"Cognitive dissonance" is the state of having inconsistent
thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes,
especially as related to behavioral decisions
and attitude change.
If you hold two beliefs that contradict each other,
you're suffering from CD.
If you hold a belief that something is wrong and yet justify
doing it or something just like it,
despite simultaneously knowing that you shouldn't,
you're suffering from CD.
If you think that it's,
I don't know, wrong for any person under any circumstance
to so much as hit a dog that they're looking after,
and yet simultaneously justify literally gassing pigs
to death, in a chamber of carbon dioxide,
so that you can eat
a sandwich that you won't remember eating,
you're suffering from CD.
In all my four years or so of professionally
tackling religious fanatics in the public sphere,
I have genuinely never encountered more dogma,
more ignorance, more evil,
and indeed more cognitive dissonance
than I have coming from people
who despite knowing the unimaginable horrors necessary
to produce it,
just can't give up cheese or just can't give up bacon.
Well, if that's you,
someone who sees veganism as some
kind of fringe woke phenomenon, or as just a funny,
and mockable philosophical position to be treated
as nothing more than a laughing stock for when you're bored,
it's time to snap out of it,
okay? We can either have a grownup conversation
about this or not.
But if you're unwilling,
forgive me for not taking you ethically seriously.
You can giggle you like about 'bacon though',
as if it's still 2009,
but while you do, consider that since this video began,
174,869 chickens,
4,150 pigs, 9 donkeys,
14 horses and 2,772,879 wild fish,
have all been slaughtered
so that people like you can satiate your
addiction to the taste of their flesh
and continue to point your greased up finger
at the vegans for being too extreme.
For the rest of us however,
who are genuinely willing to take up the mantle
of personal responsibility,
and follow our most deeply held ethical principles
without exceptions for the sake of a sausage roll,
I want to highlight some of the most obvious abuses
of moral logic that I've seen on the topic of animal abuse
and show you why it's just so insidious.
Now, you may be someone who has simply never considered
this stuff before.
And if that's so, don't feel bad,
my anger isn't directed at you.
It's not your fault that we live in a society,
that's normalized animal cruelty to such an extent
that we don't even notice it happening all around us.
It's really not your fault.
But allow me to clue you in and hopefully that can change.
And animal cruelty is truly everywhere.
It's a strange and regrettable irony, that when I complain
about dead animals being present in food, and on billboards,
and in people's shoes, in chairs
that I'm forced to sit on, in guitar straps
and phone cases and bags and wallets and roads
and cosmetics
and the only legal physical currency of the United Kingdom,
that I'm the one who's forcing other people to encounter
an observation that they don't like.
I find it funny if it wasn't so sad,
especially given just how willing those same people who levy
this accusation against me,
just how willing they are to be as pushy and loud
and forceful and unapologetic as they like
when talking about an ethical issue that they agree with,
like trophy hunting or dog abuse or bullfighting.
And that's what I'm hoping to demonstrate to you
in this video:
that when it comes to animal cruelty,
cognitive dissonance is the norm, not the exception.
I had the idea for this video.
When one day I was scrolling through Facebook
and came across a post by a page called LADBible.
They're one of the biggest social media pages
on the platform with around 37 million likes.
And you'll almost certainly have heard of them,
especially if you're in the UK.
They're a huge page, basically, that shares a variety
of different kinds of content,
and the post that I saw was one about animal cruelty.
Now I started taking screenshots every time I saw a popular
post about animal cruelty, and noticed that the general
reactions and the comments sections seemed to vary massively
depending on which species of animal
happened to be the victim.
Okay, here's the first example.
"Swan dies of broken heart after yobs destroy nests and kill
unborn cygnets."
And LADbible captions,
"The heartless teenagers
smashed her unhatched eggs with bricks and rocks."
Obviously this is horrible, right?
Who would destroy the eggs of an animal killing
its young lens for no good reason?
And the comments agree with me: 96,000 reactions,
mostly angry.
And the comments: "if these words are harsh, I don't care.
I hope that someday these teens struggle to have families
and think of their actions."
"Hope they find the little shits responsible
for this and throw bricks at their faces."
And check it out,
this guy on Twitter thinks that we should bring back
public hangings for the kids who destroyed these eggs.
Okay, understandable outrage, perhaps.
