Pushing the Hate Off My Plate
Well, kids, it’s looking like I’m not going to have enough time in the near future to write up a proper blog entry on my recent decision to go vegan. What do I mean by proper, exactly? Eh, I’m not sure. You see, veganism is something I’ve been interested in for several years, now. I’ve done quite a bit of reading on the subject and slowly but surely I’ve reached this personal conclusion that since there is no good reason for me to contribute to the accumulation of pain and suffering in this world, well, I’d really rather not continue to contribute to that accumulation (hey, wow, that was a wordy mouthful — this must be why they invented the word ahimsa).
Thing is, I was raised in a surprisingly intellectually focused conservative Christian home and from a very young age I can remember feeling quite strongly that it’s more important to remain true to one’s ideals than to appear to be "right" or "correct". This is something I found C.S. Lewis alluding to in The Screwtape Letters (in the sense that the patient’s encouraged disapointment that modern Christians do not wear sandals in no way invalidates Christianity) and found more strongly in Jefferson’s advice to his nephew and namesake, that one does not choose atheism because it is de riguer or because one has no respect for religion, one chooses atheism because religion is so important that to merely give lip service to a perfunctorily religious social collective because one’s family does so or because one’s friends do so is a form of blasphemy on the highest level. To my mind, the moral imperative of the human experience is to continuously contribute to the larger whole of awareness by consistently making the most prescient decisions one can make in this moment, here and now, regardless of how odd or quirky those choices may immediately appear to be. Because, certainly, both Gandhi and MLK looked odd and/or quirky when they first began the work for which they are now famous — and what kind of world would we live in if those two men had been afraid of social conditioning?
That’s not to say that I’m aiming to be an MLK or a Ghandi or even a Mother Theresa, just that I’d like to believe that I’ve been informed and buoyed by the enlightened example of greater human beings like these.
And for a long time, I really felt that being vegetarian was more than enough — I get a little jiggy with the politics, I vote, I’m informed about environmental issues, I recycle. I don’t eat the dead. What’s wrong with all that?
Nothing, honestly. It’s just that, for me, there are other, better, more prescient choices.
What gives us the right to use animals? I’m not asking what gives us the right to kill them, or decide what’s in their best interst, I’m asking — what gives us the right to dominion, as human beings?
I’ve never considered myself a feminist because I believe that it’s most important to create a set of philosophical human rights in which feminist concerns go without saying — in other words, as we work to build a future world in which we truly value human rights, we should not need to foucs on the special rights of women or blacks or latinos or any other group of whatever denomination, so long as the lanuage and the lens of our ethical paradigms are workable and fitting.
And yet, how can our ethical paradigms be workable or fitting so long as we affirm a reality in which it is acceptable to seize what we desire from other creatures? What kind of morally acceptable paradigm gives us the right to forcibly inseminate other creatures so that we can consume their breast milk? What kind of morally aceeptable paradigm gives us the right to skin other living beings so that we may fabricate shoes or special fasteners that hold up our pants? If we see ourselves as superior to other non-human creatures and take what we want from them at will, how far are we from engaging in the same sort of behavior with other human beings whom we may, in this or that moment, see ourselves as being superior and therefore, morally dominant, towards? If we may seize from cows, why not women? If we may seize from pigs, hounds and boars, why not blacks and latinos? Why not Jews or caucasians?
I saw veganism, for a long time, as an unnecessarily difficult choice — not a choice that would be difficult for me, but one that would be a burden on everyone else around me. Most recently, I’ve come to see that concerm — that my ethichal choices may be difficult or burdensome — as ridiculous. After all, this line of reasoning mimics the same line Jefferson mocked. I do not make ethical choices because my ethical choices may or may not make me acceptable to a certain social group; I make ethical choices because every ethical choice I make contributes to the longevity and the sustainability of the greater group to which I belong — because the nature of humanity should be humane; because this descriptive group quality, humane, is precisely what I strive to be.
I think it is quite wonderful when someone makes a strong ethical decision that requires hard lifestyle choices and can actually stick to it. Even more so when they can do so without being irritating, preachy or holier-than-thou. I know from personal experience that Jen pulls this off with quiet grace and intelligence. She knows, for example, that I am an unrepenetant (sp?) omnivore and doesn’t give me crap about it. She has made her decision, will talk about it with you if you’d like, but isn’t going to give you crap about your decisions. Which is as great as it is unusual.
