I believe it is ethically better to be a vegetarian, or even better to be a vegan. Yet I am not a vegetarian, and to be honest, it’s not even because I would love eating meat to much (veganism would be more difficult, because I love cheese), but merely because it would be inconvenient. If I had a vegan restaurant near my job, and enough practice with cooking different vegetarian meals, I probably wouldn’t mind being vegetarian; it wouldn’t even seem like having sacrificed anything.
(Okay, I took some steps to fix this, but this is not meant to be a thread about making excuses, it’s about admitting hypocrisy.)
I believe I should spend less time on internet, because my spending too much time online is probably the worst obstacle at reaching many of my goals. Guess what I am doing right now?
I’ve been in that spot for a long time and my excuse always was that vegetarianism would be too inconvenient.
Around the end of last year it finally clicked. The inconvenience excuse is plainly wrong in many cases AND being a vegetarian in just these cases is still a good thing!
I resolved to eat vegetarian whenever it is not inconvenient. This turned out to be almost always. Especially easy are restaurants and ordered food. When in a supermarket I never buy meat which automatically sets me up for lots of vegetarian meals.
I’m currently eating vegetarian on ~95% of my meals. As a bonus I don’t have a bad conscience in the few cases where I eat meat.
I already keep daily logs about what I did during the day (e.g. if I had an exercise), so I added not eating meat to the list of recorded variables. This step was trivial. But now, whenever I am choosing a meal, I remember that I will have to put it on the record. And somehow this trivial inconvenience makes me choose the vegetarian meal more reliably than previously.
I started recording this two weeks ago. First week there was no difference, but the second week I ate vegetarian food for the whole week. I only broke the chain today, because we already had some pre-made soup containing meat at home.
Anecdote: I was in your position at the start of 2013. I tried pescatarianism for a while and found it to be much easier than I expected; I transitioned to full vegatarianism a bit later and have found it surprisingly easy to maintain since. And I’m usually a pretty impulsive person, especially around food!
Surprise upside: Reduced decision fatigue, especially at restaurants.
Disclaimer: Typical mind fallacy, also I live in a very urban area with a higher-than-average density of vegetarians and vegetarian-options.
I’m hesitant at the idea of pescetarianism. If larger animals are more sentient, then fish don’t matter much, and that’s a good idea. But some people argue otherwise. If there’s a significant chance that fish are as sentient as anything else, eating only fish is a terrible idea.
While I was adjusting to vegetarianism, I tried to eat mid-sized animals, so it wouldn’t be terrible either way.
Perhaps beef-only could be an alternative to fish-only as a stepping stone? I think I remember beef getting better ratings than most other things in some articles comparing utility of eating animals with the assumption that all creatures suffer equally. (Pigs are smarter than cows, I think, but I’m not sure if you were considering them mid-size or large.)
I figure it would be more brain size than intelligence. I would expect pain would increase by having more neurons to feel it, not having a deeper understanding of what it is.
Beef-only has the opposite problem. If not all creatures suffer equally, avoiding cows would be most important.
Also, I found the article. If those numbers are somewhat correct, maybe add an adjustment for brain mass to it? But just from rough guesses at the affect that would have, I see why going for medium-size animals makes sense.
I believe it is ethically better to be a vegetarian, or even better to be a vegan. Yet I am not a vegetarian, and to be honest, it’s not even because I would love eating meat to much (veganism would be more difficult, because I love cheese), but merely because it would be inconvenient.
My personal examples of hypocrisy:
I believe it is ethically better to be a vegetarian, or even better to be a vegan. Yet I am not a vegetarian, and to be honest, it’s not even because I would love eating meat to much (veganism would be more difficult, because I love cheese), but merely because it would be inconvenient. If I had a vegan restaurant near my job, and enough practice with cooking different vegetarian meals, I probably wouldn’t mind being vegetarian; it wouldn’t even seem like having sacrificed anything.
(Okay, I took some steps to fix this, but this is not meant to be a thread about making excuses, it’s about admitting hypocrisy.)
I believe I should spend less time on internet, because my spending too much time online is probably the worst obstacle at reaching many of my goals. Guess what I am doing right now?
I’ve been in that spot for a long time and my excuse always was that vegetarianism would be too inconvenient.
Around the end of last year it finally clicked. The inconvenience excuse is plainly wrong in many cases AND being a vegetarian in just these cases is still a good thing!
I resolved to eat vegetarian whenever it is not inconvenient. This turned out to be almost always. Especially easy are restaurants and ordered food. When in a supermarket I never buy meat which automatically sets me up for lots of vegetarian meals.
I’m currently eating vegetarian on ~95% of my meals. As a bonus I don’t have a bad conscience in the few cases where I eat meat.
Actually, I just did something similar.
I already keep daily logs about what I did during the day (e.g. if I had an exercise), so I added not eating meat to the list of recorded variables. This step was trivial. But now, whenever I am choosing a meal, I remember that I will have to put it on the record. And somehow this trivial inconvenience makes me choose the vegetarian meal more reliably than previously.
I started recording this two weeks ago. First week there was no difference, but the second week I ate vegetarian food for the whole week. I only broke the chain today, because we already had some pre-made soup containing meat at home.
Anecdote: I was in your position at the start of 2013. I tried pescatarianism for a while and found it to be much easier than I expected; I transitioned to full vegatarianism a bit later and have found it surprisingly easy to maintain since. And I’m usually a pretty impulsive person, especially around food!
Surprise upside: Reduced decision fatigue, especially at restaurants.
Disclaimer: Typical mind fallacy, also I live in a very urban area with a higher-than-average density of vegetarians and vegetarian-options.
I’m hesitant at the idea of pescetarianism. If larger animals are more sentient, then fish don’t matter much, and that’s a good idea. But some people argue otherwise. If there’s a significant chance that fish are as sentient as anything else, eating only fish is a terrible idea.
While I was adjusting to vegetarianism, I tried to eat mid-sized animals, so it wouldn’t be terrible either way.
Perhaps beef-only could be an alternative to fish-only as a stepping stone? I think I remember beef getting better ratings than most other things in some articles comparing utility of eating animals with the assumption that all creatures suffer equally. (Pigs are smarter than cows, I think, but I’m not sure if you were considering them mid-size or large.)
I figure it would be more brain size than intelligence. I would expect pain would increase by having more neurons to feel it, not having a deeper understanding of what it is.
Beef-only has the opposite problem. If not all creatures suffer equally, avoiding cows would be most important.
Ok, this makes sense.
Also, I found the article. If those numbers are somewhat correct, maybe add an adjustment for brain mass to it? But just from rough guesses at the affect that would have, I see why going for medium-size animals makes sense.
I’m a vegetarian and feel hypocritical because my principles imply that I should be a vegan.
Same here. :(