I left religion, and had to explore ethics/morality beyond “whatever the bible says is right”. I went in a pretty utilitarian direction, and then arguing with my dad about how you can have morality without god, he said “but wouldn’t that include animals too?” And I initially said yes, any reasonable moral framework should be able to tell you that e.g. kicking dogs is wrong, but thinking about it more got me to veganism.
it’s definitely not reason alone, I really don’t like suffering/pain, so I’m probably more emotionally against it in general (i.e. even when it’s not me experiencing it) than a lot of people?
I will say too that I don’t dislike all animals, I like hanging out with some cats and dogs
I think it was more having the arguments put forth to me by people I thought of as more rational (my sister tends towards the dramatic in general*, I think that made it easier to avoid her arguments). But yeah having numbers and data definitely helped, and adding in the climate change POV rather than solely focussing on the more confronting animal welfare aspects. Its like, that got me over the cognitive dissonce and then once on the other side all the animal welfare arguments could suddenly sink in.
*not to be too harsh to my sister, we were also just teenagers and sisters are annoying haha, but once we were older, for actually implementing the diet in my life, she was very very helpful :)
i find this very interesting. so would you say you come by the idea of avoiding animal products mainly by reason alone?
I left religion, and had to explore ethics/morality beyond “whatever the bible says is right”. I went in a pretty utilitarian direction, and then arguing with my dad about how you can have morality without god, he said “but wouldn’t that include animals too?” And I initially said yes, any reasonable moral framework should be able to tell you that e.g. kicking dogs is wrong, but thinking about it more got me to veganism.
it’s definitely not reason alone, I really don’t like suffering/pain, so I’m probably more emotionally against it in general (i.e. even when it’s not me experiencing it) than a lot of people?
I will say too that I don’t dislike all animals, I like hanging out with some cats and dogs
I think it was more having the arguments put forth to me by people I thought of as more rational (my sister tends towards the dramatic in general*, I think that made it easier to avoid her arguments). But yeah having numbers and data definitely helped, and adding in the climate change POV rather than solely focussing on the more confronting animal welfare aspects. Its like, that got me over the cognitive dissonce and then once on the other side all the animal welfare arguments could suddenly sink in.
*not to be too harsh to my sister, we were also just teenagers and sisters are annoying haha, but once we were older, for actually implementing the diet in my life, she was very very helpful :)