Socrates Vegan
"If we pursue our habit of eating animals, and if our neighbor follows a similar path, will we not have need to go to war against our neighbor to secure greater pasturage?"
Plato's Republic, 375 BC
WHAT IS VEGANISM
"Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with: all products derived wholly or partly from animals." -The Vegan Society
PHILOSOPHY
Humans do not have the capacity to obtain informed consent from animals.
Simply put, veganism is a world view which extends mutual reciprocal altruism, ethical consideration and intrinsic value to non-human animals.
Regimented subjugation of animals originated with pastoralism, live animal transactions and theism, as non-human animals bore the burden of human aggression.
Informed by the study of ethology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience and ecology, veganism embraces science and dismisses the historic myth of anthropocentrism.
Human supremacy performs the same defensive function as racism, ethnocentrism, sexism and egocentrism, which all seek to rationalize oppressive behavior at the expense of others.
Veganism rejects hierarchical superstition and promotes the scientific consensus which animism expressed for hundreds of thousands of years.
Explicitly, that non-human animals have intelligence, individuality, personality, emotions and the desire to be free from coercion, cruelty and violence.
Animals exist independent of their perceived utility to humans.
Animal rights activist, Donald Watson invented veganism to expressly distinguish himself from the widely practiced vegetarian diet, which condones consumption of animal products for food and use for labor, materials economy, entertainment, experimentation and other forms of commercial and industrial exploitation.
Demand for animal products results in their confinement, loss of freedom, family, social structure, stress, rape, torture, infanticide, illness and murder.
Humans who use animals for their benefit, financially and morally condone and support the violent subjugation and exploitation of animals.
One third of all animals bred and slaughtered by the animal agriculture industry are exploited for consumer reproductive products considered suitable for vegetarians.
When stress and disease render animals prematurely unproductive and less economically efficient, despite the majority of all pharmaceuticals being consumed by the animal agriculture industry, those bred for vegetarian products also summarily executed.
Under vegetarian diets, animal production continues to grow exponentially for food for humans and their pets, industrial lubricants, clothing, hygiene and other animal products.
Only the universal adoption of veganism can protect animals from human-animal conflict by the total abolition of animal exploitation.
PROMOTE
Dietary change to confront the animal abuse industry is only one tenet of a vegan practice.
Advocating and educating alternative practices to human-animal exploitation, vegans work to amplify the resistance against superstitious and magical thinking regarding human supremacy and the prevalent entitlement to benefit from animal exploitation
Collective education can eradicate prejudice against animals and achieve an ethical approach to non-coercive inter-species relations.
It is not enough simply to act alone to change one's own personal habits, vegans must work earnestly to change the beliefs and behaviors of everyone.
"Can time ever be ripe for any reform unless it is ripened by human determination? Did Wilberforce wait for the ‘ripening’ of time before he commenced his fight against slavery? Did Edwin Chadwick, Lord Shaftesbury, and Charles Kingsley wait for such a non-existent moment before trying to convince the great dead weight of public opinion that clean water and bathrooms would be an improvement? If they had declared their intention to poison everybody the opposition they met could hardly have been greater. There is an obvious danger in leaving the fulfillment of our ideals to posterity, for posterity may not have our ideals. Evolution can be retrogressive as well as progressive, indeed there seems always to be a strong gravitation the wrong way unless existing standards are guarded and new visions honoured. For this reason we have formed our Group, the first of its kind, we believe, in this or any other country."
- Donald Watson
Eliminating violence to any species of animal, including humans, requires the removal of castes, pyramids and expressions of utility values for individuals determined by the dominant ideology of subordination based on hierarchical myth.
Biologists understand consciousness, no matter how small or foreign to humans, is not a comparative value, but a condition of every animal, hence all are equally conscious.
To believe only those measured by criteria of human intelligence are fully conscious, is pseudoscience with no observable biological foundation.
With vested political interests in the promulgation of violence for commerce, the mobilization of public opinion is the most significant threat poised to end the practice of animal exploitation.
"In the space of fifty years, the British slaving system was dismantled under pressure from an increasingly hostile and vocal public. The London anti-slavery societies, drawing on networks of provincial correspondents through whom popular support for anti-slavery measures was organised, orchestrated one of the first long-running and successful campaigns to bring 'pressure from without' to bear on parliamentary politics."
- Mark Jones, York University
PRACTICE
Vegans seek to identify all consumer choices exploiting animals and boycott them.
Far exceeding all other human-animal conflict, the largest death toll occurs in the production of food for humans.
Many other products contain animal derived ingredients solely because of the vast volume of corpses the livestock industry generates at scale.
Without consumers choosing to order animal products to eat, many of these industries would be compelled by profit to seek alternative materials.
Anyone can wake up tomorrow and declare themselves vegan. When confronted with a choice to purchase, consume or make use of animal exploitation, do something else.
When dining out, only vegan owned and operated businesses are the suitable vegan option.
Managers and staff are untrained or openly hostile towards veganism. Workers are directed to substitute animal products without informing customers for efficiency or indifference.
Vegans are not defending animals by demonstrating a demand for vegan food from murder-kitchens. All it does is teach them they can exploit animals as well as the vegan's concern for them.
