Hazelfaern Again

Jen Said

From Meat to Your Knees and Back Again

A ~ You asked, tonight, if eating less meat would help your knees and I told you, honestly, no. However, eating more fruits and vegetables might help. One of the things I ran across while researching appropriate foodstuffs for William (my coworker with gout) is an annotated explenation in an article on bing cherries and arthritis — the study it referenced was designed specifically to examine the effects of large quantities of bing cherries on gout (and the cherries looked as though they really did help, significantly so). The article went on to suggest that the cherries reduced key inflammatory bodies because all antioxidants have antifinflammatory properties — cherries simply have high levels of antioxidants, as do all brightly colored fruits and vegetables, tea (epsecially green tea), and to lessening degrees, coffee, chocolate and wine (especially red wine).

Certain studies have also suggested that members of the cabbage, garlic and onion families have excellent antiinflammatory properties, as well.

Maybe it would be a good idea to look at how often you’re eating fruits and vegetables (the FDA suggests a minimum of 5 servings of fresh fruits and veggies a day), how much you’re eating at a time and how they tend to be prepared. I don’t believe that anyone’s done a study on how heat and cooking processes affect antioxidant content, but certain vitamins tend to dissapear when exposed to heat and air, and antioxidant levels tend to go hand in hand with vitamin content. So it looks as though eating fresh, lightly steamed or raw vegetables is better than eating them heavily sauted in loads of butter, cream or oil — that’s just something to keep in mind.

I’d highly suggest drinking green tea. It’s easy to add to what you’re currently consuming; it has loads of wonderful health properties — especially antiinflamatory ones. I’ve been drinking several glasses of iced green tea a day for the last several years because it helps with my occasional bouts of eczema. You can sweeten green tea with spleanda for a calorie free drink. Or something I found I really enjoyed last summer is to add lime and strawberries to a pitcher of brewed green or white tea — it’s delicious. Just keep in mind that green tea has a third less caffeine than coffee and white tea has half the caffeine of coffee. Having said that, the antiinflamatory properties of green tea may help reduce your production of cortisol, which drives up weight gain. Green tea has been shown, in a few small studies, to help with weight loss, when consumed in conjunction with a low fat diet and moderate exercise. White tea looks as though it may have higher levels of antioxidants and it’s a bit tastier if it tends to be slightly more expensive. I like Stash Tea, which sells a blend of green and white tea at a more than reasonable price.

Soy products may help with joint problems because of their high levels of phytoestrogen. Tofu can be tricky to cook well (I still haven’t quite figured out how to stirfry it) but then I got lazy last week and threw some cubed tofu into a minestrone/quionoa dish and William actually thought it was chicken — most likely because it marinated for several hours. The fact that William liked the tofu better than any of the other meat replacements I’ve made so far made my whooole week, because the tofu’s cheaper and genearally better all around than a lot of the other stuff I’d been cooking up to please his yen for flesh. So there’s that. You can also toss soy milk onto cereal, which is a pretty durn easy way to add soy to your diet, or hey, there’s always the soy ice cream (imagine — medicinal ice cream — yummy power). Celestial Seasonings now makes something called Tea Dreams, which is a vegan ice cream alternative, or there’s Soy and Co or Soy Delicious (which is also excellent).

Hands down, though, the best thing you can do for your joints is to strengthen the muscles around them — over the last decade or so it’s become standard to suggest moderate weight lifting to older patients with joint problems because it’s the best thing you can do to help maintain your bone and joint integrity (tee hee — I said ‘joint integrity’). Another really helpful thing would be to lose some weight (I know that’s rather blunt, but it’s true). Reducing inflamation can help with the discomfort of irritated joints, but strengthening supportive muscle tissue and lessening the load compressing your joints is what’s going to keep them truly functional over the long haul.

I tend to be fairly paranoid about the health of my own knees. My paternal grandmother had both her knees replaced about a decade ago and my father’s had farily severe stiffening in his own knees over the last ten years (he had to give up running because of it and now his knees sound like aged hardwood floors popping whenever he bends them). Aside from getting almost all my physical quirks from my dad and his mother and his mother’s mother (short if a bit latitudinously generous hourglass figure, minor heart murmur, love of coffee, noticably germanic features), I work long manual labor hours on concrete floors throughout which I’m doing a good deal of standing in place (and I do tend to lock my knees while standing still).

Still, I haven’t looked into supplements like glucosamine because I haven’t heard a lot of sound informational references regarding them and I tend to believe that a solid, healthy diet and moderate exercise can go miles toward preventing most ills.

