thereās a lot of commodities that donāt really warrant environmental harm just because humans would prefer to have it.
Thatās idealistic, though. Your fellow humans want the things they prefer and you have to contend with that.
You can try to deny your fellow humans access, but theyāll fight you to the death for it. Unless your plan is human extermination, youāre going to have to work with humans. That means framing environmentalism in their terms, for their interests.
And that is the moral conundrum. You are correct, there comes points where you do have to draw a hard line and do what must be done to protect nature, because the human capacity to destroy it and other living things has transcended natureās ability to protect itself and all that stands between itās exploitation by one set of tool wielding apes is a group of other tool wielding apes.
Thatās a pretty extreme scenario. My critique of both ML and the China method is that it doesnāt contain, at its core, modern environmental philosophy. Not suprising, it was not a concern for the writers at the time. Chinaās revolution came after it had time to observe what capitalism and the rise of a middle class had done in the west, but it still chose to follow many of the same methods to speed run itās growth, the creation of a middle class, and now has many of the same issues the west does when it comes to the consumerism of a middle class (and the gross excesses of a wealth class, whose singular habits can make the average annual footprint of thousands look like a drop in the ocean). Iād also point out that Chinaās economy is based on selling a lot of useless crap to western markets. Itās supply and demand, and it would appear that appealing to the nature of humans to not be wasteful isā¦ futile? Our planet is changing rapidly but we are nowhere near hitting the point where the majority of humans will willingly limit their consumption for the greater good. There seems to be a strong belief in āconsume now, pay whatever consequences later.
And I see that mentality strongly in Chinaās revolution. It didnāt happen in a bubble, they knew that there would be a price to pay but anthropocentrism is fundamental to ML. China got what it wanted, and now plays catch-up with environmentalism, just like the west. My struggle with trying to critique devotion to ML or the Chinese method often reaches an impasse because nobody has developed a popular environmental minded update and will continually point to the idea that protecting it for human use is good enough and that human progression is outweighed by environmental concerns. I disagree, humanity can progress but that doesnāt mean it always gets what it wants or thinks progress looks like.
Iām concerned that the rise of popular adoption of ML thought is so dismissive of environmental concerns, which have long been only addressed by leftists. The responses out of a lot of itās supporters are becoming increasingly anthropocentric with an acceptance that a few green initiatives and climate pledges for the future are good enough, and had a dude over on Reddit basically state he didnāt give a fuck how bad factory farming was for the animals, humans deserve cheap meat. I donāt think the world is going to go vegan, but damn dude, wonāt even criticize factory farming? What the hell is happening to the left?
You arenāt going to convince 8 billion people to do environmentalism for its own sake. What youāre talking about is literally impossible, you canāt ādraw a hard lineā and expect to enforce it. The only way to do environmentalism is if you do it for humans.
had a dude over on Reddit basically state he didnāt give a fuck how bad factory farming was for the animals, humans deserve cheap meat. I donāt think the world is going to go vegan, but damn dude, wonāt even criticize factory farming? What the hell is happening to the left?
Iām vegan, but it wasnāt animal welfare concerns that convinced me to stop eating animals. I was concerned, sure, but it was never enough. What convinced me was the fact that animal slaughter is traumatizing to the humans forced to do it for a living. Workers who slaughter for a living have higher rates of depression, anxiety, alcoholism, addiction, violent crime, and suicide. That person doesnāt seem to have thought about the human impact either, and probably doesnāt think much about anything at all tbh
But tying the environment back to human health and prosperity is the key to environmentalism. You have to convince humans to protect the environment for their sake. We preserve biodiversity because it ensures our biosphere doesnāt collapse. We stop greenhouse gas emissions because global heating will kill humans. We stop dumping waste because it makes humans sick. Thatās the only thing that works. If you fail to do that, if you try to impose environmentalism on them for the environmentās sake, theyāll rebel.
If you drew a hard line and just forced veganism on people, theyād eat you.
