Mrs_deWinter

What is your goal, and what are your methods to get there?

I wanted to show that your argument is stupid. That's it, really.

Because I've never actually tried to convince you, or praise veganism, or do any of the things you'd like to argue against to begin with. You are arguing against an army of strawmen.

Claiming I'm the one who's confused only makes you seem delusional. You seem desperate to stir the conversation into a direction where you're getting praised for your diet choices, while I'm still amused about your original comment.

You're standing on the proud achievement of a claim that is not only wrong, even if it was true, it wouldn't work as an argument in your favor. Maybe on some intellectually detached level you are in fact aware how stupid of an argument that really is, so now you're trying to change the topic to vegan goals and systematic issues and convincing people of your unsurpassable approach to a sustainable lifestyle.

I am not a hardliner by any means. And I'm not even talking down your eating habits. I'm talking down dumb arguments.

Sounds like there is still some room for improvement in terms of "eating as sustainably as they can" then.

I don’t subscribe to the vegan moral system, I find it often inconsistent and confused. Like here… What’s best for the bees? What’s best for the ecosystem? What’s best for the humans?

Do you mean the vegan moral system is confused, or are you confused? Because not many vegans are confused about those things, that much I can tell you.

Right now you're voting with your wallet to increase an economic demand for the death of billions of innocent blades of grass. Not to mention dead animals - but we're not talking about them, that would be silly.

Being sealed off wouldn't have to mean having zero contact with the surrounding nature. I think we can coexist with predators while still using some land for agriculture - just not all of it.

That being said, it’s bold of you to assume someone conscious of the suffering of plants isn’t eating as sustainably as they can with the choices they have available

Oh so you are a vegan?

I am not vegan, but simply trying to understand how honey is bad, but as you say “unavoidable collateral damage of agriculture” or not.

Is bad as well, we simply have no good way of avoiding it.

Think about it this way: Beekeeping is bad, agriculture is bad. Can we avoid both? No. But can we avoid at least one of them? Easily so. So let's do that - half a win is better than nothing.

There are many ways agriculture could be less harm, less pesticides, less monotone growing practices, more spread out growing. We do not have to accept these practices to not starve.

I agree, which is why many (if not all) vegans strive to support those more sustainable forms of agriculture. But economic constraints are a real thing for many people. Not everyone can always decide to buy the higher quality produce. If we can - good, let's do that. While and if we can't, same thing with the honey: Can we avoid all the problems at once? No, but at least we can do as best as reasonable possible, so let's do that. That's veganism for many people.

I don’t think honey collecting is worse than agriculture (even of direct plants for human consumption), so I don’t think vegans should discount honey.

Even if it's just 1% worse than agriculture wouldn't we reduce a bit of suffering by replacing it? And I mean it's not even like we need honey for anything. We consume too much sugar anyway. Even if honey is exactly as harmful as sugar cane farming (which is debatable), by omitting it we would save not only agricultural resources but animal exploitation as well. Not consuming it is better than consuming it in terms of animal suffering. Since we don't need to consume it, from a vegan perspective I think it's understandable why that's seen as preferable.

I assume that for many vegans the specifically exploitative element of farming honey does make a difference to the rather unavoidable collateral damage of agriculture in general (since if we don't want to starve to death; each and everyone of us, vegan or not, will have to accept that those are happening) - but if you assume that honey comes with less suffering than corn syrup you're very welcome to replace them accordingly. Based on your tone I assume you're not a vegan and not actually interested in reducing animal suffering, but I could be wrong.

I think if you ask 10 people this questions you will get 11 opinions, at least.

I personally would prefer the reintroduction of predators into their native habitats because the human tendency to squeeze economic profit out of every square centimeter of the planet we inhabit reads absolutely bizarre to me. This kind of instrumental world view where everything has to have a purpose for us is in my opinion an epoch in the development of humans we should strive to leave behind, because although for a time it shaped our progression as a species like nothing else, it's also about to destroy the world we live in and come crushing down on us if we find no better way forward. I believe that in the long term we will have to withdraw from at least some parts of the ecosystem and let the predators do their thing. Our population centers can be (and for a good part already are) so sealed off to them that it should very well be possible to do our thing without being mauled by wolves.

...All this does go a bit beyond the question of honey though. Sorry for the rant there.

In a perfect world I think this could be true. Small scale backyard beekeeping with native species, where I only take the surplus the bees themselves don't use, where queens are left alone and drones are allowed to reproduce in their own pace. The problem is: That's not how it's done on the industrial scale at all. So even if you had such a bee utopia in your backyard and could replace all your sugary needs with that, as long as the well being of bees is of interest to you you'd probably still refrain from buying products that have honey in them. In a capitalist society companies will always use the cheaper stuff, and that comes almost exclusively with massive animal exploitation.

Every aspect of our globalised and industrialised world is causing harm. Veganism is about reducing the harm we're responsible for as far as possible and reasonable. Renouncing honey is easy. So it's possible and reasonable. No vegan thinks they're responsible for zero suffering or even zero dead animals, we're simply trying to reduce the number as best as we can without starving ourselves.

But renouncing honey is very easy, while not eating plants would mean starving to death. Since veganism is about reducing harm as far as possible, unavoidable suffering doesn't make anything non vegan.