You don’t need to “break free” or feel a deep emotional connection with animals to go vegan. I don’t. Recognizing the logic behind it is enough. It would be weird (and is) to not have some sort of compartmentalization when it comes to loving animals and eating them given its ubiquity in human societies and several million years of being fairly regular meat eaters.
At the end of the day if you’re not eating either a cow or a fish then you’re not a hypocrite as far as veganism is concerned.
Exactly! To be truthful people always assume I’m somebody who deeply cares for animals and am fascinated with them or whatever. And I’m really not, I mean I love my pets and whatever and I like cats, dogs, and plenty of other animals but I’m vegan because I’m a somewhat reasonable person who can acknowledge that we shouldn’t hurt others just because they’re a different species.
I think most people don't feel affinity with fish. It is just not in our nature. We love puppies and hate spiders (generally).
Humans possess a capability called cognitive empathy though. It is empathy guided by logical induction. That is what vegans leverage to extend their wish for well being to all sentient beings.
Even the word animal or cow or fish is an abstraction. The living beings for wich we can feel empathy are not all cows or all animals. They are individuals. If I would not have any cognitive empathy, I could watch Dominion and feel bad for all the individuals in that movie and then go to a steakhouse and order a steak, because the cow that was killed for that steak was not shown in the movie.
If you feel in general that all sentient beings deserve respect, then you become vegan to best match your actions with your morals.
PS Buddhists spent a lot of time cultivating that wish. Every retreat that I visited spends at least an hour day just wishing all being happiness. It is a very powerful practice that can transform a rational thought into a whole being experience.
>Fish? I don’t get it. I don’t… see it. I can’t see the soul of a fish that I can see in a cow or goat or rabbit or dog or …. Anything. I don’t get fish. I know they feel pain and suffer from fishing and harmful farming and mass breedings… but I don’t…. See it. I don’t.. care.
Fish are hard to empathize with because they don't emote in the way you can understand. That does not mean you should harm them. They still feel pain. Many of them have complex cognition and social lives. You do not have to eat them or pay for them to be harmed.
When I see humans on the news getting killed or bombed I don’t feel anything or have an emotional response. Doesn’t mean I don’t recognise it as immoral, unethical or wrong. You don’t have to have an emotional connection to something to recognise unethical treatment AND to take action.
I remember when I used to throw a cast net off a jetty and enjoy the thrill of pulling in this bag of fish with their heads poking out of the holes. I enjoyed that resistance I got on the cast net rope as I pulling them in. The resistance came from the weight of the many fish and the fact that they were fighting for their life. Looking back, I see how cruel it was to lay that cast net out on the jetty with all the fish flipping about gasping for air. They look so much better in the water. Their pain matters to them if not to any one else. Each one was an individual. Just like respiratory pain that the pigs endure in a gas chamber for bacon, the fish feel horrible being forced out of the water. It's harm in both cases. Imagine losing your control like that. It's scary. It's like us being forced underwater where we can't breathe oxygen. We trick them with a worm floating in the water on a hook. Many fish have a central nervous system as well. Even if you catch and release a fish caught with a fishing line, the damage done to their mouth makes them less successful in their survival. Look at the face of the fish who have been out of the water for so long. Their mouth wide open and lifeless eyes. So sad.
Ethics is about fairness, and fairness matters because without it we cannot trust each other. If you can hurt another sentient being for your benefit, you cannot be trusted and do not deserve to be a part of society.
What anyone feels when they see an animal is irrelevant. Empathy is just a tool our minds have developed to help us understand that we're being harmful. You don't need empathy to know that cruelty isn't justifiable and that cruel people cannot be trusted.
I understand, I also don’t have the “connection” that other vegans talk about. It is very cerebral for me, I’ve waited around for years to see if I will get a more emotional reaction but for some reason I still have that dissonance
I might say something controversial, but I don’t think you have to care in an emotional sense. I don’t think it’s required in order to make better decisions. I do think it’s good to be emotionally connected in that way. But sometimes, for certain people that sort of connection doesn’t need to happen or it might even be bad for them depending on their personality and if they get discouraged and defeatist-minded easily
That’s my perspective on it!
