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Wow, I've looked into the vegan community, and they're creepy. They're comparable to creationists (in the sense of denying every available knowledge/evidence) or some other "we got the absolute moral truth" groups.From what I read on diverse forums, the majority is comparable to the original poster. Usually they seem to be quite young, radical, incongruent and agressive in their world view. A lot of times they show a latent disregard for human life, excepting their own, of course. An there's an open "we're intelligent and superior, meat eaters are stupid and inferior" "Gedankengut"...Some go even so far to feed their children, cats, dogs with a vegan diet. Despite all the evidence that children will be harmed by such a diet. There even some cases where, admittedly well intentioned, parents have been jailed, because of feeding their children vegan diets. The result for their children: malnutrition, retardment and in severe cases, death. We don't even have to discuss what a vegan diet will do to a cat or a dog... Animal cruelty at its best, weird for declared animal lovers.The most congruent group I've found, are the fruitarians, they claim that they feed exclusively on fruits. Which to me, sounds like a lie. I'm 100% sure that on a frugivore diet, a human will begin to develop serious health problems in a short period of time.At least fructarians, for short periods of time, will achieve the "no killing" dogma. That being said, a vegan is a monstruous as an omnivore or carnivore to a fruitarian.Here I have found an interesting essay, at least to me, on commom tinfoil arguments thrown around by vegan/fruitarians, dissected in detail:http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-1a.shtmlOther interesting read, from a group that advocated, that's how I understood them, a vegan diet in the past (now it's the paleo-diet for them...):http://naturalhygienesociety.org/diet2.html(There's an interesting article about rats eating eachother's babies when fed on a frugivore diet, not saying that fruitarians do that, but who knows?! )A rather amusing article:http://www.vanguardonline.f9.co.uk/00509.htm(The best part, Guru Maharaj Ji's knowledge...)"The vegetarian myth" a book written by an ex vegan:http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/lipid-hypothesis/the-vegetarian-myth/
Some go even so far to feed their children, cats, dogs with a vegan diet. Despite all the evidence that children will be harmed by such a diet. There even some cases where, admittedly well intentioned, parents have been jailed, because of feeding their children vegan diets. The result for their children: malnutrition, retardment and in severe cases, death. We don't even have to discuss what a vegan diet will do to a cat or a dog... Animal cruelty at its best, weird for declared animal lovers.
Well-planned vegetarian diets — even a vegan diet — can supply all the nutrients that children require for their growth and energy needs.
And agriculture isn’t quite a war because the forests and wetlands and prairies, the rain, the soil, the air, can’t fight back. Agriculture is really more like ethnic cleansing, wiping out the indigenous dwellers so the invaders can take the land. It’s biotic cleansing, biocide. … It is not non-violent. It is not sustainable. And every bite of food is laden with death.
A "non profit" organization that relies on the sponsoring by large corporations, fot its existence, is quite questionable, regarding their recommendations and imparciality, at least to me.
Major ($100,000+) donors include: Kellogg, Kraft Foods, Weight Watchers International, Campbell Soup, National Dairy Council, Nestlé USA, Ross Products Division of Abbott Labs., Sandoz, Coca-Cola, Florida Department of Citrus, General Mills, Monsanto, Nabisco, Procter & Gamble, Uncle Ben’s, Wyeth-Ayerst Labs. (Nov-Dec 1996 ADA Courier)
For the record, the links I provided are opinions and research by a vegetarian, an ex vegetarian, an ex vegan and ex vegan society. People/organizations that have way more experience, in human years, with the mentioned diets than Gloves. One stopped after 20 years of veganism...And they do explain Glove's reaction in detail, denial and crank science (as put by the vegetarian).
"I do mind you trying to make out vegans as a bunch of crazies or as you quote "creepy", because they're not. Like most groups, it seems to be a normal distribution of weirdness. I think I'm pretty average, but decide what you will."I don't have to, you're doing the job yourself. You may be pretty average for a vegan, which would put you, in my personal view, as less... well how can I put it in nice words? Fantastic utopian?
You have the nerve to tell me that I have to inject insulin and eat stuff like soy, wheat and a lot of vegetals, that are demonstrably harmful for me just because of your radical, utopic fantasy.
Can I take you and the likes seriously? Only for your fanaticism, surely not for your ideals...Only your questioning of if a vegan diet for dogs of cats is harmful is just so out of the moon... it clearly demonstrates that you show symptoms of severe cultism.
Take care of you, I hope that you get through your phylosophy unharmed, I really do.
The few thousand Brok-pa Aryans have over 5,000 years lived in these hostile terrain at 15,000 ft altitude, subsisting on a vegan diet.
I do not object to killing plants for food currently. I do not object to killing as an absolute rule. I do object to killing undeserving creatures which can feel as an absolute rule, as most here do in other circumstances involving animals. You do not kill pets for pleasure (& find it abhorrent to do so I am willing to bet) so why should you finance & therefore enable the killing of other creautres which are quite clearly capable of emotion? Eating meat yet being unable to personally kill an animal is much more contradictory than my position. I do not believe in some mystical, spiritual aspect of life. I approach veganism from an entirely secular point of view.
