As a vegetarian with lots of vegetarian friends, I'll add a purely anecdotal observation:
People who choose to not eat meat generally do so for a reason, and for many of my friends that reason is cruelty to animals.
If a person is aware of cruelty to animals, and actually cares enough to actually change their lifestyle, then that person extends their empathy beyond their own life, beyond their own immediate sphere.
For me, it is this quality that can lead to depression. If a person allows themselves to take on the suffering they see see around them, if they allow themselves to really feel it, the world seems colder and crueler and the individual feels more powerless.
IOW, I do think people with very strong powers of denial about the wrongs they see around them are generally happier.
Thanks for this. I began switching to a vegan diet a few months AFTER my depression started. The suffering in the world weighs heavily on me, and it's marginally helpful to do something about it.
Yes, associative studies like this, with no testable theory of causation, are pretty worthless. Given the thousands of such fishing expeditions conducted annually, some are bound to have statistical significance and get promoted. They give academic researchers something to do, but don't really add much to the body of knowledge.
Is it really ignorance? I've seen the pictures of Chickens in cages. I'm aware of the industrialized meat business. I'm aware of the shitty conditions a lot of animals are put in. It just doesn't make me feel bad about eating meat.
I am aware of all that as well and it doesn’t bother me either, because they are food and food is something I need to survive. Whether it’s higher order life or lower order life…for you to live, something else has to die.
That’s purely subjective. It’s just how you’re choosing to view animals and thus doesn’t absolve you of moral responsibility for how they are treated or for their killing.
The same species of animal may be viewed as food, companions, workers, pests, etc. Again these designations are entirely subjective. The suffering of a living being is not excused by virtue of the category we choose to place it in.
Sure, it’s subjective. However, you realize that I am not an outlier here right? For all of human history, it’s been universally regarded that some animals are food
That’s not true (e.g Hinduism), but even if it were, the fact your views align with the views of other people alive or dead does not make them correct, nor does it absolve you of the moral and ethical responsibility to consider their consequences. At this stage in human development, eating meat is a choice not a necessity. Many other customs that were once as popular are now seen in a much different light.
Not sure that calling out a single homogenous religious group as an example (which even within itself is not fully vegan), when literally almost every other culture on earth has and has had meat as a part of their diet is going to do much to convince me that vegan or vegetarianism is the default dietary behavior of the human race.
Your morals and ethics are your own, I do not need absolution for nor am bound by your dietary ethical standards.
This is the thing I don’t get. Yes, those animals are exploited for food, but it’s not like you need to eat animals to live. You could very well thrive on plants exclusively, but you choose not to. Why, and I ask this not out of spite but honest curiosity, do sentient beings have to die for your diet?
I'm not OP but I'll reply, because I'm also a meat eater.
> animals are exploited for food
Animals are not exploited for food, animals are food, you are also food.
> it's not like like you need to eat animals to live.
You do need to eat animals to live. You can live without, but you have to take supplements. because again, you need to eat animals to live.
> You could very well thrive on plants exclusively
Thrive is a strong word. energy wise, meat is cheap-ish and more filling. The word exclusively here is paramount, because meat consumption has been subsiding somewhat, but this is not enough, for vegetarians/vegans you are either in, or you are morally bankrupt. It reminds me a lot of religions/cults shaming.
> I ask this not out of spite but honest curiosity
I don't believe you here, unless you were born in a vegetarian cult of some sort, you know why people eat meat. Its the natural thing to do, I'm somewhat a conservative, mostly because whenever an unnatural solution is developed, there are always unseen consequences. prove to me in 500 years that humans don't need to eat meat and I'll believe you, we'll both be dead. but I'll believe you then.
> do sentient beings have to die for your diet?
It's not like plants are not completely unsentient either, they have defenses (an aspect of organisms that don't want to die), they do chase water (thirst).
With all that said, I have reduced my meat consumption and have been trying to have an all veggie day, I've been unsuccessful, mostly because the only dish I can make is fried food, and fried food is super unhealthy to me.
> Animals are not exploited for food, animals are food, you are also food.
I take it you would take offence if I ate your kids, though?
> You do need to eat animals to live. You can live without, but you have to take supplements. because again, you need to eat animals to live.
This is mostly a myth, by the way. Reading up on nutrients and where to get them can get you a long way. You don’t need „animals“, you need a mix of different nutrients and you can absolutely get those from a variety of sources. Meat contains plenty easy energy, but just because it’s easy doesn’t mean that’s the only way.
> for vegetarians/vegans you are either in, or you are morally bankrupt. It reminds me a lot of religions/cults shaming.
Have you ever seen the movie Soylent Green? The protagonist learns the cheap food their whole society is nurtured with is actually made from deceased people. They are horrified by it, and obviously wouldn’t consider eating it again. Please don’t immediately dismiss this: It really feels similar to really understand what it means that your food had dreams, hopes, and feelings. This isn’t just some fancy lifestyle change, but a shift in moral values.
> prove to me in 500 years that humans don't need to eat meat and I'll believe you, we'll both be dead. but I'll believe you then.
I mean, it’s not like a vegetarian diet is new or something? There are many cultures that did, and continue to, eat pretty much exclusively vegetarian. Just ask a Hindu or a Buddhist…
> It's not like plants are not completely unsentient either, they have defenses (an aspect of organisms that don't want to die), they do chase water (thirst).
They don’t have a central nervous system however, or pain receptors, or even a brain, for what it’s worth. So, by all practical means, they don’t feel pain, or experience being alive as we do.
