Pacifism, Fault, and Veganism

[Purple Knight]

If a society of pacifists allows a gang of bandits to exploit them, bandits who would have otherwise died, are the pacifists partly to blame when the fattened and pampered bandits go out again, to another society, and have greater success?

If so, if part of the blame falls on a pacifist for his pampering of brutes, then I fail to see the ethical merit of pacifism.

However, if not, because presumably people are never responsible for what others do even if they knowingly caused or enabled it, then I fail to see the ethical merit of veganism, since you can easily buy meat without killing the animal yourself.

To my mind, at least one of these things doesn't work.

[Purple Knight]

In the case of the pacifist society allowing bandits to exploit them, the ethical evaluation may depend on one's perspective. Some might argue that by not taking action to protect themselves, the pacifist society bears some responsibility for the subsequent actions of the bandits. Others may contend that the bandits, being responsible for their own choices, are solely accountable for their actions, regardless of the pacifist society's behavior.

And if you pick the latter - that you're not responsible for what you cause, only what you actually do - then you're free to eat meat, because as long as somebody else killed it, you didn't.

The argument that buying meat off the shelves increases demand for meat, causing more animals to be killed, and thus the person buying and eating the meat is responsible, is exactly the same argument that the pacifists fattening and pampering the bandits are responsible for what the empowered and fattened bandits are able to do next.

If people are responsible for that which they cause, even if they do not do it personally, then you can make an ethical necessity out of veganism. But then, you cannot call it moral to pamper bandits; you should stop them.

If people are responsible for only that which they personally do, then the pacifists empowering bandits to rob again are fine; when that happens it is the fault of the bandits alone. However, you cannot make a moral obligation out of veganism.

Pick exactly one. The other must be thrown out.

[alexxcJRO]

If a society of pacifists allows a gang of bandits to exploit them, bandits who would have otherwise died, are the pacifists partly to blame when the fattened and pampered bandits go out again, to another society, and have greater success?

If so, if part of the blame falls on a pacifist for his pampering of brutes, then I fail to see the ethical merit of pacifism.

However, if not, because presumably people are never responsible for what others do even if they knowingly caused or enabled it, then I fail to see the ethical merit of veganism, since you can easily buy meat without killing the animal yourself.

To my mind, at least one of these things doesn't work.

1.
Complete veganism as in not consumming any animal products at all is bunk. Animal products as in animal organs, animal eggs, animal fat, certain animal meats are the most nutricious foods on the planet being the most bio-available. It might be very detrimental to human society to be a completely vegan society. Complete veganism might be very detrimental to human health on the long turn.
Partial Veganism defined as trying to reduce animal slaughter by reducing as much as possible human consumption without harming human health is in my opinion the correct aproach.
Eliminate if possible factory farming. No need for gluttomy and obesity: stuffing your self on meat and animal products.
2.
Complete pacifism as in not committing any violence at all is the same bunk.
One society full with complete pacifists will be completely destroyed by a society of psychopaths and sociopaths.
Partial pacifist society as in trying to reduce violence to the minimum that is realistically possible is a better thing.

The precautionary principle is always wise to be used in any situation before leaping to the extreme versions of a solution to a certain problem.

[Purple Knight]

Complete veganism as in not consuming any animal products at all is bunk.

I know. There's also the fact that more mice died under the plough for Mr. Veggie's salad than cows died for my hamburger. This is absolutely true and grass-fed beef is actually the least death-intensive food, per calorie, on the planet. But for some reason this argument doesn't convince anybody and makes people angry.

Since vegans are almost always also pacifists, I think it might help to point out that there's a flat contradiction between believing in the moral obligation to limit the harm you cause, and believing that as long as you don't personally harm or kill anyone and your hands are clean, it doesn't matter what the downstream effects of pacifism are.

Complete pacifism as in not committing any violence at all is the same bunk.
One society full with complete pacifists will be completely destroyed by a society of psychopaths and sociopaths.

