A Moral Belle Moral
So I got this message from someone, complaining that my “moral stance” seemed untenable. This surprised me, because one thing I think I’ve never claimed is to be in any way moral.
I am guessing from the subject line that you mean that *you* are not a vegan and further guessing that your message means: "I am not a vegan; does the contradiction upset you?"
Given those assumptions, let's begin: if you are not a vegan, then you are one of two things: a vegetarian of the non-vegan variety or a troll.
If you are a VotN-VV, then you consume some products (one or more of the following, though not restricted to this list) that come from animals: dairy, egg, jell-o, whatever. If this is true, then you are a hypocrite for claiming a moral higher ground. It is far less cruel to slaughter a chicken for meat then it is to coop it in a 10" x 10" box for months at a time, collecting its eggs. Milk and jell-o, along with other non-meat animal products, can also be rather uncomfortable for the animal to, uh, donate.
If you are a troll, then go away.
You could be playing Devil's Advocate, which would be rather odd, seeing as how your original post was offtopic.
Let's discuss "upset."
It would be difficult for you to "upset" me. I don't take disagreement personally. The only upsetting factor is when people act as though they are one thing, but turn out to be another. That's wack.
“Vegan” usually implies, as you seem to hope, some sort of moral self-identity. I claim no moral high ground. Everything in the world exists to consume and be consumed by others. Without the protein boost from mass organized hunting that language delivered several 10Kyear ago, it’s doubtful humans would have progressed very far. Of course, the additional boost from the invention of *bags* to carry grains and whatnot collected during foraging provided a larger “boost”.
Anyway, I understand this lack of a moral dimension to my vegetarianism annoys a great many true believers, and those that like to imagine that people’s behaviour can or should be constained within predictable boxes.
Why I am vegetarian is not an easy answer and probably impossible to explain to you without you knowing me a great deal better. For instance, before I decided to become vegetarian (14 years now) I deliberately spent a year where I did not eat any meat that I had not hunted and killed and skinned and cooked myself. I think it’d be cool for anyone who consciously self-identifies as a carnivore to at least be willing to get down and get bloody personal with their meals.
When you oppose trolling, I see wilful blinkerism. It’s a reasonable defence against uncomfortable emotions produced by discourse, to isolate some ideas as “other” and therefore ruled out of consideration on an instinctual, gut physical level. And again, I’ve seen this from Usenet on — socially controlling trolling through public outcrys is uncomfortably reminiscent of a Scarlet Letter. All decent community software, including this one, has a BlockUser function. Why not use that rather than trying to shout down people with whom you disagree?
I think your belief that there is and should be a single way for people to act is pretty pessimistic about the range of human behaviours. To make an analogy, suppose I decided to give money to homeless people because I believed it was a good way for society to care for some of its members, and that this produced a social good. Then suppose someone, say a nun, decided to give money to homeless people because her holy book tells her a sky god will reward her in an afterlife for acts of charity. Now, both our behaviours are identical, yet we are very, very different people.
What does that tell you about vegans, veganism, vegetarians, and so forth? Nothing, except that imposing such moral strictness on yourself makes it easy to fall into the trap of stereotyping.
“So I contradict myself; I contain multitudes”