You know, I’m well aware I need carbon from somewhere, something has to die so I can live. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try to reduce suffering of others just for my pleasure.
Maybe enjoying cooking really helps, though. I can conjure up a lot of tasty stuff that just works well without meat, so it’s not like I’d miss anything.
> I take it you would take offence if I ate your kids, though?
Uhhh what? like... Is that a threat? Are you a cow? did I eat your kids? Are you planning to? Do you mean like sperm? are you coming on to me? Do you mean in a plane crash where you had to eat each other to survive... in which case, yeah, I'd probably feel bad about the whole thing clearly. Or maybe I'd have to call the cops... or for a reservation IDK.
> This is mostly a myth, by the way. Reading up on nutrients and where to get them can get you a long way. You don’t need „animals“, you need a mix of different nutrients and you can absolutely get those from a variety of sources. Meat contains plenty easy energy, but just because it’s easy doesn’t mean that’s the only way.
Mostly is key here, if its an unavoidable eventuality, then you can't treat it as a spectrum. This is a binary thing, its either a myth or it isn't. You will have to take supplements.
> Have you ever seen the movie Soylent Green? The protagonist learns the cheap food their whole society is nurtured with is actually made from deceased people. They are horrified by it, and obviously wouldn’t consider eating it again.
I have not seen the movie soylent green, and yes, morality is key here, morality can be made and unmade as society wishes. Would I eat a dog or a live octopus? no. But if I was born in a society where that was acceptable I would. the fact that the people were horrified was a failure of that society itself, they should have been educated from the start about it.
> Please don’t immediately dismiss this: It really feels similar to really understand what it means that your food had dreams, hopes, and feelings. This isn’t just some fancy lifestyle change, but a shift in moral values.
What dreams does a fish dream of? swimming? what has value here? anything thinking? should we try creating braindead animals? would you eat nonthinking meat? if we're talking movies and hypothethicals, would you be okay via removing the animals brain and it being kept alive in some sort of matrix?
> You know, I’m well aware I need carbon from somewhere, something has to die so I can live. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try to reduce suffering of others just for my pleasure.
Speaking of buddhism, life is suffering, and it seems to me that if you want to remove suffering, then death is by far the only solution.
With all that said, most counterarguments here were mostly trollish, and thanks, I'll probably read up on hindu recipes... though I doubt I have any of the spices.
> for vegetarians/vegans you are either in, or you are morally bankrupt. It reminds me a lot of religions/cults shaming.
Of course, because it’s often underpinned by a subjectively moralistic worldview. Frankly this is a turn off to me as much as the diet itself. I could never be a vegan because I enjoy meat too much, but also I wouldn’t want the association with that movement and the reputation it has.
I don’t pass judgement on what vegans choose to eat, but that doesn’t mean I want to be associated with a group that is well known for being judgmental
> You could very well thrive on plants exclusively
Survive, yes.
Thrive? No, not really.
And it's absolutely not the case that everyone can even survive on a pure vegetarian/vegan diet. Some people have medical conditions that make it impossible. Many, many, many people do not have the money to buy the unquestionably much more expensive food required to maintain a nutritious vegetarian or vegan diet.
The ability to do so is a privilege of the abled and well-off.
You’d be surprised to learn that several cultures across the world do eat no or almost no meat. Meat consumption increases with wealth, so reality is contrary to what you’re hinting at: eating meat is a privilege of the well-off.
I don’t see how that relates to my point. Universal vegetarism is practiced already, without issues, since hundreds of years, by a rather large populace.
The brutally honest answer is… they taste good and I don’t want to eat plants exclusively because I don’t have to as an omnivore.
As for sentience, it does not factor into my equation, in the same way a lion isn’t concerned about the impala’s feelings. If plants are shown to have sentience one day, would you allow yourself to starve to death out of concern?
No. If I’m starving, I’m going to take a puppy, rip it’s heart out, and eat it raw. But… I’m not starving. None of us is. So to me, this all comes down to having a conscience, and being considerate.
You answered the question quite well — you simply care more about yourself than anyone else. If that’s okay for you, carry on.
Yes, I certainly care for myself more than chickens, deers, cows, pigs, ducks, fish, and many other animals that have found their way to my plate over the years. I don’t humanize them, because they are not humans, their food. You referred to them as “anyone”, which indicates you blur that line.
One difference between us…I would never pass judgement on someone who chooses to eat a plant based diet. However, being well experienced with vegans I have come to expect that moralistic evangelical aspect of folks that choose that lifestyle.
It’s not about humanising, it’s about recognising other sentient beings as having a subjective existence, thus, being someone.
I don’t pass judgement on you, by the way. Choosing not to eat me is, for most, a different mindset, not just a dietary change. I guess this is something everyone has to learn for themselves, and this discussion won’t really lead anywhere, so let’s cut it at this point.
This trend in the comments of so many to say “awareness causes depression/hopelessness” is an annoying leap and probably just a salve (“I’m so sad cuz I’m so wise”). The depression is a result of how an individual may respond to an awareness (from the small to the massive), and depression/hopelessness is certainly not a foregone conclusion for others.
The lack of depression should not imply a lack of awareness.
Those telling themselves that their depression is a result of their super big brains or high empathy may want to explore other possibilities to resolve the issue in a healthy manner. You may be highly empathetic with the chickens at Foster Farms, but the issue is an inability to incorporate that knowledge/feeling/sensation into a worldview where it doesn’t have outsized influence. I know the justifications, reasoning, excuses, and remedies are a deep discussion not to be had here, but empathy/knowledge is not the enemy.
