Thank you both. Yes, what Michael wrote here below is what I meant (I thought it was obvious but maybe it’s not):
”When people say they’re indifferent to creating happy people, they could just mean relative to not creating them at all, not relative to creating people who would be less happy. This is what I usually have in mind.”
tobiasleenaert
Karma: 284
Confused about “making people happy” vs. “making happy people”
i agree with the 80⁄20 idea, and i wonder we apparently 98% of our movement keeps stuck in black and white thinking. for instance in this case, we are apparently thinking that the question to what level of consumption the vegans are sliding back is irrelevant, but it’s not, of course. for one thing, moderate use still saves a lot of animals, for another, every reducer helps make full time veganism more easy, by increasing demand (and thus the supply), the social acceptability, the convenience with which to eat vegan etc… a society where 60% of people are 75% vegan is probably a lot better and closer to a vegan society than one where 10% of the people are full time vegan...
also, something jonathan saffran foer told me: you know the example of the guy that eats meat again because once he was at an airport and it was the only thing he could it? he fell back entirely. i think that has to do with the fact that we see veganism too much as an identity, and as something binary. when we fail, we might as well give up
i know the second point is perhaps in contradiction with the first, but maybe they both have some merit somewhere…
Thank you both.
I think my intuition is like Amber’s here. Obviously I care about any human that will be born as soon as they are born, but I cannot seem to make myself about how many humans there will be (unless that number has an impact on the ones that are around).