“Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits”. ~ Mark Twain
I am a notorious fence sitter. My problem is that I usually find it easy to relate to multiple sides of an argument, which often puts me somewhere in the middle. I see this as pragmatism, even if others may pressure me to choose sides. Recently, though, something happened that forced me to do something I don’t usually do – work out exactly where I stand. A staunch vegan friend of mine posted a Utah Philips quote as their Facebook status: ”The Earth is not dying, it is being murdered. and the people murdering it have names and addresses”.
Confused, I didn’t know whether to pick up a stake and a torch and join an angry mob, searching for the evil Earth murderers, or to go into hiding, since I am one of the murders myself. And it got me thinking about my vegan and vegetarian friends, and wondering if they know what my views are, and if they’d be able to palate them like lentil loaf or if they’ll find them as disgusting as roast veal. Well, there’s only one way to find out…
Firstly, on the whole ‘meat is murder’ thing, it’s not that I just don’t give a fuck.
But what vegans often forget is that human beings are animals too. And ironically enough, many anthropologists believe that it was only because homo sapiens began eating meat that we were able to evolve to the point that we had the capacity to even reason that meat is murder (more on this here).
And yes, I am aware of the impact meat production is having on the Earth, and I’m willing to accept the argument that we have now developed to a point that we no longer need meat. But the problem is that we are still animals in that we have impulses that we need to try and control – if I see meat I have to consciously resist the urge to eat it, just as I have to resist drinking until I’m sick or smoking a bankie a week. To see anyone who uses animal products as evil is to think of us as separate to nature – but we are part of it, animals albeit complicated ones – and part of being an animal is having an appetite.
My own story is as follows: Currently, when buying groceries I do not buy meat and try to limit the amount of dairy products (which is hard for me, as I have a huge weekness for dairy). But if I am invited for dinner and served meat, I eat it. And I will eat meat at restaurants. This, to most vegans, is abhorrent. They see it as the idea of only murdering once a week. But for me, it’s a genuine attempt to curb my consumption and curb my appetite, after all of my attempts to go “cold turkey” on meat in the past have failed.
Thing is, I am a hedonist – even just the idea of a life without, say, cheese and chocolate, instantly sends me into a deep depression. So for me it’s about eating as little meat as possible, finding more humane sources of dairy products, searching for chocolate that isn’t produced in situations of slavery, as most chocolate you’ll find in a supermarket is (more info on this here). And while vegans may find this a hypocritical compromise at best or a symptom of the fact that I am evil at worse, the world is full of people like me, who just lack the willpower to give everything up. But if you are really serious about saving the world, you have to engage and work with people like me, rather than seeing me as the enemy and continuing to preach to the converted.
I’ve heard some of you even talk of some kind of vegan revolution. Seriously? If history has taught us anything, it’s that a revolution almost always causes as much pain and misery as it resolves, all in the name of replacing an existing system with another system. Then, this system becomes corrupt too when the things no revolutionary theorists ever seem to take into account invariably come into play – human folly, greed and ineptitude. Fuck Lenin, I’m with Lennon, who said “But when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out”.
There is no “us and them”, there is no clear line dividing the “good guys” from the “bad guys”. We’re all too complex for that. I know vegans who don’t give a stuff about human rights and ones who do, ones who are basically hippies who don’t want to hurt animals and ones who are more vengeful and seem to want to see meat eaters suffer. I know vegans who work for big corporations and meat eaters who live outside of the capitalist system. I also know people who eat meat but are tireless campaigners for human rights and, yes, animal rights too. Does their indulging in this murderous practice negate all the important work they are doing?
While I respect and admire the attempts of my most dedicated vegan friends to live a life less harmful to our world and others, through the simple process of living life we all do damage – we all consume and waste. And I struggle to think how it would be possible to live a completely pure existence. Whether it’s smoking cigarettes or driving a car, all vegans I know leave their mark on the environment. I am not accusing anyone of hypocrisy or in any way using this as a justification for harming the earth, but only saying that, rather than there being two types of people, the ones saving the earth and the ones destroying it, we are all complicated human beings, and most of us are trying our best. I just don’t think it’s productive to be self-righteous, to divide the world up into good guys and bad as if we’re extras in a Hollywood movie.
I like you guys and respect you and want to work with you. But only if you can resist the urge to call me a murderer for long enough to listen to what I have to say.
Check out Mr Friedman’s blog here.
* Image is an internet mash of an old World War 2 poster, “when you ride alone you ride with Hitler”. Masher unknown.
Restraining ourselves from eating meat is useless if we don’t restrain ourselves from having children that the planet can’t afford.
Unfortunately the instinct to procreate is even stronger than the instinct to eat meat, and on top of that having children is regarded as a basic right, regardless of whether people have the capabilities and the resources to raise children.
Until humanity makes some kind of collective decision to curb their fecundity, I will have my steak and eat it, thank you very much.
MisPanda, you speak my language,
In some parts or the world (read India), there is a culture of vegetarianism that dates back 4000 years and is based on the idea that every living thing is a manifestation of the divine. The idea that god is not an external force but rather the internal life force that exists in every person and every animal. And it is exactly because we as human beings have evolved to a point where we have a choice as to whether or not we want to kill other animals, is what makes vegetarianism such a central issue that goes to the core of what it means to be a human being. To bring into the world, every year, millions of animals, merely to fatten them up, slaughter them, and eat their flesh, seems to me to be deeply problematic.
@panda – are you waiting for every person on earth to be voluntraily sterilised? because many people have already decided not to breed. many adopt or opt out entirely.
eat meat if you like, its a personal decision, but that is a pretty pathetic justification.
I’m hungry.
Hah, change the slogan on the illustration to “When you ride without contraception, you ride with Hitler” and let’s see how much the catholics like that. And don’t the urge to fuck and the urge to eat the flesh of others come from a similar primal place?
I think it should work on a sliding scale of what each person is capable of *just* on the other side of what’s comfortable. (This all takes place in an ideal world, of course). I’m a vegetarian but not for any noble reasons. I’ve just never liked meat. So it’s kind of a guilty bonus, the whole virtue aspect. But i’m not depriving myself of anything. I was in Pick n Pay the other day and was horrified and fascinated to see 100% vegan liver pate. Now this impresses me. You’ve got to be quite an advanced meat-eater to crave the taste of liver. There’s a bunch of people who crave that liver taste so much that some soy-product company saw there was a market for an imitation version. To me, that’s pretty heroic. I imagine someone making avo-flavoured pork sausages and know I couldn’t do it. Or mince called “I can’t believe it’s not asparagus” This disgusts me of course.
The vegan zealot is a tedious creature. Especially when they post interminable facebook status updates syaing stuff like “I think therefore I vegan”, from a computer, using electricity, from the office they drove to in their car. People who think there is a line that cannot be crossed fail at their own game. If you’re capable of living happily as a vegan go ahead, or if you have to go methodone-style with the soy-liver and get to feel smug, if that’s what makes a day sweeter then you should do that. But I don’t see why Friedman shouldn’t get to congratulate himself on keeping the meat thing to his own honest minimum.
The real issue is about where your food is produced anyway. Buying Italian tomatoes from Woolies (in plastic punnet) is far more bloodthirsty an assault on the already limping planet earth than buying ostrich meat from a small farm 30 kilometres away.
To compensate for my fraudulent occupation of freebie karma vegetarianism i take the train everywhere I can’t get to on foot. Or i did until i got my driver’s license last month. So that doesn’t count either. I’m going to have to find something else to do to feel genuinely pleased with myself.
I recently had a friend post that to make one kilogram of beef it takes 100 000 litres of water on her facebook status. This simple statement has forever turned me against the vegan, anti-meat brigade. See my friend didn’t think things through. This statement is clearly wrong (I will illustrate why shortly) and yet she posted it. The Vegan vs Meat debate is full of such factually incorrect facts as these, lies concocted by a meat free community determined to try and crush the practice of eating meat despite not having the facts to back up their arguments. See the facts don’t exist, all we have is propaganda.
Take that fact above. It is a very simple statement and one made continuously by anyone who has this debate with me. However simple economics states it can’t be real. Beef sells for an average of about R80 per kilo in SA. This would not be possible if that Kilo took 100 000 litres of water to produce. Even if we imagine that water costs just 5c a litre, then setting aside all costs of food, transport, slaughter, butchering, land use etc beef should cost R50 000 a kilogram. Clearly something is very wrong.
The use of manipulative, self serving and fanciful lies such as these in support of a debate which is in fact clearly lacking in facts, and therefore should never be fought at all, is a turn off to anyone who may find themselves considering the option. I don’t like to be manipulated and if you lie to me in order to do so, I will gladly eat your entire meaty delicious family just to annoy you as much as you have annoyed me. Meat for life!
P.S: I had a friend at University who used to quote the following and I treat it as a life Maxim: i did not spend the last 10 000 years crawling my way to the top of the food chain to eat carrot.
Oops my maths is wrong….it would cost R5000 per Kg, not R50 000. point stands though.
Thanks Daniel for an interesting thought-starter.
I’m going to address your arguments one by one, in the spirit of constructive debate.
Before I do though, I’d like to commend you on your approach and on your honest attempts at curbing your consumption of animal products. You make a good point in stating that it is people like you we will have to appeal to when advocating a vegan lifestyle and that we should not pass moral judgement when doing so…You evil bunnykilling bastard
Here then are my responses to your points:
1: We’re just animals.
A – We’re unique animals though, in that we have developed the capacity to model the minds of others and empathize with them. It is because we can do this – and because of our inherent social nature – that we evolve out of our interactions with other human beings complex sets of ethical behavior and, over time, moral proscriptions. At their best, these act as a set of group agreements: I won’t rape or rob you if you don’t rape or rob me is clearly a sensible agreement, for instance.
In this sense, we are indeed separate from nature. Consequently, an appeal to our animal nature ignores the very ethical domain in which the animal rights / vegan debate unfolds and can, by extension, apply equally to a defense of rape, murder or robbery (sexual impulses, territoriality and acquisitiveness all being equally natural drives).
2: We evolved via a meat-based diet.
A – Some evolutionary biologists think that our brains evolved because of a meat / fish-based diet. Even if this is true, this is just an argument from precedent. War and colonialism also resulted in cultural and technological evolution (war is a very effective driver of innovation), but we could hardly offer an ethical defense of war based on the fact that it has historically afforded us some kind of perceived advantage.
Additionally, it is likely that there is no further evolutionary gain to be had from continued meat or dairy consumption; indeed, all things considered, the opposite seems true.
3: I’m a hedonist.
A – I hope you recognise that this is no sort of sound ethical defence. We would not acquit somebody charged of a sexual crime on the grounds that they were unable to escape their hedonistic urges, right?