Yes, remember that my comment is not about enumerating all the various reasons for why someone may or may not be more or less likely to suffer from depression. My comment is specifically attacking this association between knowledge/awareness/empathy and depression as being something that naturally follows from that possession.
"How an individual may respond" is about as infinitely open-ended a statement about experience as one can make, incorporating unending psychological, physiological, genetic, epigenetic, spiritual, behavioral, and physical causes as one wants to consider. You can load it up with as much as you want or as little as you want. I would hope that you load it up commensurate with your understanding of the complexities and confounding variables.
> Never implied.
Your statement that "if you are aware of [x] you have reasons to feel hopeless" struck me as one of many here implying this link that depression follows awareness. After the umpteenth expression of this in other comments, yours was the one I replied to. I'm sorry if I read your statement incorrectly.
But it's a good time to also establish that depression is not just a negative emotional reaction. It may be reasonable to assume that most/all would experience some degree of negative emotional reaction to bad news, but it is not reasonable to assume that most/all would feel hopelessness or depression as a reaction to bad news. This has nothing to do with the knowledge itself, and everything to do with the pre-existing framework into which the new knowledge is being incorporated (and again, if we need to, let's explicitly state that, yes, the pre-existing framework is incredibly complex with many confounding variables).
> sounds like a strawman
It's hyperbole to illustrate absurdity. It might turn into a strawman if that's what I was attacking, but again, you can find many, many comments here voicing specifically what I am attacking -- the assertion that "my high level of empathy", "my awareness", "my knowledge", is integral to the person's state of depression and as often its corollary: a lack of depression follows from a lack of the empathy/awareness/knowledge. What's interesting about this humble brag is that it excuses the avoidance of difficult self-examination. It's an unhealthy coping mechanism. I call it out because I don't think it should be reinforced.
Again, if you disavow making this claim, I'm sorry to lump you in with the others that are making this claim.
It's difficult to hear someone say they chose to become vegan/vegetarian for environmental reasons when agriculture is one of the biggest environmental disasters of all time and (by far) the largest source of emissions globally is the generation of electricity.
I had a similar thought. Also I think a vegetarian is more likely to understand humanity's impact on the world, and just how helpless we seem to be to stop a negative impact that takes coordinated effort.
I think this is a great observation, obvious once you think about it.
No one would accept killing their dog or cat, but sheep, cows, etc - who cares? - even though they have the similar levels of sentience, and no creature wants to die or be killed. Its odd that our perception of suffering in another can be switched on or off, at least for most.
We can allow ourselves to feel detached from the daily carnage, or not. Perhaps choosing to accept truth does make you more depressed. Perhaps too, it has its consolations - not that these will necessarily assist you in the ladder to success.
It’s a difference between thinking of dogs as a species and dogs as individuals. I wouldn’t want “my” dog on the barbie, but generally don’t have a problem with the idea of “dogs” on the barbie if we didn’t have better choices (I/we do).
There’s also a hierarchy of value: I love you and I love my dog. I you were starving, I’d feed you my dog. If my dog were starving, it’s curtains for the dog.
It also improves understanding to differentiate between the act of killing “an” animal for food, and the specialization in a society to do that at scale. Criticizing the excesses of esp. modern industrialization need not mandate rejection of using animals for food in principle. Those are two separate issues to my way of thinking. Raising and killing an animal for food is not in itself cruel unless the methods to do so are such - in other words it need not be done cruelly. The opinion that raising and killing animals at an industrial scale crosses the line seems then a question of degree (what would it take to make industrial scale less cruel?). This is of course balanced with what our tribe needs to thrive efficiently. We allow a lot of cruelty for our convenience - just look at how your iPhone or Nikes are made (and food has to be a whole lot more affordable than iPhones). Doing anything at industrial scale exploits resources (human or otherwise). Fighting for better conditions in industry doesn’t require abstention from eating meat unless perhaps that’s your only way to get meat. I say perhaps because there’s also this idea of fixing the truck while we’re driving it - complete abolition of an industry is not a necessary step (or arguably a wise one) to improve it.
If you just broadly reject the idea of eating meat because it represents the death of another life form to sustain your own existence, that’s a tough corner to be in with any consistency.
There's actually some evidence that having left-wing political beliefs in general is associated with mental health consequences, because people with such beliefs are more aware of societal injustices, and because unhappy people are more likely to want change.
I suspect that this is a similar effect, probably enhanced by the fact that vegetarians are usually on the left. Did the study control for political views?
I'd be interested in seeing if this replicates in India, where many vegetarians are actually strong (religious) conservatives.
> for the record, mental health is known to be much worse in the far-right and far-right libertarians
Every paper I've seen on the subject has pretty much monotonic improvement in reported mental health outcomes almost all the way to the right, and if there's any non-monotonicity, it's insufficient to come even close to the reported negative mental health outcomes on the far left. This is not a formal scientific paper, but the SSC survey has the benefit of tighter granularity and more heterodoxy than most sources.
https://mobile.twitter.com/phl43/status/1227338353101672450
Interesting data points, but in isolation polling seems to be a rather poor method for determining this.
More conservative viewpoints are also associated with higher stigmatization of mental health conditions[1] and one indisputable measure of a mental health crisis (suicides) is more prevalent in rural areas compared to urban[2].
This seems like an obvious confounding variable. If you poll people have they been formally diagnosed with a mental health disorder, and one group of people refuses to seek treatment for it in the first place due to stigma, then _of course_ fewer of them are formally diagnosed.
A shallow search seems to support that people with right leaning ideologies tend to stigmatize depression more and to not support mental health help and intervention.