That being said, here’s comments from the carnivorous side of the planet:
First of all, unnecessary cruelty to animals is, of course, a bad, wrong, evil thing. And if, over time, we find ways to reproduce the same effects as we’re getting with various animal uses through other means (chemical, plant, weird biological science stuff, etc.), then fine. I don’t think it will happen for a long, long time… and I’m not sure how you get away from, for example, animal testing for medicine… but, again, if you can get the same or better results with plants, dirt, fog, glum-glum-germs, etc…. go for it. If the argument is that the plants and microbes feel less pain than pigs and chickens, OK. I’ll buy that.
But if the argument is that animals have *as much right* to the planet as do people? Nope. I don’t buy it. You mentioned religious beliefs in your post, Jen, and one of mine is that people are partly divine — children of God. Animals aren’t. That is not to say that they do not have worth, but that it is fantastically less than that of people. There is no form of life worth more than that of a person. I like animals; really. We have pets I love more than many people I’ve worked with. But do any of them count more on a moral/philosophical/spiritual scale than the worst criminal on death row? Nope. People are at the top of the dogmatic food-chain, IMHO. God, then people, then everything else.
And even if you don’t kill/contain/milk animals… what about the places where we live? The roads, the fields where we’ll grow the vegan food, etc.? That’s the habitat for skillions of animals who would have otherwise lived there. We humans, by default, displace some animals, and favor others. There are tons more Canadian Geese and hawks, for example, in Ohio now than there ever were before, because the current “people dominant” mode favorts their species. Not so many dodo birds, but tons of domestic cats. The list goes on.
So who decides? What animals get preference in the vegan world? The cute ones? The ones that don’t eat other animals? Are we going to get rid of the wolves and sharks and bats (who eat flies) because they don’t practice ahimsa? After all, if we must make some choice (we have to clear *some* field to grow all those beans), we might as well eliminate those animals who live “cruelly.”
Cruelly by… our standards. Right? People standards?
Or is the argument that because animals are “natural,” and don’t (can’t) make ethical choices, therefore the bite of the jackal that snaps an antelope’s leg in two isn’t “cruel” but “inevitable.” Animal-on-animal violence isn’t violence… it’s “the circle of life.”
But isn’t that a value judgement, too? A moral judgement? If it’s wrong to kill a cow, isn’t it wrong not to save an ibex from a shark (and wouldn’t it be fun to watch a shark on skates chase an ibex?)?
Again… I’m not justifying cruelty. I’m asking, “Where do you put the line on the other side.” Do you let me build my house on an anthill? Do you let me spay/neuter stray dogs and cats? Do we do animal testing for drugs? Do we allow for animal population control in areas where those animals are (for whatever reason; climate change, environmental damage due to humans, imported foods) running amok? And, if you kill a couple ten thousand white-tailed deer who are trampling everything in their path… who would destroy a chunk of ecosystem for a couple dozen other species… then is it OK to eat them and mount they heads on walls?
Veganism is not, in any way, a bad decision to make on a personal level; moral, political, etc. I can not find fault with it. But, because I believe that people *do* count for more than animals… it’s a decision that is on the level of “moral preference” rather than “moral absolute.”
Hope that made some sense.
- A
PS: There’s also something to be said for the efficiency/time-value of animal use over other forms of food/clothes in some cases. And if/until other means of doing the same things came along, you could make the case that it saves enough time by doing things with animals that it justifies their use on an aggregate scale. I’m not sure I buy the argument myself, but it’s been made.
Comment by Andy Havens — March 18, 2006 @ 7:57 pm
Andy, I’m really happy you responded to this post. Right or wrong, I tend to believe that meat eating and animal usage, in general, is more or less a matter of inherited habit and not something that most people think about for long.
