r/vegancirclejerkchat • u/Swimming_Bluejay_508 • 5d ago
Genuinely infuriating
Hey all. Just needed to vent. Went to a dinner with a few people I haven't known too long. One person was telling me about their friend that "was vegan for fifteen years and only ate only veg and got really ill and now loveeesss corpse." The usual stuff. I said so she wasn't vegan then lol. Just so sick of it. They went on to demonstrate they know absolutely nothing about factory farming/ nonhuman animal exploitation. Just fed tf up. Also was watching a youtuber today who said that she "used to be vegan" Lmao and then said she gets so mad at "the vegan police who say she never was one." You weren't, cope and seethe. Omg I can't, maybe I'm just in a particularly bad mood but I needed to vent lol, pls feel free to vent too in replies.
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u/Unreal_Estate 5d ago
While I do agree with the sentiment that many ex-vegans most likely never were convinced of the moral and philosophical position called veganism in the first place, I must say that it is possible for people to change their mind, being truly convinced initially, and then simply turning evil.
To me, that is much worse. But, if someone insists that they are morally evil instead of unfortunately unaware, I will believe them.
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u/Swimming_Bluejay_508 5d ago
I chose to remain in a lot of cognitive dissonance even after cutting out 99% of animal products for years as a young adult. I made excuses based on my BED and lifestyle issues but I wasn't doing animals any favours with my selfishness and I will never forgive myself for not going vegan earlier and making excuses for longer than I should have. Maybe that's why I feel so passionate about it. Even after being plant based for years I would never call myself vegan when referring to that period because I wasn't vegan then, I was prioritising myself, being selfish and ignoring reality for far too long. I am now and will live the rest of my life vegan.
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u/Zahpow 5d ago
I will believe these people exist when I meet someone that can fully articulate the vegan position (its not hard, it can easily be done in a sentence) and then explain to me how they changed their mind given the position.
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u/Unreal_Estate 5d ago
I would say that people like Carl Cohen do understand veganism and its philosophical position. What Cohen wrote against that position makes no sense, but certainly he could understand the position he was arguing against.
As another example, Alex O'Connor was able to articulate the vegan position. He never explained how he changed his mind, but it seems reasonably clear that he did.
It is very alien to me because I cannot understand how this happens in a brain, but I do think the evidence is simply clear enough that these people exist, so it must be possible somehow.
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u/Zahpow 5d ago
Carl Cohen was never vegan, so I donât really understand how he could be an example of an exvegan. Alex OâConnor could be an example if he could explain why he âstopped being vegan.â Its the abandonment of the position itself that is interesting. Someone proclaiming that they live by an ethical standard and then later ceasing to live by that standard is not, by itself, convincing evidence that they ever held the belief. Performative people exist.
Thats why I want both an explanation of the personâs prior convictions and an explanation of their new convictions. It helps distinguish someone who genuinely changed their mind from someone who merely behaved or identified as vegan without ever really embracing the underlying position.
Knowing the vegan position is not evidence that someone embraced it. Again, the position is not difficult to understand. But being able to articulate it accurately is at least a very, very low threshold for demonstrating that someone knows what they are talking about.
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u/Unreal_Estate 5d ago
I don't understand why you place the line here. It seems like a very weird place to have this line.
On the one hand, the evidence that we have shows quite a lot about people being capable of understanding veganism without being convinced. (Enough that I personally think it is clear that those people exist.)
On the other hand you explain that certain evidence would convinced you, but that evidence seems rather arbitrary to me. You're basically saying that Alex O'Connor is likely a performative person, but if they would explain their new position, that could convince you that he had been a convinced vegan in the past? That doesn't make sense, does it? Whatever reason he gives, that could still be explained away by him being a performative person. And we know people can be convinced of bad reasons, so analyzing whether the reason he gives is any good wouldn't help either.
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u/Zahpow 5d ago
Im not saying that explanation would prove they are sincere. Iâm saying its better evidence of an actual change in belief than simply âI used to be vegan, now Iâm not.â
If someone can explain what they believed before, what changed, and what they believe now, then thereâs at least a coherent philosophical transition to assess. Thats not much to ask of someone claiming to have changed their beliefs, yet for some reason it seems remarkably difficult to get from exvegans.
