Jerkface (any/all)

Right, everyone who disagrees with you is a delusional sky-fairy worshipper. I’m not religious, dude. I’m also not suffering from religious trauma. Clean your shit up.

Clearly you CANNOT define what religion even is. But boy do you ever have strong opinions about something YOU CANNOT EVEN DEFINE. Your damage is just flowing out from every sentence. Your rage cannot change the world, but once you fix yourself, you can start to try.

It doesn’t mean their mental process is slow. It refers to developmental retardation. As if the person’s body is just going to “catch up” one day… Which is why it was a stupid thing to say all along.

Look, I need to spend my efforts on the toxicity and climate collapse apocalypse. I would WELCOME zombies at this point.

I bet you cannot even define religion.

I won’t rape, torture, and murder vulnerable individuals. Call me radical but if I can be happy, healthy, and enjoy life without doing those things to animals, I’m not going to fucking do those things to animals.

We aren’t pretending it isn’t happening. We are making a mindful sacrifice.

Leaving Facebook is more than just not using a website. Facebook is more than a website and leaving it is leaving the entire culture it has captured, so that our energies are spent building the culture that remains uncaptured instead of contributing to the captured culture. It’s a big fucking deal that affects every aspect of your life in modern society.

But complaining about things that have nothing to do with me IS my game. :-(

Cruelty and violence are taboo. Unless you pay someone to do it out of sight, then it’s just breakfast.

But your honour, I only beat him to within an inch of his life. What do you mean, guilty???

Don’t get too attached to anything.

No, it was.

You’re lying to yourself, working backwards from the conclusion you want. Take care. Don’t confuse veganism with your personal morality. Just be aware when you’re not being vegan.

I would remind you that cats are an invasive pest that cause global mass extinction and locally devastate entire ecosystems. I would remind you that HOUSE CATS ALONE make up a category that causes more deaths to birds and mammals in North America – a place where they do not belong at all – than any other cause. I would remind you that the Earth has fewer than half the birds it did when I was born. I would remind you that cats who are left outdoors live significantly shorter lives and suffer more diseases and major injuries than indoor cats.

I would go so far as to suggest you are romanticizing the situation and relying on your own “common sense” rather than actually educating yourself on the risks and supposed benefits.

I’d also add that buying an individual with the preformed intention of manipulating it into loving you is fucked up from any number of moral and philosophical perspectives.

I didn’t say that caretaking is exploitation; it’s not exploitation to operate an animal sanctuary, or to donate money to an animal sanctuary. I said very specifically: owning an animal for the purpose of companionship is exploitation.

Exploitation and harm are not the same thing. You can’t cancel out exploitation by doing “good things”. And we have to be extremely careful when we take it upon ourselves to decide what is good and bad for another, and impose life consequences on that individual.

How can you tell it’s exploitation? Well, consider that you have a certain budget, and you decide that either you are going to donate it to a shelter, or you’re going to adopt an animal yourself. Which one seems more personally appealing? It’s having an animal in your life that loves you, right? (Lets say so, for discussion.)

Even though a shelter could support more animals with the same amount of money, it’s still less appealing than owning an animal. Because you’re personally getting something out of owning the pet. If you can’t get what you want without an animal, then definitionally you need to exploit the animal to get what you want.

Once you are getting something out of it, everything changes in your brain. As a vegan, you know how easy it is to lie to yourself and convince yourself that monstrous atrocity is actually no big deal. It also changes the dynamic. Are your own emotional needs going to come up for example when you are trying to make end of life decisions, for example? Are you going to be able to put the needs of the animal above your own needs in every situation when you are emotionally dependent on the animal? Are you even going to realize if you fail to?

The emotional difference between owning a pet and providing sanctuary is relevant and important. Veganism doesn’t merely protect animals, it protects animals FROM US. It also protects US from our latent carnism that seeks to engage in self-deceit and excuse the terrible things (or even just the less than principled things) we do. A vegan who wants to help strays and abandoned farm animals should donate their time and money to a shelter. It’s a great way to have a chance to interact with animals in a way that is most compatible with veganism.

And if you really really really want a pet… do it. Veganism isn’t the final word on what is right and wrong. Your personal philosophy can come to the conclusion that you are doing the right thing. But both integrity and the safety of the animal require that you recognize that you are stepping outside your veganism, and it is no longer keeping you or your loved ones safe.

You’re also not distinguishing between giving animals sanctuary and keeping them as personal pets; those are different things.

“There should be mandatory nudity in public” is a pretty controversial opinion. But you got me on board. Lets do it.

You’re arguing (bombastically and with quite a bit of disrespect to the person you are having a conversation with) that having pets is good and moral, not that it is vegan. Veganism doesn’t say anything about being nice to animals, giving animals nice homes, or even not euthanizing animals. It says, don’t exploit animals.