(If you are uncomfortable, by the way, with analogies between rape and non-human animal exploitation, it is worth considering that animal rights activists operate from the premise that non-human animals are equally capable of experiencing suffering and are, equally too, subjects of a life that is rich and rewarding. There are also no defensible criteria we can use to posit a hard line between humans and non-humans; whatever we bring to bear in deciding what moral worth to grant some humans applies also to some animals. Peter Singer’s argument from marginal cases expounds on this well, as does Richard Dawkins’ defense of the Great Ape Project.)
4: Revolution is bad, mmmkay?
A – I think John Lennon’s Imagine is the most succinct summary of my anarchist views I’ve ever encountered. For me, the prospect of violence – and violent revolution – is highly unsettling. However, it has to be accepted – if we’re being realistic – as an unfortunate possibility. The suffragettes resorted to violence, as did Umkhonto we Sizwe. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
I don’t think it’s inevitable though. We can certainly try our best to transition peacefully to a sane, sustainable, egalitarian culture of tolerance, diversity and rights that transcends the species barrier – just as we historically (and necessarily, I’m sure you’ll agree) transcended race and gender barriers!
Perhaps, however ,the term revolution, in the context of animal rights, doesn’t mean precisely what you’re thinking; in my experience, most animal rights activists are calling for revolutionary activity in the same way that the Internet is revolutionary, not in the same way the working class were a potentially revolutionary force for Marx. Some animal rights people certainly call for the latter kind of revolution, but they make the call not solely on behalf of animals but as members of social and ecological justice groups too.
5: We’re all impure, we’re all only half-way there, we’re all complicit.
A – You’re right that there are many people doing great work to disengage from the death machine of late capitalism; people who should be commended regardless of their diet.
However, this is – for me – a call for all of us to do even more, not to rest on our laurels. If there are vegans who still support Monsanto by buying GM soy they should be encouraged to change. Likewise, meat-eating social justice activists should be encouraged to consider the very powerful arguments of the animal rights movement about the inherent violence of the modern animal exploitation industry and the way in which tacit acceptance of, or complicity in this practice might very likely spill over into other domains. Leo Tolstoy – an anarchist pacifist and a vegetarian – was not far off the mark when he said that there will be battlefields for as long as there are slaughterhouses.
Here’s an example, by the way, of vegans trying to do better: http://tippingpointblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/vegan-cheese-is-just-as-inhumane-as-dairy-cheese/
The growing awareness of ecological and social issues in the vegan community also exemplifies our commitment to engaging other struggles; Indeed, a common slogan in the AR crowd is ‘one struggle, one fight, human freedom animal rights’.
And sure, we all produce waste and nobody will ever be perfect; that’s no excuse not to try and step as lightly on the Earth and each other as possible, or to fairly and honestly change in the face of new information about our negative impacts on the broader biocommunity.
For me, veganism is not just a question of ethics, health or ecology, although it is the best answer, in my books, to all of these; veganism is also a powerful statement of intent: at least three times every day, I am forced to remind myself of why I avoid animal products, of my intention to consume ethically, of what it means to live and share in a finite world big enough to hold all kinds of pains and pleasures, minds and lives, but small enough to crumble quickly under the narcissistic greed of even a few.
Far from being a burden then, my veganism is a motivational force that constantly pushes me to live more fairly as a participant in the great community of life. To live in this way continues to be boundlessly rewarding.
If veganism is so natural, why do you need to force yourself?
Dear Warren,
It’s important to have one’s facts straight when entering into discussion like this.
The 100 000l of water per kilogram of beef figure comes from Professor David Pimentel, an ecologist at Cornell University. The number might seem alarmingly high, but it is supported by further research undertaken by the FAO (the Food and Agriculture Organisation – part of the UN), the Canadian Ministry of Agriculture and many other groups. Out of interest, most of this water goes to grow the massive amount of feedstock needed to grow the livestock. The stats do not factor in all the water that is toxified and rendered unusable due to a lack of proper sewage treatment programs.
Now, it would indeed be an absurdity if all this water were paid for at standard rates. However, apart from the fact that the livestock industry is usually massively subsidized, one has to remember that the majority of this water is accessed free of charge from our fresh water reserves (lakes, streams, etc.) Given that these supplies renew at an exceptionally slow rate (less than 1% per year if I remember correctly) it is obviously crucial to make long term provisions in the form of groundwater management programs, exercising frugality wherever possible, and it is in light of this that livestock production’s impact on our remaining fresh water supplies becomes so concerning. The documentary Flow (For Love Of Water) is highly recommended for anybody who wants to learn more about the state of the world’s fresh water supplies.
@kiddo: Thanks for your post. I think I should clarify one matter: according to most research, food miles account for far less of the final impact than the type of food being produced. Here’s some reading on the subject:
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0602-ucsc_liaw_food_miles.html
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6064
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3294448.ece
You’re right in saying that we’re all still culpable to some degree in causing some unnecessary ecological impacts but – as I said to Daniel earlier – that’s just all the more reason to try and do better
PS: vegan liver? *shudder*
@Panda: Population is a worry, but not as important as consumption. The countries with the fastest growing populations have the lowest consumption and visa versa, implying that we can make a much bigger impact by simply encouraging a decrease in production and use of high-impact luxury items than by using poor rural Indians and Chinese as scapegoats when, in reality, it would take many more billions of them to make the same impact a couple hundred million Americans or Canadians do!
bru these bleading heart vage-eatrians hoping to save the world one pork pie at a time must F*** right off. they probably don’t even appreciate horse racing
@ nasty the dude said: I am forced to remind myself of why I avoid animal products
such a bullshit boring argument, everyone just dry your mascara the world is going to keep on keeping on; oil disasters, terrorism and world cups ect with or with out your little self-important contribution. so why lose sleep over it. from my end can i have a 1/4 mutton bunny please and don’t leave out the little packet of salad mum always told me i must eat my greens
“Aragorn” . Lol. Obviously, hey.
Dear moderator…Please approve my post that starts off with: “Dear Warren,
It’s important to have one’s facts straight when entering into discussion like this.”
Thanks
Ethics don’t enter into the act of eating meat. Obviously the act of eating meat in moderation is a normal, healthy and very natural activity. The manner in which we kill our animals to eat them is far kinder than the manners used by any other animal. The problem we have is that we as humans like to think of death and pain as bad things, instead of what they are, a fact of life. Applying ethics to eating meat and claiming that we are somehow dirty or sullied because things die for us to live is to forget the very basis of life, and the very foundation we are built on. So what if animals suffer in their death? One day, you too will die and you will very likely suffer in doing so. As long as your body goes on to supply its nutrients to the soil then you have done your job and participated in the process of being alive.
Further when people say, “we are killing the earth” they are wrong. We are merely killing the earth as we know it. In the grand scheme of the universe why does it matter? You are not a lesser person because you are alive and altering the world. The universe alters itself continuously.
Death and change are not bad things, trying to stifle evolution and change however might be as they are the only things which go against nature and the natural order.
@Warren: The 100 000l of water per kilogram of beef figure comes from Professor David Pimentel, an ecologist at Cornell University. The number might seem alarmingly high, but it is supported by further research undertaken by the FAO (the Food and Agriculture Organisation – part of the UN), the Canadian Ministry of Agriculture and many other groups. Out of interest, most of this water goes to grow the massive amount of feedstock needed to grow the livestock. The stats do not factor in all the water that is toxified and rendered unusable due to a lack of proper sewage treatment programs.
Now, it would indeed be an absurdity if all this water were paid for at standard rates. However, apart from the fact that the livestock industry is usually massively subsidized, one has to remember that the majority of this water is accessed free of charge from our fresh water reserves (lakes, streams, etc.) Given that these supplies renew at an exceptionally slow rate (less than 1% per year if I remember correctly) it is obviously crucial to make long term provisions in the form of groundwater management programs, exercising frugality wherever possible, and it is in light of this that livestock production’s impact on our remaining fresh water supplies becomes so concerning. The documentary Flow (For Love Of Water) is highly recommended for anybody who wants to learn more about the state of the world’s fresh water supplies.
@kiddo: Thanks for your post. I think I should clarify one matter: according to most research, food miles account for far less of the final impact than the type of food being produced. Here’s some reading on the subject:
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0602-ucsc_liaw_food_miles.html
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6064
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3294448.ece
You’re right in saying that we’re all still culpable to some degree in causing some unnecessary ecological impacts but – as I said to Daniel earlier – that’s just all the more reason to try and do better
PS: vegan liver? *shudder*
@Panda: Population is a worry, but not as important as consumption. The countries with the fastest growing populations have the lowest consumption and visa versa, implying that we can make a much bigger impact by simply encouraging a decrease in production and use of high-impact luxury items than by using poor rural Indians and Chinese as scapegoats when, in reality, it would take many more billions of them to make the same impact a couple hundred million Americans or Canadians do!
@kiddo: Thanks for your post. I think I should clarify one matter: according to most research, food miles account for far less of the final impact than the type of food being produced. It seems I’m not allowed to post links, but with a bit of Googling I’m sure you’ll be able to find some good papers, as well as articles on the Mongabay, WorldWatch and TimesOnline websites.
You’re right in saying that we’re all still culpable to some degree in causing some unnecessary ecological impacts but – as I said to Daniel earlier – that’s just all the more reason to try and do better
PS: vegan liver? *shudder*
@Warren: I’m assuming you are not familiar with animal rights discourse, which *does* find an ethical problem with animal exploitation in the same way as abolitionists found an ethical problem with slavery where until that juncture it had been perceived as a normal, healthy and natural activity (read up about the Greeks keeping slaves and the normalising discourses around it, for instance). Patriarchy was once perceived as ‘natural’ and ‘healthy’ too
As for the provision of relative comfort making something ethically defensible, this is not a sound argument: we would not accept the appeal of the slave owner that his slave enjoyed greater comfort in his quarters than in drought-stricken Ethiopia, would we? Nor would we accept appeals from cannibals that their victims were just experiencing a fact of life and were likely happy at receiving their first hot bath in ages in the cooking pot. In other words, your argument can be used consistently to defend many obviously indefensible practices.
Ironically, your appeal to detached passivity and ‘going with the flow’ reminds me of Taoism and Buddhism, two practices to which vegetarianism is often fundamental
Mr Friedman, thank you for giving us something to chew on that does not focus on fucking football.
