Video Ideas

0. How To Advocate To Pro-Vegan Leftists (Mock Vaush Debate)

How To Advocate To Pro Vegan Leftists 2.0 - Draft of Part 1

Text on the screen: This is the intro to a debate that happened between 2 YouTubers on the topic of veganims and animal rights.

At the 1:30 mins mark we'll jump in to mock debate how the conversation could have more ideally gone.

Then finally at the 6 mins mark we'll cover all basis by giving a formal counter-arguement in the case where someone still expressed disagreement.

Vaush: Howdy

AY: So, you currently are not a vegan?

Vaush: That is correct

AY: Now if we replaced all the animals in the factory farms with humans you wouldn't say it’s morally wrong…

Vaush: We can skip a few steps, I include animals in my ethical system, I agree that meat eating is morally unjustifiable. I’m not... “believes meat eating is fine,” I’m... “knows veganism is correct and is too much of a moral hypocrite to go forward with it.”

AY: Oh ok, well I actually had no idea how you would react on this topic, so I think your reaction in a way is admirable because of how honest you are, but in a way it's sad because of how pathetic you seem to be.

*Rewind sound effect*

Script: So bit of advice, never call a person pathetic when they're genuinely trying to explore an issue with you, as it's just a rude thing to say and makes people dig their heels in. So I'll let Vaush give his arguement then I'll mock debate how I think the conversation could have gone more ideally.

Vaush: My argument here, and this is one of defending hypocrisy, so I recognise my bias in this respect, but the argument I would have here is comparable to the argument I would make for not for example telling people to not buy t-shirts that were made in China. It’s that we live in a system of such unfathomably inhuman production and it’s so convenient to adhere to the ethical modes of production in which we live, that I don’t know if I can condemn a person ethically on an individual level for participating in systems that are so much larger than them. You know?

Script: Okay I can answer that, so it’s important to acknowledge where someone is either unaware of or incapable of following a vegan lifestyle, that they are not individually responsible for the act of eating meat, even though the act itself is still harmful. When it comes to awareness there's a lot of nuance there with elective ignorance, but let's just say it was impossible for them to know.

But we should be wary of extending that lack of individual responsibility away from extreme situations like being stranded on a desert island, to today where a lot of industry happens to be unethical.

Because even if we granted the argument that there's a better economic system we could move to, which would make "all consumption under capitalism is unethical" true by comparison to that ideal, there still exists a scale of immorality. It's not just "this is worse than the ideal so it's just as bad as anything else that's also worse than the ideal". Provided a sense of relative harm we hope once people become aware of particularly bad industries, they will get on board with living a low-impact vegan lifestyle -- not because it's perfect in every way, but because it's better than the current status quo.

So there’s two things: 1. There’s the potential harm in playing down the effectiveness of the vegan boycott, because a really important positive attribute to acknowledge about this lifestyle is it's a broad food category that in its wholefood form is easy to distinguish on the shelf. Therefore experimenting with the diet doesn't need to feel like a burden to take on board in the same way researching and seeking out conflict-free minerals in everything you buy can be for example. 2. The potential harm in exaggerating exceptions to the rule of individual responsibility.

But yeah you accept buying animal products is unethical, your argument is just that some of the individual responsibility gets shared more evenly with the collective society for say voting parties which maintain the status quo, which in turn alienates/socially conditions you into believing you don't have full agency. It becomes an appeal to futility fallacy, because that doesn't equate to actually having zero agency and there still remains some moral difference between the two choices regardless of how much better an ideal would be. The excuse evaporates once you rationally realize that the feeling of being without any agency doesn't reflect reality.

Vaush: Yes, I agree that meat eating is morally unjustifiable. I’m not... “believes meat eating is fine,” I’m... “knows veganism is correct and is too much of a moral hypocrite to go forward with it.”

Script: Cool, so yeah, you just have a critique of where activists put their energy?