Pacifism is not sustainable but is very dangerous in the meantime, however. There's this pacifist sweet spot where society is 99% non-violent and the pacifist himself will never ever realistically feel the consequences of forgiving even the most violent criminals. Realistically, someone else will get hurt if anybody. But at the same time, the pacifist reaps an alarming amount of moral status from his actions, making them perfectly tuned and optimised to be hypercompetitive and exploit and hurt others to get ahead. He may not intend this, but he not only pushes any consequences away from himself onto his competition, but he makes himself look good while his competition looks evil. And all he has to do... is nothing. Everyone else wants to do something. So we have this zero-effort parasitic survival strategy that blows everything else away in the perfect storm conditions of a very non-violent, but not entirely non-violent, society.

[alexxcJRO]

I know. There's also the fact that more mice died under the plough for Mr. Veggie's salad than cows died for my hamburger. This is absolutely true and grass-fed beef is actually the least death-intensive food, per calorie, on the planet. But for some reason this argument doesn't convince anybody and makes people angry.

Beef might be the least death-intensive food, per calorie, on the planet but its the biggest contributor to global warming.
From a veganism point you are right you get the most ammount of calories per death of an animal.

Since vegans are almost always also pacifists, I think it might help to point out that there's a flat contradiction between believing in the moral obligation to limit the harm you cause, and believing that as long as you don't personally harm or kill anyone and your hands are clean, it doesn't matter what the downstream effects of pacifism are.

Being a complete pacifist can be as evil as doing your harming yourself.
A group of psychopaths and sociopaths will not be moved by non-violence mentality, warmed and fuzzy benevolence. They will harm others for the sake of pleasure alone or for obtaining some material benefit. No amount of reasoning, logic and empathy shown will persuade such individuals that are capable of mutilating, torturing, killing on mass with ease.

Pacifism is not sustainable but is very dangerous in the meantime, however. There's this pacifist sweet spot where society is 99% non-violent and the pacifist himself will never ever realistically feel the consequences of forgiving even the most violent criminals. Realistically, someone else will get hurt if anybody. But at the same time, the pacifist reaps an alarming amount of moral status from his actions, making them perfectly tuned and optimised to be hypercompetitive and exploit and hurt others to get ahead. He may not intend this, but he not only pushes any consequences away from himself onto his competition, but he makes himself look good while his competition looks evil. And all he has to do... is nothing. Everyone else wants to do something. So we have this zero-effort parasitic survival strategy that blows everything else away in the perfect storm conditions of a very non-violent, but not entirely non-violent, society.

A complete pacifist mentality that permeates society together with veganism could be as detrimental to society as allowing complete freedom which includes anarchism and permission to do any kind of violence to anyone.
Also is not very fair as you say to be a complete pacifist and reap the rewards resulted from the actions of other people who are not pacifists, who "keep the peace" and in the process reap many kinds of nefarious consequences like PTSD, societal criticism and reprimand, risk to their physical integrity, health and even life.

[Purple Knight]

I know. There's also the fact that more mice died under the plough for Mr. Veggie's salad than cows died for my hamburger. This is absolutely true and grass-fed beef is actually the least death-intensive food, per calorie, on the planet. But for some reason this argument doesn't convince anybody and makes people angry.

Beef might be the least death-intensive food, per calorie, on the planet but its the biggest contributor to global warming.
From a veganism point you are right you get the most ammount of calories per death of an animal.

The only contributor to global warming is overpopulation. Everything else is pure distraction. You can reduce the amount of carbon per person, per calorie, but not eliminate it because we all breathe and fart. If we have few people, it won't matter if we fatten ourselves into oblivion, waste food, and burn coal. Conversely, if we all eat grey bacterial paste, don't even try to get as much as we need, and consent to being unhealthy because we are deprived of basic nutrients, we can cram many more people on the planet.

If we only had as many people as we did in the 80's when I was born and started hearing about this from Captain Planet, "maybe we shouldn't eat meat at all" wouldn't even be on the table. I've lived a lifetime of hearing that oh, if we only reduce, reuse, recycle, we can reduce our impact on the environment by 20%, and it ends up an exercise in futility because in 20 years, there are 20% more people on the planet. And now, of course, after having done all that, listened to Captain Planet, done everything I was supposed to, worked that hard, the environmentalists want to take another 20% out of my hide.

