Then again, the very statements of "we should eat less meat" or "animal cruelty" seem provocative to most people regardless who utters it. Any time those phrases rear their heads they seem to ignite a bunch of defensive hysterics.

Just like our enlightenment values such as liberty and reason, all progress on this issue certainly does depend on human conversation. However, I'm wary of tasking a single group of people to usher us into an enlightenment. I also think it's all too convenient to go "well, vegans should improve their marketing if they want me to change."

The thing is, we don't need vegans to convince us. They didn't invent animal ethics, they are merely the first practitioners. It wasn't the first human to rethink the ethics of rape or slavery that convinced everyone else nor had to.

We humans came up with animal ethics, slavery ethics, women suffrage ethics, liberalism, and everything else from first principles.

A first principle of animal ethics isn't vegan voodoo, it's "why should a sentient being be grown and killed for my pleasure?" After all, we already hold that standard for other humans and, for most people, even our pets. It's a small leap of reason to extend the courtesy to other animals.

call me cynical, but in my view humans rarely do anything for strictly moral reasons, at least not at scale. laws and customs are motivated much more by pragmatism (hard to have a flourishing society with frequent random killings) or at least reciprocity (I'll agree not to do X to you or people you care about as long as you agree to the same for me). modern democracy is an efficient system of control; it doles out enfranchisement just fast enough to prevent violent revolt.

bit of a tangent, but I think this explains a lot of why we don't see much progress with animal rights. exploiting them is pragmatic, and we can't negotiate with them. even if we could, what concessions could they offer? for the minority who currently care, the only viable strategy I see is to make veganism "cool" and to make it easier to join the club (ie, not demand total abstinence).

The problem is equating "progress" with doing less of something that historical progress has allowed more of. This is where part of the modern "progressive" movement runs into a bunch of walls, because it's actually calling for regression. Less travel, less fun, less food, less family, less space, less comfort.

If you want to continue progress on an issue you care about, you have to tie it into actual material progress. Don't try to ban things or turn them into moral dividers, try to make better things.

Alot of this stuff is decadent navel gazing.

Why is it virtuous to breed olives for a human purpose? Why is it immoral to be in a symbiotic relationship with a cow, which wouldn't exist without it?

Perhaps our bovine friends would be able to roam freely, if only we didn't isolate them from their habitats by growing vegetables and grain.

Just eat what you want.

Try Just Egg who knows you may even like it.