Re: Stages of "vegan" retreat

On Sun, 15 Feb 2026 11:39:22 +0100, Rupert McCallum
<[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Rupert. Long time. I haven't seen Jon around lately, and a quick glance
at his facebook profile shows that either he or someone on his behalf
tightened it down 11 hours ago at the time of my writing this post. He
usually has it quite open. He was 74 in December. Hope he's alright. He
seems awfully quiet. 
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: One more stroke or seizure and I've had it <[email protected]>
>To:
>Sent: 14/05/2025 01:54:39
>Subject: Stages of "vegan" retreat
>________________________________________________________________________________
>
> > The Ever Weaker Stages of "vegan" Self-Aggrandizement
> >
> > Stage I - "I live a 'cruelty-free' 'lifestyle'"
> >
> > A lie.  Everything "vegans" consume causes some harm to animals, 
>which "vegans"
> > say necessarily amounts to cruelty.
> >
>
>Hello, Jonathan Ball. Here I am, Rupert McCallum, and I have set up an 
>Eternal September account on Thunderbird on my laptop. A pleasure to be 
>able to engage with your drivel once again.
>
>Now then. Do ethical vegans live a cruelty-free lifestyle?
>
>Yes, they do. You are correct to say that if you are living the 
>lifestyle of a typical consumer living in an affluent Western country, 
>then the production processes for the various products and services you 
>consume are going to involve foreseeably inflicting harm on wild 
>animals, yes. Or even in some cases, harm to animals being used as items 
>of property, since it's difficult to avoid supporting that altogether.
>
>But the vegan position is not that you must make literally every effort 
>possible to avoid financially supporting a process that foreseeably 
>causes harm to wild animals or foreseeably causes harm to animals being 
>used as items of property, and it never has been. The vegan position is 
>that you must make every possible and practicable effort, which can be 
>taken to mean "every effort that can be made consistent with you 
>remaining alive and in reasonably good health", to avoid deliberately 
>financially supporting processes that involve harmful exploitation of 
>animals as items of property. If you are concerned about the fact that 
>you are still financially supporting processes that foreseeably cause 
>some harm, then you can offset the harm caused by making charitable 
>donations which aim to reduce suffering for wild animals or suffering 
>caused to animals used as items of property. That is all that the vegan 
>position requires you to do, on any reasonable interpretation of the 
>ethical foundation, whether it be deontological, act-consequentialist, 
>or rule-consequentialist, and if you do that, then you may reasonably 
>say that you are living a "cruelty-free" lifestyle. Some degree of 
>foreseeable harm is still caused in order to support your lifestyle, but 
>if you take the steps I have described, then it is reasonable to say 
>that your conduct does not amount to cruelty. So, no, you have not shown 
>that this claim of living a "cruelty-free" lifestyle is a lie. This 
>argument fails.
>
> > Stage II - "I 'minimize' the harm my 'lifestyle' causes to animals"
> >
> > A lie - a lie twice over.  It's a lie, first, because in order to 
>minimize you
> > have to measure, and no "vegan" has ever measured. It's also a lie 
>because there
> > is always some possible - not just possible, but reasonable - further 
>effort
> > that could be undertaken, but isn't only out of a wish for ease and 
>comfort.
> >
>
>What I have described does not amount to literal minimization of harm 
>caused out of every possible alternative, no. One of the alternatives 
>available is to commit suicide. This is a possible further step. But it 
>is not, all things considered, a reasonable thing to require. There are 
>other things that could be done beyond what I have already described, 
>but they are not on the whole reasonable things to require. Especially 
>when you take into account that keeping yourself alive and reasonably 
>comfortable may be the best available way of having an overall positive 
>impact on the world. And also taking into consideration that you have 
>not in fact shown that allowing yourself some non-minimal degree of 
>support of exploitation of animals as items of property is the best 
>overall path to minimizing harm. You have never provided the necessary 
>data and argumentation that would be required to show that, and I have 
>provided lots of good reasons to think that most likely you are wrong. 
>So I am entirely reasonable and justified in saying that the 
>interpretation of "veganism" I have sketched above is on the whole the 
>best way, and it can reasonably be called a way of putting an animal 
>rights worldview fully into practice, and it can reasonably be called 
>"cruelty-free", and you haven't shown that there are further reasonable 
>steps to be taken that would further reduce foreseeable harm, and if you 
>think you do know some such steps, let me know what they are, and I'll 
>give you feedback on your efforts to argue that they are (1) reasonable 
>and (2) would involve a further reduction of expected contribution to 
>harm. Otherwise, your claim that such steps exist remains unsupported.
>
> > Stage III - "I'm doing the best I can to reduce harm to animals" A 
>lie, for the
> > second reason in Stage II.
> >
>
>Not a lie. An entirely reasonable statement, for reasons clarified above.
>
> > Stage IV - "I'm doing better than you bastard meat eaters" And here 
>we arrive at
> > what it always was all about.  And yet, everything is wrong with this 
>false
> > claim.  First, it isn't true - there is some meat eater somewhere who 
>is "doing
> > better" than most "vegans".  This is the subject matter of the 
>excellent "Vegan
> > Shuffle" piece.  It is possible to reduce harm beyond that caused by 
>the typical
> > "vegan" with a meat-including diet.
