6 reasons to invest in the animal cause

personal, maybe

"He was such a radical vegan that he would even let mosquitoes bite him without killing them. He’d think: 'It’s less than a milliliter of blood and maybe a touch of dengue.' So, he dedicated everything to saving animals and felt amazing—like a hero—yet often left his own mother suffering in constant pain without so much as a word of comfort." (I’m speaking in the third person to see if I can make myself better understood.)

It might sound like sarcasm, but I really was that extreme.

I now see that I cannot invest everything in every cause. So, I tried to understand why I seemed to place so much importance on animals and so little on human beings. Here are six reasons:

1. My complete ignorance,

I didn't consider that, in the universe, in nature, a human being can be extremely valuable and rare; I could say that 0.0000001% of species exhibit our mental capacity. (90 to 95% confidence)

1. My savior ego,
   1. which leads me to want to save the most defenseless in order to feel like a hero (65-85% confidence).

1. I am pessimistic,
   1. which leads me to view human beings in a negative light and to ignore all the good they do (70-80% confidence).

1. Identification,as a vegan,
   1. I wanted to save innocent gazelles and ignore the suffering of the "evil" carnivorous lions (which also reflect a part of myself). (70–80% confidence)

1. My ignorance of evolutionary nutrition,
   1. It did not consider all the nutritional impacts and benefits of veganism. (30-50% confidence level)

1. My ignorance of neuronal processes,
   1. that a person can have billions of agents that can suffer (10-50% confidence).

Bonus: I don't know of any animal that can save as many animals as a human being. A human being can cause a lot of harm, but can also save thousands of animals. (90-99% confidence)

Human beings can be destructive, yet our capacity for construction, empathy, and cooperation is unique in the history of the known universe. A trillion animals cannot save a single human, but one human can save a trillion animals. That is precisely why I value our conversation so highly, and why I will devote all my energy to considering your points and updating my beliefs.

I have also been investing more effort into mitigating the biases that make me less empathetic and more destructive. (Double negatives can be tricky sometimes.)