Philosophical Vegan Forum

WARNING: If you are not willing to kill an animal for any reason, then reading this may put you in an impossible situation that sends you into dangerous thought spirals. Please consider stabilizing your mental health before proceeding.



The Trolley Problem
In 2014, it occurred to me that not all of the money that is spent on vegan products goes towards covering their production. Some of it is used for the products' transportation, storage (ie. heating/cooling, rental of store space), and handling (ie. employee's salaries), and the rest goes into savings.

At first, the conclusion that I drew from this was that every purchase of a vegan item that I made indirectly caused an animal to die if the company that I was buying it from sold dead animals. Even though I was not hiring the killer to commit the murder, I was still paying for their business to operate. I was paying the killer's rent, utilities, and gas, and without those things, they could not stay open and keep killing. Stores that sold dead animals were like assassins who were not making enough money off of their kills to rent an office, so they sold candy bars on the side. No, I was not directly hiring them, but they would not be able to stay open to offer their services if I did not buy their candy.

Since having this realization, I have researched and e-mailed every single company that I want to buy products from, and refused to give money to any of them that kill animals. However my research has led me to believe that there may not actually be any kill-free companies out there.

For starters, any product that is packaged might be labelled with inks/dyes that contain beetle shellac, animal glycerin, gelatin, or bone char. They might be glued shut with animal bones. Even if it is not packaged, you don't know what fertilizers and pesticides were used to grow the crops the product is made out of (some fertilizers and pesticides contain shrimp, and pesticides obviously kill insects, and probably harm or kill animals that eat the crops they're on), or how many insects were killed in their harvesting.

Most recently, I discovered that computer screens have cholesterol in them, and batteries have gelatin, which means that even if a company avoids all of the above killings, they are definitely hiring people to kill animals in order to make the batteries for their cars/trucks, and the computers that they use to operate their businesses.

Worst of all, even if a single company somehow managed to avoid all of these killings, they all give portions of their money to other companies (for individual items that their businesses use, or ingredients for their products, or advertisements, building maintenance, etc.), all of which give portions of their proceeds to other companies, and so on and so forth, and all of those companies are staffed by people who are more likely than not spending their salaries on animal death. It is impossible to give your money to literally anyone without it eventually being used to kill an animal.

When I realized all of this, I processed it with a friend of mine who is very far from being vegan, but is usually capable of figuring out how to solve problems using whatever you give him to work with, and we came to some very difficult conclusions.

The first thing we clarified was that the portion of money that is taken from a vegan purchase to cover labour/transportation/utilities/etc. is probably only enough to cover the labour/transportation/utilities/etc. that it takes to sell that one item. For example: if I buy a cabbage, the money covers the growing of the cabbage itself, the one foot of space that it takes on the shelf, and the 1% of the heating and rent of the building that is needed to stock that one cabbage. It is not enough to pay for the heating of the entire meat section. So in that respect, buying a vegan product does not heat, rent, and staff the store that sells the meat. It only heats/rents/staffs enough of the store to sell that one cabbage. So if the store only sold cabbages, then it would only be able to rent/heat a large enough space to shelve the cabbages. The only reason they can shelve meat is because they sell it. Essentially, each 'tenant' pays for their own 'unit' in the apartment.

That being said, the portion of the purchase that goes into savings can be used for anything. Even if you are only buying vegan products from that store, if the vast majority of their clients are buying tons of meat, then the store will still use your contributions to their savings to expand their meat section. So in order to know whether or not your vegan purchase is funding the killing of animals, you need to know what each company is doing with their savings. If your money goes into their savings in 2020 and they only use their 2020 savings for vegetables, then you're fine. But if they use some of their 2020 savings for new computers, trucks, or meat, then you've just funded the killing of multiple animals. You need to know what each company is planning to do with their savings, every step of the production line, for every ingredient in every item used in every step of the production line. That's impossible.

So the only way to make completely sure that you do not ever contribute to the death of an animal/insect... is to kill yourself. But you can't even do that, because if you do, any animals that are dependent on you could end up dead as a result (ex: not being able to find homes for your pets, thus resulting in the SPCA putting them down), and the humans who mourn your death are likely to turn to comfort eating/spending, which will force them to contribute more to the system of killing than they normally would. Even if you have no dependents or loved-ones, your body is host to millions of living organisms, all of which would die if you killed yourself.

So suicide is out of the option. But without it, the only possible way to live a completely murder-free life is to live in a completely self-contained, self-sustaining, hyper-vigilant, off-grid vegan society in which every member meticulously analyzes 100% of their actions and never steps on the grass for fear of squishing an insect. Also, they all die young because none of them can get medical tests done or receive medical treatments of any kind.

If there was not so much horror in the world, I would absolutely choose this option, if it even exists. However, if I chose to live a life in which I never contributed in any way to the death of any being that has consciousness, it would be impossible for me to stop anyone else from killing. I could not have a career that participated in the real world in any way, nor could I visit people using busses/cars, or use telephones/computers/etc. to change people's minds outside of a career.

So it all comes down to the trolley problem. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is the following question: if you saw a trolley headed down a track toward a group of five people that it was definitely going to kill, but you had the option of switching its course so that it veered down a track that had one person on it and definitely killed them instead, would you pull the switch? Once presented with the option, you are immediately responsible for someone's death, because if you do nothing when you could have, five people are going to die because of your inaction, but if you pull the switch, then you directly caused the death of the one individual. So which is worse: directly causing a death through your action, or indirectly causing it through your inaction? Either way, it is your fault.

