As a result, I felt a lot of hatred for people who were knowingly complicit in causing extreme animal suffering, which was basically everyone I knew. At the time I lived in a catered college university, where every day I’d see people around me eating animal products; I felt deeply alienated and angry and hateful.
This was good in some ways. I think it’s plausibly healthy to feel a lot of hatred for society. I think that this caused me to care even less about what people thought of me, which made it easier for me to do various weird things like dropping out of university (temporarily) and moving to America.
I told a lot of people to their faces that I thought they were contemptible. I don’t feel like I’m in the wrong for saying this, but this probably didn’t lead to me making many more friends than I otherwise would have. And on one occasion I was very cruel to someone who didn’t deserve it; I felt more bad about this than about basically anything else I’d done in my life.
I don’t know whether I’d recommend this to other people. Probably some people should feel more alienated and others should feel less alienated.
I watched those videos you linked. I don’t judge you for feeling that way.
Did you convert anyone to veganism? If people did get converted, maybe there were even more effective ways to do so. Or maybe anger was the most effective way; I don’t know. But if not, your own subjective experience was worse (by feeling contempt), other people felt worse, and fewer animals were helped. Anger might be justified but, assuming there was some better way to convert people, you’d be unintentionally prioritizing emotions ahead of helping the animals.
Another thing to keep in mind: When we train particular physical actions, we get better at repeating that action. Athletes sometimes repeat complex, trained actions before they have any time to consciously decide to act. I assume the same thing happens with our emotions: If we feel a particular way repeatedly, we’re more likely to feel that way in future, maybe even when it’s not warranted.
We can be motivated to do something good for the world in lots of different ways. Helping people by solving problems gives my life meaning and I enjoy doing it. No negative emotions needed.
When I was 18 I watched a lot of videos of animal suffering, eg linked from Brian Tomasik’s list of distressing videos of suffering (extremely obvious content warning: extreme suffering). I am not sure whether I’d recommend this to others.
As a result, I felt a lot of hatred for people who were knowingly complicit in causing extreme animal suffering, which was basically everyone I knew. At the time I lived in a catered college university, where every day I’d see people around me eating animal products; I felt deeply alienated and angry and hateful.
This was good in some ways. I think it’s plausibly healthy to feel a lot of hatred for society. I think that this caused me to care even less about what people thought of me, which made it easier for me to do various weird things like dropping out of university (temporarily) and moving to America.
I told a lot of people to their faces that I thought they were contemptible. I don’t feel like I’m in the wrong for saying this, but this probably didn’t lead to me making many more friends than I otherwise would have. And on one occasion I was very cruel to someone who didn’t deserve it; I felt more bad about this than about basically anything else I’d done in my life.
I don’t know whether I’d recommend this to other people. Probably some people should feel more alienated and others should feel less alienated.
I watched those videos you linked. I don’t judge you for feeling that way.
Did you convert anyone to veganism? If people did get converted, maybe there were even more effective ways to do so. Or maybe anger was the most effective way; I don’t know. But if not, your own subjective experience was worse (by feeling contempt), other people felt worse, and fewer animals were helped. Anger might be justified but, assuming there was some better way to convert people, you’d be unintentionally prioritizing emotions ahead of helping the animals.
Another thing to keep in mind: When we train particular physical actions, we get better at repeating that action. Athletes sometimes repeat complex, trained actions before they have any time to consciously decide to act. I assume the same thing happens with our emotions: If we feel a particular way repeatedly, we’re more likely to feel that way in future, maybe even when it’s not warranted.
We can be motivated to do something good for the world in lots of different ways. Helping people by solving problems gives my life meaning and I enjoy doing it. No negative emotions needed.