A person who stigmatizes mental illness would be more likely to not seek help and would not admit that they have problems in a public survey.
As an example of this, the slate star codex post shows that alt-right people reported a very low percentage of diagnosed depression. The popularity of Jordan Peterson and his videos in that space is a clear signal that a lot of these people are seeking ways to deal with mental health problems. Even more, they're not looking for them through official channels, but through online celebrities and communities.
I would be very glad to be corrected with data on this as I'm not an expert, but I think it's an important point to consider when discussing mental illnesses where self-reporting makes a big difference in their diagnosis.
The God fearing right? Having a believe in a higher leads to better mental health outcomes in general. Conspiracy theories like 9/11 UFOs or are often far leaning left views although both side have a distrust with the government. Framing conspiracy beliefs as right wing missing the real split. Those who trust power structures and people in power and those who distrust.
Well, the foundation of Christianity is the establishment of a source of hope that transcends the tragedies and corruption of the prime material plane. That hope is incredible source of strength for many. I think it's an interesting examination of people to understand where they derive hope from, and just IME for many it's their spiritual belief system. "What gives you hope (about humanity, the world, your personal life, your family, etc.)" always seems like an enjoyable conversation. To the extent that one feels and internalizes gratitude I think is also strongly correlated to hopefulness, just IME.
> because unhappy people are more likely to want change.
Things are constantly changing wrt. societal+economic measures - Gini, GDP, longevity (excl. short term perturbations). If anything conservatives might be unhappy that things are changing at all, and left-wing supporters that they're not changing fast enough.
Maybe there's something to that too. Left wingers also typically, like big government and believe that its fine for us all to collectivised and made to follow governments rules. Is that how empathy is used against the empath? Can govt just say that such-and-such is for the greater good, and most will go along with it? It seems so, at times.
counter-examples: the patriot act, military spending, police funding.
The right seems just as happy to support big gov and tow the official/collectivist line when it comes to “law and order”, international power, nationalism, etc.
Put another way, anti-vaxers come in two flavors: right wing conspiracy nuts (alex jones), and left wing flakes (goop).
I think what we’re all kind of lacking is the idea of statists vs non-statists. The left and right swap positions on issues like military welfare (tell me again our burn rate in Ukraine right now) and state surveillance (generally a left-loved cause these days) over the decades. The state wants power at a cost to the citizenry. People in power enable this regardless of their party. We should also acknowledge that it’s the nature of the system for the power structures to try and get their hooks in politicians as quickly as possible such that they can be made tools of the power structure. I guess the benefits are good but the consequences on people in power “fighting the system” are multimodal, relentless, and effective.
I think you might be confused because the “left” in the usa is a centrist liberal party. Liberals are not leftists. Actual leftists do NOT in my experience support state surveillance. Warfare isn’t a left vs right thing per se, e.g. leftist support for ww2 when american nazi sympathies were common. But imperialist wars are generally opposed by leftists.
I do think the state-ist vs non-state-ist thing might be useful, but as a leftist there are plenty of things I support a state-based solution to (healthcare) while others I do not (policing - as currently conceived, anything involving personal freedom + autonomy e.g. drugs, lifestyle). I’d suggest it’s more of a “i’m a healthcare state-ist” rather than “i’m a state-ist”.
You're confusing liberalism with left. People on the left tend to have as much antipathy towards the average far right western neoliberal government as the extreme right. The existence of extremist authoritarian social conservatives and economic libertarians who have similar antipathy should not be confused for left support of authoritarianism.
Although I think it's fair to characterize the left as favoring collectivism, I don't think it's fair to characterize them as following government rules any more than the right.
Typically speaking, the left want government rules determined by scientists and experts that maximizes overall freedom, the right want government rules determined by the church that maximizes the freedoms of adherents to that church.
So while the left may favor following mask mandates or vaccination drives because it benefits the overall physical health of the community; the right favors abortion bans, banning trans healthcare treatments, outlawing gay marriage, and barring race from being discussed in schools for--presumably--the moral health of the community.
The right is arguing these things are for the greater good in the same way the left argues wearing a mask in the supermarket is. Both sides want their governments to enact and enforce these rules. I'd argue that telling someone to wear cloth on their face is a lighter government touch than forcing 10 year old rape victims to travel 500 miles for care, but I digress.
After all, the government tells you to wear pants and I don't see people calling anyone sheep for doing so.
> Although I think it's fair to characterize the left as favoring collectivism, I don't think it's fair to characterize them as following government rules any more than the right.
Left/right are really just meaningless words in 2022. The woke left of today is literally as intolerant of any belief outside their moral code as the evangelical religious right is—-to the point that but for their beliefs they are indistinguishable from each other in terms of willful authoritarian support.
They are equally destructive and equally bad in my opinion as both want government or community to bend the will of everyone outside their group to the morals of their group.
Comparing intolerance of intolerance to just plain intolerance is a false equivalency.
It’s a bit like saying the abolitionists and slave owners were equally destructive and bad because the slave owners were intolerant of black people while the abolitionists were intolerant of pro-slavery advocates.
There are some overzealous or radical elements on the left, but not at all in the same way as on the right. Not in scale, not in effect.
If you want to say far left ideology is as harmful as far right ideology, fine. But when one problem is 100x larger, let’s not try to give both problems equal attention.
Sorry, that is exactly the sort of justification “the other side” always uses. Doesn’t matter which side of course, but it’s always some justification of bad action excused away with “the other side is 100x worse”.
I have no need for either side nor care if one is worse than the other. I don’t care what the “intentions” are…just that the effect is bad…especially when the effect is intentionally evil.
