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.
Being offended at even comparisons between the circumstances of or actions done to different individuals, or the logic used to justify them (not even comparing the individuals themselves), because you think it’s insulting for a human to be compared to a non-human animal (which wasn’t even done), is the peak of speciesism and human supremacy. When vegans/animal rights activists talk about humans and non-human animals in the same context, you need to remember we have a much higher view of non-human animals than you probably do. So we obviously aren’t intending to insult or devalue humans. We seek to do the opposite and raise the status of non-human animals to deserving and receiving proper moral consideration and respect of their interests. You may think you’re entitled to be offended by whatever you want and that makes it immediately offensive or problematic (Btw, what happened to the Tenet of the right to offend?). But being offended by certain things is actually problematic and just reveals your own bigotry rather than anything about the person who made the comparison. For example, imagine being offended at men being compared to women, white people being compared to black people, or straight people being compared to gay people. This would just expose the sexism/misogyny, racism, and heterosexism/homophobia of the person offended.
Don’t be disingenuous & pearl-clutching. You know I’m not trying to disparage those groups in any way, in fact the opposite. No, comparing the circumstances of different vulnerable groups of individuals that may in some cases need others to advocate on their behalf and represent them, in order to demonstrate that most humans already find that to be appropriate & virtuous or even obligatory to come to their aid & defend the innocent who can’t defend themselves (aside from non-human animals), and that the same logic should be used to support animal rights activism, even if the non-human animals can’t speak up for and advocate their cases in our languages … is not in any way gross or problematic or bigoted. You’re trying to twist my intentions by drawing on common assumptions and painting me as a villain that carnists would love to hate so that they can feel good about their choices toward non-human animals and the planet. If I care about the rights of all sentient beings, why would I be trying to insult groups of humans who hadn’t inherently done anything wrong.
The reality is that many humans find it insulting even just to acknowledge the biological reality that humans are animals, or to be compared to other animals, or even to have the experiences & circumstances of humans, or the logic used to defend them, compared to those of other animals even when they are literally identical or very similar (which has nothing to do with “comparing those [humans] to [non-human animals]”, not that there would be anything wrong with comparing humans to other animals if there is no intention to insult or offend anyone - they are all sentient beings, and we should be comparing them more, highlighting their similarities and asking for consistency and compassion). But, ironically, whenever humans feign outrage over this, it’s almost always humans acting offended on others’ behalves, and the individuals whose groups’ situations or history are actually being referred to are often in agreement because they understand oppression and appreciate humans learning historical lessons from injustices and applying them to other groups to solve further remaining issues in society and avoid making the same mistakes - or identifying when we do.
if only I were worthy.
get
help
What are you talking about? Are you trying to insinuate that I’m saying we have a higher view of non-human animals than we do of humans? I didn’t say that. I said we have a higher view of non-human animals than most humans have of non-human animals. The thing that is being compared is our view of non-human animals vs most humans’ view of non-human animals, not our view of non-human animals vs our view of humans. Reading comprehension 0 (or you’re just being a troll).
The point is you’re incorrectly assuming that just because you (and indeed, most humans) view non-human animals as being inferior to humans and find it insulting to compare humans to them (which I didn’t even do in what you were replying to, I compared their situations and certain actions we might take to either hurt [which I’m opposed to] or help [which I’m in favor of] them), that must mean we also view them as inferior like you do, and that we’re intending to insult or devalue humans by making any comparisons that involve both of them. Obviously the opposite is true if you understand that we’re viewing non-human animals in a different way where we don’t see them as inferior, and we see the similarities between humans and other animals as reasons to extend compassion and care to non-human sentient beings (as they’re the same reasons we care about humans, as can be pretty easily established), and trying to inspire others to view–and treat–them with more respect too.
I have never said any such thing.
Reading comprehension 0 (or you’re just being a troll).
You literally said that the reason it’s okay to unnecessarily exploit and kill non-human animals/sentient beings and not humans is the fact that non-human animals aren’t human. This implies that you view non-human animals as holding lower moral value or deserving of lower moral standards of respect. Additionally, you acted offended at even the suggestion of humans (or the circumstances and treatment and attitudes toward discriminated, marginalized, oppressed, vulnerable etc groups of humans) or anything to do with humans being compared to non-human animals or anything to do with non-human animals - including the circumstances, treatment and attitudes toward oppressed, exploited & victimized non-human animals - which implies that you think that to compare a human to a non-human animal is to devalue them, demonstrating an internalized belief of non-human animals as holding lower value. And you also said that the reason the Holocaust was bad was because humans were treated the way that non-human animals are, but then were unable to acknowledge that the way non-humans are being treated was bad too, meaning you think something that’s extremely bad and an atrocity to do to humans is fine to do to non-human animals.
treating different things differently is necessary for correct action. treating a door like a computer is wrong, just as treating people like animals or animals like people is wrong. is a computer better than a door? no.