You’re right, your argument has been made before — in fact, under the entry for veganism at Wikipedia, I found this — “Critics like Steven Davis, professor of animal science at Oregon State University, argues that the number of wild animals killed in crop production is greater than those killed in ruminant-pasture production. Whenever a tractor goes through a field to plow, disc, cultivate, apply fertilizer and/or pesticide, and harvest, animals are killed.[4] Davis gives a small sampling of field animals in the U.S. that are threatened by intensive crop production (primarily associated with the mass feeding of livestock), such as: opossum, rock dove, house sparrow, European starling, black rat, Norway rat, house mouse, Chukar, grey partridge, ring-necked pheasant, wild turkey, cottontail rabbit, grey-tailed vole, and numerous species of amphibians. In one small example, an alfalfa harvest caused a 50% decline in the grey-tailed vole population. According to Davis, if all of the cropland in the U.S. were used to produce crops for a vegan diet, it is estimated that around 1.8 billion animals would be killed annually. A major flaw with regard to this argument is due to the fact that it requires up to 20 pounds of grain in order to produce one pound of beef.[5] Consequently, twenty times as many animals would presumably be plowed to death in order to produce one pound of beef than for one pound of grain.”
Of course, it’s significant to note that Davis is referencing *intensive* farming — farming on the scale of corporate agribusiness giants like ConAgra. To a small extent, due to the lack of pesticides, large scale organic farming has a milder negative impact on the surrounding ecosystem in which it takes place. Locally grown organic produce, of course, has the smallest negative impact on the environment in general — I like to buy my veggies from the local farmer’s market, when I can, and from our nearby co-op Deep Roots, which sells organic produce from small scale local Greensboro farmers.
But you’re sidestepping my main point, which was a question — what gives us the right, as humans, to hold dominion over other animals? The response that humans are partly divine and therefore have more rights is interesting. I’m reminded of an anecdote I read about RFK. He’d travelled to South Afrika in the late 60s as a senator from NY and was holding a large town hall style meeting with a large group of Afrikaaners. During the question and answer session a man stood up and announced that he belonged to the South African church and his church held that the subservience of blacks to whites was a religious tenet — he quoted a verse from Revelations “and the light shall rule the dark”. RFK responded with “But what happens if you get to heaven and God is a black man? What will you say if he asks you ‘What have you done to my people, Saul’?”
To be perfectly honest, deep down, it irks me a little when my liberal friends try to justify meat eating — because they always wind up sounding like unpracticed conservatives. Yet, what does it mean to be liberal? Doesn’t the entirety of liberal ideology consist of the notion that we need to look beyond this one moment and into the future? To see beyond ourselves and into the whole of our actions? ‘Turn the other cheek’ means looking beyond this instinct, this habit, this urge, to strike out in anger. Environmentalism, civil rights, human rights, etc, are all about looking beyond the individual and towards the larger whole — the history, the (eco)system, the story in which each individual exists.
If we are partly divine, then our partial divinity would give us special respnsibilities as well as special rights — most likely more responsibility than rights. And if we were honest, we would have to admit that the animal in us is not a true predator — we are lumbering hairless apes. We do not have a true predator’s speed. We do not have the teeth for tearing at flesh — we have an herbivore’s jaw, set to grind, rather than rip. We have the long intestines of plant eaters. Our arteries are the arteries of the dietetically meek and mild.
We also have incredibly complex brains, which we can use as readily to muddy an issue as to clarify one. We consume the baby food of calves and wear their fathers skins. We call these things cheese and leather and say they’re natural. Yet, in a truly natural state, these would be luxury items, too expensive for everday use. The complex system which makes chees, meat, leather and other animal goods affordable on an everday basis is the same one which allows us to kill ourselves with excess, which has made obesity and it’s attendant host of ills one of the leading nonviolent killers in this modern, first-class world.
Your question about judging the morality of non-ahismatic animals, you would have to admit, is a bit fantastic, and leaps ahead of a number of more serious concerns. There are readily available options to animal based resources — in fact, the cheapest shoes at Payless tend to be vegan, on the whole. The question, however, that I’ve been asking myself, now, is how do I bring my concerns about veganism and environmentalism and social concerns together without blowing the backend off my bank account every time I want to purchase a decent looking pair of shoes? Or really, if I was poorer than I am now, how would I afford a tasty vegan diet? That’s a question that’s been niggling at me. I think that if I ever go5t the the point where I didn’t need to work, I’d like to create a series of adult education classes on nutrition, economics, media consumption and activism.
Your comment that I’m not a preachy vegan also kind of niggles at me. I’m not so sure that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’m considering writing a future blog entry titled “Seitan Saves” where vegangelicalism will be a prominent topic.
We’ll see. You’re scheduled to post your next two-parter first.
Comment by Jen — March 19, 2006 @ 2:29 am