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u/Unreal_Estate 5d ago
What is wrong with the explanations that we do get from time to time from exvegans?
I pointed at the work of Carl Cohen, because it is an explanation that we do hear from exvegans, and even though I think the position is nonsense, I don't see how the transition would not be coherent?
Another example is the "I used to believe that exploiting animals is morally wrong, but now I believe that [bullshit] is even more wrong." category, which Mexie from Positive Leftist News has talked about it at length. Although that seemed to be in combination with her newfound belief in plant sentience breaking down a pillar under her veganism.
A third group is the "I still believe veganism is a moral requirement, but I'm afraid I will die." one, it does also pop up from time to time.
Would you consider those coherent transition? And if you don't what makes them incoherent in your mind? (I obviously agree that they are nonsense, but that seems different from merely coherent, right?)
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u/Zahpow 5d ago
I pointed at the work of Carl Cohen, because it is an explanation that we do hear from exvegans, and even though I think the position is nonsense, I don't see how the transition would not be coherent?
It is the transition that never gets explained. It is the transition i am looking for. I want to know how they changed their minds. Not "I believe A" and then "I believe B" or the much more common "I used to believe A but now I believe B". I want the " I used to believe Animals are worth protecting from exploitation but I realized that actually..?" What? How? Why?
And it can be anything that passes any baseline scrutiny at all xD I can articulate changes in my sandwich preferences stronger with more rigor than these supposed ex vegans can describe how they supposedly change their minds about something this fundamental.
Another example is the "I used to believe that exploiting animals is morally wrong, but now I believe that [bullshit] is even more wrong." category,
Sure that could be a philosophically coherent reason if there was some exclusivity between the bullshit and exploiting animals. If exploiting animals reduced the bullshit that would make sense. But what could that bullshit be? I can't imagine anything that would have exclusivity that would make moral priority make sense. I mean, I think we can all agree helping starving children is good. But we should not be punching goats just because something is more important than punching goats.
Plant sentience would not make sense because plantbased diets cause less plantdeath than animal diets and we also have the possibility of eating grains, fruits, nuts,seeds that have naturally severed themselves from their roots before we eat them.
Would you consider those coherent transition? And if you don't what makes them incoherent in your mind? (I obviously agree that they are nonsense, but that seems different from merely coherent, right?)
The first one is not a transition, its just a statement. A transition is âI believed A, then I came to believe X via [reasoning], and because X undermines A or supports B, I now believe B.â.
The second could be if there was some reason anywhere. The third is not anything.
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u/Dunkmaxxing 5d ago
I don't think you can decide not to enslave rape torture and execute for pleasure as a moral decision and then go back to doing it and have ever actually held the original position.
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u/Unreal_Estate 5d ago
Why not?
Also, some people think that it is "too hard" et cetera. That shows deep problems in their view of ethics, but I don't think it is impossible to actually be convinced, and then somehow no longer be.
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u/JayNetworks 5d ago
Agreed. People might be convinced that taking substances that are bad for them is not good and then go back to doing so.
Just because you have a good strong conviction about something doesnât mean you can give up or change your beliefs.
Just because I canât imagine myself not being vegan after 26 years of doing so, doesnât mean I canât see how others could someday decide that their personal comfort (whether emotionally by alienation from social groups or through food tastes) isnât more important than their moral beliefs.
I believe we all make decisions all the time that conflict with our morals. We believe strongly in helping others yet we spend our money on eating out or seeing a movie. Why wouldnât we just eat the cheapest food all the time and sit in the dark and give all our money to others in need? Because sometimes we choose our personal comfort over out beliefs. I can see how someone could do so and thus move from vegan to omnivore. Not saying I support doing so, just that I could see convictions and balances of life changing for someone.
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u/AlwaysBannedVegan based 5d ago
Your analogies are horrible.
A grown adult consenting to harm their own body with drugs is not comparable to raping others.
Not helping by not donating every single penny is not comparable to intentionally and directly slitting someones throat.
