who took their life from them without consent.
But…then wouldn’t the activism be directed solely at slaughterhouse workers? Who…obviously won’t listen, given they chose to work there, and the only one of them I ever knew still has a special hatred for chickens decades later?
I’m not the one killing anything. Only thing I’ve ever killed is bugs, and I stopped enjoying that when I hit ten. I still inarguably fund the ones who do. Those who hunt by themselves and do kill tend very much to be poor enough to make hunting a welcome option, which I wouldn’t take issue with until they have others available.
This ideally has to range beyond the killing part if it’s to reach literally anyone whose financial situation does not depend upon continuing to kill things.
As for other people telling me they think I’m terrible, I get that all the time already, whether I’ve actually done anything or not. If you’re on the internet, stuff like that becomes noise. I don’t like me either.
