🪴vegan blog🪴

happy 20 year anniversary of Neil banging out the tunes!

though every rat is special, it's a wonderful and unusual thing for their accomplishments to be remembered and cherished by so many people so many years later. we're all so fortunate to know about the rat who banged out the tunes!

thank you to all the people who sent me reference photos of their beloved rats for this piece!!! credits under the cut!

I think it may be helpful to re-frame this so that the central assumption is a bit clearer: A) I think this action is unethical. B) X group engage in said action Conclusion: I am therefore anti X group

Do you think that the conclusion logically follows from the premises? I would argue that it doesn't. You can hold that an action is unethical without condemning, erasing or pressuring all groups that are engaging in that action. If we take this logic to its conclusion, vegans are anti almost every group, because almost every group eats animals.

I think that when we are talking about specific animal rights or welfare groups targeting specific indigenous practices, like hunting seals for example, that is a very different thing. I think this is not really helpful action, and while I don't think that is common for animal rights activists, where it does happen I think it is a problem. I do want to emphasise though, that cultural practices are not amoral, and behaviours are not exempt from any examination of their ethics on the basis that they are culturally or spiritually significant.

All that said, I think that it is a bit silly to argue that us being against eating animals means we must be anti-indigenous, on the basis that many indigenous people eat animals. Again, there are indigenous vegans, who are almost unfailingly left out of this conversation. Are they against other indigenous people because they believe that eating animals is immoral?

This doesn't come across as aggressive, but I do think you're coming in with a lot of assumptions. You will not find a single post where I have done anything close to askingn ative people to leave their ancestral lands and start farming, or really any criticism of indigenous hunting as a cultural practice at all.

When I am advocating veganism, I am talking to people who are living in consumer societies, not to subsistance hunting communities or those who otherwise cannot reasonably live without hunting or eating animals. I do want to point out that indigenous culture is not a monolith, plenty of indigeous cultures have been living through arable farming for hundreds of years. There are also indigenous vegans, and I believe that any push for change should come from within that community, not outside of it. You'll find that most progressive vegans would agree with that stance.

As for anti-indigenous sentiment among vegans, this just isn't something I see a lot of, despite how often it is discussed as a big problem among vegans. I know that this sentiment does exist, but it is very much at the fringe. Most of the demonstrations against indigenous practices like seal hunting are largely lead and endorsed by animal welfarists, who usually aren't vegan vegan.

I'm not saying this isn't a problem, we're a diverse community with a lot of differing viewpoints and political alignments. We should absolutely call it out where we see it. Frankly though, I am far more worried about the widespread erasure of animal agriculture (ranching in particular) as one of the key threats to indigenous sovereignty, but instead, everyone wants to talk about animal welfare activists whose are unwisely targeting indigenous people for hunting animals.

Seriously, AI is where you draw the line and care enough to consider the ethics of supporting the company?

Employees being overworked and underpaid in the restaurants weren’t enough?

Employees being overworked, underpaid, and irreversibly traumatised and injured at farms and in slaughterhouses weren’t enough?

The masses of farmed animals being exploited, tortured, and brutally killed at those factory farms and slaughterhouses weren’t enough?

1. Slaughterhouses are ripe with exploitative practices against it's workers

2. Most of the monoculture crop that is grown in not so great conditions is used as animal feed.

3. Vegans are not the only consumers of these "exploitative" products. In fact most of us try to avoid it as much as possible.

Also beyond all of this, I will still agree that there are plant based agriculture practices that are extremely exploitative. Palm oil is destroying orangutan habitat. Cocoa and coffee is destroying regions in Africa.

All of this being said, the fact is that agriculture involving plants *can* be non- exploitative. There are issues there, but they can be fixed with better farming practices. We can stop using insecticides, use crop rotation, pay crop farmers fairly, and still eat the same products, while also bringing back some of the forests we have cut down.