Hail Seitan!
There Are Seven Fundamental Tenets:
I - One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
II - The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
III - One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
IV - The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one’s own.
V - Beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.
VI - People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one’s best to rectify it and resolve any
harm that might have been caused.
VII - Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.
Since in the modern age we can obtain all of the nutrition we need from a well-planned plant-based diet, by buying & consuming animal products, we participate in unnecessary cruelty to sentient beings
I can make an argument that being non-vegan in the modern age is violating all seven of these tenets
Tenet I : It’s neither reasonable, nor compassionate or empathetic, to needlessly exploit & take the life of a creature when we have moral agency & alternatives, unlike other animals.
Tenet II : It’s true that it’s legal to exploit & unalive animals today, but it was also legal to own slaves in the past. Just because we’re legally allowed to do something doesn’t mean we should.
Tenet III : One’s body being inviolable and subject to their own will alone should extend to all sentient beings. If it doesn’t, Name The Trait in a way that doesn’t lead to contradiction or absurdity
That is - Name The Trait different between humans and other animals that makes it okay to do things to other animals that we wouldn’t be okay with being done to humans.
I.e. justify the speciesist discrimination and double standard and differential treatment.
Tenet IV : We should be free to tell people they’re hypocrites for loving dogs & eating cows, or even for participating in the exploitative pet industry instead of adopting/rescuing companion animals.
Even if this is offensive to people. It’s freedom of speech and necessary for the activism and the struggle for justice that should prevail above laws and institutions (Tenet II).
To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of other sentient beings, is to forgo your own right to be respected like you would be if you first gave respect to other individuals (animals).
Tenet V : Insisting we need to eat meat or animal products to be healthy despite that disagreeing with scientific consensus, is distorting scientific facts to fit your beliefs,
& not conforming beliefs to your best scientific understanding of the world.
It’s denying reality,
burying your head in the sand to avoid confronting the truth,
& living in ignorance & delusion & the willfull, unnecessary destruction & oppression of others, self, & planet.
Tenet VI : Assuming that we are already perfect & couldn’t possibly be doing anything wrong or unjust, despite every historical society participating in normalized injustice, is not recognizing humans
are fallible.
And, when confronted with your mistake, in the form of what your kind have raised you to traditionally participate in regarding unnecessary systemic exploitation & violence to sentient beings,
if your response is to deflect, close your ears, & refuse to take personal responsibility or change any behavior, is to not do one’s best to rectify it & resolve any harm that might have been caused.
then that is to not right the wrong and fundamentally unjust relationship between humans and other animals and resolve it into one of harmonious and respectful coexistence.
Rather than one of needless exploitation, domination, violence, cruelty, and oppression.
Finally, Tenet VII : To claim that because these tenets do not specifically mention an obligation to not exploit & harm non-human animals unnecessarily & to be vegan, that means it isn’t entailed by
the values underlying them, is to not let every tenet serve as guiding principles designed to inspire nobility in action & thought & not allow the spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice to prevail
over the written or spoken word.
Your username glorifies the murder of plants.
You think plants aren’t sentient because they don’t show signs of sentience that animals show.
So, do you think that if we care about plants, we should harm significantly more plants (upwards of 10x as much directly harvested to produce products of animal exploitation, & much more indirectly in land-clearing & maintenance & environmental/climate devastation of animal agriculture), than if we just used them directly?
That said, I would prioritize animals over plants (not that we actually need to, since helping/respecting one helps/respects the other, so the point is moot), because I value sentience/subjective experience, and I do think plants most likely aren’t sentient (though I didn’t say this before now, just that there’s no reason to believe they are and every reason/much more reason to know most animals are sentient) because that’s the general scientific consensus, and because there isn’t any meaningful evidence that they are or could be sentient. I don’t believe in things without evidence, so I don’t believe in plant sentience just like I don’t believe in a higher power, or invisible fairies that I can’t prove don’t exist, or Russel’s teapot (look it up). “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”. That isn’t to say it’s false, but with the current information, the belief hasn’t been justified, so I will remain agnostic on any kind of firm belief with regards to plant sentience unless something upends our understanding of biology - which is possible, but again, being vegan would still be the best thing we can do, short of future food systems that could be entirely 3D printed/lab grown/etc. And right now, we know animals are sentient. The same credence doesn’t exist for plants.