If I were to weigh in on this rather mealy debate, I’d suggest one thing: if you’re going to forgo any kind of food, make it seafood. The reasons are manifold, summed up best by the simple idea that whatever resides in the sea is a wild resource, which has been successfully plundered without any regard for the future, or indeed the interconnectedness of the oceanic food chain. Beyond the obvious reason, there are others: sushi is largely packed with heavy metals by virtue of most sushi fish being predators which absorb the accumulated poisons of their prey. If I had my way, I’d bomb the Tsukiji fish market outside Tokyo, but the Japanese might take exception to such bold behaviour.
For those who say ‘hell, why not eat farmed fish, then?’: fish farmed in the ocean, in pens or nets, provide an unnatural breeding ground for diseases and parasites, which migrate to, and infect, wild stocks. And, whilst I agree that eating meat depletes the available amount of green space, I have to at least put it to you that we can quantify the amount of meat, simply because we farm it. The same cannot be said for seafood species.
The other thing to do would be to stop breeding, and tell your friends the same. They may not listen to you (hell, 90% of my friends listened intently and agreed with the idea ten years ago, and have since promptly gone gaga for baba like they’re the first to breed), but fuck ‘em, stick to your guns. Your life will be more interesting for it and you won’t have to sit through endless discussions about dilation, epidurals nor indeed the finer points of that scintillating dinner party topic, nipple chafe
At the end of the day there are simply too many people. We have successfully fucked our planet into ICU. Well done, people.
Bring on the virus. Those who survive will thank it.
I’m a vegetarian, and believe me, vegans often save the worst of their ire for “fence-sitters” like me. I’m certainly uncomfortable with a lot of the same food production issues many people are, but I really hate aggressive proselytizing. If I ever adopt children, they will be free to make up their own minds regarding vegetarianism, and I’ll love them just the same regardless of their choice. On a related note, given the population crisis on our planet, it’s funny how often the lack of procreation is used against gay people. We’re doing the planet a favor!
http://www.eatinganimals.com/
there is much to say on this matter. for which i dont have the time or inclination. but a message to all so called vegans out there (yes, i know who you are). for a system of ethics that disallows for any kind of fence sitting or hypocrisy, how can you justify going out and smoking, drinking and taking drugs? ever thought about the health/socio-economic/ethical ramifications those industries bring to the table of morals? problem is guys, y’all mix up a largely sound argument with your own beliefs, and mete out your opinions with an unhealthy dose of judgement. if it is truly ‘bad’ to eat meat, does that necessarily make you a ‘bad’ person or a ‘murderer’ for eating meat? Mother nature doesn’t shed a tear every time an animal meets its demise at the salivating chops of another. She sheds a tear when there is gross imbalance. Ask any eco-scientists what happenes when an ecosystem is deprived of natural predators. But aaanyhow, the moral of the story, at least for me, is that, like any activity, meat consumption needs to be regulated within the bounds of what our finite resource system can cope with. other than that…it’s open season. <3 u food chain.
why is “aragorn” thanking me for my post? i didn’t stand up and give comment at your sermon. what vegan zealots don’t realise is that their incessant hammering on the same issue – like hitting the same piano key over and over and over – is inherently offputting to the people they so desperately wish to convert, to join the flock on the path of righteousness. My reaction to ANY kind of evangelical proselytizing is to immediately shut down. I can’t help it. You become less of a serious person, as with any extremist or fundamentalist, and what you are preaching will not be taken seriously. I think vegan militants often misread this reaction as the benighted infidels not enjoying having a mirror held up to them, or whatever, like this emissary has exposed the errors in their ways and they lash out out of shame or something. “poor things, they’re only human” the vegan might say. “if we get just one then the day will have been worth it”. it’s the same with people who read that shitty richard dawkins and became overnight atheist fundamentalists. always so extreme, and failing to see how being a fanatic in any direction still makes you a follower.
@fucken hippie druggies: I agree with you to a large degree. The tobacco industry, for example, tests on animals; because of this I always encourage other vegans to give up smoking.
Big alcohol companies are certainly also unethical, as are the gangsters people buy their cocaine from; I thus also encourage people to avoid these wherever possible, electing for microbrewery beers (much tastier and healthier), good single malt whiskeys and entheogenic plants (sold by much more ethical people) if they feel the need to use substances (or, heck, just grow or brew your own!)
This said, and as I stated in my first post, veganism doesn’t pretend to be absolutist, nor can anyone ever be ’100% ethical’; it’s all about honestly and consistently applying and modifying your ethics in light of changing information and situations. We can always do better and we should all try our best – as opposed to becoming complacent, deferential or smug – not only to avoid animal exploitation but to live consistently ethical lives (I’d rather go barefoot than buy sweatshop sneakers), to whatever degree that can be reasonably expected of us (it’s hard to tell someone to give up their greenhouse gas spewing car if it means they lose a job that allows them to house their family).
Ecosystems are complex things (no credible ecologist would use the term ‘food chain’ anymore by the way – perhaps trophic cascade
and our role in maintaining their balance is certainly not mass meat production; if anything the foraging, small plant-based permaculture type lifestyle is the one most in balance with natural cycles.
As I stated previously, animal rights philosophy offers some very compelling arguments as to why we should reconsider our ‘natural’ consumption of non-human animals. To shrug this off as mere moralistic posturing, out of touch with ‘nature’ is to miss out on the kind of ethical values that underlie the animal rights position and thus to perpetuate the kind of worldview that historically oppressed women, indigenous people and non-whites.
@kiddo: It’s my real name. Get over yourself
What I realise, as a longtime vegan zealot (praise teh Tofu Lord, hallelujah!) is that our controversial approach has managed to grow veganism from an almost unheard-of fringe diet five years ago into a well catered for lifestyle that everyone and their grandmother now at least marginally understands because of the massive amount of media exposure our evangelical propaganda has obtained (you do realise that every time one of these debates happens, a couple more people join our forums or subscribe to our newsletter, right?)
Veganism is growing rapidly (so say the stats, I’m afraid) and to respond to it with cliched, uninformed kneejerks is becoming increasingly anachronistic, especially when even the UN has started endorsing a diet much lower in meat and dairy for sound ecological reasons
Seriously though, to call anyone who even mentions the dreaded word ‘vegan’ some sort of zealot is to employ what is possibly the most tired ad hominem of them all…we’re actually mostly quite a reasonable bunch of critically minded individuals who enjoy a fair amount of robust disagreement within our own ranks. Check us out on the SA Vegan Society website (my bio is one of those in the director section) if you want to get a taste for our diversity and aversion to dogmatic zealotry.
<3 u food web
<3 u incisors
h8 u 'animal rights'
I’m not uninformed, that is the “kneejerk” assumption that is probably most offensive. I do work for a number of sustainability companies, whether I like it or not I regularly have to trawl through reams of new research.
I don’t call *anyone* who mentions the word vegan a zealot. I would have a lot more respect for someone who practises it without being propelled by a self-appointed duty to spread the word. You’re a friend of Jody’s on facebook, I’ve had my home page flooded with this strident campaigning. I have been considering becoming a vegan but it has nothing to do wth the influence of the thundering zealots, and if i did there is no way I’d join those ranks and subject my friends to the self-righteous tedium. It’s arrogant and boring.
SMILEY FACE SMILEY FACE SMILEY FACE WINKING SMILEY FACE
@fucken: Pithy! I’m swayed. I’ll let the evolutionary biologists know.
@kiddo: Spreading the word is how rights campaigns work. If you decide that women should have the right to vote then you are, in most cases, going to try and help them get that vote, regardless of whether defensiveness impels some detractors to wield the appellation shield.
I’m interested, by the way, in how my original reply to Daniel is in any way overzealous. Perhaps if you tried to address it in the constructive tone with which it was delivered we could have a reasonable, balanced conversation, instead of me just being subjected to the venomous rhetoric of the thunderingly zealous anti-vegan brigade?
Sometimes, being vegan feels a lot like this: http://www.meme.co.za/vegan.jpg
i just want to thank @aragorn for spending so much effort responding to these comments, from the intelligent ones right down to the deeply dumb ones (@fucken wow you are a special guy). if vegans are thought of as unwilling to engage with the rest of us aragorn is showing that this definitely isn’t the case.
@Aragorn
First off, a question or two. I was told the other day by a friend (who has never eaten meat in her life) that the average meat eating human is responsible for 21000 cow deaths in their lifetime. This seems a little low, I would imagine it being a lot more. And if there is such a statistic in existence, how is it quantified?
Secondly. I’m a meat eater. But I like my meat healthy and not tasting of too much stress (if such a thing is even possible) or hormones. I’m also a big fan of steamed vegetables. I find that what I eat influences quite radically the way I think. Often when I’m stuck on a piece of writing I find that eating a good slab of flesh will kick start the brain. I have however noticed that they kind of writing that needs that is always when I’m writing people who are domineering and conflicted. When I do a week of vegetables only I struggle to access this mindset. I actually have a system of meals that I employ when I’m writing a long form project, the same kind of system I used to employ with drugs and writing when I was younger. It seems to me that a vegetable only diet leads to a mindset that is calmer and more aware.
The interesting thing for me about this is that, in terms of evolution, if eating less meat means you care for the planet more than yourself, that it would help in seeing the interconnectedness of all things and my insignificance in that cycle, doesn’t that bode badly for the perpetuation of the species?
I also find compelling the idea that eating less meat helps you to become calmer spiritually. It is, however, my greatest curse that I find spiritual calm quite boring.
As I write this it makes me wonder if I’m the same kind of asshole as @fucken
ah man, now i feel bad. i’m sorry. you seem nice. it sometimes just all gets a little samey, you know?
@Roger: 21 000 is probably for total animal deaths, including fish. Even then, it seems a little high.
According to some stats, the number of animals the average American will consume in their lifetimes is as follows:
10 cows
2262 chickens
25 pigs
75 turkeys
6 ducks
4274 fish
The average South African probably has more of a bias towards chickens and away from turkeys and ducks.
Note that these figures do not include indirect deaths: dairy consumption involves complicity in the deaths of male calves for instance (cows are kept pregnant to give milk and thus have to give birth to unwanted male calves which are sold to the veal industry), and the production of eggs involves the breeding of millions upon millions of laying hens. Unfortunately there’s no good way to ensure the birth of only hens, and so millions upon millions of unwanted male chicks are born too. These are either turned into cheap pet food at the age of one day old or are simply thrown in the bin. Yes, just thrown alive into a dustbin by the bucket load. Youtube has some lovely examples of this practice, which happens even on ‘happy hen’ farms (as does the male calf thing).
Organic meat is arguably a bit healthier for you, but it takes just as much of a toll on the earth (grass fed beef release more CO2 and methane, for instance, and use more land and water) and the lives of of the animals are not sufficiently different to afford any ethical advantage over CAFO’s.
