The Vegan's Myth-Beating Handbook

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LUKAS BURICIN: THE VEGAN'S MYTH-BEATING HANDBOOK 9 CREDITS.........................................................................................................................................................................86 1 Terms of use This handbook is released under Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license which can be found here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ License full legal code: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/legalcode When copying or sharing, there is no additional explicit external attribution required as the authorship is obvious from this handbook itself. 2 Purpose of this handbook 2.1 Defending values of veganism The purpose of this handbook is to provide a source of useful information for defending the core values of Veganism. It aims to not only help Vegans in defending themselves in every day’s life, but also to help to promote Veganism. Furthermore, it also gives non-vegans a general idea on what Veganism is actually about and helps to demystify stereotypes. I believe that education about Veganism is the key to make the general public understand why Vegans chose their lifestyle. Education in Veganism will also hopefully help to bring awareness to the real meaning of „humanity“, by making people realise that the daily barbaric practices that humans do to animals are not humane. Also being educated about Veganism may give Vegans more confidence when explaining the detailed ethical, environmental and health aspects of promoting Veganism. Equally, for non-vegans, being educated about Veganism may mean more appreciation of the efforts that Vegans make. Lastly, becoming confident about Veganism is particularly important for people who are often challenged at their workplace, by friends socially, or at home by family members. In fact any situation where being unable to explain the reasons behind a change to a Vegan lifestyle may lead to misunderstanding, confusion and partial isolation on the part of the individual. 2.2 Why is it alright to be wrong When individuals make a lifestyle change towards Veganism it can be because of ethical reasons to protect and not further exploit animals, because of environmental reasons to help to prevent further climate changes, to prevent or reverse disease, or just improve their current health. In any case, the individual does so with the honest belief that this change in lifestyle is the right thing to do. They make the choice because of their compassion for other beings, a feeling of personal responsibility to positively impact the future for the next generations, or because they believe that human superiority should not be promoted to a norm of life. Page 4 of 87
LUKAS BURICIN: THE VEGAN'S MYTH-BEATING HANDBOOK In cases of ethical reasons to switch to a Vegan lifestyle there is simply no way to claim that Vegans should put their compassion aside. For example, it is like when being told that it's wrong to feel sad after seeing a slaughter of an animal. It is possible to be wrong in some other aspects of Veganism, for example when scientific data is misunderstood, but in terms of ethics Vegans cannot be ‘wrong’ for acting on their feelings. In the case of environmental reasons there is already a huge amount of data that supports the claim of global warming as an inevitable reality and even if all the indicators were wrong and there was no global warming after all, we have to ask ourselves an important question: whether it is more responsible to ignore all the current evidence and assume, or hope, that no climate change will ever come true, or whether it is more responsible to make the effort now to try and eventually stop the change from happening, even if ultimately all our efforts may in the end appear as unnecessary. In other words, preparing ourselves to be wrong is a responsible act. One day our grandchildren may point out what is happening to the planet and ask us why we didn't do anything to stop that when we could since we knew it. This is why it is time to be responsible. 2.3 When talking to non-vegans When Vegans talk to non-vegans we often use claims that we are often convinced are facts. It may happen though that information we use for our claims is inaccurate, because a new study or a research suggests so. It is therefore always better to be able to provide the source of our information as we didn't do the study / research / calculations ourselves, instead we have learned the information from the source. Hence we let the non-vegans assess and eventually agree or disagree with the information source, instead of them potentially disagreeing with us. This can help to avoid unnecessary arguments. There are surely many different ways to talk to different people with different impacts, but probably the best general rule is to try to make the people face the facts / claims without unnecessary emotions added. For example, when non-vegans watch videos like “Earthlings” their emotions will normally be strong anyway. When confronted by a non-vegan raising their voice, try to do the opposite: bring your own voice down if you can and try to keep the emotions calm and stick with plain facts. I know it is easier said than done and I've failed myself many times too, but later I found out that staying calm is simply the best way to be. You may find it deeply irritating when meat-eaters say “I just love meat” as you will always surely ask yourself whether a personal preference of a taste can counter-balance the value of the life of an innocent being, but note that such a response about loving the way that meat tastes is one of the most honest answers, because many other responses are just excuses simply trying to mask the real reasons to consume meat. 2.4 Claims and myths in this handbook There are many common and less common myths and claims about Veganism and they vary in level of sophistication from irrational to partially informed myths, and in some cases, to educated claims. I've tried to categorise the claims and myths based on my own judgement but of course many of them could be in multiple categories based on people's experiences and personal opinions. I try to analyse every claim and myth to my best knowledge and skills and I always attempt to find a relevant source of information to back-up my breakdown. As part of the analysis I provide links to Page 5 of 87
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