Does veganism view humans as greater than more than human beings? If so, what is the justification? If not, why is the focus on human diet?
Does veganism view humans as greater than more than human beings? If so, what is the justification? If not, why is the focus on human diet?
No. Killing and hurting animals is not bad for humans. Rather, killing and hurting animals with improper methods and ethics will invariably encourage harmful outcomes. These outcomes will not manifest with even distribution across humanity, other animals, and other life forms. It’s sad you are so disconnected from reality that you are so confident making infantile statements that are easily dismissed. You may as well start a religion that condemns the climate itself instead of addressing the causes and dangers of climate change.
And while I’m here I’ll just add … stop separating humanity from the rest of the biosphere so casually. Are you so arrogant to believe other life forms are blameless or even without ethics? Vegans treat “animals” the same way Mormons treat Indigenous Peoples as “Lamanites” that are simultaneously purer than but still lessor than and in need of “salvation.” You use other life forms as tokens just as all colonial religions do.
This is an assertion.
Evidence suggests the opposite. Communities with slaughterhouses experience higher rates of depression, alcoholism, overdoses, domestic violence, violent crime, murder, self-harm, suicide, and other forms of mental/emotional/social distress. People who abuse pets are universally reviled because pets aren’t just toys or property, they’re family. We empathize with anything that has a face or voice, sometimes even things without faces or voices, and killing and hurting makes us feel bad.
I’m even speaking from experience! Killing feels bad. I don’t want to do it, and I don’t want to force anyone else to do it.
I am not motivated by ethics. I am motivated by our species-being. We, as a species and society, would be happier and healthier if we stopped the slaughter. People who kill for a living are hurt by it, and the trauma becomes dangerous to themselves and others.
Even humans with diminished/lacking capacity for empathy are harmed by killing and hurting animals. It still trains the brain to make it easier to hurt and kill, there’s a reason animal abuse is highly correlated with interpersonal, human-to-human violence.
Carnivores don’t feel empathy the way humans do. They literally don’t feel anything when they kill, besides satisfaction. It’s just food for them. Lions can eat gazelle and it doesn’t make them want to hurt or kill their families, or engage in self harm, or kill themselves. Their species-being is to be hunters and killers, that’s literally what they are. Ethics don’t even enter the equation.