It’s interesting that you note a difference in mood / mindset when switching between diets; feelings of lightheadedness / ‘calm’ on a vegan diet are often correlated with improper nutrition…not that it’s hard to eat a balanced vegan diet (the healthiest people I’ve seen are long-time raw vegans), but you do need to do a touch of research up front. What I’ve noticed in this regard is that most people haven’t a clue about the nutritional content of what they eat: protein is seen as something you can only get from meat and calcium apparently only comes from that creamy wonderfood, bovine lactation.
I’m not sure how to respond to your concerns about veganism being in opposition to the continuance of humanity. What I can offer up is A) that perhaps a plant based diet doesn’t make you care less about yourself or other humans but instead simply increases your capacity for caring, and B) many of the most prominent historical justice activists and humanist peace movements / belief systems have been vegetarian / vegan. To pursue your line of interrogation in another direction, it might even be that the cognitive dissonance involved in producing meat and dairy serves us poorly as a species in that it manifests as violence and competition in other domains.
@Aragorn: I was vegan for 6 years and stopped in large part due to the dogmatic approach of some other vegans. However, you’re right about the diversity of opinion and approach in the community. I didn’t mean to jump on the anti-vegan bandwagon. Those 6 years were a good experience overall and I don’t regret it.
well said! excellent piece. viva fence riders.
Anyone fancy a pint?
@Aragorn
Well, that’s exactly it, a plant based diet makes me less aggressive, I was a vegetarian for about 3 years and then full vegan for a year after that, that ended about 12 years ago. I was calmer, more at one with things, less likely to attach to other people’s bullshit. Problem is, other people’s bullshit fascinates me and when I fell “spiritually” calm I don’t fee that need for fascination. This is where i get bored. A bit of strife keeps me alive. On the other hand when I have one of those full meat weeks I become a bit of an overbearing prick. This is not something I myself notice but rather my girlfriend. i’m sure there are other factors too but what I’m saying is that eating meat makes us aggressive, this aggression drives evolution. I wonder what would happen to the species if we lost it.
That said I’m not for the wholesale needless slaughter that goes on. Your figures breakdown was instructive but more so the information after, The reason i get my meat, eggs and diary products from small farms is because I don’t want to a part of that corporate planet rape crap. I don’t want to ever inch something along that smashes day old chicks into dog food.
@Bill
Yeah, after the game?
@Bill: As long as it’s a vegan pint
(http://www.barnivore.com)
I know a vegan. She bombards my facebook homepage with vegan diatribe. It’s tedious but she is family,so I can’t unfriend her really. I never know what to feed her when she visits, as she has recently started going on about “not harming fruit”. I offered her MacDonalds as I understand that doesn’t really count as any type of food group, but she got pretty angry. It took a while to get forgiveness. Sigh. My question is: Is vegetatianism a gateway habit that leads to veganism, which leads to the refusal to eat fruitism? Do veg have the same feelings as fruit? What happens next? And is this just some type of anorexia?
Is sproutarianism the final frontier or can I expect further decline in things to serve her for dinner? Is she typical or atypical? Quantitative feedback appreciated.
I realise that this is a well researched,carefully considered,humanitarian philosophy but I just find the whole thing to be jumping the gun a bit . That’s not a philosophy or anything, it’s just that for the life of me I can’t seem to grasp how animal/plant rights will(should?) get anywhere when we generally have no idea about human rights. Please explain? S-l-o-w-l-y.
Ta.
@lia: The slippery slope your unfortunate family member is on is commonly known as ‘doing the Lierre Keith’. A tiny minority of otherwise sensible people are, unfortunately, ‘everything is sentient’ animists when it comes to trying to understand the outside world. A tiny percentage – like it seems Lierre Keith is – also suffer from eating disorders. Veganism / fruitarianism is, for them, a side effect of their anorexia, not a cause.
The human rights vs. animal rights thing (plant rights is absurd of course, although, interestingly, the idea of environmental rights is gaining prominence and is even enshrined in Ecuadorean law) is plainly a false dilemma. Many social justice activists are vegan and many vegans are social and ecological justice activists. Indeed, many smart people see the two as inseperable; Einstein himself was heard to say that nothing would benefit the world as much as the transitition to a vegetarian diet, and if you look at the contemporary social justice movement, particularly the radical left, you’ll find many, many more vegans than in the general population.
I like you vegan person. You remind me of my Logic 101 teacher.
Plant rights are not in for a good time if vegans consider the idea ridiculous. So, my relative is a overwhelmingly exceptional nutter who believes in plant, animal and human rights and has anorexia. Treslemma! Whether this anorexia business is all about correlation or cause would of course be up for some lengthy fallacy talk over tea. Hopefully you could steer me in the right direction. Mind, I am a terribly disrespectful of false authority ( maybe cos I r not one of those smart people?) and I do like to have hastily generalised numbers such as many, many quantified – just a little bit.
The main problem is that she is not an argument, but a person that I just can’t find anything to feed. It’s really inconvenient. Anyway, I have run out of Logic 102 steam (I switched to needlepoint at that point).
PS: I still prefer vegans to people who eat MacDonalds.
PS:
@Lia: Your sarcasm is dreadful, and just a touch arrogant. If, sadly, that’s the style you feel most comfortable expressing yourself in though, so be it
If we want to be so silly as to give individual plants rights, we should *still* become vegan. The logic is simple: it takes more plants to feed animals to produce meat for one person than it would take to produce vegan food for that person.
http://unpopularveganessays.blogspot.com/2009/06/plant-sentience.html
Anorexia causes veganism. Veganism doesn’t cause anorexia. The former is borne out by discourse analyses of anorexics and observation of the progression of their eating habits. The latter is borne out by the numerous studies on the health and lifestyles of vegetarians and vegans (The Cornell China Study, most prominently).
Quantifying many, many: Apart from the fact that this becomes anecdotally obvious if you hang around in these circles, in a survey of 2 500 self-defined anarchists (you know, those radical lefties) around 8% described themselves as vegans (0.5% in the general population iirc) and 10%+ as vegetarians (2-3% in general pop. iirc).
Good luck with your niche catering issues…But perhaps you’d be better served by finding an article on anorexia nervosa on a psychology website to post your question under
Oh dear. We have resorted to character assassination.Might I point out that your response to @fucken re: alerting the evolutionary biologist know might be viewed by some as a touch sarcastic? Or even blatantly dismissive, pat on the head patron-ism?
Since we have obviously fled the land of logical argument – I will leave the fallacies alone now. No point really.
Perhaps its subjective of me but I find discourse analysis a bit qualitative – if we are now in science land? The China study is definitely interesting and also has many detractors. ie: Harriet Hall of Science-Based Medicine and Chris Masterjohn of The Weston A Price Foundation. Mainly the criticism is based on assertions that relatively limited correlations shown in research data ( which included significant unaccounted for factors) are extrapolated unreasonably. I know it’s not science but I have obviously anecdotal evidence that data stretching researchers generally tend to be data stretching researchers.Or maybe statisticians. At least that’s what the other guys say….
I would love to read more on that far reaching study of self professed anarchists and those global vegan stats. Would you pass on the citations please? I trust it wasn’t done by Rolling Stone Magazine? Wonder how they surveyed places like Sierra Leone and Also, I had no idea that all those radical lefties were anarchists…I thought that some may be communists or some variety of revolutionary socialist. Live and learn, I guess.
Thanks for your concern regarding my catering issues. I do find it a pain in the ass myself. I know that we have kind of been at each other’s throats, but could you not post some cheap, convenience friendly vegan recipes? I don’t think that those starvation sites will have those…Seriously if taking converts over from MacDonald’s is in the vegan/leftist game plan, you really need to take care of that whole cheap, quick and convenient business.
Oh dear. We have resorted to character assassination.Might I point out that your response to @fucken re: alerting the evolutionary biologist know might be viewed by some as a touch sarcastic? Or even blatantly dismissive, pat on the head patron-ism?
Since we have obviously fled the land of logical argument – I will leave the fallacies alone now. No point really.
Perhaps its subjective of me but I find discourse analysis a bit qualitative – if we are now in science land? The China study is definitely interesting and also has many detractors. ie: Harriet Hall of Science-Based Medicine and Chris Masterjohn of The Weston A Price Foundation. Mainly the criticism is based on assertions that relatively limited correlations shown in research data ( which included significant unaccounted for factors) are extrapolated unreasonably. I know it’s not science but I have obviously anecdotal evidence that data stretching researchers generally tend to be data stretching researchers.Or maybe statisticians. At least that’s what the other guys say….
I would love to read more on that far reaching study of self professed anarchists and those global vegan stats. Would you pass on the citations please? I trust it wasn’t done by Rolling Stone Magazine? Wonder how they surveyed places like Sierra Leone? Also, I had no idea that all those radical lefties were anarchists…I thought that some may be communists or some variety of revolutionary socialist. Live and learn, I guess.
Thanks for your concern regarding my catering issues. I do find it a pain in the ass myself. I know that we have kind of been at each other’s throats here, but could you not post some cheap, quick and convenience friendly vegan recipes? I just don’t think that the starvation sites will have those…
@lia: I think you’ll find that, apart from responding in kind to your sarcasm-soaked post (as I did to fucken, clearly a troll), I have actually addressed all the serious (erm, well, not so serious actually) points calmly and rationally.
Discourse analysis seems to yield workable results in psychology. That’s all I’m saying. Anorexics who become vegan is pretty tangential stuff though, I’m sure you’ll agree, and I don’t buy for a minute the feigned seriousness with which you raised it
The China Study has no credible detractors. If you follow the debate between Masterjohn and Campbell (or have any knowledge of what the Weston A Price Foundation is: a fringe lobby group) then it’s almost impossible not to reach the conclusion that Masterjohn is utterly uninformed about nutrition and barely knows how to read basic scientific interpretations of data.
With something as controversial as advocacy of a plant-based diet it is inevitable that (like anthropogenic climate change) you’re always going to have some detractors. It is testimony to the Cornell China Study, however, that even though it concludes that a plant-based diet is healthy, there have been very few critiques and pretty much zero robust ones. Instead, it has been supported – and its core findings reiterated – by many mainstream health organisations and research bodies from around the world (WHO, AMA, etc.)
Even though you’ve now exhaused the Criticisms section of the Wikipedia entry on the Cornell China Study, I’m sure you can go Google for more ‘why the vegan diet is bad, mmmkay’ silliness (hint: search for Tom Billings at Beyond Veg to get a taste for looniness poorly dressed up as science), but rest assured the mainstream vegan (and scientific) community has responded to it all at length, often in published, peer reviewed papers in respectable places like PubMed.org.
