The Vegan Thread

Fucking good lunch though... I might have that for second-lunch.

second lunch. fucking hobbit.

actually, fucking hobbit wannabe.

Pot, kettle?

why do 2 lunches make me a hobbit? I've been called a pig before, but not a hobbit.

Maybe the combination of chips and chocolate puts hairs on your feet?

Pedich Edhellen?

In J. R. R. Tolkien's book [I]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit, references second breakfast in a line of dialogue.

apparently, this hobbitian preference is known on the continent, where it is called 'Zweites Frühstück',or '**Drugie śniadanie', depending on where u are...
**

Wheres the rest of it? That's not going to fill anyone up!

Just had my first vegan lunch. Chips and a Yorkie bar.

When drunk I always get the 'vegan special' from the kebab shop - chips, salad, chilli sauce. How bad can it be if you can still eat chips, really.

My chefs could never understand that vegans would want seperate utensils/pans and so forth to be used.

Extremely common site would be the grill chef tipping veggie sausages into the pan full of bacon as they cooked at approx the same temp.

The chefs could also not understand why replacing veggie sausages with meat ones when the veggie sausages ran out was not acceptable.

It is with this in mind that I am perfectly at ease sitting next to friends whilst they consume animal produce. Not all vegans are obsessed with trying to convert people to their belief structure.

Exactly, I don't have an issue with that, either (and I don't even think that it's particularly magnanimous of me to concede that).

I've stressed to you before, Neil, that I'm not overly concerned with converting people--sorry if the attitude grates and the post above, for instance, comes across like that. I'm more than happy to provide information, though, and yes, that does involve taking a strong moral stance myself. If I wasn't convinced that being vegan was right, I wouldn't be vegan. I also believe that I can justify my position convincingly if challenged, although of course to do this properly takes some work and is perhaps best not attempted on an Internet forum.

But people are morally autonomous--everybody of necessity makes their own moral decisions for themselves. Information that is provided in most cases does not have the potential to sway people in itself. It requires personal experience to create a moral motivation that acts alongside moral reasons, i.e., something that is specifically relevant to a person's life rather than generally applicable. People's moral journeys are complex, from different backgrounds, with different necessities.

So, if someone wanted to disagree with me, they'd of course be perfectly welcome. If someone came up with an argument that showed me that I'm wrong, I'd likewise be perfectly happy to go along with this argument, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I'm certainly aware of the history of philosophy on this and as it is, I don't know of any arguments that could successfully show that avoidance of harm and all that is not the way to go, but who knows? My ethical position is broadly Platonic and Kantian, but Kant famously thought that animals were not self-conscious and therefore not subject to moral consideration (with which of course I don't agree), and I might well be attacked by a follower of Kant on this, or by an arch-consequentialist who didn't follow Singer, or someone with a different ethical position altogether, etc. I'm not pretending it's an easy subject, or indeed that I must apodictically be right. I've just done a good deal of studying the arguments for and against, and I've gone with those that convince me. I've also been lucky in having personal experiences that have motivated me to go down this route.

Don't know if that makes my stance any clearer--again, if all this comes across with a shit attitude, that's not the intention. It's really just a case of standing up for what I believe in.

When drunk I always get the 'vegan special' from the kebab shop - chips, salad, chilli sauce. How bad can it be if you can still eat chips, really.

I get the same, but my special dietary requirements mean I have to have chicken shish in mine. It can be a real pain, but you makes yer choices.

My chefs could never understand that vegans would want seperate utensils/pans and so forth to be used.

Extremely common site would be the grill chef tipping veggie sausages into the pan full of bacon as they cooked at approx the same temp.

The chefs could also not understand why replacing veggie sausages with meat ones when the veggie sausages ran out was not acceptable.

French?

Chicken shish, Mmmm

Surely it is impossible to even have a discussion about this when the right to the moral high ground has been so effectively abrogated?

The pre-emptive calling of moral authority seems to be a vegan version of manifest destiny, the implication being that anyone who chooses to drink milk is so morally bankrupt that they cannot even begin to understand how wrong, stupid and possibly evil they actually are.

Your stance does not allow for a discussion as you are 100% convinced of your own position and consider it to be infallible.

I should add that ethics isn't such an absolute discipline as comes across here. Being convinced of a moral stance (a) doesn't mean that discussion is impossible (just look at Socrates and his love of dialogue--but discussing these things properly certainly isn't easy) and (b) it does not involve aggressively judging others.

No-one can claim 'the moral high ground'--we all do what we can.

My chefs could never understand that vegans would want seperate utensils/pans and so forth to be used.

Extremely common site would be the grill chef tipping veggie sausages into the pan full of bacon as they cooked at approx the same temp.

The chefs could also not understand why replacing veggie sausages with meat ones when the veggie sausages ran out was not acceptable.

I think I've told this story on here before, but that reminds me of when I went vegetarian, and my Mum said, 'does that mean you can't eat chicken, then?' I said, patiently, 'no, Mum.' She looked pensive, and returned 'What about cold chicken?'

Ha! Like in The Royle Family

"What about some wafer thin ham?"

French?

Algerian, almost to a man.

To be fair, kitchen staff are barely above mechanics/miners.

I think I've told this story on here before, but that reminds me of when I went vegetarian, and my Mum said, 'does that mean you can't eat chicken, then?' I said, patiently, 'no, Mum.' She looked pensive, and returned 'What about cold chicken?'

The Chefs would also use products with dairy ingredients as they were "what we have boss" when making the vegan dishes, and could not see why they should not do so. Fun days trying to explain stuff like that- I still remember having to actually prove to them that bacteria exist, and were not an invention of the disinfectant makers of the world designed to sell more of their product.

Pot, kettle?

mine isn't through choice.

My point was about Olivers post Em.
I realise that, I was meerly making the assertion that being vegan isn't a religion. It's all personal interpretation so you will find a greater diversity within people that call themselves vegan that possibly a different collective of people who alway take the moral high ground.

I could have put the same point forward by asking the question, "Is there actually a moral high ground to be taken?".