A GUESS: A full vegan society?

[Metushelah]

Hey there,

I asked Swazee from UnaturalVegan this question and she proposed i ask this here as well so here goes :

I was wandering how would a full vegan society look like in the future ? What would it's Values be? and How will they act towards other living species? as well as possible "Aliens"?

I was wandering this for 2 reasons mainly:
1) This seems like a fun thought experiment, and would be better to try and prepare for now rather than later "on the go" ?

2) I myself am having a hard time figuring my stance on where to draw the line on the matter of "lowering suffering" in such a global society. At this point in a future society which is all vegan, with so much Knowledge and so also Responsibility i start thinking of wether we Should "kill off carnivores" to lower the suffering they cause to others (from my biology understanding this will be a self shot in the leg as they are a "necessary evil" for keeping the biosphere, and also the act of killing them is "causing suffering") or we just leave them be in spite of the pain they cause to others (but in turn we betray our values) ?

If you like this question i would be happy to hear your thoughts on the matter and see where i might be wrong or right.


Thanks

[brimstoneSalad]

Welcome! It would be hard to say, because it depends on how it came about.

Even among vegans, there are some serious schisms in values. The biggest being that between consequentialists and deontologists (then there are the nihilists and intuitionists who just go with their feelings).

I suggest you see this thread: http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?t=785

Consequentialists will most likely win out there, since they tend toward effective altruism (where deontologists tend toward extremism and alienation).

In the very distant future, I don't think we'll kill off carnivores, but we may introduce gene drives that reduce their aggression and make them able to eat plants (repairing the genetic 'damage' they have which makes them obligate carnivores).

[miniboes]

It would be fun to see a book or a movie depicting such a world. I have a few thoughts, which will be listed below in no particularly organised manner.

- Firstly, we must realise this: even though a (pragmatic (as opposed to dogmatic)) vegan world would be a victory of rational thought, we must not assume people to suddenly be fully rational. As we so often emphasise here, many if not most vegans are not much more rational than their carnist counterparts. Just as the abolition of slavery has not snowballed into veganism, we must not expect the abolition of carnism to be much more than exactly that. Our hypothetical world would not be exclusively populated by pragmatic, rational vegans such as ourselves. It would be the home to just as many crazy, stupid and despicable people. They'd just be vegan idiots instead. Therefore, we cannot assume a utopia of atheism, consequentialism, pragmatism, effective altruism, pronuclearism and all the other isms we deem to be positive. We can only assume the end of carnism.

- That is not to say that it would not influence our thought beyond the singular issue of animal exploitation. We see a very cleary link between the animal rights movement and the abolitionist movement. The idea that the exploitation of animals is wrong would be just as grounded in our culture as our opposition to slavery. Such foundational moral convictions inform new ethical debates. For example, but this is highly speculative, consequentialism may grow in popularity due to former deontologists making the argument that although humans and animals justly have different rights based on their many differences, they are united in a right not to be harmed because of their sentience. Then, the conclusion that the well-being of sentient beings may just be all that we need to base our morality on may grow in popularity. A less speculative example would be our attitude to aliens. As soon as we conclude they are sentient beings, we would be quicker to recognize that they should not be harmed (because how could be justify harming them and not animals?). This is similar to how pointing out the difference in our treatments of similar beings (pets vs farm animals) is probably an effective way of nudging people towards veg*nism.

- The exploitation of animals would be illegal. This is different from the policy I and other vegans on this forum propose. Prohibiting animal exploitation would currently result in a huge black market and other bad consequences similar to the prohibition of soft drugs. However, in a world where the vast majority of people is vegan (which is more realistic than 100%), prohibiting animal exploitation would be just as much of a no-brainer as prohibiting the exploitation of humans. There may be some subtle differences, and different laws may be made for the rights of different animals. Some speciecism is, after all, justified based on levels of sentience, and even deontologists would agree that punishing people for (accidentily) harming insects is asinine policy. As brimstone pointed out, the policies and culture would be heavily dependent on how power is distributed between consequentialist and non-consequentialist vegans.

- What brimstone mentioned is one option. Feeding obligate carnivores cultured meat is an obvious alternative. Another option might be to simply sterilize them and let them die off. That's actually an important question in general; what do we do with all the non-livestock land animals? The land humans occupy is dependent on population growth and how much we save by going vegan. Wild animals may be allowed to live in undesireable areas (e.g. sahara) and forests (which benefit us by providing oxygen and capturing carbon). We may very well decide to sterilize many of them and let them go extinct. Non-consequentialists would oppose this, but consequentialists may agree that the extinction of species is not a bad thing, especially if those species are not highly sentient.

That's my two cents.

[Jebus]

Before we start "killing off" carnivores in the wild, shouldn't we let cats (I mean the small cute ones some people keep at home) die out. They serve no purpose in the ecosystems, and clearly cause more suffering then happiness. Shouldn't a responsible government outlaw the breeding of these animals and require "cat owners" to neuter their pets?

[brimstoneSalad]

Shouldn't a responsible government outlaw the breeding of these animals and require "cat owners" to neuter their pets?

Yes, I would say so. Cats are a much bigger problem than dogs, given the ease with which they escape captivity to breed, how quickly they breed, and the damage they do to wildlife. Some half of cat owners let them roam outside freely to go on their murderous rampages.