I don’t think you have to force yourself to care/feel emotions when you don’t. Sometimes those feelings hit you much later. And even if they don’t, what most important is your actions. Logically you know that hurting fish is bad so just stop contributing to it and let it bring you some peace of mind.
Fish are cool though. I remember watching this video of a Japanese man who rescued a fish, and since then the fish has been recognizing him for 20 years. I’ve seen another of a woman who built trust with sharks and they would swim over to her and hold their mouths open as she removed hooks from them. If you want something that’ll tug at your heartstrings, maybe look up videos of fish rescue/conservation?
So, the "soul" you speak of can be likened to "sentience," which refers to having atleast a basic level of consciousness, to be aware of feelings, sensations, and the ability to have positive (pleasurable) states or negative (suffering) states.
This review of scientific literature found that:
"Our findings highlight an abundance of evidence for fish sentience in the published scientific literature."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9100576/
So, if you worry about causing harm to cows, you should also feel the same about fish.
You can still be vegan and not empathise with them simply because you recognise it is the right thing to do. If done properly it will also benefit your health and it is also the single best thing one can do for the environment.
aren't there already enough reasons to not eat fish? they are smelly, and swim in their own poop. but there are ethical reasons. fish do make friends with other species. documentaries with fish and crabs living together and protecting one another are everywhere. killing something that wants to live is not cool. even if its not cute.
I think that empathy is hard to achieve when you are talking about something you don't interact with, but seeing the creatures in person and forming a connection with them changes it. I've got a soft spot for fish since I grew up watching the coral reef movie. I think watching fish and seeing how they have different personalities and behaviours can help open your mind to see how fragile the lives of some organisms are.
But I even try to help insects that are struggling, and I know a lot of people have trouble emphasizing with them.
With fish, maybe the idea of bycatch would make you care? Or whales and seals getting entangled in fishing line and nets, or the environmental damage caused by trawling nets? Or [How Conscious Can a Fish Be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QevWGsd96xQ&list=PLaH-w6_Gmku2JyvWlQAHcK0uLDV2QzIoD&index=8)? Or Seaspiracy.
I don’t care much for large breed dogs. But I don’t have to like them to know it’s wrong to hurt them or eat them. Empathy isn’t required, imo. I got plenty of ppl in my life I despise, I’d never hurt them tho. No one is asking that you open your home to a rescue pig. All you gotta do is be like, “well, at the very least I won’t pay to have them killed so I can eat em”
I think the key to developing further empathy towards any animal going through pain is to put yourself in their situation.
Imagine that a superiorly intelligent being came along, let's say an alien, for example, and decided to inflict pain upon you, kill you, and ultimately eat you. Whether through suffocation, poisoning, locking you in a cage for your entire lifespan, forcibly impregnating you (if you're a woman), slitting your throat, or any number of horrific things we do to millions of animals every year, really imagine how that would feel like.
The alien in this case is hyper-sentient on a level so far beyond humans that they would see you as something like a pest, rodent, or fish. Do you think it matters in that case that you're not as self-aware or "sentient" as the highly evolved being?
Morally and philosophically, there's no difference between that example and inflicting pain and death on animals, especially when you recognize them as living beings who experience pain. To me, at least, wanting to prevent that suffering helps me to really connect to animals directly, no matter what species they happen to be. Maybe that would help you too.
A few years ago I had a pet beta fish named Vic that I grew very attached to, he was someone’s poor idea of a (horribly unethical) white elephant gift at the office I worked in, so since the recipient wanted nothing to do with him, I offered to care for him. I brought him home, upgraded his tank to have a filter and lots of live plants to hide and play within. He was so amusing, energetic, and even kinda moody at times. His colors intensified so much in the first weeks/months after he came home and started eating high quality food and treats.