Vaush: Yes, I just think advocacy is more effective when it's being done outside of the demand by consumers, I don’t think there’s any likelihood or any possibility of getting the vast majority of people off of their meat diets.

Script: Well beyond the obvious answer that we can drive incremental change in capitalism itself by choosing less harmful products and better companies where we can identify them, I would say existing as a vegan in the world is this really positive step to showing your seriousness and dedication you’re willing to put in. Not only can it inspire others but it can also help people who are serious about change each other and get organized, for example people’s willingness to start a food not bombs stall or guerrilla garden.

Secondly It's not the case that we need to win over everyone to veganism in order to make massive change, if a large enough minority can create breathing room for legislation and food co-ops that can provide alternatives to everybody on the way to a vegan world, I do think it’s both an obligation to attempt it and to make the transition easier saving humans and wildlife in the process. As well as driving less, buying second hand, etc. Buying nothing ever or meticulously tracking the source of every mineral may be insurmountable, but these are all pretty low bars to reach for and within the grasp of ordinary people.

Thirdly, even if you reject its effect on capitalistic industry, boycotts have the effect of bringing communities together under a liberation politics. For example car-sharing during the Montgomery bus boycott, students leading the call to stop subsidising Israel and before that South Africa, the widespread boycotting of a reactionary tabloid newspaper in the UK that ran stories saying mass suffocation at a football stadium due to overcrowding and fences were the fans fault. So boycotting to show your real felt ties to the land you stand on as necessary optics for seriousness on the left, and regardless of the mechanism by which they function the efficacy is hard to dispute.

And finally I’d just say there’s a way you could take this concern for shifting the blame onto individuals too far the other way, in that I think we’d agree if someone was obscenely rich and spent all their money on luxury items, never donating to campaigns or charities that we would need to bring about a better society you would think badly of this person because they would be displaying the same indifferent behaviour you’d expect of someone who say participated in systemic racism, for example excluding your generationally low-income black friend with no car from playing on your sports team by never seeing it as your responsibility to offer to drive to pick them up so they can join in.

Vaush: Yes. Look forward to discussing this more.

Script: Great, also if you could look into some animal rights news stories to cover on your stream, I do think there’s a lot of damning political stories which would do the job of bringing people further left as well as hopefully towards veganism. I’ll leave links to some in the description you can take a look at.

Alright, take care.

*Rewind sound effect.*

Script: Ok if that sounded at all implausable or you just want to know what to do if you face stiffer resistance. We'll run through that again, drawing from formal logic.

Vaush: Ok, here's a statement that I would make, this is a bit of a stupid hypothetical, but it's still one that I believe in. If there was a person who ate meat, who recognized that it was wrong, they know they're participating in a horrid industry, but they eat meat.

They think like, they could stop eating meat, but my life is miserable as it is, I can barely afford to keep the lights on in my house, my job is shit, like being able to eat this sick ass ethnic food that was passed down to me from my grandparents, this is one of the few things that I can live for and to take that away from me, I can't do it.

Do you think that the harm done to an individual to deprive them of that meat or dairy or what have you, would be substantial enough to say like ok, alright maybe you can keep eating meat, I won't say it's unethical if your life is hinged upon the joy that brings you or would you say that no level of joy justifies participation in that industry?

Script: Sure, so I certainly wouldn't spend my time advocating veganism with that person, if I was their friend I'd just listen to their problems and ask where I could help out. But more broadly, could we formalize your main concern in this way:

P1) We ought not spend time advocating individuals reduce their harmful consumption under capitalism if doing so puts an unhealthy focus on those most disadvantaged, drawing attention away from what systemic policies would uplift the most disadvantaged to be able to make healthy consumer choices.

P2) Advocating individuals reduce their harmful consumption under capitalism puts an unhealthy focus on those most disadvantaged, drawing attention away from what systemic policies would uplift the most disadvantaged to be able to make healthy consumer choices.

C) Therefore we ought not spend time advocating individuals reduce their harmful consumption under capitalism because doing so puts an unhealthy focus on those most disadvantaged, drawing attention away from what systemic policies would uplift the most disadvantaged to be able to make healthy consumer choices.

