Veganism And Ethics

Note to someone:

You’ve gone quiet on me so I’ll get right to the argument I want to make.

It is that there are some moral ideals of conduct that people can be excused from, and can excuse themselves from, not adhering to. The law captures many, but not all, forms of conduct that we can’t be excused from breaching. So, for example, we should never assault anyone but we can live with, excuse, be ok with ourselves, lying on occasion (if no bad consequences for someone else.) 

So, on this basis, I say veganism is one such ideal of conduct that, generally speaking and admitting of any number of exceptions, people can be excused from not adhering to, given the great chain of being, given our carnivorous nature and urges and given that our entire world in one significant way is organized around consuming animal products. 

Another such form of ideal conduct is giving away what one has beyond reasonable need to the immiserate. It’s simply not in most of us even to approach anything like that let alone more or less achieving it. 

So, just as we, most of us, virtually cannot refrain from consuming animal products, I don’t count that as an ethical breach the way assaulting someone is. Vegans, therefore, deserve our admiration for living according to their principles whereas most people, almost everybody, don’t in respect of veganism,

Where living strictly but reasonably within one’s needs and giving all else away to the immiserate or otherwise dealing with it in a helpful way is relevant is that it’s an answer to vegans who will judge non vegans haughtily, look down on them. 

I’d say if vegans aren’t giving away excess to others, they have no ground on which to look down on non vegans.

So, to drive this to a narrower point, the “ethics” of consuming animal products, save to insist on humane treatment of animals where consumption is a given, save to take protective care of animals facing extinction and save for other like cases, consuming animal products is excusable conduct. It is what we can do without shame or guilt.