r1veRRR
Who do we throw into the reactor when the majority of people DEMAND something that is only possible with massive destruction of nature, horrendous waste of resources and horrible immoral practices?
If we kill all the “evil” factory farm owners, but still demand cheap meat every day, we’ll end up reinventing that same horrible system.
A world where everyone does the best they can to avoid and/or fight against bad systems is absolutely the ONLY POSSIBLE WORLD where positive change can happen.
How else would the world change if not through individuals choosing to do the right thing? Are really expecting the same people that have fucked us(rich/politicians) to spontaneously develop a conscience and change the world out of the goodness of their hearts?
Before you bring up guillotines, those ALSO require individuals to make personal choices and changes and take risks.
You have to think practically: When has systemic change ever happened without individuals choosing to make a change? Never!
It’s the same for voting, or boycotting or unionizing or even guillotining. The french kings head didn’t spontaneously fall off, it involved many individuals making a choice, risking their life and even dieing.
They also only ever believe that when it’s about work THEY have to do. If it’s about other people, or it’s about things that directly affects them, the tune suddenly changes.
I can’t, as an individual, end rape culture. Is that therefore an excuse to keep making rape jokes, defending rapists etc.? Obviously not, but by the logic of “people against individual change” it’s entirely logically consistent. As long as I say “rape culture bad”, I can keep supporting it. I just have to wait for magical “systemic change without individual change” to rain down from heaven.
Sure, and then what? If we keep the systems around that created this situation in the first place, we’ll end up back where we started, just with new rich people.
Just to pick out the example of veganism: If all rich people are dead, but the masses still want cheap meat every single day, they WILL definitely reinvent factory farming, with all it’s horrible environmental and ethical consequences.
We don’t need animals to consume plants we can’t, because plant food is soooo goddamn more efficient on every metric. We can drastically reduce land, water and energy usage AND still feed way more people with plant foods. We simply do not need to eat animals.
Any form of “sustainable” animal farming I’ve read up on end up being still less resource efficient than plant foods, AND obviously massively reduced output. So we’re truly talking about vegan vs. an ounce of meat a week. That’s not a difference worth defending, considering the other obvious ethical issues.
Finally, why do you feel that it’s important to argue for “99%” veganism? Do you genuinely believe people don’t understand that less is better, but none is best? Do you apply the same argument to other ethical issues, like feminism? Being 99% feminist is a big improvement, but constantly arguing for it in favor of feminism (aka 100%) would obviously look ridiculous. Finally, don’t you realize the humongous difference between “we should abuse animals for our pleasure less” vs. “we shouldn’t do that”? A whole class of racism disappears if we get rid of the association between “animal” and “lesser moral consideration”.
Just in general: More sane defaults, less RTFM. Sure, you can configure everything, but MUST you? A lot of opensource developers seem to believe that configurability is a get-out-of-jail-free card for having to provide a good user experience out of the box.