No. Everyone else needs to stop having babies. That's the problem, not anything I've done.

If the governments of the world won't come together against overpopulation, they're absolutely entirely completely responsible for what happens to the planet. The people having no children, or replacement-level children, cannot possibly underconsume enough to make up for the people doubling their share in the genepool every generation. Charging them to do so is like charging non-smokers to pick up every cigarette butt discarded on the ground.

Being a complete pacifist can be as evil as doing your harming yourself.
A group of psychopaths and sociopaths will not be moved by non-violence mentality, warmed and fuzzy benevolence. They will harm others for the sake of pleasure alone or for obtaining some material benefit. No amount of reasoning, logic and empathy shown will persuade such individuals that are capable of mutilating, torturing, killing on mass with ease.

The pacifist knows this, and he simply states that it is moral to let those people do anything and everything, rather than stop them. Deep down I think he gets a sick pleasure from making normal people into moral slaves to psychopaths. I'm a psychopath myself by the way. I don't naturally have very much empathy. It doesn't bother me if people are hurt or killed. Any empathy I have is reasoned and calculated, rather than a knee-jerk reaction.

A complete pacifist mentality that permeates society together with veganism could be as detrimental to society as allowing complete freedom which includes anarchism and permission to do any kind of violence to anyone.
Also is not very fair as you say to be a complete pacifist and reap the rewards resulted from the actions of other people who are not pacifists, who "keep the peace" and in the process reap many kinds of nefarious consequences like PTSD, societal criticism and reprimand, risk to their physical integrity, health and even life.

There seems something wrong with what I call purity mentalities: The idea that as long as your hands are kept clean, cause whatever you like to others and compete like a total anarchist. Christianity seems like this at times. The halo-wearing Christian turns the other cheek to his attacker, then calls the cop who will restrain and stop the attacker and consequently go to Hell. But it's okay; the Christian who did nothing wrong will go to Heaven.

I don't even think true anarchy would be this bad. There, everyone would have the right to be out for themselves, defend themselves, and anyone who wanted to hurt another would risk being retaliated against. It wouldn't matter how an attacker decided to hurt people; he'd be at risk. Here, with laws and rules and so-called order, there are legally sanctioned ways to hurt others, certain ways you're allowed to strike with no risk of being struck in return.

[alexxcJRO]

The only contributor to global warming is overpopulation. Everything else is pure distraction. You can reduce the amount of carbon per person, per calorie, but not eliminate it because we all breathe and fart. If we have few people, it won't matter if we fatten ourselves into oblivion, waste food, and burn coal. Conversely, if we all eat grey bacterial paste, don't even try to get as much as we need, and consent to being unhealthy because we are deprived of basic nutrients, we can cram many more people on the planet.
If we only had as many people as we did in the 80's when I was born and started hearing about this from Captain Planet, "maybe we shouldn't eat meat at all" wouldn't even be on the table. I've lived a lifetime of hearing that oh, if we only reduce, reuse, recycle, we can reduce our impact on the environment by 20%, and it ends up an exercise in futility because in 20 years, there are 20% more people on the planet. And now, of course, after having done all that, listened to Captain Planet, done everything I was supposed to, worked that hard, the environmentalists want to take another 20% out of my hide.
No. Everyone else needs to stop having babies. That's the problem, not anything I've done.
If the governments of the world won't come together against overpopulation, they're absolutely entirely completely responsible for what happens to the planet. The people having no children, or replacement-level children, cannot possibly underconsume enough to make up for the people doubling their share in the genepool every generation. Charging them to do so is like charging non-smokers to pick up every cigarette butt discarded on the ground.

I agree that if we were only like 5 hundred million people the behaviour would not be important.
I agree also that something responsible needs to be done about that.

But since we are 8 billions already behaviour matters.
If 8 billion people acted responsible from tomorrow things would change dramatically.