The same thing can be said of this situation: you can move to a vegan commune and do nothing to save animals--thus causing their deaths through your inaction--or participate in the real world in order to save them--thus causing their deaths through your action.

I don't know what to do. I can't tell which is worse. I've spent the last six years coming up with a plan to change the way people think about animal rights through my career. I was hoping to use my life to save lives. But I have no idea how to do that without taking them. And I cannot justify intentionally killing anyone. It is not okay to kill whenever it suits you in the hopes that doing so will allow you to one day save a life. It is not okay to kill, period. None of your justifications matter to the one who is facing death. They won't be comforted by knowing that you influenced a few people into slightly changing their minds ten years from now so that they decrease their overall level of killing every now and then. All they will know is the terror of facing eternal nothingness, and the agony of their universe collapsing, and nothing will be able to comfort them. Especially if they are an animal that cannot conceptualize how their death might bring about change.

Whatever stereotypes you have about death from watching movies are wrong. It's the worst thing a living being can experience. It's a tear in reality. You don't feel closure. You're not comforted by memories of the past. You don't withdraw into denial. You're completely present, and connected to what's happening inside of you and out, and to all of the information you've ever taken into your brain, and you search it frantically and find nothing that can save you. Your subconscious turns to trying to gather information on the threat that's approaching and connects you completely to the vast unknown of death, and you're hardwired to feel fear when faced with the unknown... and so since death is the largest unknown you have can ever face, it produces the most fear you can ever feel. It becomes your entirety. You exist on another level of consciousness. And all you can be aware of is the fact that you are about to stop existing forever.

I know that animals can't conceptualize eternal nonexistence, but they most certainly experience everything else that I just described. They can't comfort themselves by dreaming of heaven or withdrawing into memories or analysis. They are completely present, experiencing every moment of their fading existence. I just can't do that to them. I can't do that to any animal, ever. Even when I have to have my pets put down, I know I am a murderer, and I never get over it.

Please help me. I have no idea how to keep living. I don't know how to choose between murder through action and murder through inaction. And if I kill myself, my dog will be put down, because he is incredibly aggressive and rehoming him will break his mind so much that he bites someone and gets put down (I got him because he had begun biting his owner and her toddler).

Maybe you can spot a flaw in my logic. Maybe I don't understand how expenditures work. I really hope I'm getting it wrong. But if I'm not, then maybe you have an answer to the trolley problem, or another option that I haven't considered. But I'm obviously not going to respond to people saying "you're just being too extreme. Murder when it suits you. Any number of lives taken is okay, so long as it makes your life easier".


Thank you for taking the time to read through this. I hope I haven't ruined your mental health as much as these thoughts have ruined mine. And if I have, I am deeply sorry, and can try to help you think of what questions to ask a therapist when trying to interview them to find the right one for you.


Sen

I don't have time to get to this now, but I suggest you read this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3630&p=35159

It might help get discussion started.

@Red Thank you! I'll look at it!

You sound very tormented.
It's important to acknowledge that everything you do has side effects, it is not limited to anything.

Driving a car worsens climate change, which results in more suffering, eating a bunch of potatoes has a statistical chance of a worm being killed in the harvest, and even just by walking somewhere you can step on an ant.

It is impossible to cause zero harm, and it is instead better to focus on a consequentialist outlook, where you increase happiness and reduce suffering as much as possible and practicable.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't care about eventually eliminating even the small stuff, I believe we'll eventually get there. But for the moment, we should focus on the big stuff, because:

1. the more impactful stuff is magnitudes more important (i.e. making someone drink 1 gallon less milk rather than 5 grams less milk in a chocolate bar is almost 800 times more effective)
2. for a lot of the small stuff, we don't even have the tech/inventions to get rid of it completely (i.e. completely remove crop deaths), and/or getting rid of it would actually cause more harm than good, and would be unfeasible (i.e. not driving anything anymore on a global scale to reduce climate change would make the world collapse)

Everything in life is a trolley problem, you can't expect to have a situation where you will be perfect. As soon as you do something, as consequence someone else might suffer for it, even if minimally.
The only thing you can do to make it better is to try and reduce the amount of suffering that the party with the shorter stick is getting.

And it is also important to acknowledge that with a lot of actions, you do net positive, it's not a choice of lesser evils.
For example, if I convince someone to go vegan, that's a net positive outcome, where both the direct animal killings, crop deaths, climate change, risk of pandemic outbreaks, and whatever else, all gets reduced significantly--with the main drawback being the 'pain' the person is going to have to go through giving up animal products.

But that's why when you consider the outcomes of your actions, if the equation results in a net positive there's no need to regret anything about it, unless you can make it into an even bigger net positive.
Driving a car to work has its drawbacks, but by going to work you're then able to donate a part of your income to animal charities and/or climate change, making up for more than the damage caused by driving a car. Therefore, if you chose to do no harm and drive no car, you would've made a worse choice by giving up the best moral outcome.
Then, of course, you can have an electric car to do even less environmental damage, and that's when tech and solutions can help mitigate the losses even more.

Only focusing on the negative side effects gives the wrong picture, and is as fallacious as focusing only on the positive side effects.