A slight change of subject — I don’t want you to think I’m going to go all emotional and ga-ga whenever the subject of meat comes up. I’d like to think, for the most part, that I’m a rational person and that I base my decisions on reason rather than my heart-felt more reactive stirrings. My mom, the math and science teacher, who chose a degree in teaching over straight math because she thought it would be more practical, is a really rational, pragmatic individual (something she probably got from her dad who was an army engineer and later the owner and operator of a coal mine in middle Pennsylvania). Growing up, my mom was always the lady with the cool hands and the pertinent questions — so, you’re upset, all right, well, what’s at the heart of this issue and what needs salvaging most? If we ever ran indoors, crying and snot nosed and yowly, she’d ask “Are you dying? Do you need an ambulance? Are you bleeding? Do you need a band aid? No? Do you suppose you’ll make it? Yes? Well, then, run back outside and play”

One of the books I’ve read which has affected me most is Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation. You see, Peter Singer is a professor of philosophy who became a vegetarian when a few of his colleagues challenged him to validate his reasons for eating meat — he found that he couldn’t. I really like the idea that Peter Singer discovered his reasons for becoming a vegetarian on his own, if he had a wee bit of prompting. I believe that all moral/ ethical decisions should be discovered this way — that they should be discovered, not forced. Henry Spira has a great quote, which I can’t find at the moment, that no one was ever truly educated by being beaten round the head with a 2 by 4, moral or otherwise — I so thoroughly agree.

On the other hand, there were a great many individuals who believed with all their heart that women did not have the capacity to make the important sorts of decisions involved in voting or holding personal property. There were a great many individuals who believed that the higher melanin content in black people’s skin made them more prone to immorality and less worthy of full human rights. Some would still say so. There’s another quote I’m going to improperly reference, that Auschwitz begins whenever we look towards a slaughterhouse and say “Well, they’re just animals”. The core concept is not necessarily that every slaughterhouse is an equivelant to a Nazi concentration camp (where Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and other “refuse” were put to death) but that cruelty begins with that off-kilter usage of the word “just”. It’s just a pig. It’s just a woman. It’s just a negro. It’s just a jew. Nothing to do with me. The resounding explenation for the popularity of Hitler is that he made the trains run on time. Sometimes effortless and unthinking cruelty looks like efficiency.

I don’t know that equality between animals and humans (though I have to insert that humans are a kind of animal) is important. What I believe to be important is that cruelty is cruelty. We hire individuals to kill pigs so that we can have sausage. We hire individuals to slaughter cows so that we can have leather shoes and belts. Why? What makes leather belts better than hemp ones? What makes sausage better than tofu? What factors make it acceptable to place another human on a factory line with a knife and require them to cut out muscles and tendon and bone from a carcass so that we can eat food which probably isn’t all that good for us anyway? I know what it’s like to work in a factory. I cut paper into pretty (most of the time, at any rate) labels. I can’t imagine what it would be like to work with semi-conscious animals, though I’ve seen a few videos thanks to PETA. I’m troubled by the idea that we are impressing careless cruelty into the foundationl fabric of our society through our factory farm system.

We hold degrees within our judicial system for various kinds of manslaughter. There are incidental kinds and kinds which involve planning. One of the things you’ve been bringing up lately seems to be a concern that there has to be an end to caution, at some point. Sure, and I’d agree. I’m not planning on acquiring a Jainist whisk broom, I assure you. I think it’s important to be informed as to how my possesions are made. I think it’s important to be informed as to how I can act in the most acceptable fashion possible and to constantly behave in the most sane and considerate fashion possible. That’s about it. On an ideal plane, I’d like to contribute to creative processes which pay a reasonable return to the people involved, have a minimal negative impact on the environment and include no animal suffering, human or otherwise. On the other hand, I’m not a Rockefeller. I do the best I can as I go. In my opinion, that’s what it means to have environmental concerns, to have human concerns, to be liberal. I can’t afford a hybrid car — but I can check my tire pressure and conserve resources throughout my daily purchases and energy use. I like to think that I attempt to contribute to a universe, rather than a medieval egocentric map in which I am the light around which all else revolves.

For myself, truth is an intersection at which multiple streams of information meet. Truth is an ‘aha’ moment at which varying hypohthesi and observable patterns converge. From what I’ve read, vegetarianism and veganism are bellied by philosophical, environmental, physiological, medical and anthropological studies, which is a good bit to shake a stick at. If you want to throw Judeo-Christianity into the mix, I could point out that, originally, humans weren’t supposed to eat meat and that it was only after the flood that humans were granted permission to eat animal flesh as they had vegetation and while all humans were required to go forth and repopulate the earth, they were also required to treat the earth with a stewardship on the level of husbandry. Ruining our environment for a moment of palletory pleasure doesn’t quite seem to fit that bill, in my book — but I could be wrong. It’s KJV.

Honestly, though, I’m still working through what my vegetarianism means to me. A couple of weeks ago when you commented that I’m a cool vegetarian because I don’t get all preachy at you, I wondered if that was really a good thing. Because a hundred years or so ago, slavery was considered perfectly normal and there was a handful of oddballs who disagreed. A couple of hundred thousand years ago (according to our genomes) cannibalism was widespread and (appearantly) there was a handful of oddballs who disagreed (which is why certain of us are immune to kufu, mad cow and jacob-krutzfield disease). I believe that the humane quality of our humanity is something we are always working toward and that we may never reach. On the other hand, the notion that I may make myself ammenable to unnecessary suffering is a strange thing to consider as well as one that makes me slightly uncomfortable.

