Post by brimstoneSalad » Mon Jun 16, 2014 10:25 pm

cufflink wrote: I can tell you that often when I see non-vegan food— when I look at it purely as an object of consumption, putting its origin out of my mind (an important qualification) —it's still pretty damn appealing. (Admittedly, when I purposely conjure up the image of the animal that was butchered to make this food available, the appeal diminishes considerably.) Will that change in time?

good

as enjoyable

used to be

Admittedly, when I purposely conjure up the image of the animal that was butchered to make this food available, the appeal diminishes considerably

I've heard and read assurances that when you give up whole milk and drink only non-fat, eventually whole milk becomes unpalatable: it feels as if you're drinking paint. Well, maybe that's true for some people; it certainly wasn't true for me. On the rare occasions that I tried whole milk, it tasted incredibly rich and delicious.

But there's nothing wrong with that! Not all worthwhile things are easy to achieve. Better to acknowledge that for many, veganism is a sacrifice, but one worth making. Otherwise you’re going to get people who’ll think, “How come that sizzling steak is still making my mouth water after all this time? Something must be wrong with me to make me such a failure.”

have

Exactly! That’s what needs to be emphasized—that the peace of mind you achieve when your eating habits align with your compassion, and you lose the cognitive dissonance, more than makes up for what you’re giving up in terms of sensual pleasure. Doing the right thing feels good.

The problem is that if you try to look objectively at what we really need—what is indispensable for a reasonably decent life—it’s pretty modest.

But people being what they are, the vast majority of us don’t want to live ascetic, monkish lives if we can possibly help it. Virtually everyone has wants that go beyond simple need.

) Marxism, with its idealistic “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” failed because it didn’t take into account this basic fact of human nature. (I realize that’s not the only reason Marxism failed.

But then the question becomes, how much desire for pleasure/comfort/convenience above pure need is it appropriate for an ethical person to have? And there you’re not going to get agreement.

But there’s a long way to go before masses of first-worlders are convinced they should give up whatever crosses the need-want border.

I don’t think people are ever going to agree on where to draw the line—at which point the want-to-need ratio becomes greater than what can be justified ethically. I don’t see the possibility of objectivity here.

