This does not really get us around the bottom-line, which is that purchasing a package of ground beef from the grocery store is not really something that bothers me whatsoever. It does not bother most other meat-eaters, either. There is not a syllogism in the world that is going to change this fact.
If you were committed to veganism, then wouldn't it behoove you to attempt to decipher why this is a fact? It comes across to me as being more of a question of consumer psychology than of logic.
Try going to an organization that is expert at it:
This post is also available in: Français ItalianoMany vegans are looking for the ideal way to make other people go vegan. Often, they are targeting good friends, family, or even their significant other. And, not infrequently, they get quite frustrated when their attempts at making these people...
veganstrategist.org
There was a time when I was reluctant to try vegetarian foods because I quite frankly hated classic vegan favorites like raw carrots and lettuce. Those things give me severe indigestion. Some of my vegetarian and reducitarian friends began introducing me to foods that just plain tasted good and were easy for me to digest.
This type of strategy might come across as repellent to someone like
@Zoo50, who thinks that the reason why someone ought to become a vegan is because, in that person's opinion, it is objectively wrong to kill an animal. That type of moral browbeating did not convert me to Christianity, and it is not going to convert me to veganism.
For one thing, I have established ethics of my own, which really mean quite a lot to me. Lecturing me as if I had no ethics at all was how Protestant Christians tended to operate. Their theory was that, since I was not a Christian, I was without the slightest doubt going through life without any kind of morality at all, and they were going to repair that fact by giving me one.
For example, Protestant Christians would say, "Don't you believe in something greater than yourself or beyond yourself?" I felt insulted by this, actually, because they were implying that I had never thought deeply in any respect at all. My human husband has consistently been resentful over my stalwart atheism (he is a pagan), and he once had the audacity to say, "Of course you don't because you are shallow." After the resulting conversation, let me stop at "He does not say those sorts of things anymore," lest I betray how catty I can get.
Ultimately, it is a mistake to assume that someone having different convictions from oneself proves that they have no convictions at all.
If you want an example how the best means of changing people's opinion is by relating to them through their own worldview and core values, I ask that you watch
12 Angry Men.
Observe how the hero that goes through each of those men--and changes the minds of each and every one--operates by holding people accountable to their own core beliefs. What worked for him was that he altogether shrugged off changing those core beliefs, and instead, he took their own perspectives and spoke to them based on how they interpreted the world around them.
In my experience, many people that attempt to promote veganism deeply fail to engage this strategy.
I am fairly open about what things do affect me. I do not care very much at all for either man or beast feeling unnecessarily distressed. I am relatively unfazed by death, taken all by itself. If you ask me why I would not approve of murder, I would point out that the reason why you don't murder is that most people find it to be a deeply distressing thing to happen to someone in their communities. It causes them to feel distrustful and afraid. Ultimately, I regard the fact that the victim is dead as being relatively less important.
You could take several different routes with that. You could prove to me that relatively inexpensive meat often does not actually come from sources that use humane techniques of slaughter, and even when humane slaughter actually is used, it is clearly stressful to the cattle to be taken away from the environment that is familiar to them and put into a sterile and cold industrial slaughterhouse.
Another route you could take would be to demonstrate that cattle actually do miss members of their herds that disappear when some of them are taken away to be slaughtered. Whether or not they understand death in the abstract sense like humans and elephants are known to, I could believe that disrupting the social dynamics of an otherwise healthy herd would not be viewed favorably by its members.
However, one would also be well advised to embrace the fact that I adhere to a style of Pyrrhonism. I believe that becoming too wedded to any new belief is bad for my health. I tend to practice several approaches to
epoché in the pursuit of
ataraxia. I have sound reasons why. I have risk factors for bipolar disorder. Letting myself get too excited about something or becoming a zealot about something tends to aggravate those risk factors, and I can begin cycling when I otherwise would not. The practice of
epoché in several forms helps keep me centered and level-headed. Thinking in terms of "conversion" indicates a form of black-and-white thinking that is really deeply bad for my mental health. Therefore, one would have to make peace with coming away from any conversation with me with only the most muted acknowledgements, and someone that intends to make me a "born again vegan" is barking up the wrong tree.
Vegans do not make very strong arguments by treating their audience as if their established norms, principles, and beliefs did not exist.
longreads.com
wildlife.org
