If you ask every vegan I’ve ever had a discussion with, that would be every non-vegan in the world.
Personally the only people I dislike for eating meat are the kind who have it in literally every meal in excessive amounts
I also think people should have to kill the animals themselves if they want to eat them rather than be disconnected by buying them in stores to be morally consistent but that’s just me
I think if you’re going to post things on the internet you should have to build the device you’re using to do that yourself. And write all the software needed to do it.
Or maybe it’s silly to put arbitrary moral requirements on other people. If you think it’s wrong to eat meat, sure whatever. But trying to set some arbitrary goalpost that you know isn’t feasible to make it so something you already think is morally wrong to be extra morally wrong because it’s hypocritical or whatever is kinda weird.
Not sure this is the best example becauss there is a similar issue there of phones being made via basically slavery, I hypocritically say typing on my Samsung phone (though looking into buying a fairphone next which is the best I can possibly do while still having the practical neccesity of a smartphone)
The difference there is though that I would have no moral problem with building the phone and writing the software, physically capable or not. I’m not saying people should need to physically be able to kill the animal all by themselves, just that they should be morally able to, if given a gun pointed at an animal’s head, pull the trigger and be ok with that decision
My point is not to be the gatekeeper of what’s right and wrong, my point is to force people to make those decisions themselves and to be morally consistent. If people are ok with killing animals then that’s fine by me, the bit I don’t like is the level of abstraction we have that means people don’t have to think about the consequences of their choices too deeply
I actually hate how distanced we are from meat in general, and agree that in general people should have the opportunity to kill their own meat.
That said, here’s a real counterpoint. PTSD. I know people with severe PTSD from witnessing some unspeakable brutality like the violent death of a loved one or friend. Nobody should ever ask a PTSD patient to kill an animal themselves. Which is the problem with the whole “have to kill animals” thing entirely. Too many people have some traumatic event.
Honestly, I think that’s where a lot of vegans come from. I have an extended family member who snapped after watching one of those vegan documentaries. She was weird before then for reasons none of us really knew, but she starved herself until she was hospitalized for malnutrition and her hair started falling out. When she got out, she wouldn’t eat meat anymore and wouldn’t talk about it. She isn’t a “vegetarian” in any good meaning of the word, constantly struggling with nutritional issues and avoiding meat entirely because she can’t bring herself to eat it. It has become a quiet ethical thing to her, but it’s more than that.
So IMO, we gotta cure PTSD before making people kill. I DO think we should offer “kill and butcher your own meat” as an elective field trip in school. I got to visit my first farm in middle-school and it really helped give me a balanced view of the world of food. Even if it was just a chicken, if I could’ve killed my own, cleaned it, and cooked it, it would’ve really rounded out my head on the topic back then.
I think if you’re going to get PTSD from killing an animal then you shouldn’t eat meat. If the act is so traumatising for someone then clearly they have some kind of conflict about it.
If you already have PTSD fine those people get a pass don’t want to cause more harm but that’s an incredibly small subset of people
I don’t think people who are incapable of killing an animal (mentally not physically) should be allowed to eat said animals
I’m a vegetarian and am perfectly healthy, on the higher side of BMI, regularly go to the gym and have above average muscle mass so the argument that you can’t get the nutrients you need is bullshit. I’m sorry about your family member though that sounds like a full blown eating disorder, not veganism