Environmentalism has been trying to convince people to be concerned for their own sake for a very long time. Doing so requires self-concern as well as empathy for the rest of humanity as well as indirect empathy for the planet as a whole. Right, left, or centrist, humans show an affinity for self-indulgence, comfort, simplicity, and luxury. Iāve been undercover in slaughter houses and factory farms. A substantial portion of those in the US are staffed with leased prison labor, guys whoāve already had questionable morality regarding behavior towards fellow humans, now making a $1/hr. The non-compliant cow or chicken is now an object of frustration to vent their fury. Thereās no concern for its welfare because the concept of concern does not exist. Theyāre pissed, the gratification of punching or kicking it is good enough. Not to mention, thereās some mean sons of bitches who enjoy the work. Psychologically healthy, no. But if you enjoy the power no amount of pointing out why thatās unhealthy is going to make them consider a career change.
Itās the same with over-consumption. The US has a massive problem with obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Plenty of people are aware of this, know theyāre doing it to themselves, but will kill themselves with indulgence because itās pleasurable. Also creates a whole medical industry that can then sell cure-alls, surgery, and profiteer off humanās desire to get more by doing less. Hell, Iām smoking a cigarette while typing this. Iām well aware of the dangers, just like Iām aware I drink more than I should.
I do not believe thereās a way to convince people to act in their own best interest, much less broader interests that they can see no direct benefit from and would consider an imposition. On the flip side, humans are also free to do what they choose with their bodies. If someone wants to eat or drink themselves to death, I can find it tragic, sad, attempt to convince them otherwise, but when does it become my place (or the governmentās) to stop them? As you pointed out, you couldnāt legislate veganism, people would just break the law like they do with illegal drugs or their own sexuality when morality legislation starts defining who two consenting adults can or cannot bang.
Environmental concerns are a slow and steady progression. Sometimes it comes from early education, and dare I say indoctrination (Captain Planet and Ferngully had a notable influence on a lot of the kids who grew up exposed to them in spite of how their parents may have lived). Sometimes it is just a hard crackdown and forbidding the use of something (DDT, CFCs, lead-based paints and gasolines). The debate on when, where, and what is worth overriding an individualās right to choose is a tough one, as is convincing an adult that giving up something that brings them pleasure, comfort, status, or luxury is in the best interest of themselves or a greater cause, because they will often fight back or sneak around to get what they want.
Still, my main concern is that environmentalism, animal welfare, and consumerism have been topics addressed by leftists, but recently itās become increasingly āgood enoughā or āthatās not important now, well half-ass it and deal with it laterā. If we donāt use this moment to make sure all our concerns are being addressed, weāll end up swinging the pendulum back in favor of humans above all and the issues weāre causing environmentally will continue to exist, eventually pushing us to a point where our prosperity is compromised and nothing was gained.
Plenty of people are aware of this, know theyāre doing it to themselves, but will kill themselves with indulgence because itās pleasurable.
And why would they do that? Because theyāre suffering. People will kill themselves with overeating and drugs and whatever else because they want the pain to stop and theyāll accept anything that can distract them from their suffering - even for a moment.
Thatās why obesity and alcoholism and addiction and overdoses are things that mostly afflict the poor. They want the pain to stop.
Thatās why we say āthatās not important now, well half-ass it and deal with it later." We have to deal with it later, itās impossible to deal with it right now. You arenāt going to convince suffering people that they should deprive themselves of simple pleasures.
You have to end the suffering first. If you try to override everyoneās right to choose without ending it, theyāll eat you.
Just out of curiosity, what do you propose we do with the middle class and wealthy who are doing all these things but not impoverished? Trumpās obese, Hegseth is drunk, and Elonās a junkie. Suffering from moral decrepitude but definitely not impoverished. I also question the poverty of the middle class. While many live below the poverty line, many are only impoverished because they live beyond their means for the sake of possessions over their health. They may be impoverished financially but thatās a self-made situation due to poverty of character.
Speed running a rush to abolish poverty now without considering the future cost to the environment is going to be a short term pat on the back and pawns the cost off on people who donāt even exist yet. You burn through your resources like forests, overload the utilities infrastructure, over extend the available water supply, and disrupt the ecosystem because itās more important to just get it over and done with, and you create Dust Bowls that blow all your topsoil into the Gulf of Mexico, backflow of sewage and run-off into the watershed, dry up the watershed, and build communities nobody wants to live in because as it turns out, most people donāt want to live in concrete jungles that have no natural spaces relatively close by. How about making sure the new communities have public transportation, are designed to discourage single occupancy driving and encourage walking or biking? Do we build up or do we downsize homes, fewer 2000+sqft āstarter homesā that take up the entire lot, or more tiny houses with some sort of outdoor plot to encourage gardening or at least being outside.