When I feel odd, though, I like to seek out an unexpected parallel and I’ve wondered about your own religious beliefs. After all, you’re not much for the preaching yourself, if, theoretically, for all you know, I’m going straight to hell in a handbasket. So that’s made me curious. How literally do you see heaven and hell? How much of an imperative does salvation play into your daily conscientiousness?

I could go on but it’s late. Hope your knees feel better. Remember, veggies rock. Eat colorful food. Drink green tea. Strengthen, move, use and validate. Oh, and more soon ~ J.

And Andy Said

J ~ Good email! Geez. Lotsa neat stuff in one, compact, informative missive. If there were two or three ads in there, I still would’a kept reading. Thoughts.

a) Take most of the great stuff you wrote on vegan/vegetarianism and copy it straight to your blog.

b) I never said “They’re just animals.” I didn’t say that animals don’t deserve good treatment, respect and human conditions. They do. They have rights, now. More than they did in the past in some cases. One thing, historically, that’s kinda interesting in this country is that some early child labor and children’s rights laws sprang from then current animal “fair treatment” laws. Children’s rights activists brought suit against factory/mine owners because their treatment of child workers was in violation of animal cruelty laws. Nice, hunh?

But I also didn’t say that I believe they have the same rights as people. And if you keep drawing parallels between this discussion (animal rights, vegtarianism, etc.) and past moral arguments (the relative humanity and/or worth of various ethnic/racial groups, genders, sexual orientations, etc.) I’m gonna have to get all debate team and logical on your narrowing ass. Saying, “Because, in the past, the *type* of moral argument I’m making is now widely accepted *proves* that my current moral argument is correct,” is logically bad form. By that token, I can say that any moral argument that takes a stance in which a comparison can be made between “the old way” and “the new way” always favors the new way, simply because the old way went… well… away. Also, it assumes connections where they do not necessarily exist:

“Holocaust” is to “Diet” as “Jews” are to “Food Animals” and “Meat Eaters” are to “Nazis.”
“Slavery” is to “Diet” as “African Americans” are to “Food Animals” and “Meat Eaters” are to “Slave Owners”
“Hate Crimes” are to “Diet” as “Gays” are to “Food Animals” and “Meat Eaters” are to “Fag Beaters”
“Abortion” is to “Diet” as “Embryos” are to “Food Animals” and “Meat Eaters” are to “Abortionists / Women who get abortions”

You see how this reads? Both to the victims(?) of these past issues and to people who currently eat meat? It elevates my having a cheeseburger (dairy and meat in one sitting!) to the level of Auschwitz, the Civil War, murder/assault and abortion.

It’s also, strictly from a logical/argumentative standpoint, false. To say, “Action A in situation A is wrong, therefore action A in situation B is wrong.” And that assumes that the action itself is the same. In this case, that there is something *inherently* cruel about the use of animals for human consumption. Even if we assume that, to make that assumptive leap puts us back into the “meat is holocaust” area, above. From a logical standpoint, first you have to prove to me that there is even something inherently cruel about the use of animals for consumption. And for that you have to prove that animals can process cruelty on the same level as humans, or that there is some “translation” factor by which we can say, “This amount of control/usage of animals is OK, but this amount is not.”

For example: I own several pets; dog, fish, two frogs, golden mystery snail. I am “using” them for my family’s pleasure. Emotional pleasure rather than gustatory or sartorial, to be sure, but still… I am master of my animals. They live at my whim. Four of them could be killed with one flush, or if I simply forgot to clean the tank for a week. Is this forbidden to vegans? You own a cat, if I remember correctly… why is “emotional bondage” better than another kind? It is still a master/slave relationship, eh? Who is to say that I have not subjected my pets to a life (and in Ms. Roosevelt’s case, a reaaaaalllly long life) of intollerable cruelty?

Who is to say? I am, of course. As are you. We define the cruelty, and the humanity. Ah. There’s that word again. We want to treat the animals “humanely.” Weird, when you put it in this context, eh? If we are the ones defining the conduct… we are the ones responsible for the demarcation. That puts us, inevitably, in a situation where we are in control. You can ask a Jew, a Black, a Gay… “What do want?” They can be part of the discussion. You can’t ask a cow. Or a dog or a bug. And you can make many logical argumentative leaps (for example, that Blacks and Whites can mate successfully) that pave the way towards “all humans are equal.” These are, for example, the arguments now being made against abortion; if it’s wrong to kill a helpless Jewish in a ghetto in Poland, why is it OK to kill a helpless fetus in a womb in North Dakota?

We — humans — define the limits of our humanity. It *is* wrong to kill… except when it’s not. It *is* wrong to steal… except when it’s not. Etc. We draw lines like that all the time. So… where’s your line with animals? What about… bugs? Why bugs?