You didn’t respond to any of my arguments, and are now just making ad hominems. Ok, I enjoy eating delicious & healthy plant-based foods, which I know are also far more sustainable, efficient, & ethical, including being lower-impact on plants themselves and animals/sentient beings. So what? This isn’t about me. It’s about the arguments against animal exploitation. You don’t need to have my username to be vegan. I don’t think you’re engaging seriously.
Are you really acting in the spirit of reason, scientific understanding, empathy and compassion to dismiss the avoidable suffering & misinfortune of non-human sentient animals at human hands by attempting to frame the ethical choice as hypocritical simply because it can’t be perfect despite being significantly better than the alternative?
I am not taking you seriously because initially I thought you were a troll. You are clearly putting in enough effort that you are actually a vegan crusader trying to gain sympathy from a random group by completely misconstruing the tenets to mean what you want them to mean.
I will continue to not take you seriously, because you have a comical online based understanding of veganism that is indistinguishable from trolling.
Vegan is a great thing to strive for, sure. But it approaches some things as harm reduction and others as absolutes, and that is where it falls apart as a rigid ideology because it isn’t actually internally consistent overall even if the goals are noble in intent.
http://www.candidhominid.com/p/veganism-defined.html?m=1
This essentially aligns with the general understandings/definitions/descriptions of animal rights theory, abolitionism, animal liberationism, etc. Which you can read about on Wikipedia for example.
That said, I am a descriptivist (or rather something like “progressive prescriptivist”/descriptivist, not sure if there’s a precise term for my view), rather than a “traditionalist” prescriptivist. That is, I’m fine with the word vegan being redefined, re-used, re-interpreted in principle, however I also do have certain preferences and beliefs about what definition for the word would be most appropriate or beneficial or serve the most utility, and I lean towards any of the Vegan Society’s definitions from 1951 to present, excluding the definitions before 1951 which had failed to include the full scope of animal exploitation and focused only on food (which is part of why to this day some people still think veganism is a diet). So I don’t really agree with the assessment that I have a “comical understanding” of the word, or that it’s necessarily even possible since to a degree all definitions are valid, at least in theory/in a vacuum & removed from other considerations. Regardless if you disagree with the definition(s) and understanding(s) of veganism that I used/presented, we can at least understand that I’m describing a concept which I am defining the way I have & labeling as veganism, even if we need to use a substitute word to be on the same page, or call it “my definition of veganism” or whatever. I’m saying my definition/understanding of veganism, the one I’m talking about, is entailed by TST tenets. 5. This is sort of too vague an objection to even respond to. I appreciate you said that veganism(/animal rights, as I define it), is a great thing.
it’s not a whataboutism. plants are creatures. just as satanists are not obliged to refrain from exploiting plants for food, medicine, apparel, or even to be burned because they smell nice, they are not obliged to refrain from exploiting animals in a similar fashion.
Firstly, if plants are included in creatures, and we’re supposed to be compassionate to them in accordance with reason (as well as animals), then wouldn’t reducing unnecessary harm (and suffering, for sentient beings) caused to all of them by only using plants directly instead of harming much more via animal exploitation, while simultaneously not deliberately exploiting and causing harm and suffering to sentient beings, be entailed by seeking to treat them with compassion? How is it compassionate to either animals or plants to deliberately cause much more harm and to much more of them than we need to just because we don’t want to change despite being able to meet our needs (and even desires, tho they’re less important to us than the lives & basic freedoms & interests to not be exploited & made to suffer & killed are to sentient beings) with alternatives? Seems quite uncompassionate.
Secondly:
creature noun 1. an animal, as distinct from a human being.
Like I said I’m mostly a descriptivist. So you’re free to define “creature” as whatever you want it to mean. Hypothetical future sentient AIs can be considered creatures too, I’m fine with that. But I think TST Tenets are probably using the standard/common definition of “creatures” that means animals - though I can’t say for sure. LaVeyan Satanism, btw, does seem to consider creatures to mean humans and other animals.
