Nothing Condoned

Since you have all the time in the world, literally 24 hours a day to do anything you wanted, you can do a lot with your time. All up to you.

@JustMegawatt That's true. I try to make the most of it and try to fight off depression, but it can be difficult. Sometimes I forget that I'm an adult and that I can essentially do whatever I want. I feel like generally I spend my time well, at least on days when I practice things like meditation and working out. It's about figuring out what would make me happiest. My energy levels keep me from getting too much done because of chronic fatigue syndrome, but otherwise you are right.

@iyazo I used to experience depression during my school years when I tried to fit in with the other kids. I even became one of the most popular kids in my grade, everyone knew me and I was voted into student government. I was still depressed though, girls and loneliness being the main cause. Despite being popular, I didn't have many close friends and I was very cringe with girls (listening to pick-up advice back then). I remember crying in my room a bunch.

Looking back, all my problems and drama were petty and stupid. I wouldn't behave the same way today at all, I wouldn't have taken my experiences with others as seriously because they're all temporary and I wouldn't have made my life's problems revolve around them. It felt like I'd see everyone forever at the time, but no, I saw them briefly maybe a few years at most, and then never again.

Today it's near impossible for me to experience being sad or depression. It's such a foreign emotion now that I can't even fathom it. All I have to do is compare my life experience to the needless suffering of animals all around the world, and any hint of sadness vanishes, I'm filled with energy, and I feel frustration and controlled anger at the world. It's not a relatable experience for most since most people blissfully take part in that violence, but it's akin to imagining billions of dogs in cages and being bred for slaughter when it's completely unnecessary, and people filling up their freezers with the corpses of these dogs to cook and eat.

Instead of dogs though, it's other animals. How can I feel depressed when I know they're suffering far worse? And I'm given a life purpose, to reduce or eliminate that as much as I possibly can while I'm here.

@JustMegawatt I don't have control over my depression like that, it doesn't work that way for me. I'm glad you have something you feel so passionate about that it can stop your depression. I don't have that. I also don't know if I just have low empathy or what my problem is...I could probably become a surgeon though if I wanted to, I've seen some pretty gross stuff. I'm also not a good person, I could eat a person or a dog. I see it as "it's already dead, it's food" rather than thinking about all of the torture like you said which is the problem. It just doesn't occur to me because it just feels natural to eat anything when I'm hungry because I rarely feel hunger. I think I mentioned before that I was anorexic and had issues with keeping my weight up so going vegan would severely limit my already picky eating. Sorry if this upsets you. I have been trying to consume less meat (and I'm already lactose intolerant, so I use almond or soy milk) and I know you say it's not ok to sometimes kill animals, but to me it's still better than when I used to eat a burger every day practically... I'm way far from that now. I've been trying different meal replacements and quick foods like vegetable soups since I need to store things in my room. I might be able to at least be a vegetarian... I'm not really into the whole ranting about saving the world and animals and environments because getting angry at me doesn't make me want to listen to what you're saying honestly, but I am listening and I do get it, I'm glad you have that as your sense of purpose. I don't think that would magically cure my depression though. I was a vegetarian when I was a lot younger because I don't like the texture of meat generally as it is and I was just as depressed back then.

@iyazo You have pets right? They don't start off as dead, and when they die you'd probably be disgusted attempting to eat them. Would it feel natural to kill a dog at home to eat them or kill random animals outside? Imagine raising any animals just to kill and eat them, when there is already plenty of plant foods available where no animal has to die. It's not like I've never eaten meat before, I used to eat it all the time. I just never thought about how meat got there and was oblivious / didn't care. I get that, majority of people are like that and don't really care and think about it enough, they rather it be in the back of their mind.

I mean it took me a few years after watching slaughterhouse footage and feeling bad for those animals to actually stop, but once I did, after a few years without meat I realized was literally no point to it, things shifted in my mind and I realized massive amounts of death and torture occur for something entirely unnecessary. Since I've gone a long time without it, I don't even see meat as food, it's like people looking at a piece of wood, it doesn't even resemble anything close to food. Check out the movie Dominion on YouTube or watch "vegan $20 a week" for how inexpensive it can be. My grocery bills are about $40-$60 a week and this is enough to feed 3 people. Also, I am overweight on $20 a week, which means I eat plenty enough of food and calories to not be thin, even without animal products.

@JustMegawatt You must live in a really inexpensive area then because I'm on a set income and unless I want to stick to just vegetables and fruit there is no real cheap option for a meat subsistute and being vegan and I can't survive on rice and beans alone. I don't even care about myself that much, it's difficult for me to process the suffering of others. And where do you draw the line? Chickens naturally produce lots of unfertile eggs and cows still produce milk and need to be milked if they don't have a calf but this is like the big divide between being vegetarian or vegan. And what about bees? It's actually beneficial for there to be bee farms at all so there are more colonies which can pollinate our foods, and they produce excess honey which it doesn't harm them to take. Same with wool which needs to be shorn off a sheep and grows naturally. There's a lot of grey areas like that to being vegan or vegetarian, and I just don't like people being overly aggressive about this. I'm sorry that I am able to see any animal as food and not find it disgusting because something in my brain I guess blocks me from thinking about it too much because of the instinct to eat... I'm not going to go out of my way to look at shock footage of slaughterhouse footage, I already have PTSD thanks. but yeah I don't really care that much about my body and health because of depression, it's a vicious cycle. Like I said I am making an effort to consume less and in general if everyone worked to consume less it's better than just a few people who forgo it entirely. And I don't even know why I'm bothering to change. It doesn't bother me either way. I just need food that's quick and won't spoil in my room so I grab what I can afford. I can't afford to run out and get fresh raw foods every few days and they would just go bad too quickly here. I do what I am able to do and you don't have any right to judge me for it or think that you're any better than me or anyone else.

