Beyond Carnism
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2018–2023
18:03 · 970K views · Dec 17, 2015
Social psychologist Melanie Joy introduces the concept of carnism, the belief system that conditions people to eat some animals but not others.
HN offers it as a short, light introduction to carnism and the language bias around eating animals.
3 comments from Hacker News
Yea, sure. Say we're talking about someone's leg. If we use words like "muscles" and "flesh" to refer to their leg, then that's different than using the words "steak" or "meat", because those last two words are used to legitimize eating the leg in question. If a friend of yours referred to your skin as "bacon", perhaps you'd laugh because it's an absurd idea that your friend would want to fry and eat your skin for breakfast. But sometimes we use the word "bacon" for real about eating someone's skin, mostly if they're a pig. Those, who don't view it as ethical to commit violence towards others and then eat their bodies, would therefore avoid talking about the skin of others as "bacon" and their muscles as "meat" (unless they were joking, perhaps). I wouldn't consider "egg" is an oppressive word as such, because it doesn't imply eating per-se. Vegans would still say that a chicken is laying eggs. But "fishing", even though it's just the noun "fish" turned into a verb, is violent because it means "to hunt fish, often for eating". Imagine if the verb "dogging" was used for hunting and killing dogs? "Childing"? "Womaning"? Sometimes this carnistic language bias is hidden for us. If you're more curious, please check out Melanie Joy's video, The Secret Reason We Eat Meat: this video
Start here [1] and see this [2] for a light introduction. Then proceed with cognitive dissonance, implicit belief systems and cognitive biases [3]. Have fun! [1]: [LINK] [2]: this video [3]: [LINK]
Yes, because for decades or longer, meat has been associated with affluence and a higher standard of living. There is no country in the world without meat & dairy subsidies. On a finite planet with 8 billion people, to feed everyone the "western diet," we would need 2-5 such planets. It's simply not longer possible. [LINK] Veganism grows very fast, though. It's already starting to influence meat and dairy sales, enough to make some producers very nervous (wood milk ads, for example). --- The Secret Reason We Eat Meat - Dr. Melanie Joy this video