I’ve had a certain debate a few times where you might say we argue over the “semantics” of the meat industry.
I am what you would call a vegetarian. While vegetarians won’t eat things that caused harm to produce, a vegan won’t eat anything having to do with an animal. A lot of those who would fall under the latter category hate us because they say anything that remotely resembles someone enjoying an animal product is supporting the meat industry which then kills animals, which means merely eating an animal product makes someone a murderer.
Meanwhile, there’s this concept many call piracy. It’s the idea that, as the meme proverbially puts it, “you can download a car”. The idea here, which I say in the way I do because there’s still an ongoing debate about it, is that it affects nobody. But then there’s the whole industry thing I mentioned. People on the other side of the debate often say “well what about the industry”. I’m not sure where on the scale in this topic you might put me, but I feel like there’s a glaring contradiction here. When it comes to animals, people think of the industry, but otherwise that’s not a factor.
My question is… why?
Suppose I go to a friend’s house. They’re thinking of having chicken or eggs for dinner. They ask if I would eat some if I stayed over. I don’t loom forward to eating meat, but in my mind, it’s not like the circumstance of having it for dinner didn’t fall in place in front of me, so I say sure.
Later, I talk about it in hindsight. A vegan would come and ask me why I did that. The ones I’ve spoken to have often said that eating eggs, despite them not harming the chicken, can be traced back to the store which can be traced back to the meat industry which they say kills animals absolutely and out of necessity, and that this is all direct and absolute enough that I’m a financer of the animal’s suffering. All because here I am eating eggs.
BUT… then there is the other issue. There are those on the “con” side of the piracy debate, who say “piracy can be traced back to X which can be traced back to Y which means you’re ruining someone’s livelihood”. But these people, using the above “logic”, are few and far between. And the same people who supported that then say here “I don’t see how it’s that directly traceable.”
So to the first paragraph. Thats called freegan and not vegetarian I would say. Its debatable because if you said “no I dont want to eat animal products out of ethical reasons” while still having a good contact with the people offering you that, you might move them to being more ethical. If you dont mind in this case, they dont even see that you would not really do that, so they think you do nothing big, your influence on them is not existent. At the same time you are actively socially strengthening their believes, as “even a vegetarian eats animal products sometimes” and thats “just human, we are not perfect” bla bla.
So even though its tempting, freegan is a difficult construct.
Then to the piracy. Do you really pirate movies or games made by 3 people in some garage? I would just buy those lol. And not giving people money, so exploiting their selfchosen work, is not comparable with killing living beings.
I know. Saying they were 100% analogous wasn’t my intention, not all analogies are going to be perfect, just good enough to ask a question.