Regardless of the China Study, there are sufficient pieces of mutually supporting, independently obtained evidence to soundly support the conclusion that a balanced plant-based diet is perfectly healthy for all people at all ages of life. Denying this flies in the face of both science and common sense.
The anarchist survey was undertaken by a doctoral student in anthropology / political science and some associates…including me. I guess that means I have a pretty sound grasp on its methodology and conclusions
You can do a search for it online; we haven’t made the results public yet as we’re still drafting the report. We didn’t survey Sierra Leone, no. There were many people from surprising places though. Anarchists *are* revolutionary socialists and anarchist communism is a prominent variety of anarchism. In fact, the term ‘libertarian socialist’ is often used instead of ‘anarchist’ by people who are too polite to summon up contentious images of bomb throwers and Sex Pistols fans.
Recipes: http://www.vegweb.com
i doubt a lion feels bad when they kill a buck or whatever, it’s just survival… cool article
@devon: I doubt a bonobo feels bad when it rapes another bonobo or whatever. It’s just survival.
Oh. Look.I made a double entry twitch. I blame all those smiley emoticons. They bugger with my nervous system. That’s Dirty Fighting that.
You forgot to poo poo Harriet Hall of Science-Based Medicine. Is she also some kind of fringe crackpot? Wiki didn’t say…. I always use that resource for arguments that don’t require precise backup. Just make a statement, say many, many or throw in a “reputable” name/organisation/title of some sort and we’ll all take you at your word.
I am sure that it’s entirely possible for veganism to be healthy, my argument was about your argument,really. Also, I am not altogether sure if the rules allow you to cite texts that have not been published yet. But what the hell. Anarchists, hey? What exactly does an associate do? I hear some associates are just recruiters who make coffee. Is it true? The Sierra Leone query actually related to those global vegan stats that you threw about…still love to know where they originated.
I thought that the Sex Pistols were Malcom M’s boyband. You know fashionistas, rather than anarchists. Might just be me though…
Take it or leave it, but any reference to libertarians tends to remind me of that whole “lack of regulation” economic crash of 2008 thing. Super tedious debate that. Just goes round n round n round…Socialism has strong “I got defeated by capitalism last time round” undertones. True or not. Personally, I’d go for something a little more racy, and slightly less tainted.
Ta for the recipe link. That is really helpful. I have a new perspective on vegans and something to feed that odd relative.
Peace, love and lambchops.
@lia: Harriet Hall (who also relies on Weston A Price) is poo-pooed under her own article by Campbell himself. Regardless though, where are the tons of peer reviewed published articles countering the findings of the China study? I’m reminded once more of the climate change denialists and all their ranty, unscientific opinion pieces but hardly any actual peer reviewed, credible publications to their name.
Perhaps, by the way, you need to read what I’m saying more carefully (and, in general, just read more) before resorting to absurd mischaracterisations of libertarianism / socialism. But, like, whatever man, might just be me. Don’t like, get all serious and stuff. I’m on your side.
Passive aggression is a sad thing, wouldn’t you agree?
eating animals by johnathan safran foer…
I have been vegetarian for a few years. I used to live in S.A. but am now in Taiwan. I was so reassuring the difference in attitude to vegetarianism. In S.A. you tell some one your a vegetarian and they almost always assume that your depriving yourself of nutrition and health. Yet in Taiwan there is an recognizable respect when you decline those ‘beef noodles’ responding that you are a vegetarian. Taiwanese people, even meat eaters, have a long standing belief in the health benefits and spiritual benefits of vegetarianism. I’ve even heard of men looking specifically for vegetarian women to marry because of the perceived spiritual benefits.
I suppose actually going out and hunting your own meat is utterly and totally immoral?
I suppose the fact that pretty much most of the hunted beast is used, is equally reprehensible.
Really, how could one wilfully slaughter an animal?
I think all meat-eaters should be given a rifle and sent out into the bush to shoot something they plan on eating. I believe they should be given a knife, and be expected to gut, skin and process all their meat. Personally.
Don’t get me wrong – I love meat. And I love hunting my meat. But I do find it slightly hypocritical when meat eaters squirm at the thought of actually killing their own food. Grow a backbone, seriously.
10 Good Reasons to Hunt your own Meat:
1) Less transport is required to get meat from one place to another.
Humans actually have to WALK and STALK their prey – which is far healthier than driving down to the Woolies for your daily meat “hit”. In fact, having stores of hunted meat in your house means that your trips to the local Woolies will be even fewer and therefore you’ll be saving a lot of fuel. But wait…there’s more: in sum, you’ll be doing the whales a favour too by not emitting more carbon fumes into the atmosphere.
2) Less meat is wasted, because you pay for the WHOLE animal and would therefore be more inclined to use all of it.
3) Less energy is expended when processing one animal.
4) An average impala can supply a family of 3 of 4 with enough meat for at least 3-4 months.
5) Joanna Soap would probably become a vegan if she had to shoot her own meat, and so would her floppy-haired other half.
6) The animal has better quality of life, i.e. it roams freely, grazes naturally and reproduces naturally too. Until of course, you arrive with .375 H&H.
7) The animal also has a better chance of not landing up in a pot than the little pink piggy does of becoming somebody’s breakfast.
9) Venison is free from antibiotics and steroids and is therefore healthier to eat. It also contains substantially less fat than beef and lamb. That’s good news for all the fatties out there…bad news for Medical Aids though.
10) And at least your conscience can be clear of mass, faceless slaughter. There is something COMPARATIVELY noble about standing face-to-face with a long-lashed impala or eland knowing that you’re going to kill it. It is pure cowardice, to simply turn a blind eye to the conveyer belt of fear and suffering that is the meat cycle of society.
I can already hear the far-off booming sound of dissent from animal rights activists, anti-gun lobbyists, vegans, meat-eaters and everybody with a horse to jump on.
So be it.
@Frankie: It would certainly be a much healthier and more ethical way of doing things. In fact, I encourage it…because I’m pretty sure 99% of people who tried gutting and skinning freshly killed bush meat would end up vegan
I must take you up on one point though: for all your macho swagger, isn’t hunting an impala with a gun about as noble and manly as beating up a seven year old girl and stealing her lunch?
Seriously, if it’s tooth and claw you want, go naked after your prey wielding only a rock. Otherwise your romantic appeals to the ethical and health advantages of the natural life and your implied disdain of modern technology facilitating meat production ring – at the very least – a bit hollow
PS: You do hunt *ALL* your own meat, right? Oh, and I suppose you milk wild goats too.
@aragorn I am sorry I am only getting back to you this late, but I need to respond. The comparison between what animals undergo when they are treated unfairly and what slaves underwent when they were is not a parallel that can be made. Nowhere in nature do animals take slaves and treat them in that fashion yet the killing and eating of other animals is everywhere. Death and the consumption of the flesh on an animal lower on the food chain is natural. Slavery is not. The situations are not the same at all.
Veganism has arisen from a false human ethic which deems that suffering and death are in some way unnatural and are to be prevented, whereas the truth is both are very much a part of any normal, functioning natural eco-system. It is unnatural to attempt to change the entire food chain and go against what evolution has developed over billions of years. Ultimately the only way we can save the earth is to accept nature for what it is and to introduce more ecologically friendly systems for farming our meat. Stopping eating animals on the grounds that it is in some way lessening us as people can not possibly be the answer and in the long run will probably weaken our connection to the nature of which we are very much a part.
@Warren: I think you’re confusing the issue. My point was a simple one: if slavery entails a certain relationship between parties who each possess certain criteria, and if at least some non-human animals can be said to possess said criteria, then a relationship of slavery may exist between humans and non-humans. Given this, we can then draw sound parallels between historical slavery abolitionists and modern animal exploitation abolitionists.
Now, I’m not sure what this fact has to do with your appeal to nature / precedent; indeed it appears you are falsely conflating two things. At the very best, you could argue that Frankie is not enslaving animals. As for the rest of the CAFO-supporters (i.e. most meat eaters), how is our confined industrial production of livestock NOT like slavery?
On the subject of appeals to what’s ‘natural’, forced sex and murder everywhere in nature too: does this fact offer a defence of either when it happens between humans? Even if we are going to look to nature for suggestions of what’s ‘natural’, we should at least do it consistently, looking also at comparative anatomy, primate behaviour, etc. The conclusions in these fields strongly support veganism or near-veganism.
The ONLY way we can save the Earth is to farm meat in a more friendly way? Are you sure that’s the ONLY way? Seems like a false dilemma to me. After all, can we really say that the hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indian veggies throughout history been out of touch with nature for that long?
Here’s a good argument, written in response to Lierre Keith, against your appeal to the naturalness of suffering and death: http://www.vegetarianmyth.com/node/14
PS: There’s no higher and lower on the food chain anymore; ecologists now talk about stuff like trophic cascades, not about hierarchies.
@Warren: This might be a more relevant read than the previous link: http://permavegan.blogspot.com/2010/03/facing-death-rebuttal-to-chapter-one-of.html
@Aragorn
glad you found some sense in my previous statement.
I also hunt with a bow and arrow. You might have noted that on some of those rock paintings, the dudes had bows and arrows too? I do have to draw the line at running after a bokkie in the nick. I value my lily-white hide too much. Sunburn is not my friend.
I disagree. Hunting anything with a rifle is not tantamount to picking on little kids and stealing their lunch…I’m not sure you’ve actually tried it stalking an animal to within shooting distance? Mr and Mrs Impala are keen observers, with extremely attuned senses of smell and hearing. They’re at home, living out their daily battles with Mother Nature, while Frankie and her (HER, for I am female) clan are regular city dwellers, more attuned to seeking out potential mugging scenarios than actually hunting a wild animal.
Romantic or not, hunted venison IS the primary source of meat in my household.
I don’t milk wild goats, no. And I don’t have a problem with milking domesticated ones either…milking isn’t the issue.
Neither is technology.
For me the issue is the ATTITUDE that defending animal rights means curbing legitimate hunting, while large-scale slaughter for mass consumption is seen as less reprehensible. For me the issue is that most urban carnivores writhe in horror at the thought of taking an animal’s life when one is face-to-face with it.
On every level of thinking, there are degrees on which people of similar opinions disagree – but that’s becoming a bit too academic for this Thursday morning. Not everybody will be satisfied all of the time. It’s important though, to look everywhere for logic and then to finally assimilate it into something that rings true for us as individuals. Now THAT’S romantic! :p
Do you live completely, permanently by all your standards and demands? Or do you, like most of us, try to do right as often as possible? Because if you do live in a world where everything always works according to your standards, then you must be completely self-actualised, without further ideals. In that case I have to congratulate you, because you surely have reached the zenith of your existence.