The right has over the past 6 months used the levers of government to make it illegal for women to get reproductive care, banned books on LGBTQ and race from school libraries, removed elected officials for espousing different beliefs, punished companies that disagreed with their views, and outlawed care for trans youths. There are candidates on the ballot in favor of disenfranchising voters, adding the Bible to the citizenship exam, and outlawing contraception.
The left has done what to abridge anyone's freedoms in that time? What are their candidates campaigning on to reduce other's freedoms?
It's a silly argument to have. One side is clearly embracing authoritarianism and you're here arguing both sides are the same.
The inability for both sides to see their own ugly behavior is common to both as well. It’s really remarkable how alike they are.
I once heard someone describing politics as in the shape of a “C”, where both “left and right” actually bend towards each other and being ultimately closer to each other than they are to middle of the road political thought. I think it’s a clever and accurate visual.
At any rate, I don’t engage in debate with zealots, there is nothing they can say that will change my mind, and there is nothing I can say to change theirs. That is one of the reasons why both left and right zealots always try to use authoritarianism to move the needle in their direction. Have a good day
I respect that, although I wish I could claim to be a zealot. I hope you have a good day, too.
I like to work in facts, so I gave a short list of government actions I’m aware of (I could give many more) done by Republicans that restrict freedoms all within the span of the past six months. I can provide links to articles about each.
However, when engaging with right-wingers I often get zero proof of the reasoning behind their feelings. Like above just brushing it off as an inability to see authoritarian moves by the left. If you’re trying to argue they’re the same, using actual facts and data would go a lot further towards proving your point than just sharing smart-sounding but ultimately empty rhetoric.
> If you’re trying to argue they’re the same, using actual facts and data would go a lot further towards proving your point
It’s my opinion that they are the same, and that opinion is based on my own interactions with folks on those sides. I see a common thread of behavior when items they believe to be incontrovertibly true might be questioned—even minor and inconsequential things. When in positions of power over people, be it governments or in any relationship with a power dynamic, the end result seems to be trying to find ways of using authority to hurt, degrade, or marginalize those folks that might disagree with them.
No matter how righteous you believe your beliefs to be, if the actions you willingly take because of those beliefs hurt people, you are doing evil. If you are doing evil, your righteous intentions are corrupted. So left or right it’s the same.
> Typically speaking, the left want government rules determined by scientists and experts that maximizes overall freedom, the right want government rules determined by the church that maximizes the freedoms of adherents to that church.
I don't think you have the slightest clue about what you're talking about.
> Typically speaking, the left want government rules determined by scientists and experts that maximizes overall freedom, the right want government rules determined by the church that maximizes the freedoms of adherents to that church.
c'mon, do you really think that? It's blatantly the work product of demagoguery.
The evidence clearly points in that direction, so yes.
Supreme Court rulings notably trending towards increasing Christian freedoms at the expense of others (reintroducing staff-led prayer at school, allowing businesses to discriminate against gay couples, mandating public funding be sent to religious schools, abortion no longer being within one’s right to privacy).
Then there was the Muslim ban to start off the previous Presidential term. The extreme Zionist stance of some red states, going so far as to legally punish companies practicing BDS. The Texas GOP basically shut out gay Republicans from participating and deemed them an “abnormal lifestyle choice.” They also want prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments back in public schools. There is a growing discussion of finding a way to make gay marriage illegal again. Then there’s the trans panic. The church is also against the legalization of marijuana. It’s challenging to find a place where the party’s policy stance is separate from evangelical churches.
The anti-vaccination stance was also widely promulgated by churches painting the vaccine as the mark of the beast. Similarly have read many argue against mask mandates because we were created in god’s image and it would be an insult to Him. Further, churches were one of the loudest against occupancy mandates or other restrictions on in-person congregations (the loss of revenue hurt). Don’t get me started on the number of popular churches that give sermons on the election being stolen, Trump being a Prophet or Messiah or Chosen One, and Biden being possessed by Satan. Not normal stuff btw.
The founder of conservative social media app Gab probably said it most clearly: “We don't want people who are atheists. We don't want people who are Jewish. We don't want people who are, you know, nonbelievers, agnostic, whatever. This is an explicitly Christian movement because this is an explicitly Christian country.”
Now maybe you’re part of the libertarian wing of the party. Or maybe you support marijuana legalization. Or you don’t want abortion to be completely banned. Or you go to a regular old church that doesn’t give political sermons. But if so, I hate to break it to you but you have little say in the direction of the party.
I'd add that many people go vegan/ vegetarian due to awareness of impact of meat consumption on global warming and hunger.
Worrying too much about the future and the state of the world in general can definitely lead to depression. Ignorance is bliss.
Also, I've found esoteric or conspiracy theorist views to be quite common among some vegans and vegetarian: If you're convinced that this this the only healthy and ethical way of eating, some evil force must be working against it!
> Worrying too much about the future and the state of the world in general can definitely lead to depression.
Doing "too much" of anything leads to adverse consequences, almost by definition. Arguably "worrying too much" is a symptom of depression, rather than a cause.
And what is "depression"? Are you just saying that worrying about the state of the world makes you fed-up? Maybe being fed-up about the state of the world makes you fed-up.
I try to avoid the vernacular use of the word "depression", because it can mean either being fed-up or being clinically depressed, and I'm not a clinician. FTR, I was once diagnosed with depression, and prescribed antidepressants. They had a really odd effect on me, and I discontinued their use after 6 months. I'm much happier now, because I'm not ill; I just have lots of reasons to be fed-up.