(Note that the phrasing of the definition I listed, while it may not be the intent, is speciesist since it implies & upholds the pseudoscientific and religious belief that humans are not animals [and not creatures] and are in some different category, in order reaffirm our belief in human supremacy & devalue non-human animals to make it easier to justify what we want to take from them and do to them).
And yes, it is absolutely a whataboutism to derail a subject about animal rights into accusations of alleged hypocrisy that we would still be harming plants (even if we’d be harming far less plants than we would if we were exploiting animals too), which is a combination of tu quoque and nirvana fallacy, and it’s the most common & clichéd deflection to the arguments in favor of veganism/animal rights.
Even if we were somehow hypocrites for still harming plants, even though we’re choosing the least harmful & most ideal option that’s practically available to us, and are harming the least plants and least animals possible, and avoiding contributing to/participating in systems that deliberately/opportunistically & unnecessarily exploit, harm & kill beings we know to be sentient (non-human animals), and wouldn’t be in favor of harming plants unnecessarily either (even if there’s no evidence they’re sentient like there is for animals); that still wouldn’t make our argument about animal rights wrong, since it’s not about us, it’s about the animals. Address the argument, not the arguer. So all this essentially boils down to various forms of ad hominem against us, the people defending non-human animals and representing their interests, and very little willingness to actually focus on the non-human animals and engage with the arguments we made.
Also, if we’re hypocrites for still harming (a much smaller number) of plants unavoidably because living causes an amount of unavoidable harm (but that doesn’t mean all or any amount of harm is justified unnecessarily, of course, especially deliberate victimization of sentient beings), everyone else is a much bigger hypocrite for claiming to be compassionate to all creatures while paying others to be cruel to those creatures so that you can consume products you don’t need. So you should at least come over to our side first and then we can talk about future sci-fi concepts & hypotheticals of how we can progress to a system where plants aren’t harmed by our lifestyles either, if possible - surely you must be in favor of that if you care about plants (or animals), right?
it’s not clear this is the case, though
Denying basic physics now? Do you dispute the second law of thermodynamics or think you can magically subvert it using magical fantasy meat powers? Typical carnist cope.
https://weizmann.elsevierpure.com/en/publications/the-opportunity-cost-of-animal-based-diets-exceeds-all-food-losse
“This arises because plant-based replacement diets can produce 20-fold and twofold more nutritionally similar food per cropland than beef and eggs, the most and least resource-intensive animal categories, respectively.”
Plants to animals is an inherently inefficient conversion. When you swap animal products for nutritionally equivalent or similar plant foods, cropland productivity jumps: plant replacements can yield ~20× more food per acre than beef and ~2× more than eggs; the implied “opportunity losses” of using land for animal foods are huge (beef ~96%, pork ~90%, dairy ~75%, poultry ~50%, eggs ~40%). That means more plants have to be grown and harvested to support an animal-product diet than a plant-only one, all else equal.
And this isn’t even factoring in that most deforestation is caused by animal agriculture or the subsequent impacts that has on natural habitats, ecosystems, the climate, and the effect of global warming on all life on Earth.
It’s funny that for a group that claims to value scientific fact and not distorting it to suit your beliefs, that’s literally all you can do to attempt to justify how you obviously violate the first tenet of compassion to all creatures, and you clearly don’t actually care about the tenets since you don’t follow any of them.
no citation, probably bs.
no.
no citation, probably bs.
no.
why should deforestation be factored in at all? most farmland has been cleared for centuries.
ad hominem
it’s neither.
the fact that you’re myopically focused on animals is exactly what makes your argument wrong.
Oh, my argument is “wrong” now? Are you a moral realist or something?