Let me show you what I mean with an example, where you have to choose one of the two following situations to be in:

Situation A: you're able to live without ever harming any sentient being whatsoever, and on top of that you save 1 random sentient being per day from certain death.

Situation B: you can only live by killing 1 sentient being per day, but you also save 100 sentient beings per day from certain death.

It becomes obvious that situation B has the best moral outcome, effectively saving 99 sentient beings vs situation A where you save only 1.
Which would one would you choose to be in, and why?

You may feel bad to kill that 1 sentient being, but if it's the only way to be in situation B, you would morally be a monster to not choose situation B.
You can then try to find a way to not kill that 1 sentient being per day, but situation B is still the best starting point.

If you work through your moral dilemmas in a deontological way, you'll set yourself up for failure, and make wrong conclusions. When you start looking at it in a consequentialist way, weighing pros and cons against each other rather than just focusing on the cons, you can draw the best conclusion and better the world with it.

That aside, I want to address some stuff that you've said:

That being said, the portion of the purchase that goes into savings can be used for anything. Even if you are only buying vegan products from that store, if the vast majority of their clients are buying tons of meat, then the store will still use your contributions to their savings to expand their meat section.

No, that's not necessarily correct.

A business doesn't just keep pumping money in a place that doesn't give net profits as much as another.
If section A makes money and section B doesn't (or makes less than A), it only makes sense to reduce section B to the point where it's more profitable (reduce size = reduce costs of operation and less waste for the products not bought = more profitability), and to expand section A to capitalize on the profits.
By buying more vegan products, you're showing a bigger chance for profitability and incentivizing the expansion for it.

If all the profits from vegan products were funneled into expanding the meat section, then why even keep the vegan section (that makes less money), and not replace it altogether with something more profitable?

The vegan section exists to begin with to fill in the demand, and only the demand is the driver for what expands. By increasing demand for vegan products, you're increasing profitability for vegan products.

If product X is making you more profits than product Y, which one would you rather put more of in the shelves of your supermarket?
Companies look for self-sustaining products, not funneling one side's profits into the other.

Yes, it could happen that a vegan section fails and some of the profits made for it get put into meat, but considering the current demand, it's probably the opposite, as vegan demand is rising faster than meat. That's why it's important to keep buying vegan products.
There's eventually a balance point that is reached between the vegan and meat section, and it's reached pretty fast, and then demand shifts the scale over time.

If the vegan section has 100 products but is rising 100% every month, and the meat section has 10000 products but is stale, most people still buy meat but the expansion is happening in the vegan section.

Buying vegan products and mock meats is one of the most effective forms of activism that there are, not only by making companies switch to vegan more and more, but also by allowing people to have a better access to vegan products and driving down the costs, which is going to make more people be willing to go vegan.

It is not: gamble buying vegan products risking that the profits will be put into meat.
It is: either you buy vegan products and help tip the scale more towards vegan products, or not do it and be sure it'll tip towards the meat products.

Even if you have no dependents or loved-ones, your body is host to millions of living organisms, all of which would die if you killed yourself.

Microorganisms are not sentient and do not possess any moral value by themselves.

So which is worse: directly causing a death through your action, or indirectly causing it through your inaction? Either way, it is your fault.

Or you can say:

So which is better: saving five people, or saving one? Either way, it is your merit.

But you should instead say, to have an accurate representation:

So which has the best moral outcome: having five saved and having one die, or having five die and having one saved? Either way, it's your responsibility.

Fault and merit have little do to do with understanding what the best consequences are.

The same thing can be said of this situation: you can move to a vegan commune and do nothing to save animals--thus causing their deaths through your inaction--or participate in the real world in order to save them--thus causing their deaths through your action.

You keep looking at only the negative side of your actions, not considering the positive ones and seeing that when you have to choose what to do the negative and positive sum each other out.
Participating in the real world would most likely be the best choice, as less animals will suffer and die as a result.

It is not okay to kill, period.

And therein lies your fallacy and why you're so tormented. Because of a deontological stance that is impossible to keep.

Would it be OK to kill 1 human to save 10? According to that logic, no.
What about killing 1 dog to save 1 million people? According to that logic, no.
What about killing 1 mosquito to save 1 trillion people from eternal suffering? Nope.

You can make any reduction ad absurdum to show how it doesn't work.

None of your justifications matter to the one who is facing death.

Yes, and none of your justifications matter to the ones who are not being saved.

So, it's best to do right by the most amount of sentient beings, and not focusing arbitrarily on only one side.

@thebestofenergy thank you so much for the thought and effort put into your reply! I really appreciate it! I want to respond with a clear head so that I can fully process what you are saying and respond with sufficient mental energy. I cannot predict when exactly I will be able to do so, but I will try to respond within the next 4-5 days.

Sen wrote: ↑Thu Feb 04, 2021 6:12 pm I cannot predict when exactly I will be able to do so, but I will try to respond within the next 4-5 days.

No worries, that's the great thing about forums - there's no deadline.

These are reads that are relevant to some of the points you made and that you might find useful in the meantime:

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7396
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7345

@thebestofenergy

thebestofenergy wrote: ↑Thu Feb 04, 2021 6:55 am You sound very tormented.