Alright now we can run through two exceptions to the rule, then a more general rebuttal:

Vegan Exception Counter-Argument #1

P1) If we ought spend time advocating individuals donate some amount of spare cash to campaigns & unions under capitalism because donating spare cash to campaigns & charities helps bring about a market socialist society THEN we inherently are advocating individuals reduce their harmful consumption under capitalism to have the spare cash to donate to campaigns & charities.

P2) We ought spend time advocating individuals donate some amount of spare cash to campaigns & unions under capitalism because donating spare cash to campaigns & unions helps bring about a market socialist society.

C) Therefore we ought spend time advocating individuals donate some amount of spare cash to campaigns & unions under capitalism because donating spare cash to campaigns & charities helps bring about a market socialist society AND we inherently are advocating individuals reduce their harmful consumption under capitalism to have the spare cash to donate to campaigns & charities.

Vegan Exception Counter-Argument #2

P1) If a man lived his whole life from birth to the age of 50 in a vegan socialist commune, being a wildlife vet and left to do a talk for 1 day and had the choice of buying a bacon sandwich from a wage labour deli or vegan sandwich from a worker co-op, before returning to the commune to live out the rest of his life, then it would be okay for their friends to ask why he chose to do the unethical act, drawing attention to his individual responsibility because there was zero to negligible alienation or social conditioning clouding his opinion.

P2) A man lived his whole life from birth to the age of 50 in a vegan socialist commune, being a wildlife vet and left to do a talk for 1 day and had the choice of buying a bacon sandwich from a wage labour deli or vegan sandwich from a worker co-op, before returning to the commune to live out the rest of his life.

C) Therefore a man lived his whole life from birth to the age of 50 in a vegan socialist commune, being a wildlife vet and left to do a talk for 1 day and had the choice of buying a bacon sandwich from a wage labour deli or vegan sandwich from a worker co-op, before returning to the commune to live out the rest of his life, AND it would be okay for their friends to ask why he chose to do the unethical act, drawing attention to his individual responsibility because there was zero to negligible alienation or social conditioning clouding his opinion.

Vegan General Counter-Argument

P1) If we ought spend time participating in whichever campaigns are most likely to bring about a market-socialist society fastest THEN bar fringe situations like eating disorders and severe depression it’s appropriate to discuss the unethical act of buying meat with people so as to work out where they can best put their energy. Even if doing so puts a focus on their individual responsibility, because doing so brings about systemic policy changes faster which would uplift the most disadvantaged to be able to make healthy consumer choices.

P2) We ought spend time participating in whichever campaigns are most likely to bring about a market-socialist society.

C) Therefore we ought spend time participating in whichever campaigns are most likely to bring about a market-socialist society fastest AND bar fringe situations like eating disorders and severe depression it’s appropriate to discuss the unethical act of buying meat with people so as to work out where they can best put their energy. Even if doing so puts a focus on their individual responsibility, because doing so brings about systemic policy changes faster which would uplift the most disadvantaged to be able to make healthy consumer choices.

1. How to simply explain what veganism is and argue for it

Hello, okay this is going to be a long video, so time-codes in the description if you just want to flick around. First I’m going to introduce my preferred definition of veganism, why I think it’s the best one, then run you through 5 amazing arguments for veganism. This is mainly for vegans to become better skilled at advocating, but any feedback is more than welcome.

1. The Vegan Definition

1a. How to explain what veganism is

I define veganism as simply “an animal products boycott.”

I make the point of saying it’s one campaign tactic among many, aimed primarily at achieving the end of animal agriculture.

And that personally I see it as being grounded in the animal rights movement, seeking legal habitat rights for animals to live without being subjected to human cruelty. In a similar way to how the act of boycotting South African products or the act of boycotting the Montgomery bus company was grounded in the civil rights movement.