But I must also conclude that we’re probably not living on the same planet.
@Frankie: “For me the issue is the ATTITUDE that defending animal rights means curbing legitimate hunting, while large-scale slaughter for mass consumption is seen as less reprehensible.”
I certainly don’t share that attitude (although I do morally disagree with hunting). Perhaps it’s a simple case of displacement: it’s much easier to fight against fur (which few people wear) or hunting (which few people do) than against leather and meat, which for most people would involve massive lifestyle changes.
Note that animal RIGHTS is always 100% vegan. What you regard as hypocritical is the animal WELFARE movement, a bunch of meat-eating furrier haters who, yes, are hypocrites.
You asked, “Do you live completely, permanently by all your standards and demands?”
Of course not. But I try my best to remain honest and open and to change when I feel I should. See my very first comment to Daniel’s post for an elaboration of this point.
@Aragorn (again)
Alrighty then…two questions:
a) On what grounds do you disagree with hunting?
b) What is your ideal resolution to this particular expression of (wo/)man’s bloodlust? A few lines, if you have the time, would suffice.
Go Frankie!
The only trouble with hunting – or other free range meat supplies – is that it is not a a sustainable source of meat if, say, the whole population of this country were to take it up.
As grotesque as the meat industry is, the economies of scale allow poor(er) people to eat meat. Good luck with stopping that particular runaway train …
lifelong vegetarian here! Reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer and I have to say keep up the good work!
You are totally contributing to the environment with your behavior. If only everyone could afford to do so, then maybe there would be a sort of passive revolution…
I can dream…
Hmm, nothing like a bit of discourse on to meat or not to meat to get the creative juices flowing.
Nothing wrong with vegans or vegetarians or whatever. Had a great vegan meal at a vegan friends last night, didnt miss the meat, artichokes are cool!
But we really do need to moderate our meat intakes and we do need to only score meat from where we know its not stuffing things up, like avoiding meat from feedlots and all that. I love winter cos theres venison, meat whacked from a bolt out of the blue, didnt even know it was dead, no hormones, grass feed, sustainably reared and all that good stuff. Not perfect but a lot better than most meat.
But a mcdoodles burger? Come on people, that is not food. Its built in planetary cruelty to ecosystems. Ignore this and you are a fuckhead, and here i must of course include the fuckheads who call themselves such.
As much as we must dislike being preached to, by being proselytised to by christians (why is it always xtians and not jews and muslims?) and all, I really find most vegetarians are not big preachers. Sure, we have all had some good discussions with vegans and all but its only the recently converted holy roller vegans who are a pain in the gat. A chat around the discourse of meat eating gets us to question the whos, whys and whats of our lives and diets and makes us better, more concious people. So get real on this score.
But, to get to my roundabout point – moderation good, badly sourced meat, veg, fish, you name it – BAD. Enjoy the bounty of the planet but if you want to mash up my world to feed your greed, well china, you got to go through me first and I challenge you to do that. Cos I will reach down your throat and tear your fucking heart out and eat it, with deep love. We cannot let people just do this and skeem its okay, or cool or macho or whatever. It is not.
And one final thing. There ought to be a licence to eat meat. If you can raise a chicken from an egg, and then slag it and then dress it and then cook and eat it, then you get the licence for chicken. Same for a cow, pig, sheep. Not able to raise and kill your meat, no licence, no eaty meaty matey. End of saga. Lots of meat eaters drop off map.
Yawellnofine. Thats my chirp for now. And so it goes…..
@ Aragorn
That’s exactly what I meant: Your description equates all human/animal relations like we are somehow seperate entities. You remove humanity from the natural order instead of equating our actions with other animal/animal situations. Your entire debate rests on humans no longer fitting in to the natural order, yet you call constantly for veganism as a healthier, more natural alternative.
The biggest mistake with this argument is the belief that we as humans are above anything else. That we are in some way more important than the other creatures on our planet. You may argue that it is because of a shared empathy with these other animals that you want to not eat them, but the fact is simply that you wish to act as other. You see your behaviour as being morally superior, yet in fact it is divorcing you from natural order and thereby ironically distancing you from the very thing that makes you human – your existance as a earthly lifeforce and your interconnectedness with the other animals.
This theory is backed up by your belief that death and suffering is to be avoided when in fact death and suffering are part and parcel of being alive. The further you remove yourself from this, the more you wrap yourself up in your morals ( escaping the truth that even when you harvest crops you kill millions of insects which are living on the fruit, or laying eggs in the husks) the less you will be human and therefore the less likely you will to understand your place on this earth.
When I suggest that the only way forward is to continue eating meat, and thereby enforcing a better system of agriculture I am wrong. There is one other alternative. You could kill 5.5-billion humans right now. What we need to do to move forward is to encourage family planning and smaller populations while trying to keep our agricultural practices as ecologically friendly as possible.
Your continued insistence that slavery is like eating meat is only relevant in a world conceived of in this “humans greater than animals” scenario. Humanity did not evolve to slavery, we do not have a slavery organ, or an extra whip wielding arm. We do however have teeth designed specifically for eating meat and a digestive tract more than capable of handling it. Humans are animals. We are expected, as our part of a balanced ecological process, to eat meat. We should continue to do it. The only thing we need to stop is doing it in the manner in which we are doing it and that is an issue related to our vastly over-inflated population.
Additionally you can not use the examples of previous cultures which have developed not eating meat for spiritual or religious reasons to back up the facts based on whether one should give up meet for moral or spiritual reasons. It’s like saying. Oh well for millions of years people have smoked opium therefore we should all smoke opium cause look at these cultures that have done it and thrived.
@Warren: I’m not saying we are separate from nature. I’m just saying that we have a capacity for ethical thought that, given the questions we ask when confronted with ethical situations (e.g. can a being suffer?), should rightly be extended to non-human animals.
Let’s look at it more simply:
1: People can suffer.
2: Suffering is not preferable for most people.
3: I do not like causing suffering to people.
4: If suffering of people thus occurs or is preventable due to my actions, I should act accordingly.
5: Animals can suffer….
Can you tell me at which point you disagree with the chain of thought?
That is *all* I’m saying, by the way. I’m not saying that the capacity to develop ethical relationships with the world makes us morally superior or separates us from nature, simply that it makes us moral agents.
I agree that death and suffering are part of being alive. It does not follow, however, that causing death and suffering is morally permissible. If you believe that it is morally permissible, then you need to decide whether it’s always morally permissible (i.e. rape and pillage and slavery and whatever else you can imagine is fine) or only sometimes morally permissible (i.e. slavery is okay but rape is bad). If you agree with the latter position, you need to justify whatever distinction you make between morally permissible acts of causing suffering and death and morally impermissible acts of causing suffering and death.
On the subject of the false dilemma you reiterate (better meat production oriented agriculture or doom), you’ll have to demonstrate to me – using data – why a vegan, organic, locally produced solution would not do even better in almost all places for almost all people (I’m preempting an appeal to the Inuit or Bushmen here
Your point that a comparison of slavery and animal exploitation is only valid if one accepts that humans are greater than animals makes no sense to me. Perhaps you can explain it a bit more clearly. In the meantime, I do follow that you’re making a distinction based on the fact that slavery is a social convention whereas the drive to eat meat is natural; however, I do not regard this as sufficient grounds to invalidate the analogy. After all, many analogies operate in an identical way, comparing something natural to something socially constructed.
An appeal to evolutionary biology needs to consider that our closest evolutionary cousins – the great apes – are largely herbivorous, with only slight lapses into insectivorism and a small amount of meat consumption (3% of diet by mass in chimp populations) for purposes of social demonstration (not nutrient intake). It should also consider that our dentition best resembles that of plant-eaters, as does our long digestive tract. Feel free to undertake your own research in this regard.
The idea that we’re ‘expected’ to eat meat in order to sustain our role in a balanced ecosystem does seem to fly in the face of reason a bit when you consider what a meat and dairy-based diet produced for 6.5 billion + people in a massified industrial society has done to the natural world. If you wish to appeal to nature in this regard, you’re going to need to explain why a plant-based diet wouldn’t more optimally sustain balanced ecosystems, given that it has a much smaller production footprint (I have the stats – if you want to debate this point, let’s see yours) and would merely entail a shuffling around of the trophic cascade(s) we participate in. It seems you do accept some of this though; you simply take the slightly misanthropic tack of arguing for continued meat production at the expense of a large percentage of the global population, whereas I argue (as do several major research bodies) that a vegan diet (done properly, of course) can sustain the current global population.
Finally, although you’ve appealed to precedent several times in making your case, you accuse me of doing likewise. Note, however, that in referring to previous vegan / vegetarian cultures I’m not making a proscriptive case (we *should* not eat meat) but simply offering supporting data for a much simpler case: that we *can* live just fine on a meat and dairy-free diet.
just a quick one… my own unplanned research….. i am a natural vegetarian ..my entire life. just always thought it was groce. my parents tried to encourage meat eating as they thought they should…but gave up soon.
so my research… apparently vego girls pussy tastes better than meat eating ones… smells better too… and boys …i am yet to taste a vego…then i can compare… where is my vego husband???
Vegans tend to be skinny little runts with lank greasy hair. Their girls waifish, and unwashed. it always amazes me how those who would argue for vegan diets as being equal to those of meat eaters, are never capable of the physical feats of their meat eating brothers and sisters. Off the top of my head I struggle to think of any vegan athletes. Despite having a population of over a billion India is simply incapable of producing the sporting achievements they should with a population of that size. And history supports us. Since we started eating regular meat, humans have consistently grown taller, stronger, and faster with every generation.
As for your pussy eating problem @ninja meat has nothing to do with it. Cleanliness does. I have eaten out rank smelling vegans and pristine meat eaters and for the most part cleanliness is the preserve of the sector of society that eats meat (hippies being notoriously unwashed).
I am in full support of @warren. We humans are part of a natural system. We think we are above it and so need to help nature to balance itself, to keep nature the way it is, but the fact is we don’t. Keeping nature the way it is, sustaining the ecosystem without change, flies in the face of evolution and natural order. In the end we can do what we like, the earth will balance us for itself. It will decimate us will disease and alter our ecosystem until we are incapable of life. What terrifies us is not that the earth will not go on, but that it will not go on in such a way as we can still continue to live on it. How can we be so selfish as to believe we should halt the advancement of nature just for our own benefits. Accept suffering, accept death, and accept your connection to a planet that has survived far more ecologically traumatic times than now.
I encourage anyone who is interested in disproving Matt’s erroneous assertion to research the matter for themselves by Googling ‘vegan fitness’. Carl Lewis would love your comment
As for meat eating and cleanliness…whew…You’ve got to be vegan to know how bad meat eaters smell
Do Vegan girls swallow?
