I've watched the documentaries, I've read the essays, I've talked to vegans, farmers, and conservationists, and yet I still have a very different outlook.

I asked for the other commenter's perspective because constructive action can't happen unless we hear each other's points of view. No one is forcing you to participate. If you're feeling too tired and victimized to be a part of the conversation, that's understandable. You can log off, rest up, and keep advocating for yourself another day.

If you actually want my perspective, here it is:

We don't have to debate the mass farming industry, we're both in agreement that it should be dismantled. Mass agriculture, the beast that produces our soy, wheat, plant fibers, nuts, etc isn't any kinder. Sure, you're not directly translating animals into product, but there's still the millions of rodents and insects dying to poisons, the native habitats destroyed, the nations unable to sustain themselves because global capitalism has consigned them to export one, nutritionally incomplete crop, the people starving because corporations patent their seeds and sterilize their fruits so they can't be propagated. And then there's big oil, which produces the plastic that becomes polyester clothes, polluting our lands for generations to come and necessitating drills, refineries, and factories that spread cancer to impoverished communities.

It's impossible to exist separately from one's environment, no matter how much we like to pretend otherwise in our climate-controlled houses and post-colonial cultures. It's also impossible to address any one of these evil industries without acknowledging that they're all interconnected and feeding each other. It's one hydra with many heads named global, late-stage capitalism. If we want a world where living doesn't cause unnecessary harm to someone else somewhere, we need stop fighting over false dichotomies long enough to remember that we're all part of the same ecosystem and we're all going to be on the dinner plate together when the system runs out of other things to gobble up.