Author Topic: veggie hotdog eating contest  (Read 7035 times)

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veggie hotdog eating contest
« on: March 12, 2010, 07:34:32 AM »
About a year ago I saw somewhere that an annual veggie hotdog eating contest is being held at Austin Texas. After a little googling it appeared that it was the second year that such an event was organized and that Washington followed Austin making their own tofu sausages stuffing. At first I felt it was mostly an imitative, repulsive and derisive effort to show that vegans can have fun too. The thought that many vegans who I expect much more of, enjoy a contest of poking as many meatless hotdogs buns and wieners as possible in twelve minutes, was quite disappointing. After a while it came to my mind how desperate and hopeless activists must be to lay their hopes on these embarrassing events. Activists understand that they can’t change so they change themselves?!
Or they really enjoy it? I don’t know what is worse…
That was extremely depressing. And now after I saw your vegan suffer article my depression changed into rage. Mistakenly I saw it as a cruelty free contest and now it is not only a strategic dispute I have with the organizers, participants and supporters now it’s an ethical dispute as well.

Re: veggie hotdog eating contest
« Reply #1 on: March 15, 2010, 04:38:12 AM »
I saw it on PETA’s blog and I felt the same. I remember I did thought it is a reasonless food waste but I too didn’t go that deep thinking about the harms of each package, the miles the sausages and their ingredients did, the pesticides, the water and definitely not about the planet conquering (the genius "this land is my land" part…).
I thought it’s a pathetic mimicking of the mainstream western lifestyle, proving anything "regular" people (carnivores) do- vegans do too. I see almost no activists turning against this phenomenon, and some of them embrace it.
For to many vegans, veganism is merely a lifestyle. They avoid meat eggs milk and in the best of cases honey, but it doesn’t mean giving up the joys of mindless consumerism.
They can buy dermoid Biker Jackets, dermoid fashionable boots, vegan mule shoes, vegan lip gloss, fashionable handbag purse, faux leather wallets, vegan light candle and even beauty without cruelty eye mascara, all guilt free. But veganism was supposed to lead to a deeper examination of habits and to arouse more involvement, but it’s too much to ask for, it might put people off. There is no expectation for a turnaround in the way people, even vegans, view their relations with the environment, become conscious to each step in their every day lives.

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Re: veggie hotdog eating contest
« Reply #2 on: March 15, 2010, 11:51:01 AM »
Changing the menu without dealing with the consumption habits is waiving the chance of significantly changing humans’ point of view, or a resultant of profound ignorance by the activists and non-activists vegans of how sufferingfull plant agriculture really is.
Everything is rotten from the roots. If people would agree to examine things thoroughly, everywhere they’ll look they’ll see pain and suffering. But first they must open their eyes and minds. Currently their psychological repression is unbelievable. Consumerism should be fundamentally criticized, vegan products as well. But the sense of essentiality and meaningfulness, the feeling that there is something they can do about the incomprehensible horrors of the world, that they have something to get up for, where to unload their frustration in a valuable way, effect the way they perceive the world.
They are so desperate for a foothold, that even though it is not hard to realize that veganism isn’t cruelty free, many vegans and more importantly many activists shove it aside, shutting their eyes, ears and common sense to the facts, strengthening the obsessive cling on veganism.
Evidently they succeed very well in convincing each other that vegansim is cruelty free and that’s what’s most frightening. A movement that regularly uses terms like cruelty free living in this world can’t sprout conscious, critical, serious activists.

If any of you haven’t read the article vegan suffer yet please do so as soon as possible.

The despair share in the veggie hotdog eating contest is obvious. We wrote about despair’s significant role in alike activities and in several issues regarding the movement along the website and I agree that although this event is one of the top helplessness summits, the criticism should be taken further to vegan consumerism as a whole.

Such an acceptation of vegan consumerism as a positive thing reveals there is little hope in the minds of almost all activists. Paradoxically activists who claim they believe animal liberation is possible and none speciesist society is possible act as if they don’t, participating in activities that in the best case create speciesist vegans.
Almost every action of animal liberation activists is in inconsistency with the stand a non-speciesist world would eventually come.
If they were truly convinced it’s possible to overturn the way humans perceive all sentient nonhuman beings then they wouldn’t have spent the little resources they have on almost anything but anti-speciesist activism. There wouldn’t have been so many single issue campaigns, welfare initiatives, no wasting of time in mentioning the health benefits of veganism or scares about global warming. It would have been all about non-speciesism and nothing else.
They can and will argue that the way to non-speciesist world goes through a vegan world, but this claim is strange because the vegan world that will be created using anthropocentric arguments in the best case will be a speciesist vegan world that might end up to be very temporary and of course all the other exploitation systems will continue and I am not only referring to the clothing, experiments and entertainment industries but to each building, road, fence, railway, airplane, ship, oil drill, water pipe line, gas pipe line, power station, cellular antenna, bridge, dam and any new and old concrete facility.
A vegan non-speciesist world won’t liberate the animals from the shackle in the heads of the speciesists only from the plates which is more important for the short term but for the long term as we explained several times in the website and in this forum, it is a very loose and unreliable basis.
But it is a waste of precious time dealing with an idea that is not achievable and won’t achieve a sufferingless world even if it was. If you disagree please read Why not work hard to make a vegan world?
« Last Edit: June 29, 2013, 03:28:59 AM by O.O.S »

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Re: veggie hotdog eating contest
« Reply #3 on: March 16, 2010, 07:14:33 AM »
I as opposed can understand activists who use the cruelty free argument and that have problems with the message in vegan suffer. I think it happens for two main reasons. One is that usually when they hear that vegansim is not moral it comes out of meateaters who try to justify their consumption of animal products through the pathetic projection on vegans’ consumption. They automatically try to direct the flames back to the activists, talking about them and what is wrong with their way of life. As poor and lousy as shifting the criticism ‘right back at you’ is, it works for them, and it is very popular too, who here hasn’t heard that?
I think vegans’ position   n to this article is actually a conditioned reflex to oppose to the “what about the poor carrot” argument that meateaters like so much.