Not everybody who is impoverished is suffering from escapist addictions, not everyone whoās an escapist addict is suffering from financial poverty. Elevating people out of poverty also wonāt get every impoverished person to give up their addictions, many will continue to indulge, theyāll just have better accommodations to indulge in. And the wealthy, as well as the middle class members who think theyāre wealthy like the elite but are in fact just living on credit cards, raising the impoverished out of their state and into at least the bottom rung of the middle class is going to nothing to curb their excesses and consumption. If anything, the class system is so designed to punch down there will be resentment that someone was raised to near their same level. Look at the hatred for the minimum social services we already have. We have people who rely on welfare that support candidates that promise to abolish welfare to prevent others from getting it, literally cutting off their own noses to spite their faces.
China should be an example of why massive social change and speed running the creation of a middle class at the expense of the environment should not be replicated by their model. Study it, learn from it, what worked great, what has didnāt work, and what had unforeseen consequences. Otherwise you damage the planet in ways that will never heal in dozens of lifetimes, and youāre passing the next environmental impact on to other countries because you are importing basic resources to sustain your system as well as try and go green to offset the climate change and pollution you already contributed to, which again, requires importing natural resources that are not easy on the environment to extract. Weāve seen the effects of the rise of the middle class in the west and China, and are better poised to do it cleaner than either was when they did theirs. If we chose not to itās not out of a love for humanity, because weāre clearly not concerned with the wave of humanity that has to inherit the mess.
Iād also point out that as far as we know, we are the only animals that think of suffering in the manner we do, but since we can recognize it we recognize itās affects on other living things. Causing non-human suffering in the name of alleviating human suffering a moral hardline I cannot get on board with. We cannot eliminate suffering because it has not singular cause and some of it is self-inflicted, people can be given every opportunity to escape or be helped but will not. We at least attempt harm reduction in all our actions.
Just out of curiosity, what do you propose we do with the middle class and wealthy who are doing all these things but not impoverished?
They actually demonstrate class antagonism. The wealthy, more specifically the bourgeoisie, are antagonistic to the interests of the working class. The suffering and pain they inflict on the workers that are forced to kill their meat is actually a reflection of their class antagonism. They have no empathy for the workers that suffer from their meat consumption, because their class status is predicated on exploiting workers. If they had empathy, they wouldnāt be wealthy.
Then thereās the so-called āmiddle classā, which are people who are boureoisified by owning property and investments and small businesses and making high wages. Their class status is mixed, but has a bourgeois character because at least part of their wealth comes from exploitation. Bourgeoisification aligns their class interests against workers, and just like the bourgeoisie, they have no empathy for the people that they exploit.
These classes actually canāt be convinced by the human welfare arguments Iām making, because they donāt care about humans as a whole. They care about themselves and their class cohort and their class interests. Theyād actually be more easily convinced by the animal welfare arguments and pure environmentalist arguments that youāre making, because they might at least care for non-human animals and because thereās no class antagonism.
The only āsolutionā for them is to end their classes and end class antagonism entirely. Once there is no more class antagonism, no one will want to make anyone else kill animals for them. As long as they are wealthy, they will eat flesh.
Theyād actually be more easily convinced by the animal welfare arguments and pure environmentalist arguments that youāre making, because they might at least care for non-human animals and because thereās no class antagonism.
Cāmon now. This thread is full of backlash from leftists and communists who have called me every name in the book for crazy as well as a āfascist misanthropeā for suggesting that non-human animals and the environment should have rights equal to humans. Individuals might love a favorite pet in their life, or the cuteness of penguins and pandas, but if I canāt convince other leftists of the value of animal and environmental rights, why would it work with conservatives. A substantial amount of them donāt believe in science or evolution, but base their claim to human superiority in notions of divine creation, to have dominion over the Earth. Suggesting animals have equal rights to their existence not only confronts their economic and social systems, it confronts one of the core beliefs they build their economic and social systems on.
I would also challenge the idea that people only cause non-human suffering in the pursuit of flesh for consumption. Sport hunting, the fur industry, and by-catch all cause suffering without consumption. People redirect their anger to those who canāt defend themselves, like beating a dog because oneās boss yelled at them. In the US we have a major issue with pets being used as hostages in domestic abuse situations because womenās shelters often only allow women and children. The abuser gets ahold of the pet, threatens or commits violence, and the woman returns to her abuser (side note, awareness of this is on the increase and thereās a lot of charitable organizations stepping in to help prevent it). Even āveganā leather is a questionable commodity because itās a by-product of the petroleum industry. The person wearing it might feel righteous but, well, the petroleum industry.
