Why you should embrace Veganism

Humans are not only moral agents but also morally obliged creatures who have some moral responsibilities to fulfill. One of the most common ethical issues is our morals regarding animal cruelty and suffering. The question that whether it is sensible to value our pleasure over someone else’s suffering should haunt every person and each sane or rational individual must confront this question. Still, the regular choices of people involve lots of innocent blood that they have no clue about the ethical side of it. Hence, Veganism, as a philosophy, steps in for the minimization of unnecessary animal cruelty to the highest extent possible by eliminating the use of animal products. Conversely, this essay is not against using animal products for one’s survival and vital life-threatening issues nor does it demand banning the meat industries or animal agriculture. Nevertheless, a rational person must be able to justify the logic behind supporting animal cruelty especially when they do not have to do that. There is little to no proper justification for exploiting animals in our daily lives. Therefore, everyone must embrace veganism to reduce animal cruelty to the highest extent possible. Carnist ideology is more unreasonable than veganism. The Vegan Society defines veganism as “a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to animals. ” People should not live under the impression that vegans are the only ones with an ideology. Veganism is there for the minimization of the unnecessary harm to non-human animals. On the other hand, Carnism is the invisible belief system, or ideology, that conditions people to eat certain animals. Carnism is essentially the opposite of veganism. So, no carnist can accuse vegans of being ideologues. Besides, the burden of justification is upon the heads of the carnists since they are the ones committing the act; the act of killing animals. In other words, non-vegetarian people must provide justification for something they do– not the vegans who are refraining from killing. Also, the maxim that “an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence” is common among skeptics and logicians. Thus, with this logic, extraordinary harm and suffering require an extraordinary amount of justification. However, people don’t even have a basic justification for the most basic treatments of animals. Here, it turns out that the carnist ideology is the one with a weaker position. One cannot love someone and eat them. Note how I am using ‘someone’ to refer to those non-human animals. It is because they are conscious and sentient beings just like us. The ability to experience life is indeed lower in them but that does not prove it rational to treat them as piles of flesh. Humans are inherently empathetic toward the suffering of other sentient creatures. Animals in the slaughterhouses can suffer and seeing animals getting butchered evokes the emotions like pity and empathy. Pity means acknowledging their suffering and empathy means feeling their suffering. So, people feel bad for the animals and simultaneously eat them for their transient taste pleasure. On one hand, carnists believe that animals should not suffer, on the other, they value their pleasure so much that they are not reluctant to eat those animals to please their taste buds. Such a contradictory attitude is called ‘Cognitive Dissonance. ’ The term refers to the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change. People who love animals or cannot see any animals being tortured but readily use animal products are suffering from CD. To resolve this attitude, one must either quit animal products or stop feeling bad for them when they are tortured. The value of one’s taste pleasure is nowhere near to the value of the life of such advanced sentient creatures. Everyone would believe that saving some puppies from a house fire is a brave task to perform since those puppies have valuable lives. So, the fact that they are conscious inherently makes their life valuable regardless of someone’s opinion. It is not the case that just because some people do not find anything wrong with butchering animals, those animals have worthless lives. It makes sense that human life is the most precious and one can consume animals for survival. Still, it would not make it moral though. However, there is no convincing reasoning that can justify a momentary pleasure to be more valuable to the entire life of complex sentient beings like chickens, pigs, dogs, cows, and other sentient creatures. In the same manner, a sadist who tortures the animals and gets auditory pleasure from the crying sounds of those animals is not essentially different from a person who uses his tongue to get sensual pleasure. There is barely any difference between torturing them to please your eyes and killing them to please their taste buds. In the end, both of them involve animal cruelty for one’s momentary sensual pleasure. Speciesism is another irrational philosophy a typical carnist adheres to. Speciesism, as the popular utilitarian philosopher, Peter Singer defines it, “is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species (35). ” In simple words, it is the assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals. Vegans do not have problems believing that humans are superior to non-human animals but the superiority can never be a justification for unnecessary animal suffering. It is simply absurd and downright evil. Likewise, favoring one species over another one is completely arbitrary and bizarre. For instance, treating a pet dog like one’s own family member but putting pigs in the gas chamber is insensible since both species have equal moral worth and the same level of cognition. Moreover, Carl Cohen, a proud speciesist, argues that every being ought to be concerned about protecting itself, and since humans are currently at the top, that means that we’re the best, so we can pretty much do whatever we want to other beings. Conversely, the problem with such reasoning is that the same excuse was made to justify the slavery of indigenous people by the slave owners.