> Arguably "worrying too much" is a symptom of depression, rather than a cause.
Well, it's not like you're suddenly getting a depression out of the blue and then start having obsessive negative thoughts. Repetitive intrusive thoughts can in fact lead into depression.
> Are you just saying that worrying about the state of the world makes you fed-up?
Most people will probably just feel fed up and not bother much. But for some, it can contribute to anxiety, depressive episodes or a full depression.
I agree, the term "depression" is probably used inflationary when it's "only" a depressive episode or feeling depressed.
> I'm much happier now, because I'm not ill; I just have lots of reasons to be fed-up.
Reminds me of what Jordan Peterson often mentions in his Podcasts:
When a patient comes in and tells they are depressed, he asks how the life is going. If things are going fine but the person feels depressed - might be a depressive episode or depression then.
But let's say they're a young adult, have no friends, no job and spend their whole day playing computer games and watching porn - then life just sucks and they need to work on that instead of getting meds.
I should have added a smiley or something; what I was trying to imply was that being diagnosed and treated for depression made things worse for me, and that my rejection of that diagnosis in itself improved my mood.
Let me put it another way: if you have some cause to be fed-up, and then some shrink diagnoses you with depression, you now have two reasons to be fed-up. Like as not, your original cause of fed-upness could be remedied; but depression is uncurable, all they can do is treat the symptoms.
And reportedly, the treatment can be worse than the disease:
I don't mean to suggest that depression doesn't exist. But it's wildly over-diagnosed; I suspect that depression is often diagnosed because it's massively cheaper to write a scrip for a bottle of some shifty "mood-regulator" than to look closely into their life circumstances, history of trauma, relationships with others etc.
> What is your procedure for distinguishing between neuroticism and awareness? Accurately calibrated concern and ignorance?
I'm not a psychologist, but AFAIK neuroticism is a personality trait. So my hypothesis would be that people for people who score high on that trait and maybe have some other problem in life, diving too deep into what's going wrong in the world could lead to anxiety, helplessness and depression.
And yeah, if such a person then walks into conspiracy theory territory, we'd have "heightened irrational neuroticism".
On the other hand, if someone is mentally stable and well informed, has a positive outlook on the future and adopts a vegan/ vegetarian diet for good reasons, that's great.
A thing that makes me sad at times is that, otherwise caring and open-minded, important people that I love in my life contributes to something as cruel and horrific as animal agriculture.
And also that you can't catch a break, you can't trust food and you must be prepared to defend your lifestyle during lunch or when going out.
I am not sure about this because I have many friends who feel the exact same way you do about animal cruelty but chose to solve the problem by eating less meat but choosing higher quality meat from regenerative agriculture farms that they have personally inspected and none of those people suffer depressive episodes (they also enjoy knowing their cows had 2ish excellent years of life, up to 10-11 for their dairy consumption, while sequestering a crapload of carbon, providing a seriously underappreciated carbon sink while creating higher quality soil for growing crops)
Thanks for this. I had originally written quite a bunch but realized it’s rather pointless to do.
Ultimately, no matter the stance or argument, it all boils down to the old Tolstoy quote for me: “As long as there are slaughterhouses there will always be battlefields.”
If you are unable or unwilling to muster the empathy to care for living beings you can easily dominate, how will you ever be able to emphasize with your enemies?
This model falls flat for at least one important reason:
Anti-abortion people believe that there is presently widespread systematic mass murder of babies. Regardless of whether or not you agree with them, you must concede that this is a very terrible thing to believe. Certainly worse than the effects of agriculture on animals, unless you are deeply misanthropic.
Anti-abortion people are not nearly as depressed as people who don't eat meat.
If it wasn't true, there would have to be a Simpson's paradox of epic proportions to account for the improved mental health outcomes of anti-abortion-aligned demographics. Pro-abortion republicans would have to be the happiest people in the world by a huge margin.
This isn't an argument about whether abortion is moral. Please don't bring this down to an object-level argument about abortion - I have zero interest in that. This is about the psychological states of groups who believe in the presence of an urgent moral crisis.
Why would you prioritize a “latent” life over an actual life? Anti-choice people only seem to care about others up until birth, at which point your poverty is your own problem and you shouldn’t have had so many kids.
Do you think anti-abortion activists would be OK with state-sanctioned intentional murder of babies who have been born? That would be the prediction of your model if it was applied consistently.
Being against (what you believe to be) murder should be very easily distinguishable from being in favor of whatever flavor of welfare program you're thinking about.
That's how anti-choice people want to frame the argument, but that's not the only "applied consistently" frame available, and frankly it's not one that I'm interested in. The decision is to carry a child to term, or to not carry a child to term - the "murder" (as some see it) is a consequence of the decision, not the decision itself. Nobody is choosing to have an abortion in order to kill.
So, applying that consistently, if you believe that fetuses are people, the question would be - are you ok with people being able to make legal ("state-sanctioned") choices that result in the death of other people? And of course we all are ok with that to some degree - driving is legal (40k/year dead in the USA), as is gun ownership (30k/year), as is deregulating the EPA (unknowable but large numbers of cancer deaths), and climate inaction (unknowable and growing numbers of climate related deaths).
> people being able to make legal choices that result in the death of other people? ... gun ownership (*30k/year*)
As must be frequently pointed out, well over half the deaths by firearm in the US are not the killing of other people, but suicides.
Of the killing of "other people", I'd wager a minority of those are associated with legal ownership - prior surveys of inmates in the US in prison for gun related offenses (not just homicide) show a great portion (40+%) obtained the gun used for the offense from an illegal source.