P.S: Why would we google a specific phrase designed to take us to vegan propaganda? I think it would be much easier to simply look up Aragorn on Facebook and piss ourselves laughing at how he exactly matches my description of vegans.
Oh and upon further research I discover that Carl Lewis was only a Vegan during his later career, after his body had used all the benefits of meat to grow to his height, develop his muscle density etc. Additionally he freely admits that the whole time he was a vegan he was on performance enhancers which are banned today, but weren’t at the time. Is that Vegan? He was on these performance enhancers, which today’s athletes are not allowed and still couldn’t run as fast as Bolt, Gay or Dix. Try again.
@Matt: Given that I’m more optimistic than you about the average human being’s ability to research things for themselves (and distinguish propaganda from peer-reviewed published papers
, I welcome people to find me on Facebook. My profile is located at: http://www.facebook.com/aragorn23
Be sure to look through my friends list if you want to get an idea of how diverse in mind, body and interests us vegans are
Matt, there is no basis in nutritional science for arguing against a vegan diet for athletes: a balanced vegan diet will give you everything you need to perform at your peak, as world renowned vegan athletes like ultra-marathoner Scott Jureck and Iron Man Brendan Brazier (who *were/are* vegan at the height of their careers) will tell you.
If anyone is interested in Carl Lewis’s views on veganism, I’d suggest searching Youtube for one of his video discussions on the subject.
Out of interest, here’s a brief list of notable vegan athletes (you will find many, many more if you can get over your fear of Google):
Ridgely Abele
Winner of eight national championships in karate
Surya Bonaly
Olympic figure skating champion
Brendan Brazier
Professional Ironman triathlete
Peter Burwash
Davis Cup winner and professional tennis star
Andreas Cahling
Swedish champion bodybuilder, Olympic gold medallist in the ski jump
Chris Campbell
Olympic wrestling champion
Molly Cameron
Cyclist
Robert Cheeke
*BODYBUILDER!*
Nicky Cole
First woman to walk to the North Pole
Mac Danzig
Mixed martial arts champion
Ruth Heidrich
Six-time Ironwoman, USA track and field Master’s champion
Keith Holmes
World-champion middleweight boxer
Desmond Howard
Professional football star, Heisman trophy winner
Peter Hussing
European super heavy-weight boxing champion
Scott Jurek
Ultramarathoner, Course Record Holder at Badwater and Western States
Debbie Lawrence
World record holder, women’s 5K racewalk
Sixto Linares
World record holder, 24-hour triathlon
Mike Mahler
Vegan strength coach and former Iron Man
Cheryl Marek and Estelle Gray
World record holders, cross-country tandem cycling
Ingra Manecki
World champion discus thrower
Bill Manetti
Power-lifting champion
Ben Matthews
U.S. Master’s marathon champion
Dan Millman
World champion gymnast
Martina Navratilova
Champion tennis player
Paavo Nurmi
Long-distance runner, winner of nine Olympic medals and 20 world records
Bill Pickering
World record-holding swimmer
Stan Price
World weightlifting record holder, bench press
Murray Rose
Swimmer, winner of many Olympic gold medals and world records
John Salley
NBA basketball player
Dave Scott
Six-time winner of the Ironman triathlon
Art Still
Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs MVP defensive end, Kansas City Chiefs Hall of Fame
Tarryn Terel
Wrestler
Jane Wetzel
U.S. National marathon champion
Charlene Wong Williams
Olympic champion figure skater
Never heard of any of those guys. 30 or so in the history of competitive sport? how many are vegans now, but weren’t when competing, and how many ate meat when they were growing up? How many ate meat when prepping for competition and how many used performance enhancers? *yawn* 30 is not an impressive number. I can’t list all the athletes who ate meat while they performed. There is not enough server space.
I’m not arguing for vegan athleticism being a common phenomenon (how would it be, given our cultural norms?) but rather that it is distinctly *possible*.
You missed the crucial point I made, which I will now repeat: there is no basis in nutritional science for arguing against a vegan diet for athletes: a balanced vegan diet will give you everything you need to perform at your peak.
Feel free to try debate that point with sound nutritional science.
Now that scientists have shown plants, think and remember, what the hell are you guys going to eat?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10598926
@Matt: While it is true that plants have fascinating, complex stimulus feedback systems, modern science knows that these are not sufficient to give rise to consciousness, just as similar systems in spermatozoa do not imply spermatozoon sentience. What plants and spermatozoa both lack in this regard are the types of complex nervous systems (including the limbic system) that are understood to give rise to sentience wherever we see it expressed in life on Earth.
The confusion arises when the assumption is made that such plant behavior is caused by the plants subjectively experiencing the world through sense data rather than by insentient hormonal, electrical, mechanical, and chemical processes.
Evolutionary biology also weighs in here: being, by any reasonable measure, immobile, plants lack a good evolutionary reason for having developed a subjective experience of themselves in the world.
Knowing all this, we can then apply the scientific principle of parsimony, which forces us to conclude that because we have no good reason for mistaking the kinds of hormonal, electrical and chemical responses exhibited by plants as indicators of any degree of sentience, it is highly unlikely that they are.
That all said, I’ll humour you for a minute: let’s assume that what a layperson’s article on the BBC says holds more weight than what plant biologists say. Let’s even assume that plants are AS conscious as animals. Assuming this absurdity to be true, veganism would STILL be the most ethical diet.
Why? Because you kill MORE plants in producing meat (livestock has to eat, remember?) than if you ate the plants directly. This is explained further in the following great article on the unscientific notion of plant sentience: http://unpopularveganessays.blogspot.com/2009/06/plant-sentience.html
Basically because the life does not experience the world in the same way as you, it’s okay to kill it? I guess that explains why you haven’t killed yourself yet because of the fact that your immune system destroys billions of bacteria daily. Or maybe you haven’t bitten the bullet because you’re a hypocrit?
You say that plant nervous systems are less evolved than ours and that therefore they are not granted the same rights as other life forms. Isn’t it true to say that animals have less evolved nervous systems too? Fish for example are unable to feel pain in the same way as we do, and scientists are divided on whether they are even aware of their own existence. Where do we draw the line?
Where do you stand on killing mosquitos to prevent people dying of malaria? Just where does the line get drawn for you as to which living entities are entitled to “rights” and which are not?
It seems to me that you have arbitrarily drawn a line somewhere which says, life forms which are similar to us deserve respect but those which are not do not.
It all goes back to the fact that we are tied into the ecological cycles and need to recognise that. Any attempt to remove ourselves from our proper role in nature is unnatural? Isn’t it so?
@Blaasmaas: That’s a simple reductio ad absurdum that does nothing to challenge the logic of the vegan lifestyle: that it is possible to live in a way that causes *less* suffering.
It also appears as though you didn’t fully read my very first comment in response to Daniel’s article – I address the tired old ‘nobody is perfect therefore vegans are hypocrites’ argument in detail therein.
The line is not a line at all but a continuum.
Appeals to nature (ecological cycles and all that) were also addressed in my original comment; perhaps you should read that before repeating arguments that have already been answered?
Actually, in case you’re not bothered, here’s what I said:
“And sure, we all produce waste and nobody will ever be perfect; that’s no excuse not to try and step as lightly on the Earth and each other as possible, or to fairly and honestly change in the face of new information about our negative impacts on the broader biocommunity.”
Mr Friedman wrote: “I just don’t think it’s productive to be self-righteous, to divide the world up into good guys and bad as if we’re extras in a Hollywood movie.”
Isn’t it just as counterproductive to stamp all vegans as judgemental and self-righteous?
I say – eat ‘em all….including the hippies…thith thith..thith..thith
@aragorn Are you planning on having children? If you are, then would you consider yourself to be stepping as lightly as possibly on the earth? Surely stepping as lightly as possible would mean that you would want to have as few children as possible, with the ideal being zero. But that’s not generally the vegan way, probably because prophylactics cost a lot of money for people who make a living out of selling tie-dyed t-shirts at the flea market, or maybe it’s because they damage the earth?
@blaasmaas Agree with everything you say. He still hasn’t answered where the line is drawn and which lifeforms are to be treated with respect and which can be wholesale slaughtered. I would like to know where he stands on the maleria mosquitos as well.
@Matt: I’m amused by your diversionary approach; you thumbsuck a poor argument, I respond and, instead of engaging my response, you just move on to the next lame thumbsuck.
No, I do not plan to have children. I might very well adopt at some point though. Your mischaracterisation of vegans as hippies and hippies as having lots of children rings pretty false, by the way.
I find it odd that you cannot fathom my position on where ‘the line’ is drawn; I’ve even repeated it so it’s easy to find
Nevertheless, here goes: if a lion attacks me in the wild, I will defend myself. Same with mosquitoes. It does not follow from this appeal to necessary self defense, however, that I can farm and eat animals, which is just a preference, not a necessity (unless you’re an Eskimo or a Bushman).
I don’t really give a shit whether you are carnivore, veggi or vegan.
What bothers me is dim witted idiots who clog up these comments columns with stupid outbursts of crap.
Thank you to:
Daniel
Aragorn
Frankie
Warren
Chris
Wisedom
(anyone else with a brain they are using)
for a great intellectual read.
To others with only opinions and nothing to contribute. Go donate yourself to an abattoir, im sure you would be of more use as animal fodder.
Hi EvylShnukums, long time no see and good to see you here…
@Aragorn as usual you argue with finesse unappreciated by your audience and your opposition. While you and I still have some unresolved debates, I hardly think this one presented you with very much of a challenge, although I have to say I’d like to see lia without the levity…
Two observations: Firstly I am amazed at the degree to which so many people will complain about vegan enthusiasm while at the same time demonstrating an almost obsessive desire to outlaw veganism. Secondly I am constantly amazed that people who have severely limited understanding of both logic and the subject matter at hand still insist on engaging in intellectual debate on a discussion forum.
Lastly I wish I had been involved earlier here, some of the exchanges were quite bracing…
Its amzing how the veggie debates get the juices flowing, dont they? Its not just here, its all over the net – if there is a debate on to veg or not to veg out come the hardcorecarnivores and rant and rave and talk all kinds of kak because they are threatened to hell and gone. And then what? The say just about nothing, except that vegetarians and anyone who associates with them or likes them or has vegetarian friends is a fucking tie dyed hippie dopehead blort.
I mean comon people lets pick up the debate a few notches. I think some of the comments from aragorn and others are well considered, well constructed but I just wonder whether all of the good points are just lost on the vleiskoppe.
Maybe there is something else going on. Mad cow disease? The vleiskoppe are just getting more stupid than they were born it appears.
