The problem with the carveouts that utilitarian vegans make for honey is that they’re largely falsifiable feel-good apologia. The claim that harvesting honey doesn’t harm bees is complete bollocks, really it’s in the same realm of the claim that milking a cow doesn’t harm the cow because she can always make more and just saying it isn’t doesn’t make it so. The hive does need to downsize and drones do have to die to accommodate the loss of surplus, workers do forage further and compete more with other insects for nectar, while honey harvesting rarely harvests at the low extraction levels claimed to be harmless and domesticated bee colonies crowd out native pollinators. If it were harmless the bees would never bother to make it, it takes a shitload of energy for them to produce it. It’s turn-brain-off dissonance territory in the same league as dairy farm propaganda but because vegan utilitarian thought leader Peter Singer said it’s OK they’re all willing to make the huge leap in logic to eat something that could just as easily have been maple syrup or agave nectar.
I’d respect the utilitarians a lot more if they just said they don’t care about bees and shellfish because they’re not fuzzy mammals, instead of performing these unimpressive acts of logical acrobatics.
Also to add another reason for veganism to your list, the more important one for me personally: The reflection on oneself. We are symbolic thinkers, we transpose ideas from one context to the next. eg Slaughterhouse workers exhibit the same elevated levels of domestic violence as cops. When we harm someone else, in another manner we also harm ourselves. If we can understand another entity on some level and we then hurt it, we do ourselves a psychic injury that isn’t just philosophical but has real profound effects on our thought processes, our outlook on the world, our behaviors toward other things. Maybe utilitarian vegans just don’t see any commonality between their bodies and the beehive, but I think the core failure of utilitarianism is it’s inability to respect this very simple but unfortunately intangible concept, in all contexts.
Utilitarian hedonist here. I stopped eating prawns because I heard about them pulling the eyes out to increase breeding rates. I decided to research it by watching a video of a prawn having its eyes removed.
It looked like it was in pain.
That’s enough for Me. I don’t believe in p-zombies, so if something looks like it’s in pain, I believe it. I don’t want the prawns to have their eyes pulled out because it looks like it hurts.
And the meme is actually a lie. I don’t have strong feelings about honey, I’m undecided. I actually posted this bait in part to start an argument so I could read what people have to say. And also because it’s funny and this is lemmyshitpost. Right now in this present moment, I don’t think I want honey in My life.
This thread is actually fantastic, I’ve never seen so much open discussion about veganism between vegans and non-vegans with so little malice so I’d say you hit pay dirt.
I like your utilitarian determination of pain more than most utilitarians, who require a complete nervous system and therefore eat shellfish. Your test has a higher standard than theirs, because shellfish still retract when poked nervous system or not.
Gay space communist here. I’m not vegan, not even vegetarian - I do however only eat vegetarian at home, and most of the time vegan, but I’ll eat non-vegetarian food when visiting carnivorous friends or even in restaurants, if the veggie options are unappealing.
Honey is something I stopped buying after hearing from vegans about the cruelty in its production - from what I recall, and I did also watch a video or two of the process, queen bees routinely have their legs pulled off to trigger a hive to be built, and while I don’t know if bees are conscious, I know I would never pull the legs off an insect, so I can no longer in good conscience put a pot of honey in my basket as I walk around a supermarket.
Similar logic should also apply to cheese and ice cream, the non-vegan items that I still buy a lot of, but I did try giving up these items for a couple of months, and man I’m sorry baby calves but I just love those things too much.
Good for you for trying, and at least reducing. For what it’s worth I think quitting {insert animal product} always seems inconceivable until one day it isn’t. Just by thinking about it and considering it and giving it a shot once in a while, you’re doing great.
The problem with the carveouts that utilitarian vegans make for honey is that they’re largely falsifiable feel-good apologia. The claim that harvesting honey doesn’t harm bees is complete bollocks, really it’s in the same realm of the claim that milking a cow doesn’t harm the cow because she can always make more and just saying it isn’t doesn’t make it so. The hive does need to downsize and drones do have to die to accommodate the loss of surplus, workers do forage further and compete more with other insects for nectar, while honey harvesting rarely harvests at the low extraction levels claimed to be harmless and domesticated bee colonies crowd out native pollinators. If it were harmless the bees would never bother to make it, it takes a shitload of energy for them to produce it. It’s turn-brain-off dissonance territory in the same league as dairy farm propaganda but because vegan utilitarian thought leader Peter Singer said it’s OK they’re all willing to make the huge leap in logic to eat something that could just as easily have been maple syrup or agave nectar.
I’d respect the utilitarians a lot more if they just said they don’t care about bees and shellfish because they’re not fuzzy mammals, instead of performing these unimpressive acts of logical acrobatics.
Also to add another reason for veganism to your list, the more important one for me personally: The reflection on oneself. We are symbolic thinkers, we transpose ideas from one context to the next. eg Slaughterhouse workers exhibit the same elevated levels of domestic violence as cops. When we harm someone else, in another manner we also harm ourselves. If we can understand another entity on some level and we then hurt it, we do ourselves a psychic injury that isn’t just philosophical but has real profound effects on our thought processes, our outlook on the world, our behaviors toward other things. Maybe utilitarian vegans just don’t see any commonality between their bodies and the beehive, but I think the core failure of utilitarianism is it’s inability to respect this very simple but unfortunately intangible concept, in all contexts.
Utilitarian hedonist here. I stopped eating prawns because I heard about them pulling the eyes out to increase breeding rates. I decided to research it by watching a video of a prawn having its eyes removed.
It looked like it was in pain.
That’s enough for Me. I don’t believe in p-zombies, so if something looks like it’s in pain, I believe it. I don’t want the prawns to have their eyes pulled out because it looks like it hurts.
And the meme is actually a lie. I don’t have strong feelings about honey, I’m undecided. I actually posted this bait in part to start an argument so I could read what people have to say. And also because it’s funny and this is lemmyshitpost. Right now in this present moment, I don’t think I want honey in My life.
This thread is actually fantastic, I’ve never seen so much open discussion about veganism between vegans and non-vegans with so little malice so I’d say you hit pay dirt.
I like your utilitarian determination of pain more than most utilitarians, who require a complete nervous system and therefore eat shellfish. Your test has a higher standard than theirs, because shellfish still retract when poked nervous system or not.
Gay space communist here. I’m not vegan, not even vegetarian - I do however only eat vegetarian at home, and most of the time vegan, but I’ll eat non-vegetarian food when visiting carnivorous friends or even in restaurants, if the veggie options are unappealing.
Honey is something I stopped buying after hearing from vegans about the cruelty in its production - from what I recall, and I did also watch a video or two of the process, queen bees routinely have their legs pulled off to trigger a hive to be built, and while I don’t know if bees are conscious, I know I would never pull the legs off an insect, so I can no longer in good conscience put a pot of honey in my basket as I walk around a supermarket.
Similar logic should also apply to cheese and ice cream, the non-vegan items that I still buy a lot of, but I did try giving up these items for a couple of months, and man I’m sorry baby calves but I just love those things too much.
Good for you for trying, and at least reducing. For what it’s worth I think quitting {insert animal product} always seems inconceivable until one day it isn’t. Just by thinking about it and considering it and giving it a shot once in a while, you’re doing great.