Bleaklow's recent activity
-
Comment on Any vegans on Tildes? in ~food
-
Comment on Any vegans on Tildes? in ~food
Bleaklow (edited )LinkHello fellow tilde-vegans, First post here. Hugs to all of you. Vegan for about 10 years now, my wife has been vegan well over 30 years, well past keeping track. I was veggie a long time before...- Exemplary
Hello fellow tilde-vegans, First post here. Hugs to all of you.
Vegan for about 10 years now, my wife has been vegan well over 30 years, well past keeping track. I was veggie a long time before officially going vegan as I did not think that I would be able to go vegan and stick to it, so I wasn't going to use any false labels even though I strongly ethically agreed with the stance. I got sick of myself in the end and bit the bullet. One of the best decisions of my life, it was like a weight came off me.
Reasons: Animal rights, antispeciesism, etc are the intellectual reasons, but at the core is that I grew up on a farm, raising pigs for slaughter and shooting, trapping and ferreting wild animals. I know that ethical or humane slaughter is a lie. I know from experience how passionately alive other animals are and how much we steal that from them. When I am in a shop and see plastic wrapped chicken I can feel the soft warmth of a live chicken's feathers and how quivering with curiosity and life she was as I held her. I know that there is no such thing as a humane animal farm as economics forces all farmers to treat "livestock" as a commodity, not another creature with personhood. No matter how much we farmers try to convince ourselves that we love our animals it is always secondary to economics. We can't afford to get a vet in for a sick piglet even if we want to, so we pick them up by the hind leg and smash their head on the concrete.
Tl:dr I am still full of guilt for all those that I mistreated and loaded onto trucks for slaughter. I remember their fear and screams. Being vegan is an absolute moral baseline. It is the neutral position of avoiding harm rather than a positive good. There is more I should be doing.
Do it :)
So easy these days with the sheer abundance of vegan options. The only problem is other people.
My wife is rather cross at the moment. She went vegan decades ago when it was real hairshirt stuff and vegan food all seemed to be made of wholemeal straw clippings. Now that it is easy she has developed a gluten intolerance and is having to start again learning how to cook vegan and gluten free. She defeated the boss level but the game glitched and sent her back to play from Level One again. Very fucked off.
As for the rest of us, it's time to enjoy the bounty available.