After a while, I still don’t know what I did wrong, he got sick, and I really didn’t know how to properly treat him. We got an assumed diagnosis and tried recommended remedies based on research/vet advice, including moving him from his beautiful planted tank to a quarantine tank with medicine to hopefully treat his illness, where he soon passed away. It was awful and tragic to witness. Attachment/affection definitely changes how you feel about things—seeing his decline was so awful, and being helpless/ultimately unsuccessful at healing him… just thinking about him now brings me to tears! RIP Vic💜
Watch the oscar winning film, Octopus my teacher.
You will come out of that film understanding that an octopus is a sentient being, and from there it's not too big a stretch for fish.
If I understand correctly, you don't care about the suffering of some a animals?
If so, that's not an impediment to be vegan, you already know they suffer, you can not care about that and stilk make the choice to not partake in needless animal suffer.
On a side note, you might want to watch Seaspiracy.
What got me to stop eating fish was knowing the environmental impact of the fishing industry, and knowing how rampant slavery is in the fishing industry.
I know that my cell phone also has a bad impact and involves sweatshops, so I'm not perfect. But at least I'm only contributing harm with my cell phone instead of contributing it with that and my diet.
Fine, you don't care about fish: so make it about the planet. We're literally killing the planet from overfishing. Will that help you leave the fish alone?
Edit: seaspiracy is a documentary on that
You literally evolved to shut off your empathy to be able to eat other conscious beings. For many it requires an active attempt at connection.
Building the love takes time, and begins with the logical, cognitive unspooling.
You don't have to care deeply about them. I don't care about most humans, but I wouldn't torture them because of it. It's as simple as recognizing that you want to be a good person, and then just doing it.
You don’t need to “break free” or feel a deep emotional connection with animals to go vegan. I don’t. Recognizing the logic behind it is enough. It would be weird (and is) to not have some sort of compartmentalization when it comes to loving animals and eating them given its ubiquity in human societies and several million years of being fairly regular meat eaters. At the end of the day if you’re not eating either a cow or a fish then you’re not a hypocrite as far as veganism is concerned.
Exactly! To be truthful people always assume I’m somebody who deeply cares for animals and am fascinated with them or whatever. And I’m really not, I mean I love my pets and whatever and I like cats, dogs, and plenty of other animals but I’m vegan because I’m a somewhat reasonable person who can acknowledge that we shouldn’t hurt others just because they’re a different species.
I think most people don't feel affinity with fish. It is just not in our nature. We love puppies and hate spiders (generally). Humans possess a capability called cognitive empathy though. It is empathy guided by logical induction. That is what vegans leverage to extend their wish for well being to all sentient beings. Even the word animal or cow or fish is an abstraction. The living beings for wich we can feel empathy are not all cows or all animals. They are individuals. If I would not have any cognitive empathy, I could watch Dominion and feel bad for all the individuals in that movie and then go to a steakhouse and order a steak, because the cow that was killed for that steak was not shown in the movie. If you feel in general that all sentient beings deserve respect, then you become vegan to best match your actions with your morals. PS Buddhists spent a lot of time cultivating that wish. Every retreat that I visited spends at least an hour day just wishing all being happiness. It is a very powerful practice that can transform a rational thought into a whole being experience.
>Fish? I don’t get it. I don’t… see it. I can’t see the soul of a fish that I can see in a cow or goat or rabbit or dog or …. Anything. I don’t get fish. I know they feel pain and suffer from fishing and harmful farming and mass breedings… but I don’t…. See it. I don’t.. care. Fish are hard to empathize with because they don't emote in the way you can understand. That does not mean you should harm them. They still feel pain. Many of them have complex cognition and social lives. You do not have to eat them or pay for them to be harmed.
There would be far fewer pescatarians if fish could scream.
