Interesting thread. Looks like people are still responding to it from time to time, so here are my long-winded (sorry, can’t help it :P) answers.
I do not eat any animal products other than honey (which I don’t use much, but don’t morally object to in the same way that I do other animal products). I also don’t usually use animal-based materials like wool or leather, with some minor exceptions (see my answer to #2). On that basis, some would call me a vegan and others would not. I do call myself a vegan.
There are probably some plant foods that I should give up (or only buy domestically/locally), in order to avoid contributing to anything that harms the environment or workers, but I don’t know enough about this issue to be able to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable plant foods.
I want to avoid causing suffering in entities that can reasonably be said to suffer. I feel pretty confident about mammals and birds; not quite as much about fish, but enough that I don’t want to take the chance.
Having been raised vegetarian, all of my justifications (for vegetarianism at least, not veganism) necessarily came after the fact; my first attempt, as a small child, was deciding to believe that all animals were exactly like humans (in intelligence, emotional depth, social organization, etc.) but different in physical form and without speech, and were therefore deserving of all the same rights and protections as humans. I’d like to think I’ve come a long way since then — I’m fairly convinced of my current rationale based on the idea that different kinds and sizes of animal brains have the capacity for varying degrees of suffering and other emotional experience — but I have worried at times that I’m just getting better at coming up with less-stupid-sounding rationalizations for an ultimately arational belief.
But I’ve done my best to honestly probe at the underlying values that make me care about this, plus the factual reasoning about degrees of capacity for suffering, and I think it holds up about as well as it should. (I felt a little bit validated when I read about Douglas Hofstadter’s transition to veganism for very similar reasons.) In any case, I would bet my life that a mushroom or a soybean or a carrot does not experience anything we would call suffering — I’d be nearly as confident that they don’t have anything we’d call experience in the first place — but I’d be significantly less confident making those assertions about fish. I’ll do my best to be open to the possibility of evidence that should make me change my mind.
That also leads me to why I don’t avoid honey or silk, and why I don’t mind swatting flies and ants. I wouldn’t say I’m life-bettingly confident that insects do not suffer in any way worth empathizing with, but in that case, I easily find it unlikely enough that I don’t feel bad about exploiting or killing them.
I will not make an exception if I’m served any of those foods as a guest, so I try to let the host know in advance.
It is arguable, I suppose, that if I’m already being served something with meat, eggs, or dairy in it, rejecting it will not prevent any suffering, as it’ll either be eaten by someone else or thrown away. My rationale there is that I don’t want to give myself advance permission to break my rules, because then that exception becomes part of the rules; I don’t want to get used to making exceptions like that. And I don’t want people to think I’m the sort of person who is willing to accept those foods for free or when I have already paid, because then they may take that into account when deciding what to serve me in the future, possibly leading to preventable demand on my behalf for those foods.
I must admit that on the rare occasion that it comes up, if I’m really, really hungry, and I’m at a restaurant or some other public place serving food, and the only things available are likely to have eggs or dairy, I’ll choose not to ask. I usually regret it afterwards, but I would probably regret starving myself even more. However, when I already know for sure that something has eggs or dairy (or especially meat) in it, I haven’t been able to (nor have I desired to) put that knowledge out of my mind, no matter how hungry I am. (And if I’m not starving or if there are other options, I’ll always ask before ordering or eating something.)
If I were stranded with absolutely no other way to survive, I would eat animals, assuming I could figure out how to kill and cook them before starving to death. I would try my best to minimize any suffering I might cause them, but ultimately I care more about humans than about animals.
If I ever have children, I expect I will impart my values to them as much as any parent would, but I would not resort to coercion. I would not pay for or cook with non-vegan foods for them, but I would let them try it elsewhere if they chose to. (I’m hoping that meat from animal sources is obsolete by then anyway. Research into growing meat in petri dishes appears to be going well.)
Everyone in my immediate family is vegan. (Including my cat! Don’t worry, it’s a specially formulated expensive vegan cat food, which we’ve been feeding her for about 7 years, and she’s very happy and healthy (not to mention cuter than babies). You’re still free to laugh at me for bothering with that, though.) I have some vegetarians and vegans in my extended family, and in my circle of friends, but to those who aren’t, I don’t try to evangelize anymore. It’s not that I don’t care about it — I do, I really would prefer if everyone were vegan when possible — I’ve just found that it’s too easy to come off as annoying and presumptuous, and there’s the usual difficulty with persuading people to change their values.
I take a few vitamin supplements. I eat a lot of soy and legumes and gluten as sources of protein and deliciousness; thankfully I don’t have any allergies to those. (Except for lentils. I was pissed when I found out I was allergic to them. Lentils rock.)