But now here's a fact. That is, not an opinion or hot take,
but simply a true fact.
Every year, around 7 billion,
male chicks are killed immediately at birth
by the egg industry, either by gassing them
or grinding them up alive in an industrial macerator.
Egg-laying hands are genetically
engineered differently to the chickens used for meat,
and so male layer chickens are totally useless
since males don't lay eggs.
This means that their first and last experience
of this world is being crushed or gassed to death.
And this chick culling occurs in all industrialized
egg production, including free range and organic eggs.
And it's not like we need eggs to be healthy, right?
What's the only thing that you could genuinely only get
from eggs and not another source? The way they taste.
7 billion chicks literally ground up alive
or, in the words of the British Egg Information Service,
"humanely gassed" every year
for the sake of taste pleasure.
And not only do people fail to condemn this,
they continue to be the very cause of it happening,
by continuing to purchase eggs.
But some teenagers destroy the eggs of one swan
and everybody goes crazy.
Cognitive dissonance.
Here's another one.
"Bullfighting will return
to Spain with strict new rules."
"The sport will continue despite the hopes
of animal rights campaigners,
that the coronavirus pandemic would end the tradition."
Again, thousands of mostly angry reactions.
Let's look at the comments.
"This world is so messed up that people still want to see
animal torture. Fox hunting,
bullfighting, various festivals that glorify animal abuse
and cruelty."
"Sick sick people with no heart and no morals."
"It's disgusting.
How can anyone think it's sport?"
"Barbaric evil, torture of animals.
This is why I would never go to Spain."
Yes, good idea,
stay in the UK, where we would never force cattle to run
around in an arena whilst being fought by a human.
Stay in the UK,
where we treat our cattle with decency
by forcibly impregnating them,
separating them from their wailing children,
bolt-gunning 70,000 of those cows in the head every year
and killing them for veal,
taking the mother's milk and then shipping
her off to a slaughter house to have her throat slit
for the sake of a burger.
Hopefully the animal protein will give you enough energy
to continue complaining about how poorly
Spain treats its bovines.
Of course, LADbible also makes posts relating
to cows who have been abused
and killed for the sake of being tasty.
And I'm sure that this receives just as much condemnation.
"McDonald's is adding breakfast rolls with bacon,
sausage, eggs, and cheese tomorrow."
That's cheese from the dairy cows that
we just talked about, along with the eggs
necessitating the gassing or maceration of male chicks,
and bacon and sausage from a pig
Mmst likely in this country killed in a gas chamber,
which simultaneously, by the way,
acidifies the liquid in their eyes and throat whilst choking
them to death.
The caption? "Breakfast just got a whole lot tastier!
[love eyes Emoji], [licking lips Emoji]."
Give me a break.
The only comment that I could find complaining
about this post
was someone upset that they no longer sell
a steak egg, and cheese bagel.
Cognitive dissonance.
Okay, let's take a slightly different turn:
"UK Zoo might have to euthanize its animals after being
forced to close."
Again, thousands of mostly sad and angry reactions.
I mean, I'm not sure what the problem is,
I was under the impression that it wasn't wrong to kill
an animal as long as it had a good life and was well looked
after before being slaughtered.
Perhaps people have changed their mind on this.
This commenter says, "Shocking. Death should never
be an option unless the animal's in extreme pain
that won't heal or get better.
If it bankrupts them, it bankrupts them.
This should be made illegal."
That's right:
no excuse for taking the life of an animal that doesn't need
to die. Unless it's a pig. Or a cow.
Or a chicken, or duck or- well, I think you get the picture.
But here's some better news:
"Iceland to donate profits
of penguin biscuits to Chester Zoo,
after adopting penguins."
The caption: "You can help save the zoo
by buying this snack."
That's right,
you can now help penguins by buying a biscuit
containing milk from an industry that abuses
and kills cows.
How heartwarming to be given the opportunity
to save some animals by signing the death sentence
of others.
Of course, cows are cows and penguins are penguins,
and that makes all the difference.
Cognitive dissonance.
Here's something more local:
in Oxford, there's a large meadow called Port Meadow,
where you can find cows and horses going
about their business.
Unfortunately, it also has a problem with people littering,
and a little while ago
the Oxford City Council made this Facebook post:
"Litter kills.
This seven month old calf died after eating rubbish
left on Port Meadow.
