I escaped the Reddit regime a little while ago. I consider myself a marxist-leninist-MZT. Vegetarian and vegan for a few years. I’ve a lot of thoughts on how marxism and veganism are connected. Never wrote them down. I’d like to start smth like a club for marxist vegans to develop our own proletarian theory. Most vegan theory I found is either openly bourgeois (Francione is a literal TERF) or revisionist (anti-China, anarchist, libertarian). How about fixing this?
Based on the mental illnesses that are associated with slaughter work, I don’t believe they do it “without any problems”. They are able to cope with the harm they’re doing to themselves, but fundamentally we all empathize with animals and it hurts to hurt them.
I’ve killed animals. I fucking hate it and I won’t do it again if I can help it. It hurts.
Don’t do it if you hate it. But here in Balkans it’s completely normal for livestock and fish, including hunting, it’s day to day life in village.
Don’t get me wrong because we obviously hate poachers and there’s always an uproar when innocent wild animals are harmed or endangered, but eating livestock is normal, people get weirded out when you don’t.
A lot of unhealthy things have been normal at different points in history, so I don’t really see your point.
You just called my entire peninsula unhealthy because we eat livestock meat…
I’ll tell you what’s unhealthy: settlers going to American continent and almost exterminating Bisons and various other animals Natives consumed, killing and wasting millions of Turkeys yearly for a racist holiday, bringing a predator which kills for sport to every overseas continent which resulted in extermination of dozens of species of native animals and of course poaching Elephants, Rhinos and various other endangered animals in Africa.
I’ll start by saying death to US. I hope I didn’t imply that your home is somehow less healthy than the Great Satan!
What I’m saying the people who are forced to kill animals, whether for survival or income, are harming their mental health. I am not saying that they are unhealthy; they can cope with it as long as they don’t have a lot of other stressors in their life, people who kill animals can live healthy, productive lives.
But, based on the rates of mental illness associated with slaughter work that far exceed other lines of production work, there’s clearly something unhealthy about killing animals. People who kill animals are more likely to experience health complications, like PTSD and addiction and suicide.
We can analyze the material reality of common practices in a scientific manner. Notice I never brought up morality. I am speaking purely about the impact on health. Smoking certain plants is culturally significant in some cultures, too, but it’s also unhealthy. Plenty of people who smoke never experience health problems, but the reality of the health impacts don’t change just because people did it for 1000s of years.
Have you ever killed an animal? I killed a rabbit once. Did you know they scream? I don’t think that was good for me.
Forced is another thing altogether, mass slaughterhouses aren’t humane because the animals suffer in them even before you’re killed. Here it’s just regular farming from villages, no one is forced to it, it’s just day to day life.
Then about smoking, regular cigarettes destroy health altogether and it’s just baffling to me that they are legal while weed which actually helps with cancer and effects of treating it is illegal in most places.
I kill bugs all the time idk if it counts, but I did when I was younger with my brother, it was for grill if I remember correctly. Did you kill the rabbit for food or? Because there is a certain species of rabbit which has a valuable wool(I forgot which one exactly) and they literally torture them by pulling off their wool while they’re alive which is disgusting.
They are forced by their need to acquire meat. It’s not the same coercion as under capitalist domination but I’d say that counts as being forced to kill by their material conditions. Slaughterhouses are definitely worse than barnyard slaughter, maybe the two can’t be compared, but I don’t think there’ve been studies about hunting or small scale animal husbandry. The mass suffering is also definitely worse, but death is its own kind of horror regardless of whether we suffer before our end or not.
I killed for food, sort of. I was in Scouts and we did lots of camping trips where we’d do stuff like: start a fire without matches, make an improvised shelter for sleeping, learn how to treat hypo/hyperthermia in the bush, fish without a fishing pole, etc. I don’t regret any of that, but that rabbit fucked me up. Killing and gutting fish isn’t nice either, but I never had trouble sleeping because of it. Catching a rabbit and watching her struggle in the snare, breaking her neck, it was pretty horrible.
As for bugs, maybe I’m not a True Vegan but as far as I’m concerned they’re a natural and plentiful source of B12 in case the supply chain ever collapses and I need to survive entirely off of beans and rice. I’m not going to go out of my way to eat crickets as long as I can just eat fortified yeast, but I’d definitely feel a lot better about it than eating any mammals, birds, fish, etc.
Yea slaughterhouses are definitely inhumane, but farms, hunting and livestock are normal here and we’ve been doing it since prehistory, so unless we can clone meat one day, that’s just how we live.
I don’t eat rabbits specifically but yeah they are one of the animals people keep as pets and unless they’re breeding uncontrollably on farms, I’m against it.
Some white people are disgusted by eating bugs even though it’s normal in many parts of the world(and they eat water bugs), I wouldn’t have a problem with it, it’s what these guys in survivalist shows in the wild do.
Why would cloning meat be okay? That’s not normal, so shouldn’t people stick with what they’ve always done and slaughter animals?
We eat chapulines in Mexico. It is very normal in indigenous land.
Damn, now I understand why veganism is so divisive.