Other boycotts didn’t have a specific name for the behavioural identity one took on when boycotting, the principle for why they boycotted was contained in what it meant to be part of a larger movement e.g. being civil rights advocate. So I would encourage most vegans to think of themselves as animal rights advocates fighiting for the legal protection of animals, though one could also call themself an animal liberation advocate focusing on non-human animals desire to be free to express their capabilities in the wild.

As for why someone would arrive at the ethical conclusion to boycott, it could be a million ways, but the 3 main ethical schools of thought you can draw from are consequentialism, virtue ethics and deontology. I would just be prepared to tailor your arguments to the person you’re standing in front of, as we’ll discuss later in the video. But here are a few examples:

Hedonistic Utilitarianism: The principle of not breeding sentient life into the world where you know you will cause more suffering on a global calculus than happiness. Examples: climate change, stress and pain in slaughterhouse than longer happy life in wild with low rates of predation, stress to slaughterhouse workers who are more likely to abuse their family).

Preference Consequentialism: The principle of not breeding sentient life into the world to kill when you know they will have interests to go on living longer than would be profitable. Examples: They have habits for things they'd like to do each day and they show you by their desire not to be loaded onto scary trucks and to a slaughterhouse with screams and smells of death.

Virtue Ethics: The principle of not breeding a sentient life into captivity when you know you could leave room for other animals to enjoy happy flourishing being able to express all their capabilities in wild habitat. Not wanting to parasitically take away life with meaning for low-order pleasure in our hierarchy of needs which we can find elsewhere.

Deontology: The principle of everyone should only act in such a way that it would still be accetable to them if it were to become universal law. So not breeding sentient life into existence, only to keep them confined, tear families apart and kill them later, as you wouldn't want it to happen to you.

Nihlist Ethics: The principle that you should be wary of inauthentically acting in a way you don't believe due to outside social pressures, like that acting uncaringly is necessary to what it means to be a man. So testing out values you were brought up with against new ones as you go and and coming to the conclusion that you prefer a society where most have the value of seeing animals flourishing in nature and not in captivity/pain.

1b. Why not use other definitions?

The reason I would encourage people use the definition "an animal products boycott" and not other definitions is it gets at the root motivation people have for being vegan without being divisive about which ethical system is best.

In 1944 those members of the vegetarian society who were avoiding all use of animal products created their own vegan society and came up with the word vegan out of a concern we should be advocating the boycott of the dairy and egg industries.

Now I acknowledge that one problem with defining veganism as an “animal products boycott” is people saying “well would you be okay with hunting wild animals yourself then?” But to that I would answer “implicit in the word boycott is an ethical judgement on the activity that creates the product.”

So, when I boycott products containing palm oil because of rainforest destruction needed to produce the product for example, it wouldn’t suddenly be okay for me to then go out and do that rainforest destruction myself just because I didn’t sell the palm oil on.

You can't desire that all commercial use of animal products stop existing in the world through a commercial boycott and also do an action which through your boycotting hope to prevent the incentive for it ever happening.

Now, does this definition leave room for any exceptions to the rule? Well yes in a way, but I would say a positive one, in that it allows for waste animal products to be used if no profit finds it’s way back to the person who caused the harm. If you can get a supermarket to redirect it’s 1000 loaves of bread containing whey from going in the dumpster to a food bank, that can only be a benefit to the world. Also, it doesn’t attempt to include animal entertainment boycotts in what it means to be vegan, and simply leaves that to be included in what it means to be an animal rights advocate. Although it’s so similar one can raise an eyebrow about why someone would boycott animal agriculture and not animal cruelty as entertainment. People already view veganism as simply abstaining from the use of animal products, so we just do have to contend with why awful people like some eco-fascists desire to be vegans and denounce them. To try and pretend that someone boycotting animal products can’t also be an awful person in other ways is wilfully ignorant. In the same way, claiming that ex-vegans could never have been vegan for not having understood the ethical arguments is fallacious and off-putting.

What specifically is wrong with other definitions?

