Stop it.
When I helped run the the “Vegan Circlejerk” Reddit community we were always firmly anti-utilitarian. Utilitarianism is a nonsensical, murderous, carceral, western philosophy that espouses using impossible math to come to conclusions. The wrong way to approach the world is to attempt to do equations and decide on your approach based on nonsense regardless of your intent for the “greater good.” We and the communities I’ve helped moderate have always believed in doing the right thing. Acting in accordance with your belief will bring you the result you want.
After my crew and I stepped down from Reddit, that community was steered towards antinatalism. I am personally against this and want to have this community come to consensus against it as well. I have no right to tell other people what to do with their bodies. For some I believe this philosophy is a way to control women’s bodies and set impossible standards. For others I believe it to be an expression of frustration and depression. Neither of these are in the spirit of abolitionist veganism and it will never become a prerequisite for it. Additionally the antinatalist philosophy is exclusionary to people who already have had kids which, when you get to my age, is most people. The admin of lemmy.vg is the same person who brought this philosophy to the subreddit, I would hope that recent events would encourage them to remove this link. To be clear if you decide having children is not for you that is great. I also came to this conclusion. I also don’t believe everyone who promotes people coming to their own decision is a bad person or doing the wrong thing if that includes not having children. It is when we demand people do not that it becomes problematic.
By extension these other utilitarian adjacent philosophies can be found within our movement and it is time to formally denounce it. The point of veganism and leftism is to promote life, not rally against it. The point of veganism is to elevate all life to the consideration that is supposed to be enjoyed by humans. The point of leftism is to ensure that all humans are elevated to that status too and protect each other. When we adopt philosophies that are anti-life, anti-birth, anti-woman, anti-human we lose touch with this and it is the seed from which ur-fascist thought grows.
What happened in Palm Springs is a tragedy. They were not bringing the fight to capital which oppresses us all, it brought the fight to people we are in solidarity with against capital. It was not bringing the fight to the soldiers of the settler regime, it attacked the entrapped. It was essentially a murder suicide from a depressed person who needed solidarity and community. Our vegan communities are doing a disservice promoting misanthropy to our comrades.
Please if you agree or disagree leave your statement in the comments. Thanks.
I’m a leftist and a vegan because I lean utilitarian, not in spite of it, so I disagree. I want as many sentient beings to have the best lives possible and I act in accordance with that because I want that outcome. To me, those are much more solid axioms to have than any other ethical framework.
However, if you arrived at veganism and leftism through some other ethical system, I have zero interest in denouncing how you got there, and think there should be space for that.
That said, you can also use virtue ethics to justify heinous actions and beliefs too, but I think it’s better to be targeted in criticizing the specifics of their actions and beliefs over denouncing utilitarianism or virtue ethics as a whole. If you want to levy specific criticisms about how someone acts, and you think it’s rooted in utilitarianism, that can be useful, but denouncing an entire ethical framework when its application can have widely varying outcomes isn’t good because that would throw out every ethical framework.
For me, this is where utilitarianism falls apart. It makes the observer the person who gets to decide what “the best lives possible” means. How can the outside observer have the authority to make this decision?
When talking about humans, consider when people defend colonialism by saying they brought “civilization” and modern medicine, comforts, etc. to people who did not live the way the colonizers did. I’m not saying that non-colonized people live in some utopia, but the people who thought they were doing good didn’t give a single fuck about what the colonized people wanted, disregarded all their knowledge and experience and forced their ways on them. Even if we take lessons learned from that and try and be more open minded about listening to people before making decisions about them (my skin is crawling as I type this omg) we don’t know what we don’t know and it makes no sense to apply this framework to decision making impacting others.
Now consider non-human animals and how we are even less effective at communicating with them…
Every ethical framework requires making some affirmative presumption to begin with. The is-ought gap cannot be closed. Many ethical frameworks begin with less tangible things, like a belief in a deity, which can also lead to either heinous or benevolent outcomes.
I don’t disagree with any of this. And this is why I also strive to do whatever I can to accomplish the goal that I care about – everyone having the best lives possible – to do whatever I think results in other having the greatest degree of autonomy. It’s because I believe that no one knows what would result in a better life for themselves than themselves. I will always defer toward what empowers them to have as much autonomy as possible, provided they aren’t harming others (like carnism, colonialism, capitalism, ethno-supremacy, etc. do).
Yeah. I think there’s an interesting conversation to be had about how one can cause the least harm and be most helpful to someone that we can’t effectively communicate with. I don’t have a good answer for this, so I just want to make sure their basic needs are met (or in the case of non-human animals, not actively sabotaging them) so that they can try to do whatever is best for them.
The ethical framework of the panopitcon and Nazi eugenics is not one that I would openly claim I follow. If it brought you to veganism it was an accident, a utilitarian would be against abolitionist veganism for being too extreme and for promoting humane animal testing. Utilitarianism undermines the fundamental concept of justice which is core to a social justice movement like veganism. Sorry but there is no room for that. You should really evaluate the effect of utilitarianism on the world and what people utilitarian mindsets have actually done. If it helps you that is fine but I can never support it and have to denounce what I see are dangerous ideologies.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ethics-everyone/201506/whats-wrong-utilitarianism
If you think that you can’t arrive at heinous positions with virtue ethics or other non-utilitarian ethical systems, you’re mistaken. Utilitarianism and other ethical frameworks have many unique and varied forms, and trying to denounce those broad categories entirely will get you nowhere.
You asked if anyone disagreed with you denouncing it, so I chimed in, but if there’s “no room for that”, then I’m not interested in hashing it out because there would be no point if you’ve already made up your mind.
That is right, I will never accept a philosophy that is anti-justice.
I did want to hear if people disagreed and I’m glad you posted your thoughts, I do not hate you and am not mad about it but I didn’t write that because I was opened to being changed, it was to simply to open the floor to people state their thoughts.
ily, but this is lowkey rude af. Consequentialist ethics are not inherently anti-justice, and virtue ethics and deontological frameworks aren’t inherently just
Thank you for tone policing.
God I hate lemmy.
It hurt my feelings to read that comment from you, so I shared. Granted, I should’ve used an “I” statement- instead I got defensive and made you feel attacked, and I’m sorry for that.
Big words from someone who doesn’t seem to have a lot of practice with the philosophy of ethics. Tell me, what even is justice??
Utilitarianism is Nazi ideology.
Big words from someone who needs a history lesson.
The nazis had all kinds of ideologies. Some were pagan. Many were Christians. Some didn’t have a religion. There is certainly not a single underpinning system of ethics in place - because if there were it would undermine the logical contradictions that reactionary groups need in order to work.
Also, Hitler was vegetarian, so by your logic the most moral diet is the carnivore diet?? Try again.
I don’t think it’s inherently anti-justice. But maybe we can pivot to something more constructive than just disagreeing about it: if you have an alternative to utilitarian-adjacent ethics, I’d love to hear you out. I might still disagree, but I want to know if there’s a better way to form my ethical positions.
At the end of the day, we’re only human, and we should be doing the best that we can to be ethical, and if there’s something better than what I’m currently doing, I want to know about it.