The first part of it is the largest part of physiological craving- the out of the blue desire for something without prompting. That fades like cravings for cigarettes or coffee, or anything else.Actual repulsion isn't necessarily something that's going to come up on its own absent other stimuli (with the exception of the sensation of something being overly rich if eaten- but that's not really the same as repulsion; something being overly rich can still beunless we have past experiences making us averse to it).In the example you made regarding milk, the skim milk would have ultimately becomeas the whole milk, with the whole milk elevated to the status that cream used to enjoy.Our sense perceptions are all relative like that, which is why I say you're not actually missing out on something once you've gotten used to it.When you quit eating sweets, carrots and other vegetables (even plain oats) become sweeter to you, as your perceptual standards adjust to the new norm- you haven't really lost out on that, things just get shifted around. Our experiences always normalize as long as we're north of physical deprivation (that's a line we can begin to draw with research).If you liked drinking cream when you drank whole milk, it stands to reason that you'd still like whole milk after switching to skim. For some people, that's too rich- but other people like the so-rich experience, because they haven't built as strong negative associations with excessive richness with nausea...And that brings me to the last point:If every time you're exposed to meat, you conjure up those negative associations, eventually it will rub off and you'll start to find the whole thing more and more distasteful without even consciously thinking about it.Remember Pavlov's dog? It's the same sort of thing, that automatic conditioning works even on subconscious levels within our own minds.For any person who adopts veganism for moral reasons, this response is almost inevitable given enough time (if they draw up those thoughts and images- some people just avoid seeing meat, and in those cases fewer exposures may rather ironically reduce the effect).It's not perfect, but it's very widely reported in long term vegans (although sometimes there are odd exceptions which inexplicably pop up).People who are vegan for health or environmental reasons alone, who don't consider animals moral beings, usually won't experience that because they never create those negative associations that reduce the appeal of the meat.This is something you probably never did with whole milk. If, for example, you had associated the thickness with the thickness of - let's say puss - every time you saw whole milk before, it might have eventually put you off at sight without having to think about it.We can train our subconscious impulses remarkably well in some cases, through those associations, even without intending to do so- and I think that's what happens with most vegans who experience that.It's not that the not eating it causes us to not like it. Not eating it long enough causes cravings to fade, sure, and not eating anything of comparable richness for long enough will cause us to re-calibrate our metrics for what defines richness (thus making it much more rich when next encountered by comparison), but none of those necessarily make it taste bad (just, for some people who don't like "too rich" it might be too much to have all at once).What makes it smell and/or look revolting is the negative associations that come up when we're exposed to it, subconsciously re-associating those smells and sights with something unpleasant over time and with regular exposure.Of course, none of that is of any use if you're hungry enough- fellow human being start looking pretty delicious at that point.The same is the case with sweet things- they just taste really really sweet. Some people have built in negative associations with excessive sweetness- perhaps from gorging on sweet things as young children and getting sick- others don't. Because sweetness doesn't have an instinctual "too sweet" gag level, response to those kinds of things is a little subjective.For somebody who grew up on warhead sour candies, for me there's no such thing as too sour- so even if I don't eat anything sour for months, a lemon won't put me off (although it does taste MUCH more sour if I haven't had one for a while).Saltiness is a little more objective as far as how somebody will react to "too salty" (or at least it seems to be); there might be an innate reflex against excessive saltiness that's triggered more easily in those who don't eat as much salt, which doesn't exist for other sensations.Anyway, what did happen, and which I think you describe well, is that your subjective perception of creaminess shifted radically- your whole scale was re-calibrated, which is the whole point about not really missing out from that.While you were drinking whole milk regularly, cream would have given you that experience of great richness.Once drinking skim milk, whole milk provided the experiences of great richness, cream would be like an exponentially more rich experience liken unto some kind of religious experience.I agree that not all worthwhile things are easy to do. And veganism can definitely be hard in the beginning- cravings can pop up even after a couple years: they just get more and more spaced out and weaker over time.I'm just not sure how many long term vegans really actively want animal products anymore (aside from things like cheese and ice cream).I'd love to see more data tracing the recession of cravings for meat; smoking cessation seems to be a very good model, though- both from vegans I know who are ex smokers, and having read the research on its patterns.I'd also love to do some studies on long term vegans who still find meat appetizing, to find out what their exposure level is like, the context, and how they react to it.Since overwhelmingly the anecdotal reports seem to be (Both young and old, and it's the same in my case) that the smell of meat became off-putting (including the smell of spices in combinations regularly used to cook meat- I couldn't stand oregano for a long time until I learned to cook with it and disassociate it from meat), I would want to find out what's different about those cases so I could offer advice on how to associate the two things better to help stave off such cravings.Sure, it doesn'tto be fixed. But why live with uncomfortable cravings when you don't have to? Maybe a test of will power, or character building... but that just doesn't seem right. Ordinary subconscious brain function usually takes care of that within a couple years. If somebody doesn't want to like the smell of meat, and get hungry every time they see a meat ad, I think there's learned behavior that can overcome that.Yes, and this is the primary thing- just to do the right thing. It wouldn't matter if babies tasted like chocolate- we still wouldn't eat them.And, often doing the right thing despite it being hard makes it all the more meaningful.But, at the same time, I don't think veganism has to be hard (at least after the first few months of getting into it, which are the hardest, and then fighting occasional cravings that fade over a couple years).Why advertise something as harder than it needs to be? After all, I want to encourage more people to try it. And sometimes if you say something is easy, and that they can do it, just the thought alone will make it easier and empower them.It is modest, but there's no deprivation in that. When you get used to things, they become the norm. Human psychology of happiness doesn't rely on luxury, but on satisfaction with what we have.People only become unhappy when they become consumed with wants- a modest life can be happier than a luxurious one, because all of the trappings of luxury (where they are above our needs) all normalize back down, and whenever we go without those luxuries for want of them, only then do we become deprived.It's like any drug addiction. We just reach a new normal- and then when we fall below that high expectation, we experience the suffering of first world problems.Yes, they have wants that go beyond needs, but that's only because other people made them want those things.We've basically brainwashed each other to covet things that are neither necessary nor useful to improving well being.The problem is that undoing that mindset is a lot harder than creating it in the first place- like religion, it's an up hill battle.Well, the people who tried to enact Marxism thought they could do it thought force, and they assumed it would be much easier than it actually is.It takes education, and choice from informed consumers to make it happen- force doesn't do it, that's putting the cart before the horse.For a perfect person? None. But those are ideals.For a good person: just a little less than average.The important thing is that, as members of society, representing a direction society should strive to move in, we take one tiny step in that direction by being better than the average person.It takes time. It will take generations. Maybe longer. Maybe we'll never reach that point. But as long as we're moving closer to it, that's OK.There are two stable landings on the path to ethical being.One is objective, which is the break-even point. Just do more good in the world than harm. You get a lot closer to this by being vegan. By buying a few carbon credits to offset your usage (which is easy enough too), and generally being a good person and occasionally helping others. It's pretty easy to "break even" by doing a little bit of good to make up for the harm we can't help but do.Once you hit the break-even point, you're an OK person. Donate another penny to charity, and you're technically a good person. Even if you drive a fancy car, live in a big house, and do nothing more for the world. You did your bit, and you did a little more good than harm.That's an easy thing to do.The other is society and ability-relative. It's something I tend to call the jerk metric.If you're Bill Gates, and you're a billionaire, you just have to be a jerk to keep all of that to yourself and not use most of it to make the world a better place- because it's so easy for you to give away a lot of money without affecting you. Bill Gates isn't a total jerk- he started a multi-million dollar foundation with his wife, and gives the vast majority of his fortune away.Does that make Bill Gates a better person than you or I?Well, he's probably done more good in the world than you or I could do. But has he done more good in the world than you or I would do if we were in the same position? Maybe not.The ability-relative metric asks not if you're objectively good, but if you're good relative to your means, and the norms of society- it asks how much you go out of your way or inconvenience yourself to do the right thing. If another person (the average person) were in your shoes, would they do more or less than you?It's also pretty easy to be better than the average jerk. It means doing the good things that are easy for you to do, and avoiding the bad things that are easy for you to avoid- and then going a bit farther, and doing the good that's a little inconvenient, and avoiding bad things that are a little inconvenient.If you're better than average, then, for a human in this social context, you're not a jerk.If you manage to both break even in the world, doing more good than harm, AND not be a jerk, that's about all you can ask for as far as objective metrics of being a decent human being.Beyond that, it's a slippery slope with no apparent rest stations until you reach sainthood.