The second reason is that the suffer in factory farms is so great that it is quite understandable why the ones that were exposed to it claim that everything that is not evolve with it is moral and painless even though it is not true and it is easy to figure that out just using your common sense.

Re: veggie hotdog eating contest
« Reply #4 on: March 17, 2010, 04:37:30 AM »
Yea I totally agree I should definitely be more forgiven towards activists who are still stuck with the cruelty free notion and veganism is ideal and who ignore basic things like how can humanity feed almost 7 billion creatures without conquering substantial part of the terrestrial part of the world!?!?!
What are you saying, that they shouldn’t have made this article?!

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Re: veggie hotdog eating contest
« Reply #5 on: March 17, 2010, 11:54:38 AM »
no no no. the exact opposite. I think it is very important. This article represent a very interesting and challenging concept for whoever watching it and I include my self in it too as someone who once seized veganism as the best thing ever happened to him and to the whole world. Now I’ve got to face a few issues that I knew of and suppressed and some I didn’t realize.
This article is challenging because it comes from vegan activists who know very well what is factory farming and proved it all along the website. There is a lot of info in the article about the harms involved in plant agriculture and a lot more over the net. I started to read a little and unfortunately I found many confirmation to what‘s written in it and generally the more I discover the more I am amazed.
It was a little hard for me at first because I kept comparing to factory farms which is of course a mistake. There is no room for comparison and there is no needs as well. My conclusion for now is that although they are incomparable and that nothing can be compared to factory farms, veganism is bad enough that we must think of other solutions including seriously consider the one suggested in this website. The fact that to live is to hurt (a sentence I can’t take out of mind these days) is not new to me but it was never so bluntly, sharply and assertively represented to me to the point I just cant ignore this voice. I must confront with the idea that I will systematically hurt just being alive and that millions constantly suffer just by being existent. I am not from out of space the material is not new but now that it is a specific suggesting for totally alter course it became the big question and answer gets clearer and clearer as I go over more and more material in this a little cheeky but brave and determined website.   

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Re: veggie hotdog eating contest
« Reply #6 on: March 19, 2010, 06:20:31 AM »
We knew that this article would cause a little fuss even though we wrote a few times that we are not comparing between factory farms and anything else (like all of you we are all sure that factory farms are innumerably worse) and even though we wrote that the fact that plant based diet is sufferfull too it is not an excuse to maintain any diet but a vegan one. It didn’t happen wet (at least that we know of…) but we took under consideration that some activists, the less confident and less open minded, with a serious need to kill the messenger instead of dealing with the message, will even think we are not vegan and will denominate us as anti vegans. So to remove any doubts if someone has ones, we are vegans for years and we don’t have the slightest doubt that plant based diet is much less worse than animal based diets.
Of course that as horrible as it is, veganism is still the best diet. And that is exactly what’s bothering us, that this sufferfull diet is the best. We mustn’t compromise on suffer. We are sure that many activists who are now sure that the vegan diet is cruelty free, will not accept it as a solution if they know how much suffer is involved in it.

The list of harms is truly a bottomless cask. There is a lot more information that we left out. We recently found out about another extremely cruel pest control method.
Since Diamondback caterpillars developed a resistance to regular pesticides, farmers developed a device that imitates the females mating sent that attracts the male moths into the device which spray fungus spore on their backs when they enter. After a while the male moth who see no females gives up and fly back to the field with the fungus on his back. Very soon the fungus starts to spread all over his body until he is literally eaten from within. When the funguses finish devouring all the male moths they move to the diamondback caterpillars who are doomed to the same fate, being eaten from within.
You can watch a short video about this horrifying method. 

Just one example that affects millions of creatures. Anyway I think your sincerity should be well appreciated. It is not easy to genuinely confront with yourself and I (and I know am I speaking in the name of all of us on this) can definitely relate to the difficulty in the acknowledgement that this is how it is. The natural order of this world is that there is no way of accumulating energy not on the expense of someone else. Some organisms’ harm is expressed in long term effects, silently and slowly and with some it is very evident and clear but for all of them to live is to hurt. It is always on the expense of others. There is no chance for reciprocation. It is against the laws of nature. It’s ironic that in the name of nature and natural, activists always try to create what is so unnatural - reciprocity.
The only way to eliminate suffer is to break the laws of nature. Vegansim can’t accomplish that. Only the only one solution can.


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Re: veggie hotdog eating contest
« Reply #7 on: March 22, 2010, 07:21:59 AM »
One last thing, you said:
They automatically try to direct the flames back to the activists, talking about them and what is wrong with their way of life. As poor and lousy as shifting the criticism ‘right back at you’ is, it works for them. And it is very popular too. Who here hasn’t heard that?

Don’t you think it says something about the relevancy of the movement if the weak excuses used by meat eaters are enough to excuse them from a serious examination?
I think it is another example for the weakness of the movement. The fact that such lousy excuses work for meateaters is a very unequivocal evidence of the impossibility to fundamentally change the world. If people can ditch the moral debate so easily it says something about us too not just about them. About us, about the chances of the moral argument to prevail and about humanity as whole

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Re: veggie hotdog eating contest
« Reply #8 on: March 22, 2010, 02:21:42 PM »
I do think so. Unfortunately I do. It is another issue among many that needs to be reexamined while I reconsider my future as an activist.

 

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