Why not define veganism as reducing suffering which is the consequentialist reason for being vegan? Because ‘reducing suffering’ is too big, too abstract, too idealistic, beyond the capacity of one person to ever achieve, laudable but doomed to failure. Whereas ‘boycotting animal products’ is not. ‘Reducing suffering’ creates the impression of the martyr, the need to live a ridiculously puritan lifestyle, like Jain monks sweeping the floor everywhere they walk. And excludes all other ethical systems.

Why not define veganism as the rule that ‘man should not exploit animal’ which is the deontological reason for being vegan? Because it immediately brings to mind the plenty of ways we can pragmatically rescue animals and improve their circumstances while still being seen to be exploitative-ly keeping them captive, e.g. rescuing dogs, chickens or horses. And excludes all other ethical systems.

Why not define veganism as a hodge-podge of the two main ethical systems, consequentialism and deontology, as the modern vegan society tries to do? Because it’s far too convoluted and open to misinterpretation. You get into debates about what does “as far as is possible and practicable” mean, when you could just say veganism is a boycott. If you aren’t capable of participating for being eating disordered for example, that’s ok, you can be ethically on par with or more ethical than a vegan in your own way, but you just aren’t able to participate in the boycott.

2. Arguments for Veganism

Now what are the best arguments for advocating veganism?

Well that really depends on your audience, but I’ll run through a few and give my thoughts on the pros and cons of each.

So, first off let’s start with an argument that is designed to work on any ethical system, called name the trait.

2a. General Purpose - Name The Trait

Basically it asks what would be the ethical implications for humans if we used the same justifications that meat eaters use for how we treat animals.

1. Would you prefer not to kill a human for food if you could easily access and eat plant food?

2. Would you prefer not to kill a non-human animal for food if you could easily access and eat plant food?

3. If you answered that you’re not ok with killing humans for food and you are ok with killing non-human animals for food, what trait is true of the animal that would let you feel justified in killing animals. And, if that became true of humans, would you then feel justified in killing humans if you could easily eat and had access to plant food in either scenario?

So lack of intelligence, no social contract, etc.

So one positive feature of this argument is it directly makes real for people the severity of their actions.

The negatives are it doesn’t directly deal with any of the pragmatics of day to day living. It’s this abstract hypothetical in which if the other persons position is shown to be absurd, nothing they said was of any value. You may win your point but still alienate the person. People like to have the feeling that they have imparted some knowledge about the world in a two way conversation, not that they are just being shown up for their mistakes.

One way to alleviate this problem could be to ask beforehand, how confident are you on a scale of 1 to 10 that eating animal products is ethically justifiable in your current situation in life? Engage them in the idea that we all have assumptions we were raised with which we have to work hard to see through sometimes, as a precursor to asking your questions. Having had the conversation, ask if their confidence was increased or decreased.

But even this tact again runs the issue of people just saying a high number and then feeling obligated to argue strongly to justify their conviction. Or even coming away with a lower number, but now believing it’s even more of a complex topic than they previously thought - so feeling vindicated in continuing to consume animal products because “there are no easy answers”, even though the agnostic position should be to ‘do no harm’.

2b. Consequentialist - Marginal cases

Very similar to name the trait.

When meat eaters try to justify the killing of non-human animals they often reach for the idea that humans have some superior ability which entitles them to control the lives of those without that ability. How this intuition plays out in society has led to disabled people working below minimum wage or the putting off of using tax payers' money towards accessible public amenities like bus stops with the right pavement height for wheelchair users.

Quoting from Wikipedia:

The argument from marginal cases takes the form of a proof by contradiction. It attempts to show that you cannot coherently believe both that all humans have moral status, and that all non-humans lack moral status.

Consider a cow. We ask why it is acceptable to kill this cow for food – we might claim, for example, that the cow has no concept of self and therefore it cannot be wrong to kill it. However, many young children may also lack this same concept of "self". So if we accept the self-concept criterion, then we must also accept that killing children is acceptable in addition to killing cows, which is considered a reductio ad absurdum. So the concept of self cannot be our criterion.