@iyazo
- For eggs, majority of them are from sickly chickens in inhumane cramped cages without any room to move, many die laying eggs and if they make it to "old" age (maybe a year old?), as thanks for their lifetime of suffering and egg production, they're slaughtered.

- For cows, they don't produce milk unless they have a calf, so they're impregnated in a cycle and the calf is taken a way to get slaughtered to make veal. Baby cow slaughter videos are some of the worst, they're cut in half forced to go through a giant saw-like device, screaming in horror and face visible with pain in the process. After a lifetime of enslavement giving milk to humans since the calves won't get any, the mother cows are slaughtered.

- For sheep being shorn wool, they're done in a rushed way, chained to a table or held down violently, and often get stabbed or cut and in the process with the red blood visible on their white skin, oh and after a lifetime of providing wool, they're slaughtered.

- For honey, bees are treated extremely violently too, they're forced bred through artificial insemination and entire colonies are poisoned to death on a whim based on profitability. The most relaxed kind of animal exploitation video I can think of would be on bees, and this is still pretty horrid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clMNw_VO1xo

There's tons of videos and photos of everything I mentioned. That's one easy way I make myself not pay for anything that includes any animal products, because I recognize the horror and exploit it took for those products to be produced.

Not judging anyone, I never thought of myself as "better" than anybody, why would I even have those thoughts? I'm just trying my best to spread information since most of us are kept in the dark about it (it's illegal to film slaughterhouse footage, gee I wonder why?)

@JustMegawatt And after my life is finished on this planet I too will die an inhumane death. Life isn't pretty or glorious. There's precious little wonderful or pretty about it. I became a vegetarian when I first found out where food comes from when I was a kid, I don't need to sit and be lectured on this for literally no reason out of the blue. I think you are misinformed about a lot because not all farms are like that. Where I live a lot of people own small family farms- it's not fighting the big bad meat industry. They take their livestock very seriously. Never have I seen an animal out on the countryside that looked sickly or unhappy regardless of what they're for. Anyway, at some point, I grew up and started eating food again when my anorexia went dormant. I'd rather not go back to being anorexic "because I can't eat" I'm not going to watch your horror story vegan propaganda either. I don't need to see tons of photos of "proof." I really don't give a shit to be honest with you, I'm just fucking tired. I hate this argument. Take it somewhere far away from me because you ARE being judgmental, telling me how horrible it is for the poor animals, harassing me with information which isn't fully true. Some of it is, I know the majority of the meat industry has really low standards and are cruel, but also if it's illegal and there's no footage how do you know that baby cows get sliced in half or are even capable of screaming? You're just making up worst case scenarios. No. Cows aren't slaughtered alive like that. They take them and hang them upside down and slit their throats first because it's supposedly "more humane." Get actual sources not backed by pro-vegan propaganda skews and stop spreading misinformation. It's one thing to be an annoying raging vegan and another to also be wrong.

Sheep do need sheering. That's a fact. There was once one that ran off and went living in some caves and when it was found it was so matted and hindered by all of the wool it could hardly move around. They sheered off the wool and it was fine again. It's like a haircut, it doesn't hurt them. Does that mean I'm saying people shouldn't be more gentle with them? No, I know not all people are gentle.

I've never heard any of that bullshit about bees before in my life. And how much experience do you actually have in raising any of these animals? I know for a fact any respectable beekeeper wants MORE bees not less and wouldn't just poison a whole bunch for no particular reason. I know a lot of times they accidentally LOSE colonies if something happens to the queen, but it's not intentional. I can be certain without looking at the link that it's likely vegan sourced skewed propaganda so I'm not bothering.

You know what I never see brought up though is plant rights. Like who gave you the right to uproot anything and just start eating it? Did you know that when plants like grasses are cut they release a chemical that lets the other plants know danger is near and they're dying? Yes, plants can scream too. So in the end no matter what I eat I want it to be screaming in terror because I'm an apex predator. You're next, kid.

@iyazo Lol chill, I'm not being judgemental at all. I don't care what you do, eat all the meat you want for all I care, I just want to spread info.

The thing about plants too is that 80% of our crops are fed to livestock. I don't know what the ratio is but you have to probably feed it 50 calories of plants to get 1 calorie of meat. So overall you'll kill more plants by eating meat than eating plants directly.

These videos exist because it wasn't always illegal to record that footage, and there are activists who sneak into these places to record the footage. I've seen them and shown them to others, I can link them here but as you said you don't even want to watch them. They're on YouTube lol.

I don't care tbh what you do, I was just posting some information and that's alright if you think I'm wrong despite not having fully looked it up yourself. People get offended all the time and say it's "vegan propaganda' when it's literal factual footage. Anyway good luck!

Anyway let's call it quits on this subject. Could honestly talk about this forever, I've experienced a bunch, killed animals with my own hands before and have relatives who keep farm animals that are sent to slaughter (and are kept in cramped cages, in buildings not visible to the public)

Also you're right, the baby cows are not getting sawed in half. My memory of it was wrong, just rewatched the footage and it's their necks getting cut, but their faces are clearly visible, they are struggling and are clearly awake the entire process.