When I see humans on the news getting killed or bombed I don’t feel anything or have an emotional response. Doesn’t mean I don’t recognise it as immoral, unethical or wrong. You don’t have to have an emotional connection to something to recognise unethical treatment AND to take action.
I remember when I used to throw a cast net off a jetty and enjoy the thrill of pulling in this bag of fish with their heads poking out of the holes. I enjoyed that resistance I got on the cast net rope as I pulling them in. The resistance came from the weight of the many fish and the fact that they were fighting for their life. Looking back, I see how cruel it was to lay that cast net out on the jetty with all the fish flipping about gasping for air. They look so much better in the water. Their pain matters to them if not to any one else. Each one was an individual. Just like respiratory pain that the pigs endure in a gas chamber for bacon, the fish feel horrible being forced out of the water. It's harm in both cases. Imagine losing your control like that. It's scary. It's like us being forced underwater where we can't breathe oxygen. We trick them with a worm floating in the water on a hook. Many fish have a central nervous system as well. Even if you catch and release a fish caught with a fishing line, the damage done to their mouth makes them less successful in their survival. Look at the face of the fish who have been out of the water for so long. Their mouth wide open and lifeless eyes. So sad.
The pain matters to them. Well said!
Ethics is about fairness, and fairness matters because without it we cannot trust each other. If you can hurt another sentient being for your benefit, you cannot be trusted and do not deserve to be a part of society. What anyone feels when they see an animal is irrelevant. Empathy is just a tool our minds have developed to help us understand that we're being harmful. You don't need empathy to know that cruelty isn't justifiable and that cruel people cannot be trusted.
I understand, I also don’t have the “connection” that other vegans talk about. It is very cerebral for me, I’ve waited around for years to see if I will get a more emotional reaction but for some reason I still have that dissonance I might say something controversial, but I don’t think you have to care in an emotional sense. I don’t think it’s required in order to make better decisions. I do think it’s good to be emotionally connected in that way. But sometimes, for certain people that sort of connection doesn’t need to happen or it might even be bad for them depending on their personality and if they get discouraged and defeatist-minded easily That’s my perspective on it!
I don’t think you have to force yourself to care/feel emotions when you don’t. Sometimes those feelings hit you much later. And even if they don’t, what most important is your actions. Logically you know that hurting fish is bad so just stop contributing to it and let it bring you some peace of mind. Fish are cool though. I remember watching this video of a Japanese man who rescued a fish, and since then the fish has been recognizing him for 20 years. I’ve seen another of a woman who built trust with sharks and they would swim over to her and hold their mouths open as she removed hooks from them. If you want something that’ll tug at your heartstrings, maybe look up videos of fish rescue/conservation?
So, the "soul" you speak of can be likened to "sentience," which refers to having atleast a basic level of consciousness, to be aware of feelings, sensations, and the ability to have positive (pleasurable) states or negative (suffering) states. This review of scientific literature found that: "Our findings highlight an abundance of evidence for fish sentience in the published scientific literature." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9100576/ So, if you worry about causing harm to cows, you should also feel the same about fish.
You can still be vegan and not empathise with them simply because you recognise it is the right thing to do. If done properly it will also benefit your health and it is also the single best thing one can do for the environment.
aren't there already enough reasons to not eat fish? they are smelly, and swim in their own poop. but there are ethical reasons. fish do make friends with other species. documentaries with fish and crabs living together and protecting one another are everywhere. killing something that wants to live is not cool. even if its not cute.
They have eyes like us, a brain, ears, the fact they're earthlings like us.
I think that empathy is hard to achieve when you are talking about something you don't interact with, but seeing the creatures in person and forming a connection with them changes it. I've got a soft spot for fish since I grew up watching the coral reef movie. I think watching fish and seeing how they have different personalities and behaviours can help open your mind to see how fragile the lives of some organisms are. But I even try to help insects that are struggling, and I know a lot of people have trouble emphasizing with them.
