Veganism & Sentience Musings

I'm a vegan. Have been for over a year now. It comes up in conversation often. Not because I bring it up. But things as simple as choosing lunch locale's trading recipes, or choices of snacks bring it up. I am not an "in your face" vegan. I don't attempt to impose my dietary choices on anyone else. But I get alot of questions. I've been thinking on them more lately and my vegan voyage has been a progression for me.

I initially became vegan before my last surgery. I reached a point where eating certain foods hurt. Or caused other unpleasantness. The worst culprits were animal products and greasy foods. I am a largely rational person so I quit eating those things. And I went full bore. It was a bit hard at first, but wasn't long till I had made the switch. After becoming a vegan certain aspects of my eating habits were questioned (often not too kindly) by family and friends. I finally just listened and didn't explain my choices. I found that people had their own ideas why I had taken this route and no amount of explanation would sway them other wise.
My grandmother was sure I had joined a religious cult and that was why. My mom actually got it. My husband saw it as a grand new challenge. My friends all assured me I'd be deficient in protein and Iron, and my peers in nursing school (at that time) saw me as difficult or odd.

I am comfortable in my vegan skin now. It makes me healthier, happier and more productive so it is good. But as I go along and hear the arguments for why people should eat meat I am faced with a defined speciesist argument every time. I for one am not ever convinced of a "natural order" of who should be predator and who should be prey. Nor do I necessarily buy that they are "lower" creatures. I have been wondering about tests for sentience in animals and how this will affect people's eating habits. Will they be less inclined to eat something if they believe that thing they are eating may have a rational mind with a comparable self-awareness? It occurs to me that part of the problem in addressing these issues is that a good selection of people around me do not think in these terms. And they are simply not interested in making that leap. Animal=tasty. No thought required.
I see this applying to the eventuality of AI too. In the minds of the masses, "It is a machine therefore it does not feel or if it does feel that feeling is not real." I really think that in order for them to accept something so new as the concept of machine sentience, they must first get over speciesism as relates to currently existing species. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe a thinking-feeling-rational machine may jar them out of their apathy and shake up their personal paradigms enough to allow them to reflect on other species as well. All I know is that with the current mass-media-pop-culture mindset where the mass of the populace has been lulled into a state of complacency I do not think much time is spent contemplating.
I view a good chunk of mass media right now as "capitalist porn". Let me define that for you. In pornography sex and partners and sexual gratification is readily accessible, there is not a denial (unless it enhances the gratification later) and there are no consequences to expending sexual efforts or energies any where with anyone. Modern mass media has developed a culture of readily available goods and services with no need to earn the capital to acquire them. The people portrayed always have the latest goods and services while seldom having a job or having to rationalize needs vs. wants. There is no bankruptcy as a common theme. Credit cards help distance from the tangible spending. That is what I mean by "Capitalist porn". I define it now because I use the phrase frequently.
This distancing of gratification from sources and consequences to the masses does not improve the ability to assay accurately future implications of the now. I wonder if we'll have to find a way to make a singing cow pop star that is fully sexualized in order to persuade people to stop eating meat.