How does it constitute being “myopically focused” on non-human animals just because those are the individuals I’m advocating for respectful treatment of (entailing not harming/exploiting/killing/violating their interests unnecessarily)? Is BLM myopically focused on Black people, is feminism myopically focused on women, is LGBT activism myopically focused on LGBT people? When there is a group of individuals being ignored and oppressed in society, it warrants & requires specific, focused advocacy on their behalf - either by the group themselves or by others who would be able to speak up for them if they can’t (similar to children, certain cognitively declining elderly, or certain mentally disabled humans, who might not always be able to attend a protest or government meeting for example, but would still be represented and advocated for by those who can). That doesn’t mean you’re saying other groups don’t matter as well, but to say “all lives matter” in response to those movements and to dismiss & object to them, is a whataboutism tactic, and you’re essentially doing the same thing here. And it’s based on a strawman of assuming that we exclusively care about this group just because we recognize they need support, representation & advocacy. A large part of humanity already advocate for humans of various groups to be respected. But almost no one does the same for non-human animals nor respects them themselves, and then whenever anyone does, we get told “why are you focused on this”? It’s insulting to the victims tbh, of whom there are countless more per year and even per month (especially when factoring in marine animals) than any humans have ever existed in history (only 117 billion, which is a fraction of the non-human animals that humans exploit & kill, cause immense suffering and do horrific things to that are about as bad as the worst things ever done to humans by each other).
Again, that doesn’t mean I don’t care about anything or anyone other than non-human animals. I obviously care about humans, I spend part of my time advocating for LGBT rights and women’s rights and immigration rights. But I also care about non-human animals and advocate for them, what’s the problem with that? It also doesn’t mean I don’t care about plants, if that’s really what you’re still getting at, which is a desperate argument. Whenever people make this argument, one thing remains true. They never acknowledge the point that more plants are harmed by animal ag than plant ag and therefore if we want to reduce harm to plants we should be vegan, which renders their whole point moot even if they want to try to claim plants are sentient. All they do is keep repeating or implying that we’re somehow hypocritical because of something vague to do with plants, with no alternative solution provided by them, no recognition that veganism is the least harmful & most ideal option even if nothing is perfect, and of course, no acknowledgement that we should respect the animals, or of their established sentience, or how it’s a win win to help the planet and the animals and ourselves at the same time. Just coping and deflection.
no, but creatures obviously has a broader meaning than you are allowing.
no one is saying “all lives matter”. you can’t seem to engage with intellectual honesty.
that’s not been established. you just claim it.
you are doing so while ignoring definitions of “creature” that are more expansive.
it’s fucking gross to compare these people to animals. get help.
no, it doesn’t.
why? what’s so special about sentience?
that’s not what they’re getting at. they’re getting at this: whatever other creatures we eat is inconsequential. plants or animals. even eating exclusively plants harms animals through habitat destruction and crop deaths. this is acceptable. everyone accepts a certain amount of creature destruction for the purpose of continuing to live.
no, but you are artificially narrowing a tenet of TST to focus on animals instead of all living creatures. for all your accusations of “bad faith” i would think you could recognize it.
that’s not been established. you’re just claiming it.
no alternative need be presented. the fact is everyone accepts the necessity of killing plants and animals to live.
for good reason. non-human animals are not part of society. they are a tool of society.
somehow, i think the lady doth protest too much.
This is a line from Shakespeare and a kafkatrapping fallacy. Someone denying or arguing against something/defending against false accusations doesn’t actually mean they’re guilty. However, I also don’t know how that relates to what I said.
you, yourself, continually attack the arguer instead of what they’re arguing. anyone can see this. i need provide no evidence.
The lexicographer’s role is to explain how words are (or have been) actually used, not how some may feel that they should be used, and they say nothing about the intrinsic nature of the thing named or described by a word, much less the significance it may have for individuals. When discussing concepts like creatures, therefore, it is prudent to recognize that quoting from a dictionary is unlikely to either mollify or persuade the person with whom one is arguing.
I’m not reading that wall of text either.
no. no one needs to engage in this fallaciously framed argument.
How is asking someone to identify the criteria which they’re using to justify the discrimination between individuals a “fallaciously framed argument”? There’s nothing fallacious about it. If people are able to just arbitrarily treat some individuals differently than others without having to explain their reasoning, then we can just as easily rationalize racism, sexism or any other form of discrimination as “it just is what it is” and refuse to engage with any attempt to justify it. It’s of course convenient and in the short-term interests of the victimizer/oppressor to want to avoid having to defend their position or confront the logical entailments of their actions & beliefs, and yes of course you don’t literally physically have to, but as I was saying you would need to provide some kind of reasoning in order to have and present a coherent and consistent position and justification for the actions & the differential treatment.
ntt, as has already been explained to you, is a fallaciously framed argument
you are