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Comment on [Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism?

zalgotext@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

I think people do construct identities around consumer behavior, and they feel rejected when someone doesn’t share those same consumptive habits which they take for granted.

But I think theres a problem with public discourse that encourages this kind of ingroup/outgroup good/bad acceptance/rejection, so much that it is implied in all discourse whether a vegan or not.

people can’t see the world for what it really is, we can only see it from behind the fences of our specific camp.

Very well put, and agreed on all points, especially the bit about how this sort of in-group/out-group behavior is not limited to food. Veganism/food opinions in general are particularly clear examples of it in action though.

I forget where I first heard this, so unfortunately I can’t give proper credit, but I once heard that we’d all get along better if people learned to say “that’s not for me” instead of “that’s disgusting”, and it’s really stuck with me. Like who cares if someone doesn’t like cheese on their pizza? Picking it off is hurting no one. It’s a food preference, it’s not that serious. Let people enjoy things the way they want to enjoy things. If it isn’t immoral or harmful, let people be. People doing things differently from you is not grounds for you to question or ridicule. Have some empathy, have some respect, have some semblance of open-mindedness, and let people live their lives, man

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Teppichbrand@feddit.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I get what you are saying and I agree with “thats not for me”. The difference to other personal preferences is that as a carnist, you are paying for literaly billions of our fellow earthlings being killed on an industrial scale. So many that it’s destroying our livelihood. So this is not a personal choice anymore, there are victims you do not notice, human and non-human. A lot of victims, 1.9 Million chickens killed in Germany every day.
Once you realise this and you have had the courage to really look beyond the word slaughter with your own eyes, see the inconceivable suffering, this becomes something I can not push out of my sight anymore. And then you realise it’s everywhere. So what to you do?

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- AchtungDrempels@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That’s a really hungry carnist.
  
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Juice@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Right, I agree, have empathy and respect, open mindedness. But without getting into it too deep, you know how do I empathize or respect others when often we don’t empathize or respect ourselves? It’s this involuntary and constant process of turning out and externalizing. Please don’t consider this a call out, just an illustration because I know you don’t mean it this way, but by the end of your thought process you are like out grouping some imagined person who is doing this thing, creating an in group between you and I, and others who still behave this way. And I can be as cognizant as I want about this, but I also commit to these groups, and I have recent examples of this toward ideological groups I encounter in my political organizing. People who I used to not have a problem with, I now am extremely suspect of, because this was done to me. Its like baked into our language, or the ways in which we derive meaning. And maybe to some extent its unavoidable, or at least will be until some severe cultural shift happens that changes our ontology and language.

But many people have noticed, from all walks of life, you will hear, “we have never been more divided.” And yeah sometimes you hear this from people who probably don’t have our best interests at heart. But this campism has only increased since, idk, Trump? COVID? The neoliberal turn of the late 70s early 80s? Who can say. But if that’s true, and this phenomenon has increased over time, then maybe it can decrease as well. I hope so. There’s a lot of changes that need to happen to society, and quickly, but without that respect and empathy you talk about, I worry about what might happen to people. This out grouping can quickly turn into dehumanization and worse if not checked. And I don’t know what to do there except at least try and model that behavior and try and discuss it when I can.

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- zalgotext@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  by the end of your thought process you are like out grouping some imagined person who is doing this thing, creating an in group between you and I, and others who still behave this way.
  
  Yeah, I’m definitely cognizant of that, but I don’t necessarily see it as a bad thing. For me it fits into the “don’t tolerate intolerance” principle. It seems paradoxical, but the way I’ve come to understand it is that sometimes the in-group/out-group divides are unavoidable, but as long as the in-group is tolerant of everything other than intolerance, they’re more “in the right” from a moral sense. If the in-group ends up getting all the people in the out-group to join the in-group, the only group left will ideally be tolerant.
  
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  - Juice@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah you’re right it’s okay to have differences and preferences, its the moralizing of them rather than accepting and trying to find commonalities across the divides.
    
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