Philosophical Vegan Forum

Not sure if any of you have seen this Earthling Ed debate, but it's easily one of the most interesting ones I've watched, in particular around the 27:15 mark:
https://youtu.be/et3ZYCuuS3M?si=EPgfDlQLpuPKdVBN&t=1636

Basically, he says that a society capable of protecting itself from outside aggression relies to a large extent on the existence of non-vegans within it, since they are able to get something from meat -- in his words, "bloodlust" -- that gives them the necessary drive to fend off invading forces.

Ed points out that vegans are still very much capable of self-defense when necessary, and really the whole argument seems quite silly. But I think it reveals an interesting aspect of non-vegan psychology that tends to not come out so much in debates, what one might refer to as "non-vegan supremacy". In particular, some of what he said reminds me of this part of a speech by Richard Spencer:
https://youtu.be/1o6-bi3jlxk?si=UJLuA4TxIBWR4_mm&t=77
where he talks about how the non-white races "depend" on the whites (perhaps more specifically, people of German, Nordic, Gallic or Anglo-Saxon descent) in order to exist comfortably in western society.

Okay, perhaps most non-vegans don't really believe that meat has some mystical (or even physiological) effect that makes you more capable in some way. But what they might actually believe may be, somewhat more "reasonably", that the psychological aspects of a person that may predispose them to veganism are not well-suited for achieving the highest levels of productivity in certain lines of work. And so these roles are best filled by people who are not "vegan-inclined". Sure, legally you can't explicitly discriminate on the basis of whether someone is vegan (I think the UK recently passed a law about this), but this aspect could still be very relevant to whether or not someone chooses to go vegan, for example if someone experiences impostor syndrome -- which is very common in academia in particular -- and thinks that by going vegan they would render themselves "too soft" to be able to compete with their peers (as the guy in the above video mentions around 18:50).

To refute Richard Spencer, I would say that sure, it is empirically that case that the whites have been more successful than any other race, but that has nothing to do their racial identity. Whether a society is successful probably depends a lot more on luck in terms of geographic placement and the overall degree to which people in the society treat each other with respect and give each other time to work on things related to social and technological progress. Given these qualities, I have no trouble imagining a non-white society that is more advanced and powerful than any current society, but a white supremacist may have a great deal of difficulty/reluctance to do so, because they'll be too attached to the empirical fact that no such society has ever existed.

Similarly, no fully vegan society currently exists or has existed in history. The closest thing we have is the Hindu and Jain cultures of India, and Buddhist cultures of Asia that are vegetarian for religious reasons, but they are far from being part of any kind of superpower that commands respect on a global scale. So "non-vegan supremacists" might associate vegans with weakness in the same way a white supremacist would. Basically all of the tools and technology that we rely on to live reasonably comfortable lives in the modern day were created by non-vegans, and people have a lot of gratitude and respect for the scientists and inventors responsible for them. They were also mostly white men, so in the same way that sexists and white supremacists may look down on women and non-whites for not being of this category of people that they consider to be "known goods", I think it's quite possible that non-vegans would look down on vegans for the similar reasons. Or, if they acknowledge that vegans are not completely useless, they may still think that we need a "healthy mix" of vegans and non-vegans for a fully functional society.

So, what do you think? Is non-vegan supremacy a thing?

I think the reason there has never been a fully-vegan society is because veganism is a modern solution to modern problems. It's unethical to eat eggs now, because now the egg industry is the biggest cause of superbacteria (because around 70% of antibiotics these days goes to the egg industry). It wasn't causing superbacteria 100 years ago (when antibiotics didn't exist), and it won't do that a few centuries from now (when we have lab-grown eggs), but it does so now. Factory farming didn't exist 100 years ago, because such animal abuse would be unprofitable back then (it's the antibiotics that made animal abuse profitable), but it does exist now and needs to be addressed. It won't be unethical to eat meat when, 100 years from now (much sooner than we will have lab-grown eggs), we have lab-grown meat, and it wasn't that unethical 100 years ago (when factory farming didn't exist and animals were treated much better than they are now), but it is now. Not to mention nutrition was poorly understood 100 years ago, so veganism back then might have even been dangerous to health.
So, no, I don't think there is "non-vegan supremacism" comparable to "white supremacism". The reason there hasn't been a thriving non-white society in human history has nothing to do with racial identity, but the reason there hasn't been a thriving vegan society in human history has to do with veganism being a modern solution to modern problems.

teo123 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 20, 2024 8:54 am I think the reason there has never been a fully-vegan society is because veganism is a modern solution to modern problems.

