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The more I think about it, the more I feel a deep, existential distrust of carnists. (hexbear.net)
submitted 3 months ago by BeanisBrain@hexbear.net to c/vegan@hexbear.net
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I am a Marxist and a materialist. Ideas and beliefs don't arise ex nihilo. They emerge to fit the material reality in which they exist. What are the material realities that lead to carnism? I would argue that there are only two that matter:

  1. "I benefit from objectifying these animals."
  2. "These animals are too weak to stop me from objectifying them."

Boil away the justifications, strip away the decorum, and this is what you get. But what if that person enters a situation where they benefit from objectifying me? What if I'm too weak to stop them? What barrier prevents them from doing so? My intelligence? My capacity for suffering? Their empathy and goodwill? None of that saves cattle, or pigs, or chickens. Why would it save me? I'm not foolish enough to think I'm special.

And look, survival situations are one thing. If you kill and eat an animal because the alternative is starvation, you have decided that the animal's life is worth less than your life. If someone decided that my life was worth less than their life, and a situation came up where they had to act on that decision, I wouldn't begrudge it. I wouldn't like it, I'd fight it, but I wouldn't begrudge it. The thought of someone deciding my life is worth less than their pleasure, though? Turns my blood to fucking ice.

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[-] LeninWeave@hexbear.net 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

u/tomenzgg beat me to it, but apparently you haven't read A Modest Proposal.

I just want to reply to this part specifically. A Modest Proposal wasn't actually calling to eat orphan children, it was satire based on the fact that calling to eat orphan children (actually, it was the children of poor people) would be shocking and repulsive to any reader. I don't know if that was what you were actually saying, but I think it is important that AFAIK no one at the time was unironically calling to eat orphan children. Of course, as part of that satire Swift did liken the Irish to livestock, which is something that plenty of colonizers have unironically said of the colonized. It just wasn't the case in the particular case of that essay.

this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
51 points (91.8% liked)

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