So, I asks my wife — the one who studied primate anthropology in school and who still reads journals and shit, and who has worked on the Womens Health Initiative — about the whole, “Do we need meat?” thing. Her reply: Technically? No. But getting the protein that we need to be healthy (especially as growing children) without animal products of some kind is very, very tricky. Not impossible, but you have to watch your diet extremely closely. Meat, in abundance, isn’t great for you, no. But neither (she tells me) is giving it up entirely. It’s just very, very hard to find (especially in societies where you don’t have access to funky meat substitutes) all the amino acids you need in your system without recourse to either meat, milk, eggs, fish, etc.

What about the whole “we’re not built to be meat eaters?” thing. I asked her that, too. She tells me we’re built to be omnivores, with, specifically, a diet rich in “soft animal protein.” IE… bugs, snails, fish, grubs, crabs, etc. We don’t have the “ripping teeth” of carnivorous-specific hunters, but all primates — all of them — she informs me, eat meat. It just comes to most of them in the form of bugs and grubs. Some (baboons, for example), hunt and eat larger animals like rodents. In times of drought, when bugs go away, many primates will eat larger animals, forage for carrion and, in extreme cases, resort to killing each other and cannibalism. Our stomachs are NOT built, she tells me, to be strictly vegetarians; if they were, we’d be able to process grains much more efficiently, as to grazing animals (cows, sheep, etc.) who can extract much more good stuff from vegetables, whereas our body passes lots of that stuff right through; roughage. Your comment about cooking is true in some cases — some kinds of cooking does reduce the value of some vitamins, etc. — but in many cases, without cooking, we’d be completely unable to eat/process certain types of vegetables. Whereas the nutritional value of most meats can be gained when eaten raw. Cooking kills germs, yes, preserves food and makes things tastier… but it doesn’t aid/enable the digestive process. Eat uncooked grains, though… you crap uncooked grains. This, to me, is an argument against the “naturalness” of vegetarianism.

Which doesn’t mean vegetarianism is wrong, any more than driving cars is “wrong” because it’s “unnatural.” It just means that the argument-from-nature isn’t one you can stack up against eating meat, I don’t think — chimps eat meat. We have systems that process meat pretty well, just not in the grotesque amounts that Americans lump it down. And doing something badly isn’t an argument for not doing it at all. If you want to say “We should eat far less meat, and from sources that are less cruel,” sure. I’ll agree with that.

But, so far, the ultimate argument — eating meat is *wrong* — doesn’t fly with me. Because it relies on a moral absolute, “All animals are the equal of humans,” that I believe is; a) impossible to enact — we can’t live in this world and not beat the crap out of animals by the billions in doing so, and; b) fundamentally odd. Why “odd?” Because if you believe that a chicken has the same rights as my son… what does that say about how you might choose to behave around him? If you think that the rights of 1,000 sheep are as important as 1,000 United Auto Workers… why would I ever vote for you, if I was a UAW member? If you will sacrifice the nutirtion/feeding, convenience, medicinal/research and (even) fashion benefits of using animals… at what point can I trust you to bloody well stop and consider *my* rights? What’s next?
Do I get to mow my lawn? Can I eat veggies that were produced on land that “upset or disposed” animals? I need a line, somewhere, because I have stated a clear moral absolute — people are more important than animals. Not that animals are unimportant, shouldn’t have rights and aren’t deserving of humane treatment. But, in a pinch, you will *always* have a pretty good idea of where my stance will land you, your kids, your neighborhood and your state. Vote for Andy, and you will never worry that I’ll give your house to owls. Why? You’re more important. Does that mean that I don’t treasure national forests and want to stop drilling in the Arctic? No. Does that mean we don’t do things to improve the lot of animals and preserve endangered species? No. But, in the end… if you have to choose between what’s best for people and animals… people win. Because we’re the ones making the decsion. If it were up to the sharks, they’d pick “sharks” I bet, every time.

c) When I say you’re not “preachy,” I mean you’re not obnoxious. Don’t worry. You are advocating well and strongly for your position. But you aren’t turning me off with self-righteous, idiotic, dogmatic doo-doo. You are making clear, honest, heart-felt arguments. Maybe that is “good-preachy.” Which is fine. I should be clear about that. I like listening to good preachers at church, so I probably shouldn’t always use “preachy” as a pejorative.