I for example have reduced my meat and dairy consumption with ~80 percent.

I have reduced substantially my Methane Gas and electrical power consumption and Gaz(for vehicle) consumption by doing certain actions:
-using a bike, electrical buses, walking instead of a car for most of my transportation .
-changing the electrical devices in my apartment with ones that are more economical(40%), reducing the lighting on my TVS with 50%, under-volting my CPU and GPU on my PC and reducing the power consumption(30%), using intelligent power socket and eliminating vampire power consumption, isolating the inside of the apartment and reducing the humidity and therefore reducing substantially the use of Methane Gas for heating(70%), i don't use a AC in the summer: isolating the apartment helped, I have put light reflectors on windows.
- buy quality clothing and changing them far less frequently.
- use my phone till it no longer works

I saved a lot of money in doing so. It is more healthy to eat less meat and dairy. Eat more quality foods, from sources that are not from factory farming. Eat local fruits and vegie. O don't eat avocados and things that need to be shipped from very far away. It's more healthy to walk, ride a bike.

If all humans or the majority of human would decide to act responsible from today the world would be in a much better shape.
We could do 2 or 3 or 4 Manhattan like projects in respect to fusion, mirrors mega projects to help with the reducing of reflectivity of the light by the melting of polar ice, carbon capture technology and so on.
But I guess this is not unlikely since its so easier to be destructive, selfish, irresponsible, evil, malevolent, overindulge with food/alcohol/cigarettes/drugs/sex/shopping of material things and since most humans are such weaklings ....

To be a simpleton and a loser crapping in his only existing home is so easy. Being responsible with your only existing home is much a harder thing to do.

The pacifist knows this, and he simply states that it is moral to let those people do anything and everything, rather than stop them. Deep down I think he gets a sick pleasure from making normal people into moral slaves to psychopaths. I'm a psychopath myself by the way. I don't naturally have very much empathy. It doesn't bother me if people are hurt or killed. Any empathy I have is reasoned and calculated, rather than a knee-jerk reaction.

I don't think the pacifists get a sick pleasure. It's just delusions.
Delusion is a major thing which plagues greatly our society. Delusions about gods, about our love ones good nature and very good intentions, unconditional love, utopian "heaven like" future societies, that our economical system is sustainable and possible to go on ad infinitum, about our power to surely change our gloomy future when we do not fully comprehend the exponential function.

I myself have great empathic, emotional response but at the same time I can be very calculated and cold which is a trait I myself cultivated.

There seems something wrong with what I call purity mentalities: The idea that as long as your hands are kept clean, cause whatever you like to others and compete like a total anarchist. Christianity seems like this at times. The halo-wearing Christian turns the other cheek to his attacker, then calls the cop who will restrain and stop the attacker and consequently go to Hell. But it's okay; the Christian who did nothing wrong will go to Heaven.
I don't even think true anarchy would be this bad. There, everyone would have the right to be out for themselves, defend themselves, and anyone who wanted to hurt another would risk being retaliated against. It wouldn't matter how an attacker decided to hurt people; he'd be at risk. Here, with laws and rules and so-called order, there are legally sanctioned ways to hurt others, certain ways you're allowed to strike with no risk of being struck in return.

1. Christ and Ghandi like mentality seems very good and nice at the surface level but fails at a more in depth analysis.

2. Anarchy would be ok if people's nature would not be so destructive, selfish, irresponsible, evil, malevolent, very prone to overindulgence. The necessity for order appeared because of this nature I think.
On the other hand you are right with so-called order and legally sanctioned ways to hurt others we can have an institution(=the state-which was given responsibility to keep the order) to cause all kinds of atrocities, suffering and pain if enough irresponsible, immature, ignorant, evil, malevolent individuals permeate it.

[Purple Knight]

If all humans or the majority of human would decide to act responsible from today the world would be in a much better shape.

I don't believe this anymore. For the all part, yes. If all humans started acting responsibly, the world would be in much better shape.

The problem is what happens if just the majority do it. Ultimately, bottom-up conservation does nothing but give the irresponsible who gobble resources a bigger genetic share in the future.

