Don't know how many here have read "The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability" or similar literature, but I wonder how many vegetarians actually don't conform to the stereotype of animal rights activism...
Or, let me explain:
I believe that humans Can eat meat and it's therefore a free choice. I believe that to eat meat, to hunt animals for meat, is not only OK, but actually sometimes a necessity and adds to the bond and communication between mankind and nature. I do Not support the modern meat-business where animals are treating appallingly, but someone who hunts their own meat, and only kill enough to feed themselves are Not monsters in my book.

There seems to be this awful trend in contemporary urban life where people, mainly young people, like to fight for animal rights, fight for preservation of nature, for organic food, etc, yet Still continue to live in the big cities and support the industrial machinery which destroys the same earth they claim to love. A lot of these people Never go hiking or camping in the woods, never ever set foot somewhere green except for Parks, and still seem to think that they are "connected" with nature. For me, "true" connection with nature involves living in pact with it, living off it, going into a communication with it, Not merely living in the big city and not eating meat. One prime example of a culture truly in contact with nature is the Native Americans. How many native americans were vegetarian I wonder...
Regarding these same aforementioned lifestyle-vegans, how many of them would refuse to kill a lion or tiger, only to be eaten by the same animal? Are these vegetarians assuming that animals somehow practice the same non-violent-Gandhi-philosophy themselves? And is this just another example of anthropomorphising?

Is the non-religious vegetarian movement hypocritical? Is it a product of the abundance in the west? Compared to people in underdeveloped countries who do not have the possibility to be vegetarians, we're pretty spoiled...

To conclude, I should say that for all this I am personally a, new, vegetarian, mainly for religious and health reasons, who consider this a personal choice.

All in all, these are Just questions that I have been playing with, they are not neccessarily my views, I just wanted to throw out some hypotheticals and see where it goes...

Love and peace to you, and carrot stew, too!

well i would say that veg*nism is not just a personal choice but an ethically superior choice. comparing some forms of hunting wild game to factory farm meat one could also see hunting as an ethically superior choice but it's not like those are the only two choices either. fishing? eating bivalves?

i've thought about going hunting but it's not something i grew up doing so just going out of the spur of the moment doesn't happen.

There are 7 billion people on this planet. 7 Billion. There is no way that 7 billion people can 'hunt' 'just enough to live off of' that is a complete fantasy, and every animal on the planet would be dead in a matter of years, if not months. A vegan who drives a hummer throwing Styrofoam boxes out the window, is still better for the environment than a meat eater. Also, I feel you have a couple things confused. 'Animal rights' and 'Environmentalist' are not always the same thing, actually often times they're not. I may want every animal currently alive to live a long and healthy life, even if it destroys the planet. Like wise, If killing every animal (namely humans) helped the planet, that would be more environmental. I'm not quite sure where you're getting that they are the same thing. Also, a lot of people's circumstance stops them from living the life they want, I'm fortunate enough to live 95% off the grid, in the most amazing town on the earth.

And... why wouldn't it be a personal choice? You mention 'who consider this a personal choice'. Well, duh.

An "awful trend" to "fight for animal rights"--in contemporay urban life?
Urban life involves destroying animal habitats-completely, forever. It's created in complete disregard for anything natural. Cities, and suburbs are lined with stores that buy their meat from factory slaughterhouses that care for nothing but profit, and have nothing natural in mind. Even the animals people care about, and choose to live with are treated as commodities-often selectively bred, bought, and disposed of if no longer practical.
People have no say where they're brought up. You seem to feel that it would be more significant for people to leave the cities and live naturally, but give no basis on how that would be possible, or how it would change the reality of what has already been done. Fighting to change the way animals are viewed is the only real solution to the life most modern cultures have created for it's people.
Hunting, wool shearing, fishing, using animals as transportation, have had their practical and symbiotic reasons at one time. They don't have any rational basis in modern society.
Lierre Keith seems to use her rationale of natural animal farming as better for the environment than veganism (or even vegetarianism) but reality for it is a far greater fantasy than for people to just stop the creation of animal products. If she were actually sincere in her beliefs, she would advocate veganism, as that would be closer way for her humane and sustainable meat to exist at all.

And what's this about not being willing to kill an animal if your life depended on it? Who cares about that scenario! Why would animals, who don't selectively change the nature they live with, be held to the standards of humans?
The idea that vegetarianism is a product of abundance doesn't make sense. I say to create animals so mutated by forcible breeding they can't live on their own, then force them into conditions where nothing of their instinct is allowed, even night and day and feed times are distorted, body parts are cut off, they get injected with antibiotics and vaccines and hormones, then transported to the slaughterhouse JUST so this society of affluence, spoiled people can have the meat they say is natural to their diet.
When we can live where transport is at hand, grains are milled, veggies grown and picked and packaged, and work is likely so sedentary we have to create time just to excerise our sorry a**es, I see veg*nism as the only natural diet to sustain us, and our planet.