Take your litter home with you,
or face a 150 pound fine."
And the local community were understandably outraged.
Yeah, you know what else kills cows?
Killing cows. 70,000 calves are killed each year
in the UK alone so that we can eat veal.
And that's done on purpose! Right?
And it's done by the same people
prodding the 'angry react' button in response to people
being so heartless as to leave their litter in a field
for a calf to eat.
I know that I'd much rather be that calf
than a cow on a factory farm,
but so long as one is being turned into a tasty lunch,
who the hell cares, right?
Cognitive dissonance.
"Sea turns red in Faroe Islands
as 250 whales slaughtered in one day in annual hunt."
"This year's barbaric event is going ahead
despite the global pandemic."
Again, let's look at the comments:
"Give me a gun and 10 minutes.
The whales will be fine and I will not feel a thing
when the humans are dead."
"Nothing humane about this at all.
An act of cruelty, masquerading as tradition.
There are many things we used to do
that are no longer relevant to today's society,
and I wish this would cease."
I couldn't have put it better myself.
Now, someone else tries to defend this tradition by saying,
"How about people mind their own business and stop judging
other people's culture and traditions."
And here comes the response:
"A tradition?
Shut up. Sick as fuck.
Traditions are Christmas and new year.
Not slaughtering animals in this awful way.
Eat turkey or chicken like normal people,
not sea mammals that live in THERE OCEAN.
Shut your hole mate."
Hmm, yeah. Actually,
as if it needs it, I do have one comment on this:
You'll remember that the original headline says,
"250 whales slaughtered in one day."
Now, if, like this commenter,
you want to eat chicken like a 'normal person',
it may be of some use to know that the exact same number
of chickens are killed for food in less
than a 15th of a second.
For reference, since this video began,
this is how many chickens have been slaughtered for food.
I wonder how angry the coverage of this chicken abuse
is from the LADbible.
"KFC is selling half price zinger stacker burgers
This weekend."
"Customers just have to use a secret code word.
[Drooling Emoji], [love eyes Emoji]."
What's that...
What's that word? Oh yeah:
Cognitive dissonance.
Here's a video on YouTube that really rubbed people
the wrong way:
ASMR dog leg eating. That's right,
an ASMR channel posted a video of a woman eating some dog,
and as you can see,
the like to dislike ratio is... telling.
Here are some of the comments:
"The most delicious thing about this channel
is its dislike button."
"I'm starting to think that this woman is a demon
or something."
"Wonder when her 'eating my mum' ASMR video is coming out."
"Come near my dog and see what happens."
"How can she eat a dog?
Such a horrible thing."
And my personal favorite:
"Imagine asking this girl to cook you a hot dog."
Yeah, imagine if she put a dead dog inside
of some bread instead of a dead cow?
That would be outrageous.
Imagine if she put a dead pig?
Oh wait, no,
because this ASMR video of someone eating some dead pigs,
animals which, by the way, are
just as intelligent as dogs, went down an absolute treat;
people loved it.
Cognitive dissonance.
But even with everything that I've just shown you,
at least vegans are generally respected online
for their views, and not mocked or ridiculed,
or anything like that.
It's not like any post remotely related to veganism,
even when it's not motivated by the treatment of animals,
is laughed out of the room by meat-eaters,
is it?
Well, let's once again turn back to LADbible
to find out.
"Woman who spent £10,000 on failed acne treatment
clears skin by going vegan."
Cool.
Good for her. Whatever.
Now let's look at some of the comments:
"The hardest thing about being a vegan
is keeping it to yourself."
Ha ha, did you come up with that one yourself?
"If God didn't want us to eat animals,
he wouldn't have made them out of meat."
"I'd rather have a nice juicy burger with a slice of cheese
and eat it in front of the cow's crying family."
Ladies and gentlemen I hope that I've made my point,
and that you'll think twice before claiming that vegans
are pushy or extreme or cringey,
or just need a nice steak.
Or, if you can't manage that, then you forfeit your right
to complain about animal cruelty
when the victim happens to be a member of a species
that you find cute.
But you know what's definitely not cute?
Cognitive dissonance.
So cut it out.
I've been Alex O'Connor or CosmicSkeptic,
you can find me on social media here:
If you like what I do and want to support it,
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Don't forget to subscribe,
thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.