d) Me and salvation? Hell in a handbasket? Complex subjects, kiddo. Better for phone-talk, I think. In short, I believe in God, Jesus and the Big Ghost. I believe that heaven and hell start here, on earth, as we embrace either love or hate, forgiveness or wrath, mercy or vengence as a lifestyle. The choices we make follow us into the next place, I think. But I believe (thought I hope it’s not true) that where we “get off the ride” on Earth, may be where we’re pretty much stuck for the rest of eternity. If death takes us out of time, and moral choices require an element of temporal decision making (”If I do this then this will be the consequence), then maybe our lifetime (see? life*time*) here is the way in which we are molded (mold ourselves) for our part in the eternal. If that’s the case, and you leave the playing field with mui bad mojo… bad scene. You’re trapped forever as a hateful, vengeful, wrathful being, unable to “do” anything. And if we’re all together in that great beyond… imagine being in a place with no intellectual, spiritual or emotional boundaries, forced to share eternity with all the people you never learned to love or forgive or be forgiven by? Sounds a lot like hell, doesn’t it? But if you chose the other path — being in place with no intellectual, spiritual or emotional boundaries, forced to share eternity with all the people you love and forgave and who have forgiven you — sounds like heaven. Same place, different you. My belief is that hell and heaven are the same place. Exactly the same. And that whether or not you experience that place as joyful or wrathful depends on whether or not you enjoy love, forgiveness and mercy. Some people, clearly, are deeply uncomfortable with those experiences here on earth; as seen, as Paul says, “through a glass darkly.” How much more awful will it be when the veil is removed?

You’ll probably argue (many do) that you don’t need Christianity to experience love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, etc. And, in fact, I agree. Mostly. There may be “degrees” of heaven, for example. Levels of comfort with “all that nice-nice hoo-hah” in the afterlife, eh? Christ does say, “There are many rooms in my Father’s house.” I take this to mean that there’s lots of places to hang out in the afterlife. But he also says, “None will see the Father except through me.” I take this to mean that the most profound level of sharing… of understanding those concepts that will do us the most good (both here and after-here) comes through Christ’s teachings, as opposed to other religious viewpoints.

I hope that progression is possible after life. I hope that there is allowed a final moment of choice; of “ah-ha!” where we are given a glimpse of what is ultimately possible, such that we can choose, so that, when “all is made clear,” we can say, “Yes. That. I’m sorry I didn’t get it before, for whatever reason. That’s what I want for the rest of time.” But I have a feeling that, even with a clear view of salvation… many would choose damnation or oblivion. Many choose hate over love here. Why should they change when presented with a clearer choice? One that will result in an eternity of that which they fear most?

My greatest fear is that I will somehow be shown, after death, what would have been possible had I “lived up to my full potential.” Had I been truly “good.” Here’s the world “before” and “after” you really stopped fucking around and put your shoulder to it, Havens. See what you could’ve accomplished?

That terrifies me. But that’s guilt-fantasy. I believe, because of my Christian beliefs in mercy, forgiveness and love, that God isn’t interested in my guilt. He just wants me to be his child. I’m no more important than any other of his kids. I need to love Him, you, and everyone else, and try… just try… to live the life Christ pointed at. Be more like him. Salvation, in that way, is, I guess, in my daily consciousness. Because my salvation is something that begins every day, or moves farther away. My joy is that I am saved, now. My only fear is that I will somehow think that I am in any way responsible for this salvation.

More later, I’m sure.

- A

So Jen Said

A ~ Cool stuff — some great rebuttals. Candidly, there are some things you brought up that I’m not informed enough to tackle, just yet. For instance, you’re right, our primate cousins do eat small amounts of grubs and rodents as a protien source — it translates to roughly 10% of the protein in their diet, which, if I remember correctly, is pretty damn close to what ‘modern’ hunting and gathering tribes get from the hunting portion of their own diet. That’s a very small amount, but it does exist.

Vegan Nutrition

As far as vegetarian nutrition goes, no, it’s not even difficult to get all your amino acids from plant sources. That’s the subject of Lapine’s Diet for a Small Planet and a serious foundation block for vegetarian nutritional theory. There are 8 critical amino acids which the human body cannot produce on it’s own — all of these can be found in a vegetative form, although, with the exception of soy products, they have to be combined from different sources. Rice and beans (or, technically, grains and legumes) deliver all of these amino acids. The interesting thing is that the combination of grains and legumes is the universal basic dish of nearly all cultures, at some point in their development, panglobablly. In Central America, that dish was a combination of maize and beans. In Southern Asia, that dish was soy and rice. As time went on, the beans in this dish were fortified or replaced by chicken and the second most universally common dish in the world is chicken and rice.

There is one nutrient which most vegans will agree is difficult (but not, by any means, impossible) to gain from plant sources — that’s vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 is the result of a bacterial synthesis which ususally occurs on the soil level. Most ruminant animals (cows, etc) get their vitamin B12 from munching grass. Most omnivores and herbivores get their supply from animal sources (particularly the liver, which is rich in B12). B12 can be found in it’s richest vegetative form in sea kelp and seaweed, which is where most natural vegan supplements source their B12. It’s also developed in petri dishes in labratories.