I do not think for a second the world is going to go vegan, nor that thereās an entirely harm-free solution to life. I also donāt think the world is going to quit doing as it does and go back to subsistence farming, nor is that even the right solution for the entirety of humanity. I do believe that harm reduction and mindful living are the key, and that is something we can teach and encourage.
But the next few of questions I would have for you- how do we deal with the āhavesā of society that exploit, take, and refuse to abandon their class? Youāre not going to get them to stop with appeals to reason, and theyāre not going to sit back and watch their privileges be stripped without pushback. How do we achieve compliance? Do you really think most people would stop eating meat if they had to raise, slaughter, and process it themselves? Even in a cashless, barter and trade economy, the demand for meat will always exist and people will outsource it. Theyād blackmarket it if you completely outlawed it
You do sound like a fascist misanthrope, because the logical conclusion of your argument is that humans are irredeemably evil and there is no hope.
I would also challenge the idea that people only cause non-human suffering in the pursuit of flesh for consumption.
I never expressed such an idea.
how do we deal with the āhavesā of society that exploit, take, and refuse to abandon their class?
Well first we have to abolish their class. Theyāll have to work for a living, like everyone else. That eliminates the class antagonism.
This of course means class war. I am not proposing appeals to reason, or some peaceful process where they just watch their privileges be stripped away. Compliance can only be achieved by a state repressing their class and reeducating them on their new class position in a society where they can no longer exploit workers.
Do you really think most people would stop eating meat if they had to raise, slaughter, and process it themselves?
I actually do. The majority of people donāt have the heart to raise and kill and mutilate, or even the stomach for it. Their empathy gets in the way. I think if everyone had to experience the entirety of the production process, rather than the commodity fetishism of just pretending the meat magically appears on store shelves, then the majority of them would choose alternatives. Then, once a majority stop eating meat, the minority will face social constraints for their filthy habit.
Unlike primitive barter-and-trade economies our food is not scarce. In a society where thereās always plenty of food and where people have to confront the non-human animals they must hurt and kill, theyād choose to eat plants. There are certainly people that can stomach killing animals for literally no reason, but theyāre an extreme minority. Theyād be repressed through social stigma, and perhaps even laws, but the majority of people would already have given up meat and would go along with it.
But we have to address the class antagonism first, and along with it food scarcity and commodity fetishism.
Thatās idealistic, though. Your fellow humans want the things they prefer and you have to contend with that.
You can try to deny your fellow humans access, but theyāll fight you to the death for it. Unless your plan is human extermination, youāre going to have to work with humans. That means framing environmentalism in their terms, for their interests.
And that is the moral conundrum. You are correct, there comes points where you do have to draw a hard line and do what must be done to protect nature, because the human capacity to destroy it and other living things has transcended natureās ability to protect itself and all that stands between itās exploitation by one set of tool wielding apes is a group of other tool wielding apes.
Thatās a pretty extreme scenario. My critique of both ML and the China method is that it doesnāt contain, at its core, modern environmental philosophy. Not suprising, it was not a concern for the writers at the time. Chinaās revolution came after it had time to observe what capitalism and the rise of a middle class had done in the west, but it still chose to follow many of the same methods to speed run itās growth, the creation of a middle class, and now has many of the same issues the west does when it comes to the consumerism of a middle class (and the gross excesses of a wealth class, whose singular habits can make the average annual footprint of thousands look like a drop in the ocean). Iād also point out that Chinaās economy is based on selling a lot of useless crap to western markets. Itās supply and demand, and it would appear that appealing to the nature of humans to not be wasteful isā¦ futile? Our planet is changing rapidly but we are nowhere near hitting the point where the majority of humans will willingly limit their consumption for the greater good. There seems to be a strong belief in āconsume now, pay whatever consequences later.