Support vegan owned and operated food service businesses in your community and while traveling. Dining out is not a necessity, with restaurant laborers also suffering exploitation, low wages, and poverty.
No business is truly vegan friendly while capitalizing off the horrific violence of the animal exploitation industry. True friends don't murder those you seek to protect.
Vegan products at animal industry retailers are never intended to appeal to existing customers, but to attract new business by horizontal marketing targeted to vegans.
Cook at home for yourself or with friends and always dispense with products derived wholly or partly from animals including trace allergens, which always contain the ingredients on their allergen warning labels, intentionally or not.
If a factory food was processed with traces of the products of violence against your loved ones, would you still consume them?
You don't have to believe in non-human animal equality to be vegan. Vegans simply have to extend courtesy to non-conspecifics and refuse to order their death.
The simplest method to mitigate committing bigoted acts is to suspend judgement and recognize that nobody chooses how they're born.
Non-human animals have been observed demonstrating awareness of the mental states of others, humans can use this same ability to prevent intentional harm.
Possible
Exploitation of individuals for their species in supply chains is standard practice in modern industry.
Vegans cannot rescue every animal and dismantle every animal enterprise, do the best you can with the resources at your disposal by becoming an informed and empathetic consumer.
While boycotting all industry is impossible, reducing one's participation in elective commerce overall is the most protective choice.
The goal of veganism is not the abandonment of civilization for billions of people, but rather to create a human society free from animal exploitation and ecological destruction.
Focus on those behaviors which can be controlled, few could survive by re-wilding themselves without intensive survival training.
Make the choice to abstain from violence for the victims forced to exist in human society who are not granted the same privilege.
Dogma
Veganism is secular philosophy which carries on the tradition of empirical evidence for non-violence as the most harmonious and peaceful form of existence.
While a few religious traditions permit the sacrifice of animals in instances of extreme necessity or piety, none require it.
Despite veganism not espousing any esoteric or spiritual beliefs, every extant religion accords the near universal sentiment that egalitarianism towards animals is correct and good behavior.
"I praise a non-violent sacrifice at which cattle, goats, rams, chickens, and pigs are not slain, where various creatures are not slaughtered. Someone with three qualities is cast down to hell. What three? They themselves kill living creatures. They encourage others to kill living creatures. And they approve of killing living creatures. I will teach you the beneficial and the harmful. And what is the harmful? Killing living creatures. And what is the beneficial? Not killing living creatures. Laying aside violence in respect of all beings, both those which are still and those which move, in the world, he should not kill, nor cause to kill, nor allow others to kill."
- Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha
"Clearly, the Bible has no place for a tyrannical anthropocentrism unconcerned for other creatures. Together with our obligation to use the earth's goods responsibly, we are called to recognize that other living beings have a value of their own in God's eyes: by their mere existence they bless him and give him glory. The Catechism clearly and forcefully criticizes a distorted anthropocentrism: 'Each creature possesses its own particular goodness and perfection… Each of the various creatures, willed in its own being, reflects in its own way a ray of God's infinite wisdom and goodness. Man must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things'."
- Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis
"And say to the people, 'Sanctify your-selves for tomorrow, you will eat meat, for you have wept in the hearing of the Lord, saying, 'Who will give us meat to eat, for life was good for us in Egypt?' Therefore the Lord will give you meat, and you will eat. You will eat, not just one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days, but a whole month, until it comes out your nostrils and makes you sick, because you have de-spised the Lord... And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague.
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- Moses, The Hebrew Bible
"There is not an animal that lives on the earth, nor a being that flies on its wings, but they form communities like you. Nothing have we omitted from the Book, and they all shall be gathered to their Lord in the end... A good deed done to an animal is like a good deed done to a human being, while an act of cruelty to an animal is as bad as cruelty to a human being."
- Al Qur'an, 6:38 and Hadith of Abu Umamah al-Bahili
"That which you consider worth destroying is yourself. That which you consider worth disciplining is yourself. That which you consider worth subjugating is yourself. That which you consider worth killing is yourself. The result of actions by you has to be borne by you, so do not destroy anything."
- Tirthankara Mahavira, Jain Ācārāṅga Sūtra
"Abstain rigorously from eating the flesh of kine and all beneficent animals least you be made to face a strict reckoning in this world and the next; for by eating the flesh of kine and other domestic animals, you involve your hand in sin, and thereby think, speak, and do what is sinful; for though you may eat but a mouth-ful, you involve your hand in sin, and though a camel be slain by another person in another place, it is as if you who eat its flesh had slain it with your own hand."
- Adarbad Mahraspandan, Zoroastrian High Priest
"Only life can give life... Ital is [the diet] of the movement of peace and love, it is not correct for Rastafari to cause pain and suffering through the slaughter and consumption of animals. He shall not make his stomach a cemetery says the Rasta."
- Tracy Nicholas, Rastafari
"The Lord gives the grains and the fruits of the earth for food; and for righteous man there is truly no other lawful substance for the body. Wherefore I say to all those who desire to be disciples, keep your hands from bloodshed and let no flesh meat enter your mouths; for the Lord is just and bountiful; who ordains that man shall LIVE by the fruits and seeds of the earth alone. I am in all creatures and all creatures are in me. In all their joys, I rejoice. In all their afflictions, I am afflicted."
- Jesus, Gospel of the Nazirenes