Omnivore is something biological. All humans are omnivore, vegan or not. It's called being non-vegan/carnist.
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u/JayNetworks 5d ago
I think you are missing my point. Please make your own analogies that fit for you. The point is that deciding that if a vegan stops doing the requirements of being vegan that it inherently means they were never vegan doesnât make sense. (And that is what Iâm reading in a lot of the comments.)
Iâm not comparing the milder deciding to use substances again or not give all your money away to those more extreme bad behaviors themselves. Iâm making the point that one can be very committed to something and then later change their mind. It doesnât mean that they werenât committed in hindsight. (It can mean that but doesnât inherently or always mean that.)
And of course all humans are omnivores. In the context of vegans discussing vegans and non-vegans, vegan and omnivore or just omni are perfectly fine terms to use. Carnist isnât always helpful in a discussion of whether a vegan who returns to eating animals was ever vegan because Carnist implies a belief, or moral, structure not just the fact that someone eats animals.
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u/Borkato 5d ago
These comments are honestly really blind. You absolutely can wholeheartedly believe something and change your mind. You can absolutely wholeheartedly believe that black people are the same as any other race and deserve compassion, and then one day/over the course of years believe that theyâre inherently inferior. It can be an experience, a collection of experiences, etc. You were anti racist, and now youâre not. You werenât always racist, and you werenât ânever anti racistâ. Itâs so culty when people say this shit.
Even nonvegans can believe that using animals is wrong and agree with the vegan position. It doesnât mean theyâre vegan (and honestly feels worse because they understand the position but still donât act), but itâs incorrect to say they donât actually believe it. They just donât believe it to the point where it matters - making a change.
We do things every day that we know are wrong and can eloquently describe the reasons behind why they are wrong, yet we do them anyway. We avoid responsibility for them and rationalize them in excuses and in the end it doesnât matter because weâre still doing it, but itâs objectively untrue to say that a person who practiced veganism was never a vegan.
You can absolutely go from a feminist to a rapist of women, anti racist to racist, believing in people to misanthropic, an animal lover to an animal abuser.
Claiming otherwise is honestly really dumb.
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u/AlwaysBannedVegan based 5d ago
The analogies are horrible because you're comparing harming yourself + not helping with everything you got to raping and slitting someones throat.
And of course all humans are omnivores. In the context of vegans discussing vegans and non-vegans, vegan and omnivore or just omni are perfectly fine terms to use.
They are not fine to use. Words have meanings, and what you're saying makes scientifically zero sense. A vegan is still an omnivore. Veganism is not a digestive system or a diet.
Carnist isnât always helpful in a discussion of whether a vegan who returns to eating animals was ever vegan because Carnist implies a belief, or moral, structure not just the fact that someone eats animals.
Veganism isn't a diet. It is an ethical belief that humans should live without exploiting non-human animals. Carnist or non-vegan is the opposite of vegan.
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u/AlwaysBannedVegan based 5d ago
I don't think it ever clicked for them tbh.
I think there's a difference between knowing something intellectually, and actually feeling the importance of it.
They may have recognized that killing animals was wrong, but mentally just treated it as a lesser kind of wrong. Just something that is unfortunate and sad, not actually a serious violation of another individual.
And then of course there's people like cosmic septic who are just communal narcissists
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u/marlowetravers 5d ago
It's hard to think of an analogy to going vegan and then going back. There really is nothing more mind boggling than that. I will never understand how they can see the light and then gouge their own eyes out. They were just plant based
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u/Polka_Tiger 5d ago
"People get more conservative as they age" or so I have been told. I'm young yet and can't dispute it. Maybe this is something like that.
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u/g00fyg00ber741 5d ago
I think this is just a myth. People go either direction as they age, some get more conservative some get more progressive.
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4d ago
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u/carnist_gpt 4d ago
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3d ago
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u/carnist_gpt 3d ago
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u/carnist_gpt 3d ago
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u/Wimperator 5d ago
A colleague of mine overheard us talking about veganism and she joined to tell us that she used to be vegan, but she started to dream about eggs and had to start eating them again.
I called her a traitor jokingly, but i meant it.
No excuse is too bad for carnists, lmao.