And I see that mentality strongly in Chinaās revolution. It didnāt happen in a bubble, they knew that there would be a price to pay but anthropocentrism is fundamental to ML. China got what it wanted, and now plays catch-up with environmentalism, just like the west. My struggle with trying to critique devotion to ML or the Chinese method often reaches an impasse because nobody has developed a popular environmental minded update and will continually point to the idea that protecting it for human use is good enough and that human progression is outweighed by environmental concerns. I disagree, humanity can progress but that doesnāt mean it always gets what it wants or thinks progress looks like.
Iām concerned that the rise of popular adoption of ML thought is so dismissive of environmental concerns, which have long been only addressed by leftists. The responses out of a lot of itās supporters are becoming increasingly anthropocentric with an acceptance that a few green initiatives and climate pledges for the future are good enough, and had a dude over on Reddit basically state he didnāt give a fuck how bad factory farming was for the animals, humans deserve cheap meat. I donāt think the world is going to go vegan, but damn dude, wonāt even criticize factory farming? What the hell is happening to the left?
You arenāt going to convince 8 billion people to do environmentalism for its own sake. What youāre talking about is literally impossible, you canāt ādraw a hard lineā and expect to enforce it. The only way to do environmentalism is if you do it for humans.
Iām vegan, but it wasnāt animal welfare concerns that convinced me to stop eating animals. I was concerned, sure, but it was never enough. What convinced me was the fact that animal slaughter is traumatizing to the humans forced to do it for a living. Workers who slaughter for a living have higher rates of depression, anxiety, alcoholism, addiction, violent crime, and suicide. That person doesnāt seem to have thought about the human impact either, and probably doesnāt think much about anything at all tbh
But tying the environment back to human health and prosperity is the key to environmentalism. You have to convince humans to protect the environment for their sake. We preserve biodiversity because it ensures our biosphere doesnāt collapse. We stop greenhouse gas emissions because global heating will kill humans. We stop dumping waste because it makes humans sick. Thatās the only thing that works. If you fail to do that, if you try to impose environmentalism on them for the environmentās sake, theyāll rebel.
If you drew a hard line and just forced veganism on people, theyād eat you.
Environmentalism has been trying to convince people to be concerned for their own sake for a very long time. Doing so requires self-concern as well as empathy for the rest of humanity as well as indirect empathy for the planet as a whole. Right, left, or centrist, humans show an affinity for self-indulgence, comfort, simplicity, and luxury. Iāve been undercover in slaughter houses and factory farms. A substantial portion of those in the US are staffed with leased prison labor, guys whoāve already had questionable morality regarding behavior towards fellow humans, now making a $1/hr. The non-compliant cow or chicken is now an object of frustration to vent their fury. Thereās no concern for its welfare because the concept of concern does not exist. Theyāre pissed, the gratification of punching or kicking it is good enough. Not to mention, thereās some mean sons of bitches who enjoy the work. Psychologically healthy, no. But if you enjoy the power no amount of pointing out why thatās unhealthy is going to make them consider a career change.
Itās the same with over-consumption. The US has a massive problem with obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Plenty of people are aware of this, know theyāre doing it to themselves, but will kill themselves with indulgence because itās pleasurable. Also creates a whole medical industry that can then sell cure-alls, surgery, and profiteer off humanās desire to get more by doing less. Hell, Iām smoking a cigarette while typing this. Iām well aware of the dangers, just like Iām aware I drink more than I should.
I do not believe thereās a way to convince people to act in their own best interest, much less broader interests that they can see no direct benefit from and would consider an imposition. On the flip side, humans are also free to do what they choose with their bodies. If someone wants to eat or drink themselves to death, I can find it tragic, sad, attempt to convince them otherwise, but when does it become my place (or the governmentās) to stop them? As you pointed out, you couldnāt legislate veganism, people would just break the law like they do with illegal drugs or their own sexuality when morality legislation starts defining who two consenting adults can or cannot bang.
Environmental concerns are a slow and steady progression. Sometimes it comes from early education, and dare I say indoctrination (Captain Planet and Ferngully had a notable influence on a lot of the kids who grew up exposed to them in spite of how their parents may have lived). Sometimes it is just a hard crackdown and forbidding the use of something (DDT, CFCs, lead-based paints and gasolines). The debate on when, where, and what is worth overriding an individualās right to choose is a tough one, as is convincing an adult that giving up something that brings them pleasure, comfort, status, or luxury is in the best interest of themselves or a greater cause, because they will often fight back or sneak around to get what they want.