Yes, this realization has completely hijacked my life. It has been causing me insomnia, which is why I'm only just responding now... so I'm sorry for taking long, but I've just been in a massive brain fog and haven't been able to process this properly. And then, just as I found some clarity, one of my friends had a medical emergency that required my full attention for three weeks. So I'm really sorry for only just getting to this now, but this is the first time I've been able to since my initial post.

It is impossible to cause zero harm, and it is instead better to focus on a consequentialist outlook, where you increase happiness and reduce suffering as much as possible and practicable.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't care about eventually eliminating even the small stuff, I believe we'll eventually get there. But for the moment, we should focus on the big stuff,

I don't really believe pleasure/happiness exists. I believe that everything we identify as 'happiness/pleasure' is simply relief from pain (ex: getting a foot rub only 'feels good' when you have knots or something that is causing damage that needs to be 'healed'. The reason it feels 'good' is because you are removing the source of damage, but if you were to do the same thing to a foot that is fully healed, it would feel uncomfortable or painful, because the rubbing is causing more damage than healing). I see 'happiness' as being similar to 'coldness'--it doesn't actually exist. There is simply the absence of heat/pain. So focusing on increasing something that doesn't exist doesn't make sense to me, and I can't do it. But I can certainly focus on removing/reducing pain. That seems like a tangible goal that I can plan towards.

And it is also important to acknowledge that with a lot of actions, you do net positive, it's not a choice of lesser evils.
For example, if I convince someone to go vegan, that's a net positive outcome, where both the direct animal killings, crop deaths, climate change, risk of pandemic outbreaks, and whatever else, all gets reduced significantly--with the main drawback being the 'pain' the person is going to have to go through giving up animal products.

I hadn't considered the idea that certain actions can lead to net positive for some reason. I guess because of the philosophy I just explained above. But I can certainly look at it a "some actions both cause and prevent damage, while others only prevent it". So the "net positive" actions would be the ones that only reduce/prevent damage.

But that's why when you consider the outcomes of your actions, if the equation results in a net positive there's no need to regret anything about it, unless you can make it into an even bigger net positive.

I don't agree that there's nothing to regret, but I can be begrudgingly satisfied with saying: "the most productive way to reach the goal of eliminating animal death is to do the most possible with your present resources, make note of the places where what you had was not sufficient to prevent deaths, and then use the data you gathered/analyzed to make and execute better and more successful plans in the future (in part by planning to obtain what was missing from the first attempt)". But the cost of an animal's death has nothing to do with how it impacts me or anyone else. The cost is determined by how it impacted the animal. Therefore, since the animal can never move on and recover from it, neither can I. My focus is not on my own loss--it is on what the animal lost. To say otherwise is like saying "kidnapping, torturing, and murdering a child is only tragic because the child's parents will be upset." No--it is irreparably tragic because the child is dead, and can never recover. That cannot in any way be lessened by the healing and moving on of the parents. So I will focus on reducing deaths, but never stop regretting the ones that I cannot prevent. (I'm not upset with you, by the way. I have no idea what tone you are reading this in, but I am writing it in a neutral one).

A business doesn't just keep pumping money in a place that doesn't give net profits as much as another.
If section A makes money and section B doesn't (or makes less than A), it only makes sense to reduce section B to the point where it's more profitable (reduce size = reduce costs of operation and less waste for the products not bought = more profitability), and to expand section A to capitalize on the profits.
(...)
Yes, it could happen that a vegan section fails and some of the profits made for it get put into meat, but considering the current demand, it's probably the opposite, as vegan demand is rising faster than meat. That's why it's important to keep buying vegan products.

Maybe I didn't phrase it properly, but that was exactly my point: that if a company decides that their meat section is more profitable for them, then they will use the money I gave them to expand it. There is no way to be certain that your money will not be used for meat when you buy from someone who sells meat, because you cannot be sure of how they are hoping to use it. Even if their vegan section is growing, they may have plans to do repaint or do construction or something with products that include dead animals. Even if the number of vegans is growing where you live, there is no way to predict how the company you are purchasing from is going to use your money.

By buying more vegan products, you're showing a bigger chance for profitability and incentivizing the expansion for it.

The vegan section exists to begin with to fill in the demand, and only the demand is the driver for what expands. By increasing demand for vegan products, you're increasing profitability for vegan products.

I do agree with this, however, which is why I used to only shop at vegan grocery stores. Rather than supporting the vegan section at mainstream supermarkets in the hope that they decide to expand their vegan section with my money, I tried giving my money only to people who were definitely going to use it to exclusively buy vegan products, thus expanding their business and making them more accessible to other vegans. If purely vegan grocery stores became successful enough to meet people's entire grocery needs, then people could stop there once and be fully satisfied, and then leave. As it is right now, people don't know what they can and can't get there because the businesses are so unreliable, so they often have to waste time going there, only to not find what they were looking for, and then even if they did, they often have to go to another grocery store afterward in order to complete their list. Nobody wants to do this, so they just skip the vegan stores altogether. But if all vegans exclusively supported purely vegan grocery stores, then they could become more like supermarkets, and eventually branch out so that they came to be recognizable/familiar, and known for being reliable. This would make it way easier for people to go to them, and when people wanted to transition over to being vegan, they wouldn't just see a few items in the vegan aisle of the mainstream supermarkets and think "is this really all there is? I'll never make it on these products alone". Instead, they would think "oh, I can go to that supermarket everyone goes to and get everything I need there. It'll be easy".