You also have to make the distinction between animal rights and animal welfare. Animal rights activism is pretty much veganism because it means that you don't find the use of animals ethical under any circumstances.

This has been discussed before:
https://www.veggieboards.com/newvb/sh...egetarian-Myth
https://www.veggieboards.com/newvb/sh...egetarian-Myth
https://www.veggieboards.com/newvb/sh...Sustainability
https://www.veggieboards.com/newvb/sh...rian-Myth-quot
https://www.veggieboards.com/newvb/sh...rian-Myth-book...


So are you saying that hunting and eating hunted animals is a good thing? Please clarify.


I find this type of discussion to be pretty disingenuous. I think you should clarify which views are your own and which are not.

Frankly, I'm confused by your whole post, anrbjotk. Are you trying to say you're pro-hunting and meat-eating? Are you vegetarian for your health or for ethical reasons?

I haven't read Lierre Keith's novel, but I've done a fair bit of research on it in terms of reading reviews (both good and bad).

From what I've gathered, it's a very poorly researched book, filled with misrepresentations of the veg*n community (or at least, part of the veg*n community) and brings forth a conclusion to which Lierre presents no logical solution to the problem.

However, as someone who has tinkled with these questions you bring up, I'll answer them to the best of my ability.

The "awful trend" you refer to is somewhat unfair, as many of us haven't chosen this lifestyle. Yes, seeing us return to pre-agriculture hunter-gatherer societies with no institutions of any kind would be quite nice, and would certainly prevent any environmental or xenocidal or humanitarian problems from occurring. However, that's just not feasible.

With 7 BILLION people, and many more well on the way, returning to any sort of "hunting" at all, even on a relatively small scale (like, say, 10%), would be, literally, the epitome of unsustainability (you'll find I make up words a lot).

As such, someone who's environ-mental (get it, hehe, I made a joke!) can logically come to the conclusion that human civilization (at least for the time being) is here to stay, and the only way to stick to our values of equality and justice is to incorporate them into modern society as best we can. I certainly don't think it's unfeasible for there to be a truly sustainable (at least, in terms of the environment) society, so it's somewhat unfair to criticize those of us who do live in modern society to not return to nature, and still care about the environment. Largely because, the vast majority of us would likely DIE if we chose to embrace what we currently recognize as "true" environmentalism, and I'm not a big fan of dying.

Also, these criticisms you bring up always fail to address one thing, and that's self defense. If I was in the presence of a lion, and it was being aggressive (or at least, enough to warrant danger in my mind) I would certainly kill it (or at least, try to). Largely because, again, I love myself, enough to not want to die. Better the lion than me, and I wouldn't expect anyone, even the lion, to have any less selfish views.

HOWEVER, the truly compassionate thing would be to avoid the lion (and thus, unnecessary confrontation) in the first place, so he/she can continue living peacefully (or at least, relatively), while I can too. And hey, that's already what I do.

The lions and tigers and bears, oh my, example is BS anyway. Very rarely do Westerners ever eat lions or tigers, most animal rights/welfare activists are focused on the animals that we actually do torture, mutilate and eat in our countries. Rarely are you going to have to fight for your life with a chicken or a cow.

Even aside from that, stumbling across a lion in the forest and taking it out with your bow right before it sinks its teeth into you is a vastly different playing field than the millions of chickens who never get that shot at life. To quote a bumper sticker, "both sides should know they're in the game."

I'm not really feeling the love with your description of animal rights as an "awful trend".


Animal rights is not about connecting to nature per say, it's about connecting directly to animals through empathising with their thoughts and feelings. You can do that while living on a farm in Iowa, or you can do it just as well in an apartment block in a big city concrete jungle.

One could be a human rights advocate and still defend themselves against another person who's trying to kill them. What's the difference?

@ thread.

I kinda wish the OP would respond back. . .

Sorry, been very busy, so haven't had time to keep up, will reply quickly now, and more in depth tomorrow morning.

Do you really mean that you would Not kill an animal even if not doing so meant the destruction of the earth? Isn't this exactly the kind of paradoxical thoughts that I poked fun at in my first post? You would allow a ... mouse to live even if it meant that every human being would die? So you ARE putting animals before humans? Why? I put them equal to humans, they have the same rights, more or less.

When I said that it is better to hunt your own meat, I was proposing that as an alternative to the industrial society (which is destroying the planet AND the animals), or as an alternative to the large meat industry.