I think people have always been aware of the fact that animals have had to die to get meat from them, and the ethical implications therein. Religious vegetarianism has its roots in "ahimsa", which is non-violence and fundamentally stems from moral considerations, and is quite an ancient concept. And there are some examples of ethical vegans who have existed throughout history, the philosopher Al-Ma'arri for example.

teo123 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 20, 2024 8:54 am it wasn't that unethical 100 years ago (when factory farming didn't exist and animals were treated much better than they are now), but it is now.

In what sense? Yes, if you mean that the killing may have been justified as a survival necessity. But I don't think so in terms of the welfare of the animals themselves. Farm animals may have somewhat freer lives in the past, but I don't think that makes up for the fact that their slaughter has always been quite brutal.

teo123 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 20, 2024 8:54 am nutrition was poorly understood 100 years ago, so veganism back then might have even been dangerous to health.

It depends on the region I think. Inuits, for example, would certainly not have been able to survive on a vegan diet. But vegetarianism has existed in places like India for thousands of years. And many ancient Hindus were probably almost entirely vegan by modern standards, since milk was more of a luxury item back then.

teo123 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 20, 2024 8:54 am So, no, I don't think there is "non-vegan supremacism" comparable to "white supremacism". The reason there hasn't been a thriving non-white society in human history has nothing to do with racial identity, but the reason there hasn't been a thriving vegan society in human history has to do with veganism being a modern solution to modern problems.

Yeah, perhaps not entirely comparable in terms of scale and problematic implications, but I think some kind of supremacist mindset could exist in the minds of non-vegans in the sense of "society needs people like me who eat meat" in the same way that white supremacists think that society would cease to function without the presence of white people, as evidenced by the guy that Ed was interviewing.

aroneous wrote:And there are some examples of ethical vegans who have existed throughout history, the philosopher Al-Ma'arri for example.

I am not sure veganism was a good idea in ancient or medieval times. I think it's possible that there were a few mostly-vegan societies in ancient times, but that died out because of their veganism. There is a reason the consumption of milk spread so much: those who consumed milk had much better chances to survive famines. It's one of the reasons Indo-European languages spread so much. Today, of course, things are very different (milk is mostly taking food away from us), but it was like that in ancient times. The other reason why Indo-European languages spread so much are ploughs (*h2erdlom) and other agricultural technology making the use of animals. The technology that could replace animals in ploughs didn't exist at the time of Proto-Indo-Europeans. You can perhaps argue that the use of animals for ploughing hurt us at the time of Heron of Alexandria (that his inventions didn't gain widespread acceptance because of that), but you cannot dispute that it helped Proto-Indo-Europeans survive.

teo123 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 21, 2024 4:42 pm I am not sure veganism was a good idea in ancient or medieval times. I think it's possible that there were a few mostly-vegan societies in ancient times, but that died out because of their veganism. There is a reason the consumption of milk spread so much: those who consumed milk had much better chances to survive famines. It's one of the reasons Indo-European languages spread so much. Today, of course, things are very different (milk is mostly taking food away from us), but it was like that in ancient times.

I guess I was thinking of veganism a bit more in terms of intent to minimize harm rather that a strictly vegan diet. If you were transported to ancient times and forced to live through a famine in, say, winter in Scandinavian Europe, you might accept that you would have to get used to drinking goat's milk and eating reindeer meat for some time. You probably wouldn't abandon your vegan principles, though, and would recognize that you're doing this strictly out of necessity. And you would certainly have a very hard time finding a society of like-minded individuals.

I think the reason there haven't been any "vegan" societies in the past is simply because people had much different priorities, and probably didn't even have the time or interest to consider things like utilitarian ethics. So yes, veganism is more of a modern thing in that it's a result of our moral evolution that has only become widespread recently, because it's only recently that people have comfortable enough lives to seriously consider this kind of thing and disseminate their ideas. But moral reasoning along the lines of veganism has really always been open and available to people.

That's an interesting discussion, but a different one. I guess that what I was getting at with this post is that if someone has a somewhat "bigoted" perspective towards vegans, they're not really going to care whether or not a noteworthy vegan society could have possibly existed in the past, they'll just point to the fact that there hasn't been one and extrapolate that to a judgment of vegans as being weak and useless, if that works in their best interest in terms of justifying their own meat consumption.

It's a strange argument, though I think I've heard some adjacent things too. It's more just playing up stereotypes, and I think just reflects that individual's ignorance.

Regarding vegan societies, keep in mind it's only been possible to be reliably healthy as vegans since the discovery and isolation of B-12 in the late 50's. Commercial sources came later, I don't remember the date. Wild bacterial sources are not always reliable.
There just has not been time for a vegan society to develop. Vegetarian societies of course, and maybe isolated vegan communities who lived on a particular source of water/soil and got lucky, just not vegan ones really on any large scale.