The only reason I have stopped going to purely vegan grocery stores at the moment is because there is only ever one in existence at a time in my entire province, and they always exist for about a year or two, and then go out of business, only to be replaced with another some time later. The last one I was supporting went out of business right before the pandemic started, and I have not found one since, so I am trying to find ways to order directly from vegan companies online, but it is expensive and very difficult.

So which has the best moral outcome: having five saved and having one die, or having five die and having one saved? Either way, it's your responsibility.

Fault and merit have little do to do with understanding what the best consequences are.

None of your justifications matter to the one who is facing death.

Yes, and none of your justifications matter to the ones who are not being saved.

So, it's best to do right by the most amount of sentient beings, and not focusing arbitrarily on only one side.

The two above quotes were what got through to me. I still had a lot of trouble processing them, but I would like to explain what I discovered about my thought-barriers so that others who might be struggling with the same ones might be able to identify and get over them like I did.

In order to explain, I have to start with a few definitions:
1) I define 'innately moral' as: any action that causes no harm
2) I define 'innately immoral' as: any action that causes harm
3) I define 'corrupt morality' as: innately immoral actions that must be done in order to minimize harm when there are no innately moral options available (ie. choosing the lesser of two evils in order to minimize the harm that is done when there is no way to ensure that no harm is done at all)

With that out of the way, here is my explanation.
The way that I have been looking at this whole thing was essentially "how do I personally reduce the number of innately immoral things that I do" instead of "what will reduce the overall death toll?". My goal was not to reduce the death toll--it was to reduce my own innate immorality--ie. to live in a way that causes no harm (in this case, the focus was exclusively on causing no irreparable harm (ie. death)). I think that my mentality was that if everyone did the same thing, then the amount of harm being done in the world would drop to a point where only a small percentage of the population would have to cause harm in order to prevent/repair it--ie. if everyone who was capable of living in an innately moral way did so, then the number of people who were forced to use corrupted morality would be minimized.

If we lived in such a world, then being innately moral would be the most moral thing I could do, because it would be the best way to minimize the overall death toll (and the overall harm that is done). But because of the way the world works, using innate morality actually results in the overall death toll being higher than it would be if I used corrupt morality.

I think that I could not see this is because I did not have the coping mechanisms I needed to accept that we live in a reality where it is impossible to survive without killing. I was desperately trying to find a way to live kill-free while unconsciously avoiding the information that could prove to me that doing so was impossible. I just so happened to have discovered said information at a time when my brain had shifted enough for me to consciously acknowledge it, thus leading to my initial post.

So for starters, I could not consider the big-picture mentality (ie. minimizing the overall number of deaths instead of preventing all of them) because doing so would mean acknowledging that there is no way to live kill-free. The second reason I had difficulty seeing that it is the best mentality was that everyone who has ever explained it to me has done so to justify their mentality of "there's no point in me going vegan, because nobody else will do it, so it doesn't actually make a difference". My gut response to that has always been "and if everyone who ever said that actually went vegan, then it would make a huge difference, and even if my lifestyle isn't enough to change the world, every little contribution adds up, so I need to contribute as much as I can".

People also 'focus on the big picture' all the time in order to get out of helping humans with various problems, and I have seen it most prominently in those who see others as less than people--ie. those who see humans as; personal experiences, opportunities, objects (trophies, toys, etc.), concepts, extensions of themselves, etc. Basically, those who see living beings as things to be used for personal gain and then discarded are the ones who find it easiest to use the mentality of "what matters most is that I personally feel I have overall done a good job by my own standards when I die". They do not focus on the cost to the individual that was harmed, because all that matters to them is whether or not they have been harmed by that individual's experience (ex: "it doesn't matter what that individual lost by dying. No matter how tragic it was for them, their death is not a tragedy because I personally can learn from it and move on (and they never existed except as a tool for me to improve myself anyway, so since they served their purpose, it's okay for them to be discarded now)."

My point is: those who focus on the big picture usually do so because all they care about is their own overall 'moral end points' (ie. the number of points you get at the end of your life for having followed the rules of morality), and they see other living entities as personal tools for them to use to get as many points as they can. The problem is that this mentality looks almost exactly the same as its polar opposite: the acknowledgement that each living entity is real and matters, and the loss of their lives is an irreparable tragedy that should be prevented at all costs, which makes it essential to choose the option that saves as many as is possible, whenever there is no option to save them all. The first mentality says "the means justify the ends, so long as I feel good about my effort", and the second one says "whether or not I feel good is irrelevant. What matters is the wellbeing of others", but both come to the conclusion of "kill the few to save many".

Despite realizing this, I still could not bring myself to ever kill one to save a million (even the mosquito question was hard for me), so I had to analyze why, and I realized what the mental block was: whenever I picture myself killing a single animal, I picture every vivid feeling that would go through that animal's mind and body as it was dying--because this was the method that I used to get over my meat cravings when I became vegetarian. Any time I wanted to eat meat, I would picture the animal being slaughtered, so going down that pathway in my brain was easy, since I had done it so often. So when I played through the thought experiment of "which is worse: me killing an animal, or me letting others kill animals?", it was easy for me to picture my own killing. But I had never needed to imagine animals dying when I was trying to save them from others for multiple reasons: 1) I didn't need the motivation, since I already cared enough, and was not fighting my own desires. Picturing the death would just destroy me and render me useless, 2) Picturing their death would not help me get inside the mind of the person who I was trying to talk to, since they were not doing so, therefore it served no purpose in helping me figure out how to work with their thoughts to change them, 3) Seeing animals get butchered or injured in any way is so traumatic to me that I've never had to watch those documentaries that people recommend on animal cruelty in order to become and stay vegetarian/vegan. My brain never needed to build the pathway of imagining others killing animals (and I had very few images of it happening in my head to draw on, since I don't watch it happening), so when trying to play through the thought experiment of "which is worse: you killing one or others killing many?", I did not automatically imagine the second half.

