I do not find fault in that attitude either, to be human is to have emotion, and to feel a sense of belonging. For someone who grew up on barbecue that's hard to reconcile.

However, a rigorous impartial analysis always categories eating meat as not ideal on both moral and ethical grounds. It probably has higher consensus among philosophers than climate change does with climate scientists. The irony is that I doubt all philosophers are vegetarian/vegan, so they themselves are probably the biggest hypocrites (or they have built up some system of ethics where being unethical on this is okay).

I come from a country where even if you're not vegetarian, your dose of meat is a few pieces of chicken once a week. It was very straightforward for me to choose vegetarianism and even then I struggled with it. I have nothing but respect for someone from rural Texas who chooses to be vegetarian though; that is just infinitely harder.

In the same way you could argue that unless you become completely carbon neutral any attempt to minimise your carbon output is pointless, or indeed if you can't stop all crime, why bother trying and stop any.

Most vegetarians aren't hypocritical because they don't claim perfection, they just claim to be doing more in this one regard than the average and in that respect they're normally correct.

We're all monsters really.

On the other hand, I find it annoying that a vegetarian can draw the line in the sand and decide what is morally correct for everyone to believe.

I'm sure there are vegans judging you for eating (milk, eggs etc. whatever you do eat), and there are "vegetarians" that eat seafood who think you are too extreme, and there are probably people who only eat plants that died of natural causes who think all those groups are terrible and should have more self control over their diet.

The article was pretty interesting and novel to me and if you get a few more dumb questions from people, I don't think it is the end of the world.

Personally, I am vegetarian due to ethical concerns, not dietary or nutritional ones. In my decade+ of being vegetarian, I have discerned the pattern that moral proselytizing is generally offensive to people. I think most intelligent non-vegetarians are more amenable to talking about clearly objective impacts (number of dead animals, environmental impact, nutrition, etc).

I prefer to be able to have a rational conversation when I talk about the topic with someone. Righteous indignation is more usually a thought extinguishing reaction to all involved. And then no one comes away with anything at all.

I simply doubt that any such statement is justified. In my experience vegetarianism evokes a great deal of cultural small-mindedness. That is simply an empirical observation. So it was my best guess - given that the statement was so absurd, for the three reasons above - for what was going on here. You'll notice I didn't say that they were small-minded, I said that their statement read as such.

As for the guidelines. I think you should generally assume good faith. But if you see someone express a common prejudice it can also be helpful to call that out. I don't believe in the 'principle of charity' as its stated there. I think you should engage accurately with the arguments that your interlocutor presents, not with an alternative version of it.

People may be eating what they choose to eat with just as much moral conviction as your vegetarianism. That is not for you to decide.

You have no right to deceive others about what they are putting into their body, let alone in hopes of "convincing" or converting them.

You have no right to physically force your own morality upon others without their informed consent.

Think about what you have just argued for here.

Well, it isn't. I've spent half a year backpacking around India being mostly vegetarian, because most of the meat food in dhabas was so full of bones (more than actual meat) and mutton so chewy, that vegetarian recipes were better (and safer) meals.

Its not for everybody, and not for all the time. This is very valid approach since billions people can't be forced out of meat. We can iterate on it, make it better, cheaper, more eco/animal-friendly. But go ahead and live by your words, nobody stopping you.

Secondly: our technology allow us a variety of diets and ways of life that the animal primitive way of living does not.

This does not mean you should be vegetarian. I am, and I would certainly not enforce it on anybody. But if you take the decision to be veggie or not, it should be from the perspective of a modern, educated human in the context of our science and society.

My dislike of the tendency for vegetarians to be all holier than thou was solidified while I was homeless and being harassed online by a holier than thou vegan* who claimed to be vegan because she couldn't tolerate the suffering of the farm raised animals. Meanwhile, she took glee in adding to my suffering, though I was extremely ill and desperately poor because of it.

I am a big fan of "go pray in your closet." Making food choices because you sincerely believe they are morally right is totes cool. Being an asshole to anyone who doesn't eat like you, not so much.

* To make matters worse, she wasn't really a committed vegan. In cold weather, she happily added cheese to her diet. She just preferred to call herself vegan for the virtue signaling associated with it.

But if you think you're helping the environment by being vegetarian, then you might not be as frustrated about the environment. Being a vegetarian is not "doing your part" when it's just an ineffectual gesture that assuaged your guilt.

So it's only wrong as much as it is misdirected energy.