What are you bringing next? Adolf Hitler's (a convinced vegetarian) ideas on vegan nutrition? There's another tribe in the Himalays the Hunza, which are also mentioned by vegan/vegetarians as an example of people living since bazillions of years on a vegan/vegetarian diet... It comes out, that when scientifically investigated, most claims are plain myths, exaggerations and crackpot idealizations.While I'm aware that aryan was a term misused by national socialists, the direction into which this writing is pointing, should be clear, blue eyes, blonde, aristocratic aryan nose, vegetarian = Übermensch, brown, brown, brown, meat eater = monkey.
You value the well being of a pig more than mine, ok, you're definetly nuts, like Adolf Hitler, that valued the well being of his dogs more than the well being of millions of human beings, disgusting.
I did not think you would mind killing the sprouts; it was the aphids I was wondering about.Do aphids feel pain? Are they sentient? Because they react to stimulus does not make them sentient in my book.
I also agree that my position is contradictory, though I am unsure about the meaning in degrees of contradiction. I am aware and choose to live with this, and many other, contradictions. I just choose which battles to fight and this is not high on my priority list.
I am unsure of the relevence of this but I remember talking with a Buddhist priest many years ago who was happy to live with the idea that he did not have to work but live on the charity of others, and he obviously accepted that the world would not allow everyone to behave this way. But this did not stop him trying to pursuade everyone to adopt his stance and just concentrate on seeking enlightenment. I think living with contradictions is part of the human condition; the above is more stark tham most.
Gloves, in my limited experience of home produce, it is almost impossible to grow sprouts without aphids getting on them, or, alternatively, using pesticides. I am fairly sure this is true of many vegetables. I guess it is theoretically possible to grow them in a sterile environment, but this is not a practical solution. In any case you have to clean them or cook the insects with the sprouts. A contradiction for you to solve maybe :-)
If you watched the Xmas lecture for children (I caught a part of it) the subject of aphid reproduction was discussed. Without natural controls they reproduce at a phenomenal rate. They reproduce using Parthenogenesis (essentially reproducing clones of themselves) and do so in a way that each adult has two generations of offspring prepared and ready to go. Why do you think, because we have brains, that this should mean that it disqualifies us from the natural order of being a controlling factor? It just makes the decisions harder. It is part of the Pandora's box that is called knowledge.I know this has diverted from the original discussion, but hey, lets be wild :-)
I suppose I see the choice of veganism as a rather unimportent and personal decision that is likely to have little impact. Its main value would be to instill people with a greater degree of empathy for other humans via association with the animal surrogates.
that is likely to have little impact.
For the foreseeable future I don't see the world becoming vegan and I do not even see it as a practical proposition.
I rather think it is similar to thinking it good for people to be pacifists, but in the event that there is a threat to also think that it is good that some people are not.
I see the world as many shades of grey and it is rare to be able to make such a black/white choice.
Again, I see you are justifying your position on the basis of converting your emotional response into a justification for the concept
2. It is wrong to intentionally and unnecessarily harm sentient animals except where doing so is necessary for the essential benefit of other sentient animals, including humans, or for other animals of the same species.
All men are equal - slavery is wrong. An 18th century slave trader may justify his actions on the basis that the slaves were some sub-species but, more generally, slaves were considered a useful bounty of war in most cultures. The concept of them being inferior was a justification to placate those who may have felt uneasy about it in a developing liberalism.
Comparison with the severely mentally disabled or those in a coma: Yes, they may recover but a sheep is not likely to start reading Proust :-) More importantly, there are laws which are there to protect individuals when those individuals are not able to do that themselves*. It is nonetheless the case that someone can be judged to be in a persistently vegetative state and have life support removed.
It may be clear that severely mentally disabled people may not recover, but these people have considerable "sentience" compared with any non-human animal. It is necessary for the law to protect such people and we have such laws.
I would guess that you are against abortion. That is a subject for another debate. Personally I dislike abortion beyond a very early stage (zygote stage) but I also think there is a conflict between the continued health and well-being of the mother, the (possibly) unwanted child and the rights of the unborn baby who is no doubt to some extent sentient when abhorted at (say) 3 months. Absolutism does not work here either. We (humans) have to make decisions and formulate laws that can be practically applied within the limitations of the world we live in and the knowledge we have.
It is fine for you to take the view that you are being logically consistant in being a vegan and if you wish to evangelise the idea, that's OK too. It wasn't any sort of "put down" when I said it will be unlikely to matter much. What I meant was, that the idea is impractical with the world as it is, so the concept does no harm. If it encourages people to think about sentience in animals and empathise, then it is a positive for the human race. I happen to think that we will move in such a direction (higher mammals are clearly sentient) but that I think we are looking at 100 to 200 year time span. It will have to involve a good deal of categorising and making value judgements, so I wholly disagree with your view that you should avoid killing anything. I am fairly sure that I would not classify aphids as sentient. I think you are going too far in anthropomorphising all creatures and I think we have to do better than that.
Emotions are the basis of what is good & what is bad.