Not only did I not have the natural inclination to picture others killing animals, but even if I had, the death of a single entity consists of a billion pieces of information for the brain to process, and the human brain is not even capable of picturing numbers larger than six in it at a single time, so trying to process the entirety of a single death is difficult enough, but trying to picture a million deaths is physiologically impossible. It is useless. It is why humans are infamously more callous when it comes to mass human death than they are when it comes to single deaths. We are not capable of empathizing with that many deaths all at once. So the thought experiment of "which is worse: a single animal death, or the death of a million animals" feels like asking "which is worse: a single death, or the abstract concept of death?" In the first example, I can feel empathy. In the second one, I cannot. It feels like trying to picture nothing. So it becomes the question of "which is worse: the death of a living creature, or the death of nothing?" That's why I was having such a hard time seeing how obvious it is that not saving a million lives is worse than committing a single murder.

I still cannot empathize with or even imagine more than one death at once (meaning I cannot get inside of their heads and go through what each of them is experiencing). But I have been with all of my pets as they have died, so although I do not have the mental capacity to relive my empathic journey with all of them at the same time, I can at least picture other people killing my pets one after the other, and me allowing it to happen. This rephrases the question as "which is worse: giving someone the gun they need to kill the cow that won't get off the train tracks I'm on, or not getting home in time to save my cats when I know that somebody is planning on beating them to death?" It immediately becomes obvious that the results of negligent homicide are as bad as the results of homicide itself, because I can live through both using pre-existing thought patterns.

More importantly, living through the deaths of others in the thought experiment makes it about the individuals dying--not about my responsibility in the matter. Focusing on my responsibility made it about me, and about which crime made me a worse person: allowing or committing murder. In this scenario, it is obvious that I would be a worse person if I committed a murder than if I allowed someone else to do so. But focusing on the cost of death to the individuals experiencing it makes it about their losses, which are equal which makes it obvious that all deaths are also equal.

So to summarize: the reason I couldn't see why allowing a million deaths to happen was worse than committing one murder was because;
1) I wouldn't have to if it was possible to save everyone, and I couldn't accept that that was impossible,
2) The idea of focusing on the overall death toll sounded so much like what people with psychopathic tendencies say to justify their immorality that I could not see the other reasons for considering it, and
3) I have an underdeveloped ability to picture others killing animals and am literally incapable of picturing millions of deaths all at once, which led to me only being able to consider the thought experiment in terms of my own responsibility and what it said about me as a person.
And the final conclusion I have come to is that all deaths are equal, which means that my kills are not more costly than those of others. That means that it is just as important for me to prevent others from murdering as it is to prevent myself from doing so. Therefore, since it is impossible to prevent all murder, the most moral thing that can be done is to minimize the overall death toll... which is of course the conclusion you gave me. It just took a lot of re-organizing in my brain to figure out how it fit... but it did, so thank you for giving me it.

I still believe that we should all strive to reduce our own innate immorality as much as is possible, and really consider each death to be a tragedy so as not to get accustomed to them. I think it would be incredibly easy for a lot of people to start making allowances for more and more killings, always being able to justify them by saying "well it's in the name of the greater good, right? I'm sure one day I'll make up for it...", without actually ever doing so. When you start doing that, you become a psychopath who sees other people's tragedies as personal experiences to be made use of instead of recognizing that they happened to the individual more than they happened to you, and that that individual mattered outside of how they affect you.

So I think that the best way to reduce your own killings is to make yourself permanently self-sustaining so that you do not have to support murderous companies... that means giving your money to those companies at first to set yourself up, but then being able to stop for good once you are self-sustaining enough. So for example: it's been my plan since I started to realize that all companies kill animals to move to a self-sustaining farm and own equipment like a soy-milk machine and flour-grinder and such. I do not believe I would be able to be completely self-sustaining without spending 100% of my time growing and making food, but at least I could grow and make most of it so that I would only support companies when absolutely necessary. And of course I would only support the ones who are vegan and local.

Thank you for all your help. I've really been torn up about this, and I'm still quite unhappy with the conclusion I've had to come to, but I think it is the lesser of evils. And I would love to be able to use my life to make it so that people do not have to face this horrible decision ever again. Maybe focusing on that goal can help me cope a little.

Sen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:41 pm Yes, this realization has completely hijacked my life. It has been causing me insomnia, which is why I'm only just responding now... so I'm sorry for taking long, but I've just been in a massive brain fog and haven't been able to process this properly. And then, just as I found some clarity, one of my friends had a medical emergency that required my full attention for three weeks. So I'm really sorry for only just getting to this now, but this is the first time I've been able to since my initial post.

Sorry to hear this happened to you.