Okay ouens. Life is a continuum. You dont have to be a Jain to be a vegetarian. You dont have to apologise to a carrot when you eat it for hurting its feelings. Those are dof sentiments and even doffer debating points.
Lets be real. The worlds rising meat consumption is fed by vast tracts of soy monocultures grown across the Brazilian Cerrado, the Amazon, the Pampas and other threatened areas. Most of this soy is genetically engineered to resist weed killers that in turn kill bugs, frogs, fish you name it. Where soy is not grown corn (mielies ouens) are grown to feed the cows. Your cows dont come from green grassy pastures, they come from shit filled feedlots. And that is just the start to the industrial disaster that is the biggest single impact on our planetary ecosystems.
So sure, eat a bit of meat. But remember when you eat it you are killing the earth, bit by bit. So if you must eat it, do it in moderation. Or the mad cow disease will come and make you more stupid than you are already are…….
Oh, sorry, thats already happening…….
hanibals mom must be really proud – of her dog.
The reason these debates become so intense is that buried beneath the Vegan debate is a smugness. A certain appeal to moral superiority. The vegans begin these debates with the belief that they are the morally and intellectually superior ones; the only people who have the solution to our current decimation of our planet. This is quite simply not the case, yet that smugness comes through and annoys those who believe in an alternative.
If we meat eaters weren’t being told that we smell bad and that we would need to become a vegan in order to dig ourselves out of our vile caves of throwback behaviour, then I feel we might be a little more tractable.
I find myself adopting the same position when I argue for Atheism. I get this self-righteous attitude that I have knowledge which somehow the religious are not privy to, and I have to fight myself not to adopt it. When there are no concrete answers we must all try to be a little less smug in our arguments and that might help our opponents to understand us a little more logically.
Personally I don’t have a problem with the Vegan lifestyle and I am glad that some people are at least considering options when it comes to how we are to save our planet, but what I do have a problem with is the Vegans approaching their solution as being the only one available.
As I clearly stated before. I believe that the long term solution is not to ignore our natural desires to eat meat. It is not to divorce ourselves from our natural and primal needs. It is instead though to carefully manage our populations so that we can continue to live on this planet and use all of it’s resources in a sustainable manner. If there were only a few million humans on earth we could eat meat, tap oil wells and even mine for ores without completely altering our environment. And as there is another solution I don’t think vegans should automatically damn anyone who wants to eat meat. Personally I love beef, pork, chicken and many other types of meat, but I have no children and have no intention having any. Am I truly responsible for the end of the world as we know it? Probably not.
@Warren: Thanks, firstly, for your constructive contribution to this discussion. If only some of the other commenters exercised similar temperance.
Just because people perceive smugness doesn’t mean it’s there. In fact it might be that they’re just projecting the cognitive dissonance emerging from their own minds onto other forces, instead of accepting that they themselves are already aware of the ‘moral superiority’ of eschewing the meat.
In other words, it’s easier to ignore judgement if you think it’s coming from someone else than if you realise it’s coming from you. Yes, I know that sounds odd (perhaps even smug
), but interestingly enough this cognitive dissonance is the subject of a brand new study by Dr. Steve Loughnan from the University of Kent, which I hope you will Google.
I certainly don’t feel that vegans have the solution to the decimation of our planet. In fact I criticize this view quite heavily in places: http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/the-politics-of-liberation/
I maintain that your assertion not to ignore ‘natural desires’ is problematic because it implies, by extension, the legitimacy of various other ‘natural desires’ that we rightly regard as abhorrent (rape, for example), thus ignoring the entire subject of ethics, something which *could* accurately be regarded as something emerging from nature.
I’m not sure not having children redeems you in any way, especially not if you’re a relatively entitled westerner with 10x the footprint of an entire Indian family. Are you solely responsible? Of course not. Are you partly responsible? Yes, to the same degree that anyone flicking a cigarette butt out of their car window is partly responsible for the toxification of groundwater.
Is it a matter of wrong or right, or a variable of these extremes? These kinds of discussions always crop up in different areas of life. Can they be rooted in a simpler conflict?
There has always been choice. As long as you have it you will encounter opposite forces in your world view. Expansion – Contraction, Resistance – Agression etc. As long as you have these you will have growth, in many forms. Which way YOU grow is your choice as a free agent of this world and the final outcome of the world is a sum of all it’s parts which is here, now, today.
What is the world you are making?
Personally I don’t feel that debating these facts and hypothesis will solve these conflicts. I feel that if we focus more on a practical approach, showing each other how we are creating our own version of a better life for the world around us and appreciate that the other person is charged with a desire similar to our own, then we can begin to enjoy less conflict and more ongoing solutions using our apposing forces to identify and create them.
Most importantly the way it stems is that we need to recognize that most other people want life to be better too. Yes systems through history have given us more differences to deal with but that will always be an ongoing trend. Finding things in common with people is what gives you power and makes you valuable to the conscious world. Anything else is really fence sitting if you think about it.
Good points Max the man.
Remember the big picture and work towards a mutually beneficial outcome in the end game….whatever that may be!
@Frank Max: Nicely said.
I like how John Davis of the International Vegetarian Union sees it: http://www.vegsource.com/john-davis/are-you-a-positive-or-a-negative-vegn.html
He talks about negative veganism, defining yourself in opposition to something, as less useful than positive veganism, leading by example and defining yourself by what you *do*.
If, by the way, anyone doesn’t fully understand the animal rights position, this excellent summary by Dr Tom Regan might prove worthwhile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5RRLBC1S3w
@wisedom : For sure, big picture is the important thing, and even that is very much of an individual thing. The way we see the big picture can also change our stress levels, eating habits and the rest of our physiological systems. And again the similarities in each other are often easier to see through the big picture, that’s why religions were able to form and other forms of organized perception of the world. Now days it looks like the big picture is becoming more of an individualized kind of arrangement because the world and it’s location in the larger mysterious universe is far better understood by individuals than in the past. I vote for everyone to have their own big picture that works up a good harmonic chord so that we can get this ship flying straight yo.
@Aragorn: Re: “http://www.vegsource.com/john-davis/are-you-a-positive-or-a-negative-vegn.html” – I like that idea of doing your own thing without much attention on what we are “not doing”. That’s cool, can work for anyone seeking to change their own habits in any area of consumption or just plain old creativity. That’s good advice in practical form.
Also liked the video that emphasizes our similarities with animals, for me it was an eye opener to a different way of thinking and helped me understand something new.
It’s incredible how a small change in attitude and genuinely respecting another person/animals point of view can lift the stress of our convictions, opening the way for a solution to fill the void. If people can unite with the world around them in an open way, respecting other life despite the differences, then a whole lot of organizational and social problems could see an improved future. Why?
As soon as masses of living organisms unite, not through what they are or what their preferences are but through a common sense of trust and respect for others life even when they don’t always agree, they soon become a powerful mass that can change the face of history.
@Aragorn I have considered cognitive dissonance in my argument before, but no I believe in this case I know where the sense of smugness comes from. You yourself have acknowledged the presence of negative veganism, which could also be described as being a type of thinking where you find youself believeing your opinions to be superior. The negative stereotypes of meat eaters put forward on this very forum – they smell etc – all adds to that sense of smugness and superiority and has little to do with cognitive dissonance. As I explained I struggle to not adopt that same smugness when faced with the very religious. I think it’s something the vegan argument could consider at least before brushing it off as a failure in the meat eater. I genuinely do not believe eating meat to be inherently destructive.
Secondly the comparison of eating meat as being natural to rape as being natural is not a natural link. The natural desire in that case is procreation, not rape. Similarly we should kill animals to eat them, not simply to kill them. Certainly killing without purpose is as abhorrent as rape, but this doesn’t remove the fundemental basis that both procreation and eating meat are natural processes for which we have been developed.
While we are on the subject of studies, recent papers published have suggested that those who consider themselves green, or actively changing their behaviours to benefit the planet are often worse offenders when it comes to the planets destruction. Having absolved themselves of guilt they do subtle things like leave lights on longer, run showers for longer etc. The same situation is observed when people on a diet cheat – they do so to a level worse than their original eating pattern.
My proposal that if each human chose to have no children or one child per couple for the next few generations certainly does not absolve me of any destruction caused, but then neither does simply giving up meat. We are talking about long term solutions here and I believe that a far more natural and balanced solution long term would be for humanity to manage its populations. If I don’t have my 2 children, then in just five generations I have (assuming 2 children per child) prevented resource consumption by 62 people and 126 in six generations. Surely you not eating meat wouldn’t have that benefit five generations from now?
@Warren: Sure, negative veganism also plays a role, but it shouldn’t serve as merely another excuse to continue your habits, ala ‘I’m not gonna change cos the vegans keep hassling me.’
I think you misunderstand my analogy: I’m not arguing that anything natural is fine as long as there’s a reason, but rather that we cannot argue that something is fine simply because it appears in nature, as rape (also used for domination, not just procreation) does.
You state: “I genuinely do not believe eating meat to be inherently destructive.”
Please defend that statement. Your appeal to future generations simplifies population dynamics tremendously and also implies timeframes that are entirely unrealistic, given the ecological problems.
I’m interested in the recent papers on self-considered greenies being the worst environmental offenders; this certainly doesn’t apply to any ecologically-minded people I know, and certainly not to the majority of vegans.
Simply giving up meat will not magically save the world, no. Here’s an excerpt from the editorial of the January 2010 Vegan Society newsletter that shows how many vegans feel:
“If we are to be responsible participants in the unfolding of life in the universe, we need stop just calling ourselves vegans and start calling ourselves environmentalists and social justice activists too.
In other words, instead of spending our time comfortably consuming non-GM soy burgers, vegan cheese and raw food macca smoothies, as if this will somehow magically suffice to save us from impending ecological catastrophe (with all the implications that has for humans and animals alike), we need to work to make drastic changes to every aspect of our lifestyles – food production is not the only thing killing the planet! We also need to summon up the courage to analyse the situation in which we find ourselves carefully and honestly, and decide, together, how we will change it.
So let’s stop believing the empty rhetoric of the vegan lifestylist contingent – that ‘the world is vegan if we want it to be’ – and start the urgent work of recreating a world, in our minds, our gardens, our communities and in the streets, in workshops, in massive marches and perhaps even under cover of night, that reflects all that is good about our species. With your help, and if we do not hesitate, perhaps we might yet succeed!”
Why are meat eaters so defensive when they meet a vegan? Guilt? Even if you don’t care a stuff about the agony suffered by animals in modern intensive “farming”, it s a fact that my vegetarian shit smells a whole lot sweeter and healthier than yours, so there.