I'm guessing this representation of illegal ownership goes up when you filter for just homicide offenses (the killing of other people) and when you consider whether the possession itself was legal, even if obtained from a legal source.
Manslaughter or the killing of other people outside of homicides/suicides are in the low single percentage digits of the total figure.
You seem to be mistaking me for an anti-abortion person. I don't think you are engaging in this conversation at the right (non-object) level, and are engaging in a completely unrelated argument entirely, so I'm respectfully going to cut this off here.
I did not mistake you for someone who believed that. I took you for someone relating an argument that requires adopting a framing that I don’t hold and does not interest me
We're pretty happy to accept "I pulled the trigger because I thought my life was in danger" as a reason to not punish someone for killing... many are happy with "I pulled the trigger because I thought my property was in danger". Some are even happy with "I pulled the trigger because they were threatening me for pointing a gun at them".
The reason for the trigger pull, it turns out, matters quite a bit to people.
> But, it would make sense perhaps, if many of the empathic vegetarians would also be anti-abortion too.
Depends on where your empathy goes. You also have to consider the life of the one carrying the foetus, and the life that a being that is not yet sentient would get if it were to live. I don't see any inconsistency with being vegetarian in that respect.
Refusing to eat mussels but being supportive of abortion would seem inconsistent, though... As well as being fearlessly against abortion while enjoying a piece of a cow one in a while seems very inconsistent, if you set aside religious believes.
Just a point on the logic here - let’s agree that the trade-off is not always (perhaps even infrequently) one life for the other life in any given case of a desired abortion. It’s a spectrum that goes from the mother’s at-risk life at the most grave to convenience of lifestyle / avoidance of responsibility at the most callous. All abortions are not one or the other, but all points on this spectrum are represented. The debate is often framed to highlight one extreme scenario or the other as justifying a specific policy carte blanche. But we do ourselves a disservice as wannabe rational thinkers be ceding either assumption to the passionate advocacies on each side.
> convenience of lifestyle / avoidance of responsibility at the most callous
That was also what I was thinking of when I wrote taking into consideration the life of the unborn child. Being undesired or a burden isn't really giving someone the best chances of being happy and fulfilled. But then again, we can come up marginal cases.
The industrial civilization is cruel with the environment at large no matter your diet. Agriculture needs to destroy entire ecosystems for it to exist.
“Everyone else is heartless and only I can see the truth.”
If you were to sit down and have a very open honest conversation with somebody who doesn’t share your perspective, you’ll find that you’re intentionally (or unintentionally) ignoring a lot of information to form your point of view.
Every public influence in our world today knows how to influence people in this way too. You fit in a bucket and you’re going to see information that reinforces you.
There’s nothing wrong with being vegetarian or vegan. There’s nothing wrong with eating meat.
There’s a lot wrong with believing you know what’s best for everybody.
Putting the suffering of sentient beings aside, there are still many things wrong with eating meat as practiced in most developed countries... Ressources consumptions and heart diseases are only two of the very well documented issues.
It doesn't stop at "knowing what's best for everybody." I'm fine with people thinking they know things; what I'm not fine is the power of the state being turned against everyone to enforce what are nearly always fringe or minority beliefs.
Sorry, vegetarians and vegans, but most of the world is just fine with eating meat[1].
Is not eating meat for this reason any better than just only buying from farms that are free range and cruelty free - so you support humane farms.
The problem with vegetables is they have a lot of compounds that stop nutrient absorption. You do not absorb iron easily from vegetables. But a roaming animal that eats grass and vegetables digests them and makes their nutrients readily absorbable when you eat their muscle. I think we are more evolved to eat meat than plants honestly.
Do you think the plant wants to get ripped out of the ground, sliced up and eaten by you? Probably not. You're not any more noble than a meat eater.
Given that this study was made in Brazil, I can't not imagine the social consequences of not eating meat (exclusion from barbeques, etc) and how those also affect mental wellbeing.
I would love a cross-culture study of this, especially with India or Japan.
More of a curiosity given how different it is culturally and culinarily. Obesity is socially shumed more, which I'd imagine correlates negatively to health issues from a vegetarian carb-rich diet.
> Nutrient deficiencies do not explain this association. The nature of the association remains unclear, and longitudinal data are needed to clarify causal relationship.
That is an interesting paragraph. I wonder if it could be linked to people often choosing a meatless diet due to animal cruelty concerns. The more aware of it you are, the more you see it. A bit like veterinarians having higher rates of depression.
This was done in brazil which is a very meat focused culture. Not eating meat automatically makes you an outsider or maybe people doing this are outsiders in the first place. Outsiders = depression :)
> Limitations.
> The cross-sectional design precluded the investigation of causal relationships.
Some have argued that meat contains compounds that, while not strictly essential nutrients, are still beneficial, like creatine. But this is pretty controversial.
What they literally mean is "the model of nutrition we are using does not predict the association". This is evidence that whatever model they're using isn't complete.
Nutrition science is still under rapid development, and its epistemic rigor is not yet very high. There are many reasons that plant-based diets are theorized to cause health issues that are not yet conclusively proven or disproven, such as the effects of plant fat profiles on human metabolism. Plants are certainly not chemically fungible with animals, and popular nutritional models do not incorporate many details of this.