The point of my thread was: I am a vegetarian. I am so due to religious and health reasons. I do not eat meat because it is unhealthy, disgusting, and unnecessary. However: I still believe that mankind can eat meat and should eat meat. In the great scheme of things, within the laws of nature, man is meant to eat meat. The idea of man as a vegetarian and anti-meat is a notion created by hipsters and animal-rights activists. Or... god, I'll explain better tomorrow...
What I mean is that vegetarianism has been around for thousands of years, yet it is only recently that veggies go around with this attitude like they somehow are solving the problems of the world, and that not eating meat MUST MEAN that you are against any productive use of animal meat...
Am I making ANY sense?

I haven't read the book and don't know what stereotypes you're talking about. But I agree that hunting is better than factory farming. I don't agree that it's necessary for communicating with nature.


Are you suggesting that animal rights supporters don't eat meat, because they think not doing so will help them connect with nature? If so, that is false for the most part.

Or are you just arguing that people should connect with nature? If so, what does this have to do with animal rights supporters or meat eating? That would apply to everyone living in urban areas.


Probably none. Just as they would probably not refuse to kill a human in self defense.


There is no non-violent-Gandhi-philosophy inherent in vegetarianism.

Are we assuming animals are all pacifists? No, that would be absurd. But what is your point?


No.


No.


It is made easier by the abundance in the west, although I'm sure it exists outside the west. There are anti-animal cruelty laws in a wide variety of countries.


Indeed. And compared to the Donner Party who had to resort to cannibalism, people in underdeveloped countries are pretty spoiled.


Some of the questions are a little confusing, but doing my best to answer.




Humans are not meant to do anything. According to some religious views that may be true, but nature (viewed from a purely scientific non-religious perspective) has no intention. For humans to be meant to eat meat implies we were designed by a higher intelligence who intended for us to eat it.

The fact is, the human body is versatile enough that we can choose to eat or not eat meat.


To cut you off mid sentence, it is only recently that we have modern factory farming. Is a reactionary trend in response surprising?


Do they? I would need evidence to be convinced of this. I've know many veggies and I don't agree that they have this attitude.


This assumption I have seen both from veggies and from omnivores. One example: I mentioned to an omnivore that I did not eat meat, because he was asking me about burgers. He said "Okay. Do you ever wear leather belts or shoes?" He as much as admitted that he was going to call me a hypocrite if I said yes. Sadly many veggies would agree with him. I don't wear leather, but this I find this "hypocrisy" nonsense tiresome. Vegetarianism is a diet, not a manifesto.

No.

I put animals far FAR before humans. And I never said It was an environmentalist, a health, or an animal activist veggie. I'm actually all three, and I truly believe people are the biggest destructive force on the planet, at once killing it as well as all the living beings on it. But that's a conversation for a different topic. Why are environmentalists and animal rights people so combined in your head? They are two different groups, that may or may not intersect.

Hunting is not an alternative to industrial farming, because there aren't enough wild animals for human consumption because we breed like there is no tomorrow. You seemed to have ignored that point.

Actually, Adam and Eve were vegetarians. Also, vegetarianism existed long before 'hipsters'.

It wasn't until recently, IE: the factory farming movement, that brought it around so veg*ns really are doing far more for the environment than any other lifestyle choice. It's also very recent that going veg*n, if done properly/healthily, can solve all the lifestyle health problems. Many people today, as hundreds of years ago, were/are veg*n because they feel it is wrong to kill animals. It's not just recently that veg*ns have felt morally superior.

Not really, at least to me you're not making sense.

I can't really understand the logic behind someone who thinks it's right that an animal should die for humans... when you claim to put them on equal footing, but what-evs.

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?… It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beautyand grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.
—Plutarch

As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love.
—Pythagoras

Succinct and on the ball.

I eat a vegetarian diet and not an activist. It's a dietary preference to me. I'm pretty lucky I have the culinary ability to be able to support my diet (relatively) healthily. It doesn't affect my self-definition in any way - just a choice.


Who are these people you cite?

No thank you i will stay out of the wild animals habitat and keep to myself, which will keep harm from coming to them or me, because they do not have a chance to attack me if i'm not sleeping in their house. I don't need to "connect to nature" to be a vegetarian, and as i said i don't think of it as connecting, i think of it as putting yourself in an animals home and taking a risk for them to hurt or kill you. Religion has absolutely nothing to do with veg*nism, environmentalism, or animal rights, unless it is for your personally. And now we are spoiled because we can choose to eat a better way? I don't consider being able to survive being spoiled, i consider there being people starving in the world a travesty.All of us on here chose the diet that uses the least resources, and that if everyone else chose, we could feed those poor starving people, so that statement along with the religious one was very irrelevant.