>
>You haven't shown that, all things considered, this is particularly 
>likely to be true. Even if it were true, there are reasonable grounds 
>for saying that a commitment to not supporting the exploitation of 
>animals as items of property is part of the overall best approach. Any 
>additional harm caused by this can be offset with charitable donations 
>if need be. It is best to take a principled stand against financially 
>supporting the exploitation of animals as items of property, for all 
>sorts of reasons. This can, again, be justified in deontological, 
>rule-consequentialist, or act-consequentialist terms.
>
>Furthermore you are mistaken in thinking I have any particularly great 
>investment in thinking that meat-eaters are bastards. I admit that now 
>and then I'm a bit saddened by the lack of compassion shown by people 
>who continue to eat meat, but my parents and sister eat meat regularly 
>and I love them even though I don't fully agree with all their choices, 
>and obviously there must be some sense in which I don't think they are 
>bastards. I think that you're a bastard, obviously, for obvious but 
>unrelated reasons. But I don't bear you any particular ill-will; I just 
>get a mild recreational benefit out of putting further effort into 
>(according to my ideas about what I'm doing here) giving you detailed 
>constructive feedback on the intellectual shortcomings of your 
>arguments. Yes, vegans do do better than meat-eaters at reducing 
>expected contribution to harm, and no, the main point is not about 
>trying to make yourself feel morally superior, it's about trying to 
>reduce expected contribution to harm. That's what it's about. Your 
>efforts to argue that the honest motivation isn't there were of course 
>always transparent bullshit, motivated by feeling threatened by the 
>ethical vegan stance out of a sense of guilt, as any person of good 
>sense would have been easily able to see. It's funny how you lack the 
>self-awareness to be able to see this.
>
> > The greater vileness of this claim,
> > however, is that it attempts to make virtue a matter of comparison 
>with others,
> > rather than doing what is right, and that is never a valid basis for 
>virtue.
> > This illustrated by the famous sodomy example featuring Derek Nash 
>and his
> > beloved twin brother David.
> >
> > If David sodomizes the wretched eight-year-old neighbor boy six times 
>a week,
> > and Derek sodomizes the lad "only" four times a week, Derek cannot 
>claim to be
> > virtuous because he's "doing better" than David at refraining from 
>harming the
> > boy.  Note also:  if David increases his filthy acts of depravity 
>against the
> > boy to a dozen times a week, Derek could also increase his filthy 
>acts of
> > depravity to, say, 10 times a week, and he could still maintain his 
>claim to be
> > "doing better" than David, even though Derek is now doing *worse* 
>than he was
> > previously.
> >
>
>The disanalogy between this rather disturbing thought-experiment and the 
>actual situation of ethical vegans as I have outlined above is clear. No 
>sensible person would take seriously for a single second the idea that 
>this is a valid analogy. All that this shows about you is that you like 
>to dwell on the thought of sodomizing eight-year-old boys. It's not the 
>least bit clever, and it doesn't speak particularly well of the 
>healthiness of your state of mind either. There is no need to engage any 
>further than that with this drivel, and there never has been.
>
> > Virtue is never shown by means of a comparison with others.  Virtue 
>consists
> > only in doing what is right, and not doing what is wrong.
> >
>
>But you've shown no good reason to think that the ethical vegan concept 
>of virtue, as I outlined it above, is flawed, or that it is in some way 
>tantamount to being willing to deliberately countenance deliberate 
>sodomy of eight-year-old children. Because that's very obviously an 
>extremely stupid thing to say, and I expect you probably feel a bit 
>embarrassed now that this incredibly obvious fact has been pointed out 
>to you. You definitely should, anyway.
>
> > The entire "vegan" claim collapses.
> >
>
>You haven't made a single dent in it, and you never have.
>
> > * not "cruelty-free"
>
>Yes, cruelty-free.
>
> > * not "minimizing"
>
>Minimizing within reasonable constraints, yes.
>
> > * not "doing the best I can"
>
>Yes, doing the best I can under reasonable interpretations of what that 
>means.
>
> > * not "doing better than you meat eaters"
>
>Yes, doing better, in all likelihood, than every single meat-eater, or 
>at least you certainly haven't shown otherwise, and in any event without 
>the slightest doubt doing better in expectation than the person who just 
>regularly walks into the supermarket buying animal flesh without any 
>effort to be selective about what they buy. That, of course, being you 
>(we may reasonably assume).
>
>There are also issues here about the nature of the harms necessarily 
>involved whenever you make any attempt to do animal slaughter at scale. 
>But we can talk about that some other time.
>
> >
> > It's all a lie, and the goal of the lie was morally invalid even 
>before they
> > started.
> >
>
>It's all true, and the ultimate goal is a perfectly respectable one, 
>which you should adopt too, and deep down you know it, but you lack the 
>moral courage to do what is required.
>
> > Just shameful.?
>
>Not at all. You, on the other hand, should certainly be a bit ashamed of 
>your continued meat-eating habit, not to mention your conduct over the 
>years on this newsgroup, and you really should change. The time has 
>come. Become a better person. I know you've got it in you.