Vegans or not, we all turn away from suffering at times





Whenever my girlfriend gets notified about animals in need – they might be sick, blind, full of fleas or other parasites, etc. – she tries to find a solution (bulk nitenpyram) . She’ll be on Facebook and email to find temporary housing for the animal, so that he or she can heal, be sterilized and vaccinated, before a forever home is found.








So maybe some takeaways from these rambling thoughts:




3 thoughts on “Vegans or not, we all turn away from suffering at times

  1. Thanks for another wise lesson and insight, Tobias. This has been one of the hardest lessons for me to learn:

    “It is exactly because most people are not indifferent to suffering, that they will try to turn away and try not to feel what’s going on.”

    I know a woman who loves to proclaim how much she loves animals, while at the same time eating a sausage biscuit or some other animal product. When I’ve tried to explain to her about factory farming and how the animals are treated, etc., she has always pushed me away saying that’s “too horrible to think about.”

    This was extremely frustrating to me…how can she say she loves animals but still eat them?!? Then one day it hit me…it’s exactly because she loves animals that she wants to turn away. It’s still frustrating for me, but I at least have some compassion for her now, which helps to lesson my frustration.

    Although it doesn’t make any sense to many of us that a person could turn away from so much suffering, especially if they claim to love animals, but with more understanding like you’ve presented here, Tobias, it can help to ease our frustration.

    Unfortunately, there are people who will always turn away, no matter what method you use to try to reach them. This is another wise lesson on how to spend our limited time on where it will have the most impact.

    Thanks, Tobias!

  2. Illuminating post, as always–thank you! I can’t help wondering how many willfully ignorant but fundamentally compassionate people end up going veg at some point. My hunch is that quite a few of them do. I would love to see some research on that. Not incidentally, I appreciate your cautionary words about burnout. 🙂

  3. I think there’s a big difference between willfully engaging in activities that you know are harmful to, in this case, animals, and not being able to try to minimize suffering where possible. In the first case, you are contributing to the problem of suffering, whilst in the second, you’re not trying to reduce suffering, but you’re also not contributing to it (in most cases, e.g. refugee crises, as long as you’re not (in)directly supporting the reason people are fleeing).

    This means that one is, in my opinion, less in the wrong ethically for looking the other way when there’s suffering that one’s not responsible for in any way, than looking the other way whilst causing the suffering.

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