Still, my main concern is that environmentalism, animal welfare, and consumerism have been topics addressed by leftists, but recently itās become increasingly āgood enoughā or āthatās not important now, well half-ass it and deal with it laterā. If we donāt use this moment to make sure all our concerns are being addressed, weāll end up swinging the pendulum back in favor of humans above all and the issues weāre causing environmentally will continue to exist, eventually pushing us to a point where our prosperity is compromised and nothing was gained.
And why would they do that? Because theyāre suffering. People will kill themselves with overeating and drugs and whatever else because they want the pain to stop and theyāll accept anything that can distract them from their suffering - even for a moment.
Thatās why obesity and alcoholism and addiction and overdoses are things that mostly afflict the poor. They want the pain to stop.
Thatās why we say āthatās not important now, well half-ass it and deal with it later." We have to deal with it later, itās impossible to deal with it right now. You arenāt going to convince suffering people that they should deprive themselves of simple pleasures.
You have to end the suffering first. If you try to override everyoneās right to choose without ending it, theyāll eat you.
Just out of curiosity, what do you propose we do with the middle class and wealthy who are doing all these things but not impoverished? Trumpās obese, Hegseth is drunk, and Elonās a junkie. Suffering from moral decrepitude but definitely not impoverished. I also question the poverty of the middle class. While many live below the poverty line, many are only impoverished because they live beyond their means for the sake of possessions over their health. They may be impoverished financially but thatās a self-made situation due to poverty of character.
Speed running a rush to abolish poverty now without considering the future cost to the environment is going to be a short term pat on the back and pawns the cost off on people who donāt even exist yet. You burn through your resources like forests, overload the utilities infrastructure, over extend the available water supply, and disrupt the ecosystem because itās more important to just get it over and done with, and you create Dust Bowls that blow all your topsoil into the Gulf of Mexico, backflow of sewage and run-off into the watershed, dry up the watershed, and build communities nobody wants to live in because as it turns out, most people donāt want to live in concrete jungles that have no natural spaces relatively close by. How about making sure the new communities have public transportation, are designed to discourage single occupancy driving and encourage walking or biking? Do we build up or do we downsize homes, fewer 2000+sqft āstarter homesā that take up the entire lot, or more tiny houses with some sort of outdoor plot to encourage gardening or at least being outside.
Not everybody who is impoverished is suffering from escapist addictions, not everyone whoās an escapist addict is suffering from financial poverty. Elevating people out of poverty also wonāt get every impoverished person to give up their addictions, many will continue to indulge, theyāll just have better accommodations to indulge in. And the wealthy, as well as the middle class members who think theyāre wealthy like the elite but are in fact just living on credit cards, raising the impoverished out of their state and into at least the bottom rung of the middle class is going to nothing to curb their excesses and consumption. If anything, the class system is so designed to punch down there will be resentment that someone was raised to near their same level. Look at the hatred for the minimum social services we already have. We have people who rely on welfare that support candidates that promise to abolish welfare to prevent others from getting it, literally cutting off their own noses to spite their faces.
China should be an example of why massive social change and speed running the creation of a middle class at the expense of the environment should not be replicated by their model. Study it, learn from it, what worked great, what has didnāt work, and what had unforeseen consequences. Otherwise you damage the planet in ways that will never heal in dozens of lifetimes, and youāre passing the next environmental impact on to other countries because you are importing basic resources to sustain your system as well as try and go green to offset the climate change and pollution you already contributed to, which again, requires importing natural resources that are not easy on the environment to extract. Weāve seen the effects of the rise of the middle class in the west and China, and are better poised to do it cleaner than either was when they did theirs. If we chose not to itās not out of a love for humanity, because weāre clearly not concerned with the wave of humanity that has to inherit the mess.
Iād also point out that as far as we know, we are the only animals that think of suffering in the manner we do, but since we can recognize it we recognize itās affects on other living things. Causing non-human suffering in the name of alleviating human suffering a moral hardline I cannot get on board with. We cannot eliminate suffering because it has not singular cause and some of it is self-inflicted, people can be given every opportunity to escape or be helped but will not. We at least attempt harm reduction in all our actions.
They actually demonstrate class antagonism. The wealthy, more specifically the bourgeoisie, are antagonistic to the interests of the working class. The suffering and pain they inflict on the workers that are forced to kill their meat is actually a reflection of their class antagonism. They have no empathy for the workers that suffer from their meat consumption, because their class status is predicated on exploiting workers. If they had empathy, they wouldnāt be wealthy.