Sen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:41 pm I don't really believe pleasure/happiness exists. I believe that everything we identify as 'happiness/pleasure' is simply relief from pain (ex: getting a foot rub only 'feels good' when you have knots or something that is causing damage that needs to be 'healed'. The reason it feels 'good' is because you are removing the source of damage, but if you were to do the same thing to a foot that is fully healed, it would feel uncomfortable or painful, because the rubbing is causing more damage than healing).

Some people would enjoy it even without having any knots or problems, and purely just out of the blue, though - it would really depend on the person's sensitivity rather than the state of what they have.

Pleasure/happiness exists, just like suffering does. Just like you did here, you could also argue that suffering doesn't exist and it's simply the lack of happiness.

You can go from being neutral to having pleasure without alleviating any suffering (i.e. random gift surprise, nice view when looking outside the window, nice smell of food when you wake up even if you're not hungry, etc.).
Happiness isn't required to be a counterposition to a certain type of suffering (that you would otherwise experience) for it to exist, as in fact you can find many cases in which happiness can happen out of a neutral state, and where you weren't even aware of the fact that X would make you suffer if you didn't have it.

Sen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:41 pm I hadn't considered the idea that certain actions can lead to net positive for some reason. I guess because of the philosophy I just explained above. But I can certainly look at it a "some actions both cause and prevent damage, while others only prevent it". So the "net positive" actions would be the ones that only reduce/prevent damage.

A net positive action would be an action where the sum of its consequences results in a positive outcome.

If X = positive consequences, Y = negative consequences, Z = moral outcome:

X - Y = Z

15 - 14 = +1
That would be a net positive result (meaning the action is better taken than not).
15 - 3 = +12
That would be a higher net positive result.
15 - 0.001 = +14.999
That would be an action that has such negligible downsides that you might as well consider it without downsides.

However, that doesn't mean that it's the best action possible.

100 - 84 = +16
That would be the best possible action to take out of all 4 of them if you could only choose one, because it has the best moral outcome (best positive net).

There are actions where the downsides are so negligible you might as well consider them without any downsides (like the third example), but that doesn't mean they're the only good ones or even the best ones.

(you do say in the last section of your post how decreasing the overall suffering is better, but happiness is a factor to consider too)

Sen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:41 pm

But that's why when you consider the outcomes of your actions, if the equation results in a net positive there's no need to regret anything about it, unless you can make it into an even bigger net positive.

I don't agree that there's nothing to regret

Why?
Regretting means you wish you had done it differently, but if it's the highest positive result you could've achieved in that scenario, the regret is misplaced and irrational.

Sen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:41 pm since the animal can never move on and recover from it, neither can I.

Yes, you can. Because an animal died from your actions, doesn't mean you can't recover from it and you have to punish yourself forever.
Doing that would actually be morally bad, not only for self-torment, but also because you wouldn't be productive much being in such a self-harming state of mind.

Sen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:41 pm My focus is not on my own loss--it is on what the animal lost. To say otherwise is like saying "kidnapping, torturing, and murdering a child is only tragic because the child's parents will be upset." No--it is irreparably tragic because the child is dead, and can never recover. That cannot in any way be lessened by the healing and moving on of the parents. So I will focus on reducing deaths, but never stop regretting the ones that I cannot prevent.

While it is important to remember the harm we did in our past to push us forward with motivation to do better in our future (guilt can be useful in that way), it becomes self-destructive for no benefit when we let it get to a stage where we cannot stop mentally punishing ourselves for it. There is no use in that.
It becomes an argument of what we 'deserve', and not of what's best. And that leads to outcomes that are not positive at all - neither for us, or the animals. A lot of people feel like it's honorable and just for them to indulge in self-punishment for what they did wrong, without realizing it doesn't lead to anything, and that the animals don't care about that either.
You can use the energy to change things, rather than being self-harming without purpose.

A business doesn't just keep pumping money in a place that doesn't give net profits as much as another.
If section A makes money and section B doesn't (or makes less than A), it only makes sense to reduce section B to the point where it's more profitable (reduce size = reduce costs of operation and less waste for the products not bought = more profitability), and to expand section A to capitalize on the profits.
(...)
Yes, it could happen that a vegan section fails and some of the profits made for it get put into meat, but considering the current demand, it's probably the opposite, as vegan demand is rising faster than meat. That's why it's important to keep buying vegan products.

Sen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:41 pm Maybe I didn't phrase it properly, but that was exactly my point: that if a company decides that their meat section is more profitable for them, then they will use the money I gave them to expand it. There is no way to be certain that your money will not be used for meat when you buy from someone who sells meat, because you cannot be sure of how they are hoping to use it.

There is no way to be certain of anything when trying to make future predictions - the person could also use the money you give them to buy child slaves.
Or they could also use the money you give them to donate to the Against Malaria Foundation.

You can't assume them to spend it in a good or bad way simply because of how you feel, it's about where you put your money that tips the balance. If they would otherwise have a 50/50 chance of spending them in a good or bad way, spending that money on vegan foods definitely tips the balance on the good side. If they don't just pocket your money, the chances that your money will be used to expand the vegan section will be significantly more likely than not - therefore, it's better to spend them that way than, say, throwing them down the drain.

Sen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:41 pm Even if their vegan section is growing, they may have plans to do repaint or do construction or something with products that include dead animals. Even if the number of vegans is growing where you live, there is no way to predict how the company you are purchasing from is going to use your money.