> The association between meatless diet and presence of depressive episodes was expressed as a prevalence ratio (PR), determined by Poisson regression adjusted for... PRs ranging from 2.05 (95%CI 1.00–4.18) in the crude model to 2.37 (95%CI 1.24–4.51) in the fully adjusted model.
science direct needs some ELI5 graph tool where you could plug in these arcane results. e.g. for this particular study they use the Poisson distribution https://www.reddit.com/r/askmath/comments/1mqdwb/eli5_the_po... , a bit to unpack there for the uninitiated in statistics.
Agreed. Also, the crude CI is almost crossing 1 and the width (and PR) seems to increase when controlling for other things. This may suggest that those other things may be of more significant interest than the main effect the authors are modeling.
Interesting but being purely correlational is a big limitation. It seems quite plausible that people that worry and feel depressed about climate change and animal welfare would choose to go vegetarian. The diet making people depressed is quite plausible too.
As a former vegan(not vegetarian), the lifestyle was the result of distrust in other foods. Everything had to be organic, unprocessed, and free of all animal products.
It also became difficult to continue eating out with friends and family. Our family holidays became difficult. Both of which can lead to depression.
The diet is also not simple. There are rules involved in getting the consumed nutrients into your body effectively. A prime example being vitamin C and iron.
The standard way is to do an intervention: either tell meat eaters to stop eating meat or tell vegetarians to start. Then compare with a control group. In medicine it's also advisable to use double-blinding.
I'm not suggesting the authors made a mistake or anything. An association study is a good cheap starting point to see whether a closer look is warranted.
As a vegetarian of eight years, I can say that a meatless diet did not have any effect on my depressive episodes. I had them before I stopped eating meat, and I had them after. So based on my one person anecdata this is correlation (maybe a depressed person tries a lifestyle change to help themselves out of depression) but not causation.
If you break this down into "light" and "darkness" and define darkness as just the absence of any light you can see where the depression comes from. Think of a lantern in a dark room. You are in the center of the room (the star below) the half way point between the lantern and the end of the room. So any step you take toward the positive direction, you are now surrounded with MORE darkness.
+
/ [+3]
/ [+2]
/ [+1]
*
\ [-1]
\ [-2]
\ [-3]
-
i.e. start caring about animals and that's great, that's positive, but woah, at +1 you have more darkness now than at the zero point.
What the study misses is that the participants Brazilians are likely to meat-eaters who were denied meet. Try run the study in places like India with partial vegetarians. If denied meat, they are not likely to have similar outcomes.
Correlation is not causation, especially not in nutrition where it's so hard to control for hidden factors. There exist randomized controlled trials that show the exact opposite of this association, see https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2.... I consider these RCTs to be much higher quality evidence than other types of study designs such as the in the OP.
I went through a very serious episode of depression when I was a vegetarian. I was so, so down and had many thoughts which might be not far off suicidal. Something like a nervous breakdown and existential crisis rolled into one.
I read somewhere that I might be deficient in certain things and I should check my diet. The depression could be my body telling me something is missing.
I started to reintroduce whey protein (I was avoiding dairy because cows welfare) and chicken back into my diet, then fish. I was desperate to get out of this state of mind. I can’t say for certain this was the cure but it worked for me (sadly) because it would be nice if I didn’t feel like I needed to eat meat.
Eating a lot of greens, nuts, tofu etc etc, a balanced diet, but maybe not balanced enough.
I wasn't eating red meat for a while, I stayed with chicken and fish, which I don't believe are great sources of iron, then I started to feel better. I got back into red meat later on, maybe 6 months later.
I think I was eating a balanced diet, but not good enough. I did try vegetarian again for a few years at a later stage. This time, I was working from home and cooking a LOT of curries with legumes etc, I seemed to feel good and I was monitoring my mental health closely. I made sure to do a bit more protein. I would've just ate meat again if I didn't feel well but I never ended up depressed like before. The experiment ended however when I moved to another country where it was just too hard to cook and prepare vegetarian again, so I don't have much more to add unfortunately.
Maybe eating vegetarian is ok if one has a lot of time for it?
I’m surprised there wasn’t a mention of Vegetarian and vegan being more of a fad. There seems to be a lot of people who go vegetarian or vegan not for any serious moral, or health issues, but because it interesting?
> [...] neuroticism was related to more positive attitudes toward animals and speciesism. This association was driven by the withdrawal aspect of the neuroticism trait. [...] This pattern suggests that people who feel more anxious, passive, and withdrawn may also tend to have somewhat more positive and less hierarchical attitudes toward animals.
I can highly recommend vegetarian imitations of meat products, in fact the Polish Go Vege brand often tastes better than real thing, which I earlier thought was not possible to do. I am in no way associated, just a fan. Here is list of products they sell:
This seems pointless. Did they have a motivation, a hypothesis in mind before they started on this investigation? I mea on with enough data I can show all sorts of meaningless relationships that ultimately have no bearing on each other. Why is this warrant a publication?
How do you know someone spends most of their energy being angry at vegans? They'll tell you this joke. (And start to argue with anyone they see eating a meatless meal)
I tell people I'm vegetarian only when I am offered meat, which yes happens regularly. So I have no choice. Eating is social, so anyone who hangs with me for any amount of time is going to figure out I'm vegetarian.
People who choose to not eat meat generally do so for a reason, and for many of my friends that reason is cruelty to animals.
If a person is aware of cruelty to animals, and actually cares enough to actually change their lifestyle, then that person extends their empathy beyond their own life, beyond their own immediate sphere.
For me, it is this quality that can lead to depression. If a person allows themselves to take on the suffering they see see around them, if they allow themselves to really feel it, the world seems colder and crueler and the individual feels more powerless.
IOW, I do think people with very strong powers of denial about the wrongs they see around them are generally happier.