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Things I’ve learned since going vegan
- You can slice someone’s throat and still love them.
- The word “need” can also mean “could easily live without but do kinda want”.
- The word “humane” can mean literally anything you want it to.
- It’s ok to call people out for harmful behaviour unless that behaviour involves bacon.
- Plants definitely feel pain and lawns scream when you mow them.
- Crop workers are exploited but slaughterhouse workers definitely aren’t. No exploitation here, no sir.
- Meat is the only food that contains protein.
- “Found the vegan” is still funny and original the millionth time.
- Before humans came along, cows were just wandering around with massive udders praying for someone to invent industrialised agriculture.
- Steak is cheaper than beans, rice, pasta, and canned vegetables.
- While 99% of all meat comes from factory farms, no one eats that meat.
- Everyone only buys local, organic, humane, Dalai Lama approved meat.
- Everyone has an uncle who owns a farm straight out of a 1950’s Americana magazine
- Everyone has a degree in nutrition and evolutionary biology.
- Everyone knows that one guy who went vegan and almost died.
- Everyone is free to talk about their identity, beliefs and interests without being shamed for them. Unless they’re vegan. Vegans can fuck off.
Yea, well it tracks with the deferred ethics of the whole dynamic/system.
My favourite was the opening, which set the tone and had me double take to make sure I read it correctly: “You can slice someone’s throat and still love them.” Of course you can, so long as you respect them and remain mindful of the circle of life.
I don’t engage in any vegan arguments at the moment … but I’d imagine the real razor would be whether anyone has actually killed the kind of animals they’re eating and would be happy to do that every time they ate (the corresponding amount of meat, just to be “fair”). I have, through scientific research seen and participated in animal killing, and watched how others digest the process. I’m pretty most moderately thoughtful people would not be up for it at all.
One of the points in my waking up to carnism was when I mentioned an interest in hunting rabbits (a so called invasive pest here) over dinner with my family as a late teen.
My father expressed an incredible disgust at the idea of hunting, made some comment about sadists or something. The rest of my family were more reserved but similarly aghast, that I would be willing to participate in the process by which meat, which we were eating, was created represented some sort of character flaw.
Yet at the time we had gone fishing, and I had done work experience on a farm. I volunteered at the school farm and had raised broiler chickens and helped load them onto a truck to a slaughterhouse.
It made me realise how utterly disconnected we all were and how the people around me were utterly repulsed by the violence required for their pleasures.
I moved out shortly after and went pescatarian largely due to the soul searching that prompted. Becoming vegan later when I realised Nirvana lied to me.