[alexxcJRO]

If all humans or the majority of human would decide to act responsible from today the world would be in a much better shape.

I don't believe this anymore. For the all part, yes. If all humans started acting responsibly, the world would be in much better shape.

The problem is what happens if just the majority do it. Ultimately, bottom-up conservation does nothing but give the irresponsible who gobble resources a bigger genetic share in the future.

People are sheeple if enough people behave a certain way the rest will follow lead.
Nobody wants to be the odd one.
Asch conformity experiment prove this.

[Purple Knight]

If all humans or the majority of human would decide to act responsible from today the world would be in a much better shape.

I don't believe this anymore. For the all part, yes. If all humans started acting responsibly, the world would be in much better shape.

The problem is what happens if just the majority do it. Ultimately, bottom-up conservation does nothing but give the irresponsible who gobble resources a bigger genetic share in the future.

People are sheeple if enough people behave a certain way the rest will follow lead.
Nobody wants to be the odd one.
Asch conformity experiment prove this.

I know about the stick. They show 5 people two sticks and ask them which is longer. But unbeknownst to the hapless fifth guy (who answers last) the previous 4 are plants, who say the shorter stick is in fact, longer. 90% of the time, the poor fifth guy says the short stick is the long one too.

The problem is the people who won't conform and just do whatever they want. They're extreme outliers but if they are rewarded with a greater genetic share in the future, the future will be far bleaker.

Let's take a group of 5 females, Patty, Betty, Janice, Randi, and Sam. We also have 10 oranges. Each orange represents resources and allows a female to reproduce. The group says, look, let us preserve oranges, and each take one. They all nod their heads. Then Patty grabs the 5 extra oranges, because nothing stopped her from doing that except agreement.

Now we have a new generation of 4 nice people who will conserve if possible, and 6 Patties who will grab grab grab until the resources are dry. If any more resources are found, Patties will just take them all.

Whereas if each just took their share, we could have had 8 nice people and 2 Patties. In fact, We might only get something like 1.7 Patties because she doesn't naturally conserve even her own oranges, so when everyone else is just barely hanging on, some of her offspring may actually die.

[alexxcJRO]

If all humans or the majority of human would decide to act responsible from today the world would be in a much better shape.

I don't believe this anymore. For the all part, yes. If all humans started acting responsibly, the world would be in much better shape.

The problem is what happens if just the majority do it. Ultimately, bottom-up conservation does nothing but give the irresponsible who gobble resources a bigger genetic share in the future.

People are sheeple if enough people behave a certain way the rest will follow lead.
Nobody wants to be the odd one.
Asch conformity experiment prove this.

I know about the stick. They show 5 people two sticks and ask them which is longer. But unbeknownst to the hapless fifth guy (who answers last) the previous 4 are plants, who say the shorter stick is in fact, longer. 90% of the time, the poor fifth guy says the short stick is the long one too.

The problem is the people who won't conform and just do whatever they want. They're extreme outliers but if they are rewarded with a greater genetic share in the future, the future will be far bleaker.

Let's take a group of 5 females, Patty, Betty, Janice, Randi, and Sam. We also have 10 oranges. Each orange represents resources and allows a female to reproduce. The group says, look, let us preserve oranges, and each take one. They all nod their heads. Then Patty grabs the 5 extra oranges, because nothing stopped her from doing that except agreement.

Now we have a new generation of 4 nice people who will conserve if possible, and 6 Patties who will grab grab grab until the resources are dry. If any more resources are found, Patties will just take them all.

Whereas if each just took their share, we could have had 8 nice people and 2 Patties. In fact, We might only get something like 1.7 Patties because she doesn't naturally conserve even her own oranges, so when everyone else is just barely hanging on, some of her offspring may actually die.

The extreme outliers are always in the very small minority.
We already been over the fact that complete pacifism is a broken ideology.
Superman, Goku like ideology and kind of partial pacifism is preferred.
We intervened to forcefully pacify the extreme outliers.

We don't let the very small minority to get a greater genetic share in the future.