I don't think it said it was necessary; I was making the argument that people who hunt are in more contact than urban-dwelling hipsters who go in marches against the fur industry but have never set foot outside Brooklyn (say)


I meant that animal rights supporters think that by not eating meat they are somehow putting a spanner in the works of the meat industry, when Meat Inc. couldn't care less what some neo-hippie eats or not, vegetarians are a drop in the ocean for the meat machinery. What I worry about is the sense of self-satisfaction I have seen in some veggies, as if Not doing something is somehow stopping something (which is why I mentioned Gandhi)


If we follow the stereotype (and yes it is, but they exist, in large numbers) of urban-dwelling animal rights supporters who never leave the big city, then it seems strange that they somehow would support rights for animals they know nothing about (rendering the act of saving them mere posturing. For, in contrast with "starving babies in africa", wild animals can be seen and connected with if one bothers to take a greyhound)




Unless you follow my above-mentioned example of "doing nothing" somehow being "doing something"


I'm just referring to the scientific data of different species digestive tracts.


There I agree!


Yes and No. I think it's more complicated than that. Meat only last so long, leather last for decades and more. Therefore one can wear leather that has already been made as it no point destroying it, where as we could stop meat-production today and meat on peoples tables from them would be gone within a few years. But that is just my view. Also there is No point in calling other people hypocrites, if they are not eating meat that is good for them! It doesn't have to be a manifesto, it can, but mustn't be, however if you make it into a manifesto be prepared to me mocked. Like when I, as a fourteen year old, decided to not support Coke by not drinking it, but it took me a year to realize the Litpton tea I was drinking was made by Coke... So now I no longer make manifestos, I just don't eat meat and avoid Coke...

But, look, I'm sorry I have been rude or aggressive. These were just some ideas I had, and they were Never intended to portray anyone here, the reason I posted it was that I thought no one here fitted that stereotype, and I was therefore free to mock them. I am very sorry, and will refrain from posting here from now on (almost no one answered by "new to vegetarianism"-thread anyway)

So what?


There is a story on here somewhere about a boy throwing starfish into the ocean, an old man walks up to him and asks what he's doing. The boy replies "If the sun comes up and they're still on the beach, they'll die." The old man replies, "There are thousands of starfish, you're not doing any good" As the boy tosses another in the ocean, he says "It matters to this one."


Again, so what? What does it matter if a good deal of vegetarians live in cities? I don't understand why that matters at all. You can know something is wrong, and not be anywhere near it. Also, why do you assume 'they know nothing about' cows or pigs or chickens? You make wild generalizations about the very people on this board, where i can't help but wonder why you're even here in the first place. I get you're a healthy/spagetti G-d vegetarian, but why make sweeping generalizations about those of us that aren't?

Except you can call people with perfectly good veg*n intentions hipocrites because they aren't "one with nature"?


That's your choice, other people feel more strongly about their decisions, perhaps because other peoples decisions come from a moral base.


You shouldn't feel free to mock anyone... because its rude.

This person is obviously anti veg*n and pro meat, seems to me they don't really fit the requirements to be here, whether they eat meat or not.

Well, if pro-meat means that I respect peoples choice to eat meat, then yes I guess you can call me that... I choose myself not to eat meat, but that is a personal choice. I am Not anti-vegan or anti-vegetarian at all... with me being one an' all...

Ya i wouldn't call you a veg*n i would say you're an omnivore that doesn't eat meat, definition-wise fine you are but i personally wouldn't consider you that when you have the same mindset as meat eaters do.

Alright, but I'm not seeing the relevance. I've known vegans who love nature and hiking, and others who hate it. These two issues are not really related.


The less demand, the less supply. The less supply, the less animals who have to go through that and the less money goes into the meat industry. So, yes, they care what we eat.

The one person can't make a difference argument is silly. It's like saying I'm having an insignificant impact on the murder rate by not murdering so I might as well kill some people.

Veg*nism has nothing to do with being a hipster or hippie, BTW.


I don't get how it's strange and I don't get why you think people who live in a city no nothing about animals. Also, are you saying we shouldn't care about starving babies in Africa?


It may not be actively doing something, but it's avoiding doing harm and avoiding contributing to the problem.


No hard feelings. So long.

It doesn't strike you as more odd for these urban dwellers to imprison wild animals in zoos and circuses?
You can't understand the connectivity of human rights/animal rights? That I don't need to be familiar with a animal, or human of different culture, to realize life with sentience deserves to live as it was born to live?

BTW- you don't exhibit any Buddist teaching.

I figured he was Hindu.