I don’t hold fruitarianism, etc. in very high regard, because the only justifications for it (unless there are nutritional or environmental reasons I haven’t heard about) seem to be new-age concepts or other nonsense. That goes doubly so for the people who anthropomorphize trees to the point where they’ll only eat fruit that has naturally fallen off. (Apparently some people actually do that, wtf.) I feel the same way about vegans who have similar rationales, actually. I’m certainly glad when I hear that someone is a vegan, but if they go on to say that it’s because all animals have metaphysical souls, bestowing upon them the same absolute and universal rights that we humans have, or if they say it’s because Adam and Eve and all the animals in the Garden of Eden were vegetarians before the Fall, then I have to judge their rationality negatively, even if I approve of their actions. I’m a little bit more sympathetic to raw-foodists, though the appeal to nature fallacy still seems to rank highly among the usual justifications for it. Meanwhilst, there are also the “freegans”, who, if I understand correctly, only eat non-vegan food when they feel there is no chance of it contributing economically to the industries in question. I guess I have no moral objections to that, if they’re really careful not to indirectly create any demand, but that can lead to an odd primitivistic lifestyle that can be immoral in its own ways. I once knew a freegan who subsisted mainly on theft and dumpster-diving. I didn’t doubt her good intentions, but I found the whole thing to be too weird for me to respect.
In the other direction: I have to admit that, yes, I judge meat-eating to be less moral than vegetarianism. That seems to cause a bit of indignation when I mention it (so I don’t usually mention it), but it doesn’t seem like it should be surprising. I’m not saying that meat-eaters are Innately Evil, but there’s nothing in my own values that says that it’s wrong for me to do it but okay for others. That would be a weird value system. Still, since meat-eating is still the unquestioned norm in most of the world, I don’t judge individuals on that basis, and I’m usually quiet about it.
I was raised vegetarian (both of my parents had been for many years), and I went vegan some time around 2002 or 2003, I believe. A few years later I decided I didn’t care about avoiding honey, which made almost no difference in practice.
I miss egg dishes sometimes. I miss not having to worry about whether things have eggs or dairy in them before ordering. I miss not knowing that a lot of Thai dishes are made with fish sauce that they don’t mention on the menu.
I was once accidentally served bacon at a restaurant. I liked the taste (had a few bites before I noticed it didn’t taste like tempeh), but didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
Growing up vegetarian was very easy for me, because I happened to be born with a vegetarian cookbook author for a mother. So I never felt deprived or forced or jealous; good food was always in abundant supply. (My parents actually used the same strategy that I described in my response to #4, but I never had any desire to try meat anyway. There’s probably an element of reverse psychology in there.) It’s been a little harder now that I’m living on my own — I never really learned to cook, and I don’t have enough money to eat out as often as I’d like — but I’ve not been tempted to give up any aspect of my veganism. I have, however, stopped bothering with organic ingredients (which my parents used, so I was used to them when I lived at home). I’m not convinced that their alleged benefits have enough evidence to justify the added cost.
Interesting thread. Looks like people are still responding to it from time to time, so here are my long-winded (sorry, can’t help it :P) answers.
I do not eat any animal products other than honey (which I don’t use much, but don’t morally object to in the same way that I do other animal products). I also don’t usually use animal-based materials like wool or leather, with some minor exceptions (see my answer to #2). On that basis, some would call me a vegan and others would not. I do call myself a vegan.
There are probably some plant foods that I should give up (or only buy domestically/locally), in order to avoid contributing to anything that harms the environment or workers, but I don’t know enough about this issue to be able to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable plant foods.
I want to avoid causing suffering in entities that can reasonably be said to suffer. I feel pretty confident about mammals and birds; not quite as much about fish, but enough that I don’t want to take the chance.
Having been raised vegetarian, all of my justifications (for vegetarianism at least, not veganism) necessarily came after the fact; my first attempt, as a small child, was deciding to believe that all animals were exactly like humans (in intelligence, emotional depth, social organization, etc.) but different in physical form and without speech, and were therefore deserving of all the same rights and protections as humans. I’d like to think I’ve come a long way since then — I’m fairly convinced of my current rationale based on the idea that different kinds and sizes of animal brains have the capacity for varying degrees of suffering and other emotional experience — but I have worried at times that I’m just getting better at coming up with less-stupid-sounding rationalizations for an ultimately arational belief.
But I’ve done my best to honestly probe at the underlying values that make me care about this, plus the factual reasoning about degrees of capacity for suffering, and I think it holds up about as well as it should. (I felt a little bit validated when I read about Douglas Hofstadter’s transition to veganism for very similar reasons.) In any case, I would bet my life that a mushroom or a soybean or a carrot does not experience anything we would call suffering — I’d be nearly as confident that they don’t have anything we’d call experience in the first place — but I’d be significantly less confident making those assertions about fish. I’ll do my best to be open to the possibility of evidence that should make me change my mind.
That also leads me to why I don’t avoid honey or silk, and why I don’t mind swatting flies and ants. I wouldn’t say I’m life-bettingly confident that insects do not suffer in any way worth empathizing with, but in that case, I easily find it unlikely enough that I don’t feel bad about exploiting or killing them.
I will not make an exception if I’m served any of those foods as a guest, so I try to let the host know in advance.
It is arguable, I suppose, that if I’m already being served something with meat, eggs, or dairy in it, rejecting it will not prevent any suffering, as it’ll either be eaten by someone else or thrown away. My rationale there is that I don’t want to give myself advance permission to break my rules, because then that exception becomes part of the rules; I don’t want to get used to making exceptions like that. And I don’t want people to think I’m the sort of person who is willing to accept those foods for free or when I have already paid, because then they may take that into account when deciding what to serve me in the future, possibly leading to preventable demand on my behalf for those foods.