The debate over B12 is ongoing. There are certain families in England which have been vegan for 4 or 5 generations and haven’t taken any B12 supplementation at all. Their argument is that B12 is produced by the human liver and that there is no evidence that humans need to gain it from outside sources — more specifically, they argue that B12 deficiency is caused by a problem stemming from the liver and not a lack of B12 coming in. Having said that, these lifelong nonsupplementing English vegans represent a group of less than 100 individuals and are too small a sample of the population to base any firm conclusions upon. B12 deficiency, especially in infants, toddlers and children, creates severe neural impairments and can represent a lifelong handicap when and where it occurs. Vegans represent less than 2% of the population in the US so it’s difficult to say, one way or the other, whether the nonsupplementing vegans are right, and the concern over supplementation is based on studies involving children with faulty B12 synthesis or if supplementation should be an absolute for all vegans. Since there is no concrete evidence that large groups of vegans can live without B12 supplementation, the overwhelming majority of vegans support and advocate supplementation, especially for pregant women and lactating mothers, where an adequate supply of B12 appears to be most crucial.

Having said all that, complete vegetarianism was wildly popular in China and Japan for centuries. In fact, the art of making tofu was imported into Japan with Buddhism, as a spiritually mandated meat replacement. To this day, vegetarian food is known within Japanese cuisine as temple food. While seaweed and kelp would be abundant in Japan, it would be interesting to look at the landlocked Buddhist provinces of China or Tibet to see if B12 supplementation/deficiency has ever been a notable concern.

The Rights of Small Languageless Creatures

You’ve made some really salient points in this section, but one of the really intriguing bits you brushed over is the element of language, or the ability to communicate, as a foundation for defensible rights.

One point I’m itching to address right away is your logic formula in which animal rights translates into an anti-abortion philosophy:

“Holocaust” is to “Diet” as “Jews” are to “Food Animals” and “Meat Eaters” are to “Nazis.”
“Slavery” is to “Diet” as “African Americans” are to “Food Animals” and “Meat Eaters” are to “Slave Owners”
“Hate Crimes” are to “Diet” as “Gays” are to “Food Animals” and “Meat Eaters” are to “Fag Beaters”
“Abortion” is to “Diet” as “Embryos” are to “Food Animals” and “Meat Eaters” are to “Abortionists / Women who get abortions”

I gave this a bit of thought several months ago, when it occurred to me that my stance on veganism might require me to rethink my stance on abortion. The thing is, the key reasoning within pro-choice philosophy is that the unborn fetus is part of a woman’s body “My body, my right to choose”. In that sense, the decision to terminate a pregnancy is a wholly different issue from hate crimes, holocausts and slavery. Pro-choice philosophy changes radically the moment a fetus becomes a viably independent life form, an infant. Terminating the life of an infant is infanticide and is not supported by NARAL or Planned Parenthood or any other pro-choice group.

Vegans are as divided over abortion as are all Americans, generally. I personally believe that the reasoning behind pro-choice and pro-life philosophies both hinge on a definition of where an independent life begins. Pro-lifers tend to believe that a fetus is an independant life form from the moment of conception (in some cases, from the moment a woman produces an egg and a man a bit of sperm, even if they never meet). Pro-choicers tend to believe that a fetus is a part of a woman’s body, much like her uterus or her ovaries, and that she has as much of a right to remove any of these as a man has a right to remove his testes, his molars, or his appendix. I also personally believe that, for the specific reason that the question of abortion rests within a particular timeframe in which the fetus is/isn’t a part of a woman’s body, this debate exists outside of vegan philosophy, to a greater extent that it exists within it.

I also find it interesting to note that it is only fairly recently that the fetus has begun to be viewed as a a type of unborn infant. In fact, the classic timeframe for setting a natal chart within astrology is set the moment an infant takes it’s first breath — because within our earliest thinking on the subject, this has always been the moment in which it has been thought that life begins. Modern medicine has allowed us to view this differently. If it is possible to save a prematurely born infant by placing it on a respirater, does that change our defination of a viably independant life form?

Infants, specifically mentally retarded infants and children, played a large part in Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation. Singer argues that all of the reasoning which can be applied to the notion that humans have a fundamental right to use animals toward their own ends can be applied to mentally retarded children. His key point is that there is no valid reasoning which allows humans greater rights than other animals. If we say that humans have greater rights because we can communicate, wouldn’t that negate the rights of autistic children or children with cleft pallattes who cannot speak? If we say that humans deserve greater rights than animals because we contribute to a larger society, doesn’t that also leave out mentally disturbed or retarded children who will always need to be protected and nurtured as children and will likely never be able to “contribute” to a larger society as their relatively healthier counterparts? If these reasons allow us to test our medicines and sociological and psychological theories on animals, why not use retarded children as well? After all, the results would be better because we would not be crossing speciel boundaries, as we do when we test on rabbits, guinea pigs and rats — the results would be indisputably more accurate a greater majority of the time.

I’ve been steadily working my way through Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights. I say steadily because it’s thick — thicker than Cryptonomicon. Regan builds his case from a staunchly philosophical background, beginning with Descarte’s classical treatise that animals lack consciousness. One of Descarte’s defenses for his theory that animals lack soul (and therefore, in his book, consciousness and worth) is that they cannot truly speak (he refers to their communication as a prompting of passion, what we would probably refer to as instinct). Regan counters that children begin in this state and that if a lack of language implies a lack of consciousness it would be impossible to teach children language in the first place.