Here is, I think, where you miss the mark.
It's not just about your money. This is about statistics.

If the vegan section is growing, more money will be pumped in the vegan section.
Say 90'000 dollars will be put in expanding, maintaining and publicizing the vegan section, while 10'000 dollars will be put in maintaining and publicizing the meat section.

Your 10 bucks might go towards the 10'000 dollars to maintain the meat section (because at that moment maybe it's needed there), but both caps have to eventually be fulfilled (90'000 + 10'000), which means that if your 10 bucks are put there, 90 bucks from a guy eating meat will have to eventually be put in the 90'000 vegan section.
Technically, in that scenario, your money would be used so that 1 dollar every 10 dollars would go to the meat section, and 9 dollars every 10 dollars would go to the vegan section - but then, so would the meat-eaters do the same thing.
In this scenario, the more you buy vegan options and make them want to expand the vegan side of the market, the more you make both parties' money go less in the meat section and more in the vegan section.

If you instead decide to stop buying food altogether and starve, not only you would die, but the % of money spent in the vegan section would decrease, meaning you would make both parties' money go less towards the vegan section (after they see the difference in less demand for vegan products) and more towards the meat one, as if you never changed it towards the vegan one to begin with.

Sen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:41 pm But if all vegans exclusively supported purely vegan grocery stores, then they could become more like supermarkets, and eventually branch out so that they came to be recognizable/familiar, and known for being reliable. This would make it way easier for people to go to them, and when people wanted to transition over to being vegan, they wouldn't just see a few items in the vegan aisle of the mainstream supermarkets and think "is this really all there is? I'll never make it on these products alone". Instead, they would think "oh, I can go to that supermarket everyone goes to and get everything I need there. It'll be easy".

On the flip side, if the majority of vegans started going only to vegan grocery stores, the main chain stores (Walmart, Target) would see significantly less profitability in tapping in the vegan market.
Which would mean significantly less vegan products.
Which would mean three things: existing vegans without vegan grocery stores near them would struggle more and there would be higher recidivism, vegan curious people would be less likely to try out veganism because their usual grocery store has less options, and meat-eaters wouldn't even see the vegan options that they would maybe try out to see what kind of vegan foods they might like or not.

I don't think it's useful to only buy from vegan stores, it's really good to show big chains that veganism = money (they have pretty much food monopoly for a reason, it's good to change the monopoly into a more vegan one).

Sen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:41 pm My goal was not to reduce the death toll--it was to reduce my own innate immorality--ie. to live in a way that causes no harm (in this case, the focus was exclusively on causing no irreparable harm (ie. death)). I think that my mentality was that if everyone did the same thing, then the amount of harm being done in the world would drop to a point where only a small percentage of the population would have to cause harm in order to prevent/repair it--ie. if everyone who was capable of living in an innately moral way did so, then the number of people who were forced to use corrupted morality would be minimized.

If we lived in such a world, then being innately moral would be the most moral thing I could do, because it would be the best way to minimize the overall death toll (and the overall harm that is done). But because of the way the world works, using innate morality actually results in the overall death toll being higher than it would be if I used corrupt morality.

Yes, there are often compromises you have to make.
Your 'corrupt morality' is actually just morality - weighing different sides and their consequences and seeing what you should do to increase happiness and decrease suffering the most.

Sen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:41 pm I think that I could not see this is because I did not have the coping mechanisms I needed to accept that we live in a reality where it is impossible to survive without killing. I was desperately trying to find a way to live kill-free while unconsciously avoiding the information that could prove to me that doing so was impossible.

Yes, as it currently stands it is impossible.
That doesn't mean it will always be impossible (we might eventually be brains floating around the universe living thanks to the energy of the sun), but for right now, 0 harm is not an option.

I'm glad you managed to sort out the issues you were having.

Sen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:41 pm The first mentality says "the means justify the ends, so long as I feel good about my effort", and the second one says "whether or not I feel good is irrelevant. What matters is the wellbeing of others", but both come to the conclusion of "kill the few to save many".

Yes, the difference between 'ethical' egoism and utilitarian consequentialism.
Except that ethical egoism doesn't lead to 'kill few to save many', it just leads to justifications to do whatever you please at the end of the day.

Also, saying that whether you feel good or not is irrelevant isn't correct, you are sentient and therefore should be part of the moral consideration as well - arbitrarily counting you out doesn't make sense. The difference, though, is that you don't put yourself on a pedestal, but instead compare yourself fairly.

Sen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:41 pm So the thought experiment of "which is worse: a single animal death, or the death of a million animals" feels like asking "which is worse: a single death, or the abstract concept of death?" In the first example, I can feel empathy. In the second one, I cannot. It feels like trying to picture nothing.

And that is why morality goes way beyond empathy, and empathy can help you only to a certain extent.

Sen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 7:41 pm So I think that the best way to reduce your own killings is to make yourself permanently self-sustaining so that you do not have to support murderous companies... that means giving your money to those companies at first to set yourself up, but then being able to stop for good once you are self-sustaining enough.

I already touched above why I don't think boycotting the market is good (make it much harder for veganism to grow), and why you shouldn't concern yourself with the chance of your money being used for the meat section (follow statistics, not anecdotal money usage examples).