Then we can say for any criterion or set of criteria (either capacities, e.g. language, consciousness, the ability to have moral responsibilities towards others; or relations, e.g. sympathy or power relations), there exists some "marginal" human who is mentally handicapped in some way that would also meet the criteria for having no moral status.

Positives are it works well on consequentialists.

Negatives are: because of its focus on how similar humans are to animals it could unintentionally leave you with a warped picture of only the cost and complexities of helping disabled people to engage in as many of the aspects of society that they are capable of and would like to. So coming to the end of a discussion solely focused on connecting two negative facts about some disabled people and non-human animals.

Therefore it’s important that there should be time spent acknowledging both the unique perspectives of neuro-divergent people who have improved our society dramatically like Albert Einstein. As well as the unique capabilities of non-human animals to pursue what they have reasons to value, that is a great source of wonder to us, which inspires the arts and which we can study through behavioural science.

Which leads us well onto...

2c. Virtue Ethics - Respect for Animal Capabilities

If the wonder that we experience in viewing wild animals is not 'how similar to us they are', but their 'real opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value' and one sufficient reason we grant this freedom at least to a basic extent to humans is they have a desire to achieve what they find valuable then; the fact non-human animals experience this desire too means we ought extend these freedoms to animals.

So, a holistic world-view of not wanting to reduce both the quality and quantity of positive experiences humans can have with animals, as well as animals with other animals for low-order pleasures such as taste/texture.

From the philosophical vegan wiki:

Veganism is at its core about peace and compassion. By not buying animal products, you may even feel more at peace and start to get other ideas about how to become a more compassionate person in other areas of your life. Feeding your virtue in one way can help you become a happier person, while doing harm to animals can lead to cruelty or caprice in other ways e.g. the link between slaughterhouse workers and rates of domestic violence.

Of course be prepared to acknowledge that there are fringe cases of people going vegan as a method to feed a concept of superiority and use it as a tool to bash others over the head with.

Positives are it’s hard to argue against without making yourself look bad aha.

Negative are: we’re used to treating virtue as an extra something special we’re not required to do, but makes you an even better person if you do voluntarily. So the idea that we ought do something just because we find wonder in it doesn’t appear to hold a lot of weight on it’s own. Therefore probably best used in tandem with an argument like name the trait. Still the argument offers an avenue to talk about what goals and ambitions people have and how breaking with addictions to unhealthy foods could make them happier because of the compassion they would also be showing animals and the better world with more wildlife in it that they could help to bring about.

2d. Deontology - The Golden Rule

The golden rule isn’t strictly deontological and can be used on anyone, but it is also very close to how deontologists you may encounter view philosophy, like Kant’s categorical imperative for example: The principle that everyone should only act in such a way that it would still be acceptable to them if it were to become universal law. So when applied to animals; not breeding sentient life into existence, only to keep them confined, tear families apart and kill them later, as you wouldn't want it to happen to you.

From the philosophical vegan wiki:

• Ask people if they accept the golden rule

• Ask if they were in an animals' hooves if they would like being born into this world as property, only to be killed at a young age for another's taste pleasure.

• The response should typically be "no", but...

There are three common objections:

1. The objection that we could eat nothing, because "If I were a plant I wouldn't want to be eaten either"

This is easily answered, but may lead into more discussion: If you were a plant you would not care about being eaten, because plants are not sentient and have no brain or ability to think. The only likely response is plant-sentience, which is an argument rife with pseudoscience and misunderstanding of physiology and the nature of sentience and intelligence, as well as often supernatural claims.

2. The arbitrary objection that the golden rule only applies to humans.

Which begs the question of "why?", and "why not only to your own family and not to strangers?" Or "why not only to your own 'race'?"

3. The rejection of application of the golden rule to those who in theory would not or could not apply it back to you.

This is a misunderstanding of the golden rule, which operates independently of how others might treat you.

