RE: Can You Be a Vegan But Not An Anarchist?
I'm personally still just a vegetarian mainly because of a weak will, but I recognize that being vegan is the moral thing to do. I view animals as conscious and I view it as immoral to harm them in unneeded ways and since we can survive fine without consuming them and enslaving them, it's immoral for us to do so.
But I am by no means an anarchist as I think there are many things that cannot be achieved without some form of government and I think the idea that a society could safeguard freedom without employing some form of governance is pretty much an utopia.
I don't think you neccessarily have to agree with my reasoning, but I think it's a good example of how the two things don't have to overlap and that supporting one without supporting the other is possible and might be viewed as reasonable.
Still, I'm very happy that you are raising the points that you are because I do think that if you are an anarchist and value freedom, it makes a lot of sense to want to extend that freedom to other conscious beings at least to the extend of not killing and enslaving them.
Governance and the State is different though. A stateless society still allows some form of "government". It's just the individual has the right to opt-out and associate freely; with the State, government is forced upon you.
Yes, it is utopian thinking, but so is every other ideal and social organization. How can one accept the immorality of enslaving animals, but then think it's ok to force others onto a government system?
It's very simple, I don't view government as a form of slavery, but as a necessity to help ensure freedom. If you can opt out of government, you can opt out of the consequences of hurting other people's freedoms. If you can't opt out of them, then government is forced upon you. So you have two choices - allows individuals to limit and destroy other people's freedoms and rights, or give up a bit of freedom so you have some form of governance. Assuming there is a way around that is simply wishful thinking and I see anarchism as that assumption.
So how we organize society is a separate issue to how we think we should treat animals despite the fact that the two issues certainly have an area of interface.
Non-sequitur. You're assuming that those who opt-out of any government means they are opting out of hurting other people's freedoms. The true anarchist believes in absolute freedom and that no individual should have power over others.
In any case, the State is force so by supporting the State you are essentially saying its ok to be forced for the sake of some protection of freedom, which is also wishful thinking. Every State on Earth has eventually turned into a totalitarian State eventually bringing down Society with it.
Both deal with conscious beings. Not sure how one can assume that humans need to be forced so they don't force others, and that animals on the other hand should not be consumed or enslaved. Seems contradictory.
@rocking-dave Thank you for your comment! Personally for me, the anarchism came after the veganism. I always questioned things about our government but never would classify myself to any political party or participate in much discussion of it. After becoming vegan is when I started to see a lot of the parallels. I now believe that a lot of the 'freedom' I thought we have is an illusion.
One point you said especially stood out -- "...I think there are many things that cannot be achieved without some form of government..." -- I can understand that thinking but what forms a government? People. So yes - most everything in society cannot be achieved without people of course. But the idea of a group of people in a hierarchal system ruling over the rest of us doesn't always achieve great things, war for example.
And unfortunately, the area of overlap or interface between the two is much greater than one might think. For example, the roads we drive on are made from our hard earning tax money, which taxes in itself is another conversation. But what are the roads made of? Asphalt. And ashpalt contains stearic acid that comes from tallow (beef fat). Pretty gross right? So money coming from my paycheck and yours is in multiple ways contributing to many things that we both might not support or agree with but there is not much as an individual I can do about that because in this society you are forced to pay taxes.
I think often times people underestimate humankind - individuals working together in a cooperative manner. We are very much under this idea that we constantly need some kind of overhead in order for anything to function properly but look at this system we are communicating on. Individuals are sharing their ideas and opinions and earning cryptocurrency from it, but more importantly many are earning a sense of freedom to expression, and no governmental system is needed for it to cooperate. Again, thank you for your feedback and good luck on going fully vegan if that is your goal!!!
Thank you for your reply.
Of course, governments are susceptible to corruption and most of the time corrupt. A lot of the individuals in governments around the world are self-serving pricks that only care about themselves. But with all its flaws and shortcomings, a rule of law is still better than lawlessness. In the state of anarchy, who or what would restrict this type of self-serving individuals from abusing everybody else, from building power by amassing resources and oppressing or killing everybody in their way? Humans didn't need governments to have wars and to kill each other and the current time we are living in is one of the least violent periods we have ever had in history.
If you want to talk about cruelty to animals, look at it that way. If we live under anarchy, people that see animals as objects would be doing whatever they feel like with them and there would be no real way to restrict them from imposing the least humane forms of breeding, farming and animal testing, right? But if you have some form of government oversight that is accountable to the people in some way, the government can impose restrictions on what can legally be done to animals and this is in fact what we are currently seeing all over the world. We have by no means reached justice or a truly moral treatment of animals yet, but I think we are a tiny bit closer to that then we would be in a state of anarchy.
This is indeed the case. Reality is not pretty, but to improve the status quo we need to offer a real alternative that is practically achievable. It really breaks my heart that we haven't gotten there yet, but I don't see how anarchy could ever get us any closer. Sure, governments are far from perfect, but what real alternative does anarchy offer besides a demonstrably impractical utopia?
Well, we have a lot of data to show us what we can expect from humans. While many of us want to be productive members of a cooperative society, data seems to show that most of us still act egoistically when given the chance. It also shows that even under the restrictive laws that we have right now that offer severe consequences for hurting others, many people still choose to do so. I don't see how imaging that removing the consequences would make us less likely to hurt others really and this is why I see anarchism as wishful thinking. If literally everybody wanted it and was ready to do their part in it, all kinds of utopias would be possible like communism, socialism, anarchy and more, but having everybody on the same page and having nobody willing to abuse the loopholes in the system is something that has never ever happened in history and I see no reason to assume that it is indeed possible at all.
Let's indeed look into the system that we are communicating on. Is it without rules and restrictions? Is it without government? If there are no rules, how come we have hardforks that change them? If there is no form of government, how were the hardforks decided on? Is voting for witnesses not a form of representational democracy? Also, let's not forget that the infrastructure we use to access the steem blockchain (the internet) would not and could not exists in it's current global form without the support and oversight of governments. If there were no tax dollars, there would be no internet. The internet had the chance to be standardized and becoming global only because of government oversight and regulation. So besides the system not being a true anarchy on the inside, it is able to function only in the context of a world that is not an anarchy either.
Additionally, while steem claims to be free and open, there are large actors that can indeed enforce rules by their own volition and you can see many people effectively being banned from getting any rewards and having their content visible in people's feeds by the efforts of individuals and groups of individuals. I'm not saying the people that have engaged in doing this and protecting the community from abuse or spam are doing a bad job, but I'm pointing out that the fact that they are able to succeed in their efforts shows how susceptible the system is to abuse from individuals holding enough resources. Destroying somebody's rewards through flagging/downvotes is in fact a way to force other individuals and restricting their freedom. So even in this supposedly anarchic system, people have started looking for ways to impose rules, there are people abusing the system and it's not all just freedom and cooperation.
Thank you, that is indeed my goal as I see it as the right thing to do and I'm actually quite embarrassed for not having done so yet.