To my mind, Descartes argument is a rather fancified, stylized and palletized variation on a fundamental human prejudice — we tend to care more for what is familiar than we do towards that which is alien or unfamiliar to us. That prejudice does underlie a great deal of our less fortunate history, which is not just limited to racism and homophobia, but becomes bound up and intertwined with the reasoning we create in order to justify these feelings and related actions.

Prior to slavery in America, forced enslavement tended to be primarily justified through a brutal “might is right” philosophy — we have conquered you and now we will take what you own and make it ours, including your citizens who we will make our slaves. Later in human history, this was justified through two related strains of reason which I tend to think of as “Our God is better than your god” and “We’re wearing pants and you’re not” — religious and cultural arguments made forced enslavement acceptable, especially in the early 19th century. One of the earliest arguments for slavery in America is that the heathen Africans, by being taken by force and pressed into service in the US, were exposed to a greater culture and a true religion, which they would not have had the benefit of recieving if they had remained in their native lands. Thus slavery equaled salvation. In all reality, this is just the “might is right” argument dressed up in an emporer’s new clothes of moral and cultural imperative.

However, in the early 20th century, the infant sciences of genetics and sociology allowed these arguments to be spun in a completely different fashion — they enabled a fundamental prejudice toward the familiar and towards aggression against the unfamiliar to be presented within the language of racial superiority. “Scientific” tests which measured the skulls of deceased Native Americans used the language of phrenology to argue that whites have larger brains and are therefore fundamentally superior — and therefore have the right to dominion over all other races. Early IQ tests, created through a test sampling of upper class white Americans was applied to a group of recent Eastern European immigrants created the false impression that all Eastern Europeans are fundamentally stupid and that test was responsible for the immigration laws which are on our books today. One of the questions on the test showed a picture of a tennis court and asked what was missing from the image — it seems unthinkable to imagine that a group of immigrants who had just left countries racked by famine and poverty and had most likely never seen a tennis court before would be able to recognize that it was the net which was missing from the picture.

And yet, beneath these flawed arguments toward racial, cultural and religious superiority there is a fundamental fear that the unfamiliar may threaten the familiar. One hundred years after these events and a half century after the civil rights movement and Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique, we’ve begun to realize that our fear of the alien and a “might is right” philosophy are not only unnecessary but may be a real impediment to the progression of our culture as a whole — this is a lurching realization, as human history and human civilization, itself, is a lurching, tidal affair.

One of the most interesting thoughts you’ve brought up so far is that animal rights may, in some way, jeopardize human rights. I’d say, no more than human rights jeopardize other human rights — no more than women’s rights jeopardize civil rights and vice versa.

In my mind, the philosophy of rights is a structure much like a hillside. Each individual set of rights — women’s rights, civil rights, human rights, et al, are a blade of grass on that hillside. The intertwining roots of that grass across the hillside is what keeps the hill, the philosophy of rights, intact.

Rather than jeopardizing human rights, animal rights support all other rights. When we extend consideration and respect even to the smallest, most alien of creatures, we make it that much more difficult for violations of human rights to occur. If we say all living creatures deserve sunlight, space to move about freely, clean food and water, we expose an unthinkable level of cruelty in the conditions of poverty in which a great majority of the citizens of this world live, every day. If we say all living creatures have a fundamental right to live free of oppression and dominion, we expose an intolerable reality in the economic slavery which creates and maintains sweatshops, armies of children and the regimes of war lords. If we refuse to act aggressively even towards field sparrows, voles and blind cave fish, how much more difficult is it to close our hearts to the mothers who raise children in poverty, to the starving, to the defenseless, to the voiceless among us?

Animal rights support other rights because we learn to see that cruelty is cruelty and oppression is oppression and these things are always unacceptable, no matter the reason, no matter who or what they victimize, because there are means which are never justified by their ends.

Yet, just as it was once an unimaginable future in which former slaves lived side by side with white people and women worked side by side with men and gay individuals adopted children from the same agencies as infertile heterosexual couples, it can seem impossible to conjure a near future in which animals exist entirely for their own sake and not for or because of us — just as women don’t exist for men, just as black people weren’t made to serve white people, just as gay individuals weren’t created to hide their homosexuality so that heterosexual couples can feel better about the fact that they haven’t put much thought into anything aside from the urge to procreate and die.

Rights, in fact, should be the opposite of special — they should be so ordinary, so plainly common, that it’s shocking when they’re destroyed or bent for any reason.

Yet we live in a world in which we are constantly endangering living creatures, everyday. We endanger wild and tame animals with our roads, with our intensive farming methods, with suburban sprawl and noise pollution. We endanger our fellow humans with an economic system which offers no sane way out of poverty, little in the way of education and nothing at all in the way of cultural enrichment.