Positives are it’s simplicity.

Negatives are by comparing 'how similar to us they are' in their desire to avoid simple things like pain, it again, like the first two arguments, unintentionally draws people’s attention away from animals desire to ‘do and be what they have reason to value'. E.g. conjures up imaginings of having to share a busy high street with masses of sheep and cows because they want to enjoy the same right to free movement as you. However, you can easily argue that as humans there are some ways that we can intelligently gather that fences separating human habitat from animals would be a plus because it’s in cows own interest not to get lost inside a concrete jungle.

2e. Nihilist Ethics - Property Rights for Animals

If you desire the ability to live a full life on your property because it satisfies a desire you have to meet your basic needs and you’re in favour of guardianship laws to protect this ability for severely mentally disabled people in court because they can't defend themselves then; you should really desire non-human animals who also have these needs have a legal right to their wild habitat as property and should enjoy guardianship laws which protects their legal rights in court through appointment of a guardian to represent the case of one or a group of animals unless another reason is specified on pain of living in bad faith.

This centres the discussion on how you may be excluding other groups because it's the social norm. If there's one norm that unites nihilists in their rejection of universalist ethics, it's that of the desire to live authentically, so not acting in a way you don't believe due to outside social pressures, like that acting without compassion is necessary to what it means to be a man.

Everyone has some values they were brought up with that inform their meta-ethical system. It’s up to us to test out those values as we go along against new ones we discover and decide what kind of world we want to live in. We are meaning-seeking creatures innately, we can if we chose seek the happy flourishing of ourselves and others in the process, instead of living a life predicated on taking from others happy flourishing unnecessarily.

Getting to a stage in human civilization where we are able to derive meaning from compassionately caring for the basic needs of every person could be a great thing, just like we could find meaning in getting to see more land freed up for wildlife, where animals are able to express all their capabilities.

Positives are it gets you to appreciate what core basic necessities you take for granted as a means of encouraging the other person to show compassion for animals.

Negatives are it is primarily made to work on nihilists highly concerned with authenticity. Again could be used in tandem with name the trait, to first show a basic commonality for how we all come into this world with certain needs and then ask what trait justifies excluding one group from moral consideration over another.

Secondly people may question the logistics of granting rights to animals today which gets into a procedural tangent about how to incrementally introduce the law in parts, first to grant habitat rights in planning disputes, then rights for some of the few farm animals left when we grant them rights to live a full life to seek refuge in semi-wild habitat like pigs allowed to go feral, so long as we can re-introduce predator species to keep the population in check.

But yeah, that’s the end of the video, remember to tailor the argument you use to the person you’re talking to. Let me know what you think in a comment down below, all the best, peace.

2. Open Letter to Matt (Mirror)

google drive copies

3. How to use media more productively

As viewer, commentator, contributor and/or creator.

4. How to use the philosophical vegan wiki

Scrolling screen capture and explanation for most practical uses.

5. Top 25 Most influential moments for veganism in history.

vegetarian-history

Forum Game/Debate: Most important moments in vegan history.

My animal ethics history blog post

6. Benetar Response

forum thread

7. Anti-Natalism in the vegan movement

Various expressions of rational to fatalist online, geographically and historically.

Youtube Anti-Natalists

He debunks himself often enough reminding us that his words are just the product of scar tissue basically rerouted brain tissue through long-term depression he’s grown too used to to abandon. Just a negative utilitarian who doesn’t see any virtue in accepting the limits of human control, it’s bizarrely religious in that he clings to the sense that the only meaning could come from if there were a merciful god that would fix all of nature.

Possibly take down of his joke theory of everything essay:

Rational Wiki wrote: Gary Mosher: Physics crank who fervently asserts an alternate "theory of everything", rejecting all evidence of special/general relativity and the double slit experiment. He is also known as "inmendham", and alternately proposes a "destroy all life" philosophy.

Thread-Gary-Inmendham-Theory-of-Everything

critique-of-inmendhams-radical-pessimism.html

Website