I must admit that on the rare occasion that it comes up, if I’m really, really hungry, and I’m at a restaurant or some other public place serving food, and the only things available are likely to have eggs or dairy, I’ll choose not to ask. I usually regret it afterwards, but I would probably regret starving myself even more. However, when I already know for sure that something has eggs or dairy (or especially meat) in it, I haven’t been able to (nor have I desired to) put that knowledge out of my mind, no matter how hungry I am. (And if I’m not starving or if there are other options, I’ll always ask before ordering or eating something.)
If I were stranded with absolutely no other way to survive, I would eat animals, assuming I could figure out how to kill and cook them before starving to death. I would try my best to minimize any suffering I might cause them, but ultimately I care more about humans than about animals.
If I ever have children, I expect I will impart my values to them as much as any parent would, but I would not resort to coercion. I would not pay for or cook with non-vegan foods for them, but I would let them try it elsewhere if they chose to. (I’m hoping that meat from animal sources is obsolete by then anyway. Research into growing meat in petri dishes appears to be going well.)
Everyone in my immediate family is vegan. (Including my cat! Don’t worry, it’s a specially formulated expensive vegan cat food, which we’ve been feeding her for about 7 years, and she’s very happy and healthy (not to mention cuter than babies). You’re still free to laugh at me for bothering with that, though.) I have some vegetarians and vegans in my extended family, and in my circle of friends, but to those who aren’t, I don’t try to evangelize anymore. It’s not that I don’t care about it — I do, I really would prefer if everyone were vegan when possible — I’ve just found that it’s too easy to come off as annoying and presumptuous, and there’s the usual difficulty with persuading people to change their values.
I take a few vitamin supplements. I eat a lot of soy and legumes and gluten as sources of protein and deliciousness; thankfully I don’t have any allergies to those. (Except for lentils. I was pissed when I found out I was allergic to them. Lentils rock.)
I don’t hold fruitarianism, etc. in very high regard, because the only justifications for it (unless there are nutritional or environmental reasons I haven’t heard about) seem to be new-age concepts or other nonsense. That goes doubly so for the people who anthropomorphize trees to the point where they’ll only eat fruit that has naturally fallen off. (Apparently some people actually do that, wtf.) I feel the same way about vegans who have similar rationales, actually. I’m certainly glad when I hear that someone is a vegan, but if they go on to say that it’s because all animals have metaphysical souls, bestowing upon them the same absolute and universal rights that we humans have, or if they say it’s because Adam and Eve and all the animals in the Garden of Eden were vegetarians before the Fall, then I have to judge their rationality negatively, even if I approve of their actions. I’m a little bit more sympathetic to raw-foodists, though the appeal to nature fallacy still seems to rank highly among the usual justifications for it. Meanwhilst, there are also the “freegans”, who, if I understand correctly, only eat non-vegan food when they feel there is no chance of it contributing economically to the industries in question. I guess I have no moral objections to that, if they’re really careful not to indirectly create any demand, but that can lead to an odd primitivistic lifestyle that can be immoral in its own ways. I once knew a freegan who subsisted mainly on theft and dumpster-diving. I didn’t doubt her good intentions, but I found the whole thing to be too weird for me to respect.
In the other direction: I have to admit that, yes, I judge meat-eating to be less moral than vegetarianism. That seems to cause a bit of indignation when I mention it (so I don’t usually mention it), but it doesn’t seem like it should be surprising. I’m not saying that meat-eaters are Innately Evil, but there’s nothing in my own values that says that it’s wrong for me to do it but okay for others. That would be a weird value system. Still, since meat-eating is still the unquestioned norm in most of the world, I don’t judge individuals on that basis, and I’m usually quiet about it.
I was raised vegetarian (both of my parents had been for many years), and I went vegan some time around 2002 or 2003, I believe. A few years later I decided I didn’t care about avoiding honey, which made almost no difference in practice.
I miss egg dishes sometimes. I miss not having to worry about whether things have eggs or dairy in them before ordering. I miss not knowing that a lot of Thai dishes are made with fish sauce that they don’t mention on the menu.
I was once accidentally served bacon at a restaurant. I liked the taste (had a few bites before I noticed it didn’t taste like tempeh), but didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
Growing up vegetarian was very easy for me, because I happened to be born with a vegetarian cookbook author for a mother. So I never felt deprived or forced or jealous; good food was always in abundant supply. (My parents actually used the same strategy that I described in my response to #4, but I never had any desire to try meat anyway. There’s probably an element of reverse psychology in there.) It’s been a little harder now that I’m living on my own — I never really learned to cook, and I don’t have enough money to eat out as often as I’d like — but I’ve not been tempted to give up any aspect of my veganism. I have, however, stopped bothering with organic ingredients (which my parents used, so I was used to them when I lived at home). I’m not convinced that their alleged benefits have enough evidence to justify the added cost.