Then thereās the so-called āmiddle classā, which are people who are boureoisified by owning property and investments and small businesses and making high wages. Their class status is mixed, but has a bourgeois character because at least part of their wealth comes from exploitation. Bourgeoisification aligns their class interests against workers, and just like the bourgeoisie, they have no empathy for the people that they exploit.
These classes actually canāt be convinced by the human welfare arguments Iām making, because they donāt care about humans as a whole. They care about themselves and their class cohort and their class interests. Theyād actually be more easily convinced by the animal welfare arguments and pure environmentalist arguments that youāre making, because they might at least care for non-human animals and because thereās no class antagonism.
The only āsolutionā for them is to end their classes and end class antagonism entirely. Once there is no more class antagonism, no one will want to make anyone else kill animals for them. As long as they are wealthy, they will eat flesh.
Cāmon now. This thread is full of backlash from leftists and communists who have called me every name in the book for crazy as well as a āfascist misanthropeā for suggesting that non-human animals and the environment should have rights equal to humans. Individuals might love a favorite pet in their life, or the cuteness of penguins and pandas, but if I canāt convince other leftists of the value of animal and environmental rights, why would it work with conservatives. A substantial amount of them donāt believe in science or evolution, but base their claim to human superiority in notions of divine creation, to have dominion over the Earth. Suggesting animals have equal rights to their existence not only confronts their economic and social systems, it confronts one of the core beliefs they build their economic and social systems on.
I would also challenge the idea that people only cause non-human suffering in the pursuit of flesh for consumption. Sport hunting, the fur industry, and by-catch all cause suffering without consumption. People redirect their anger to those who canāt defend themselves, like beating a dog because oneās boss yelled at them. In the US we have a major issue with pets being used as hostages in domestic abuse situations because womenās shelters often only allow women and children. The abuser gets ahold of the pet, threatens or commits violence, and the woman returns to her abuser (side note, awareness of this is on the increase and thereās a lot of charitable organizations stepping in to help prevent it). Even āveganā leather is a questionable commodity because itās a by-product of the petroleum industry. The person wearing it might feel righteous but, well, the petroleum industry.
I do not think for a second the world is going to go vegan, nor that thereās an entirely harm-free solution to life. I also donāt think the world is going to quit doing as it does and go back to subsistence farming, nor is that even the right solution for the entirety of humanity. I do believe that harm reduction and mindful living are the key, and that is something we can teach and encourage.
But the next few of questions I would have for you- how do we deal with the āhavesā of society that exploit, take, and refuse to abandon their class? Youāre not going to get them to stop with appeals to reason, and theyāre not going to sit back and watch their privileges be stripped without pushback. How do we achieve compliance? Do you really think most people would stop eating meat if they had to raise, slaughter, and process it themselves? Even in a cashless, barter and trade economy, the demand for meat will always exist and people will outsource it. Theyād blackmarket it if you completely outlawed it
You do sound like a fascist misanthrope, because the logical conclusion of your argument is that humans are irredeemably evil and there is no hope.
I never expressed such an idea.
Well first we have to abolish their class. Theyāll have to work for a living, like everyone else. That eliminates the class antagonism.
This of course means class war. I am not proposing appeals to reason, or some peaceful process where they just watch their privileges be stripped away. Compliance can only be achieved by a state repressing their class and reeducating them on their new class position in a society where they can no longer exploit workers.
I actually do. The majority of people donāt have the heart to raise and kill and mutilate, or even the stomach for it. Their empathy gets in the way. I think if everyone had to experience the entirety of the production process, rather than the commodity fetishism of just pretending the meat magically appears on store shelves, then the majority of them would choose alternatives. Then, once a majority stop eating meat, the minority will face social constraints for their filthy habit.
Unlike primitive barter-and-trade economies our food is not scarce. In a society where thereās always plenty of food and where people have to confront the non-human animals they must hurt and kill, theyād choose to eat plants. There are certainly people that can stomach killing animals for literally no reason, but theyāre an extreme minority. Theyād be repressed through social stigma, and perhaps even laws, but the majority of people would already have given up meat and would go along with it.
But we have to address the class antagonism first, and along with it food scarcity and commodity fetishism.