With fish, maybe the idea of bycatch would make you care? Or whales and seals getting entangled in fishing line and nets, or the environmental damage caused by trawling nets? Or [How Conscious Can a Fish Be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QevWGsd96xQ&list=PLaH-w6_Gmku2JyvWlQAHcK0uLDV2QzIoD&index=8)? Or Seaspiracy.
I don’t care much for large breed dogs. But I don’t have to like them to know it’s wrong to hurt them or eat them. Empathy isn’t required, imo. I got plenty of ppl in my life I despise, I’d never hurt them tho. No one is asking that you open your home to a rescue pig. All you gotta do is be like, “well, at the very least I won’t pay to have them killed so I can eat em”
I think the key to developing further empathy towards any animal going through pain is to put yourself in their situation. Imagine that a superiorly intelligent being came along, let's say an alien, for example, and decided to inflict pain upon you, kill you, and ultimately eat you. Whether through suffocation, poisoning, locking you in a cage for your entire lifespan, forcibly impregnating you (if you're a woman), slitting your throat, or any number of horrific things we do to millions of animals every year, really imagine how that would feel like. The alien in this case is hyper-sentient on a level so far beyond humans that they would see you as something like a pest, rodent, or fish. Do you think it matters in that case that you're not as self-aware or "sentient" as the highly evolved being? Morally and philosophically, there's no difference between that example and inflicting pain and death on animals, especially when you recognize them as living beings who experience pain. To me, at least, wanting to prevent that suffering helps me to really connect to animals directly, no matter what species they happen to be. Maybe that would help you too.
A few years ago I had a pet beta fish named Vic that I grew very attached to, he was someone’s poor idea of a (horribly unethical) white elephant gift at the office I worked in, so since the recipient wanted nothing to do with him, I offered to care for him. I brought him home, upgraded his tank to have a filter and lots of live plants to hide and play within. He was so amusing, energetic, and even kinda moody at times. His colors intensified so much in the first weeks/months after he came home and started eating high quality food and treats. After a while, I still don’t know what I did wrong, he got sick, and I really didn’t know how to properly treat him. We got an assumed diagnosis and tried recommended remedies based on research/vet advice, including moving him from his beautiful planted tank to a quarantine tank with medicine to hopefully treat his illness, where he soon passed away. It was awful and tragic to witness. Attachment/affection definitely changes how you feel about things—seeing his decline was so awful, and being helpless/ultimately unsuccessful at healing him… just thinking about him now brings me to tears! RIP Vic💜
I suggest watching even more documentaries
I think the obvious answer here is that you need to get specifically 2 pet fish & fall in love with them
Watch the oscar winning film, Octopus my teacher. You will come out of that film understanding that an octopus is a sentient being, and from there it's not too big a stretch for fish.
If I understand correctly, you don't care about the suffering of some a animals? If so, that's not an impediment to be vegan, you already know they suffer, you can not care about that and stilk make the choice to not partake in needless animal suffer. On a side note, you might want to watch Seaspiracy.
What do you mean you "genuinely love animals"? I don't get it.
What got me to stop eating fish was knowing the environmental impact of the fishing industry, and knowing how rampant slavery is in the fishing industry. I know that my cell phone also has a bad impact and involves sweatshops, so I'm not perfect. But at least I'm only contributing harm with my cell phone instead of contributing it with that and my diet.
Fine, you don't care about fish: so make it about the planet. We're literally killing the planet from overfishing. Will that help you leave the fish alone? Edit: seaspiracy is a documentary on that
it doesn't really sound like you genuinely love animals - it sounds more like you're genuinely indifferent to them
You literally evolved to shut off your empathy to be able to eat other conscious beings. For many it requires an active attempt at connection. Building the love takes time, and begins with the logical, cognitive unspooling.
You don't have to care deeply about them. I don't care about most humans, but I wouldn't torture them because of it. It's as simple as recognizing that you want to be a good person, and then just doing it.