This isn’t just bad for those who suffer, it’s bad for those who allow this suffering — it’s bad for all of us. On a certain level, I believe that every time we passively accept suffering we actively kill off a vibrant, feeling part of ourselves, that part of ourselves which holds forth good faith between ourselves and the rest of the world. On another level, when we allow the natural world around us to be destroyed, we dismantle a delicate system of which we are still profoundly ignorant and throroughly incapable of healing.

You asked if I think it’s acceptable for people to keep pets — that’s actually a very good question. As you know, I have two cats so I’m going to give you more than one answer. From a purely ethical, philosophical standpoint, no, people should not keep pets — it’s just not a very good idea. We have a tendency, as humans, to create mythic relationships with animals which can wind up leading to bad scenarios between humans and animals farther down the road. We develop either a “pet the fuzzy” or “hate the invader” attitude toward animals which is wholly innapropriate and unmaintainable in the long run — it’s what leads visitors to Yellowstone to want to get way more close and personal with wild animals than is truly wise and many of these mislead individuals wind up gored or mauled or otherwise seriously harmed. This can turn “pet the fuzzy” into a spiteful “hate the invader” attitude which is even less wise. Far fewer individuals would be mauled by bears if all the national parks were razed and replaced with parking lots but then we’d be dealing with even more serious problems with air pollution, global warming, roaming, wild, homeless animals, the inviability of our lakes, streams and water supply, etc, etc.

On the other hand, there are an awful lot of tame and semi-tame animals living on the edges of human civilization who need good homes — protection and nurturing. I think, in an ideal world, we’d leave all animals to the wild. Ideally, in this one, we’d work toward rehabilitating semi-tame animals in sanctuaries. Having said that, I’ve had my cats for over 10 years and I’m not giving them up. Cause damn it, I’m selfish. I most likely won’t acquire more cats, though, when they pass away.

The pet question gets a wee bit emotional among vegans. There was a series of posts at Vegan Represent about just that, and the vast majority of vegans were pro pet ownership. Most likely, I think, because pet ownership is what exposed most of the vegans there to animal sensitivity in the first place. It’s hard to get ethical about your emotional awakening spot, I think.

For myself, there’ve been a couple of really significant moments in which I had a kind of animal related epiphany. The first one I hadn’t thought about in over a decade and was just reminded of it when I was musing that most vegans have this “animals suffer!” moment right before they go vegan and I realized I had one of those, too, but it was a long, long time ago. The other is an anecdote I tend to reference when I’m talking about my view on death.

The first story took place when I was between 4 and 5 years old. I was living in Okinowa, Japan (my dad was a pilot with the Search and Rescue unit stationed there). The military base had a theatre which would show older movies which were no longer playing in major theatres (this was back before VHS). My mom had taken me to see a nature film about beavers. The first part of the movie was about a young beaver living in the wild with his dad — building a dam, gnawing down trees, swimming, etc. Beaver stuff. Then the beaver’s dad disappears and the young beaver just sort of goes about doing what he and his dad had done, if in a rather hapless, lost way. There was a particular scene in which the beaver swims past a shack in the woods and as he slowly swims past it, the camera sweeps the side of the shack and there’s this splayed beaver hide mounted to the exterior wall facing the river. I may have gotten this all mixed up because I was 4 years old, afterall, but in this particularly horrified moment I was convinced that the poor, young beaver was swimming past the carcass of his father and I vividly remember turning to my mother and saying “I want to leave now.” I was absolutely adament so my mom gathered up our stuff and we left, right then. I didn’t watch another nature film until I was in my early 20s.

Then I was 14 and absolutely fell in love with The Neverending Story. I found the book at the library and read it several times. There’s a particular section in which the empress gives Etreyu her royal seal, which will protect him through his quest to save Fantasia. One of the caveats to wearing this seal, however, is that Etreyu is not allowed to interfere in the delicate dance between predator and prey. We’d travelled to Yellowstone about the same time and this gets mixed up in my head with a story the park ranger told us about the deer in the park. You see, in the late 80’s all of the wolves in and around Yellowstone had been trapped, shot or otherwise killed. At first, everyone was impressed with the regal herds of unfrightened deer which strolled casually through the park. The second autumn, however, it became appearant that there was a bit of a problem — the deer population had exploded and the park wasn’t big enough to support them all. By the third winter, the trees had been skinned of their bark as far up as the largest deer could reach with it’s teeth. This was when the park realized it needed its wolves — because without predators, the unchecked deer would destroy their habitat.

I believe that death is important, just as limitations are important. Just as awareness is important. You made a comment about the humane/human connection and pointed out that only humans have the capacity to reach this particular quality of humaneness. And maybe I agree, although I’d say that’s because we simultaneously have the ability to not reach it. Animals in the wild do not have animal husbandry. Or suburban sprawl. Or Leonardo DaVinci in the good, bad and bestselling conspiratorial sense. I believe that we, as humans, have wonderful capacities as well as additional responsibilities. As they say, “To whom much is given, much is expected.”

Here’s to good faith.

More on other subjects soon ~ J.