Entries tagged Opinion
I was approached by the folks over at OpposingViews.com to weigh in on the debate over whether or not animals should have the same rights as people. What follows below is the quick essay I submitted to them. You can find the full debate here if their site starts working correctly..there have been transient failures all weekend.
In one episode of the 1980s absurd British sitcom “The Young Ones,” Neil, the hippie of the group, famously quipped “vegetable rights and peace!” comically upping his hippie cred into the stratosphere. Hippies, of course, are presumed to be for rights for all kinds of things: trees, rocks, water, air, and, of course, animals. Not being a hippie myself, I can’t really speak to the arguments for granting non-sentient things like trees rights (though there is a rather compelling environmental case to be made for protecting them from what economists call the “externalities” of capitalist industrial production) but it is worth thinking about why animals should be accorded at least some of the rights that we bipedal primates called “humans” enjoy.
To begin with, despite the question as posed, I don’t think animals should have the same rights as humans in all cases. Granting the dogs I live with a right to free speech or the right to vote is pointless (insert your own joke here about the election and re-election of George W. Bush). Instead, I’m advocating for something that is much more simple. In the respects that animals are like us—most notably, in their ability to feel pain, have subjective experiences, and value their own continued existence—animals should have rights similar to the rights we have. In the broadest terms, this would mean that we’d have to stop eating and wearing them, experimenting on them, and bringing them into existence for our own ends.
Anyone who lives with a cat or a dog knows that animals not only have personalities, but that they also have memories, fears, wants, and desires. The dogs and cat that I live with seek out comfort, avoid pain, and desire companionship, and it is clear to me that they suffer as acutely as I do (if not more acutely) when they are hurt, or sick, or scared. Moreover, having spent time around animals ultimately destined for slaughter, I also know that pigs and cows and chickens are also capable of these same pleasures and pains, and what appears to be a subjective awareness of their surroundings, yet for reasons that no one can really justify, we snuggle up with one set of animals called “pets,” while we eat another set of animals called “livestock.”
When it comes down to it, the case for animal rights is really a case for adopting a thorough moral and ethical stance in favor of treating like cases alike. My own outlook has been shaped by the ethical theory of Gary L. Francione, who argues that though animals and humans are clearly different, they are alike in the sense that they both suffer, and are both sentient. For this reason, Francione argues, animals should receive equal moral consideration. Most importantly, this would mean extending to animals inherent value, or really bringing them into the moral community by recognizing that certain aspects of their personhood cannot be “sold away” or sacrificed for the benefit of another. Put most simply, because animals are like us in some relevant regards, they should be treated like we would be treated in those instances.
The tired objections that animals do not deserve rights because they lack rationality, or language, or human levels of intelligence, or whatever arbitrary characteristics anthropocentric philosophers decide are important are so self-serving as to be almost comical. The obvious problem with using qualities like these to exclude animals from moral consideration is that we can almost always find humans who also lack those qualities. A great many humans lack what we’d consider to be “normal” rational faculties, yet no one seriously suggests that the mentally disabled be enslaved, or that they should be used for food or medical experiments. Similarly, you may be smarter or more eloquent or stronger than I am, yet none of those attributes gives you the right to make me your property. Why? Because in the relevant regard that both you and I share in not being the chattel of another, no arbitrary criteria—not intelligence, rationality, language, eye color, skin color, gender, etc.—can be used to violate this basic right that guarantees our inherent value. Those of us who are for animal rights (and not simply for animal welfare) wish to make “species” another irrelevant criterion for deciding who does and does not get the basic rights accorded to members of our moral community.
Surely, the road ahead towards giving animals more thorough membership in our moral community is a long one. Veganism—not consuming animal products of any kind—is certainly the first step of many in this direction, and a step that everyone can take today. In spite of what Neil the hippie might think, vegetables don’t need rights, as they feel no pain, and have no sentience. Animals, however, are another story altogether.
Posted by Bob Torres 
Filed under: I was quoted in a recent article in Metro Newspaper (along with Denyse of Urbanvegan) about which diet is most affected by the rise in food costs. The article doesn’t delve very deep into the issue, but basically the conclusion seems to be that vegans are the most affected by these increases in food costs, because our costs are higher to begin with and we are hit harder when there’s bad weather that wipes out crops. Of course, none of this is borne out by actual studies, which would actually be interesting to see.
Our grocery bill has definitely increased over the last several months, which I’m pretty sure is due to the cost of fuel that affects everyone no matter what they eat (unless you grow absolutely everything you eat yourself). But from what I understand, there are other factors involved in the high prices. Increased demand for wheat around the world is making flour more expensive. Bad weather has hurt rice prices. Floods in the midwest have ruined a lot of grain crops. The price of milk, meat, and eggs is increasing because the cost of the animals’ food (corn and other grains) is increasing from all of these factors.
Now, it seems to me that if you eat a diet heavy on meat, dairy, eggs, and processed foods (SAD, anyone?) that tend to contain a lot of wheat, corn, and soy by-products, then your prices are going to be through the roof.
Our diet mostly consists of fresh produce, beans and other legumes, a few grains, and a few processed things like tofu, veggie burgers, and seitan. Unless bad weather affects every single crop we eat (which is unlikely), then I don’t see how vegans are affected any worse than your average omni consumer. It seems to me that everyone is affected in different ways by higher prices, but that vegans really don’t take a bigger hit than other groups unless you subsist solely on bread and processed foods.
I get frustrated when people have the misconception that veganism has to be expensive. It can be, certainly, depending on how you structure you diet, just like if you’re an omni with a penchant for Kobe beef and truffles, it can be expensive. (And unfortunately in this country, it is often more expensive to eat healthy than unhealthy, but that is a topic for another blog entry.) But there are plenty of things that vegans can do to lower their grocery bill no matter what state the economy is in. As I said in the article and in a previous blog entry, you can eat locally, and try to eat what is in season, since it will tend to be the cheapest (and most tasty!) then. You can stock up on bulk grains and dried legumes. You can plan out your meals before you go to the store, and not buy on impulse. You can stay away from expensive frozen or boxed processed foods. You can make large batches of things like soup one day to eat throughout the week so you aren’t tempted to go out to lunch. You can eat high fiber fresh veggies that fill you up so you aren’t eating more later in the day. Veganism doesn’t have to be incredibly expensive or complicated if you get into the habit of knowing where your money is going and what to look for.
Thanks to the few of you who alerted us to the wonky RSS feed. Looks like in some readers there were no paragraph breaks or other formatting making it through. This morning, I fixed the formatting, and for most of you, it should look fine now.
The sole exception here seems to be with Google Reader, which seems to cache the feed site-wide. I guess those of you who are using Google’s reader will just have to hang on until the cache expires; I have no idea how long this is, but it shouldn’t be too long (I hope).
We’re a movement dominated by professional activists — paid by large organizations — to do the bidding of those organizations. This is fine if you think that dressing up in chicken costumes makes sense, or if you believe the latest animal gassing scheme is a good thing, or if you happen to agree that Wayne Pacelle actually deserves a compensation package worth more than $230,000 annually. (The previous link is a PDF. I got the Pacelle number from Statement 71 on page 94.) But if, like me, you have doubts about highly paid activists, about so-called “victories” that still leave animals as commodities and property, and forms of activism that use one form of exploitation (sexism) to combat another (speciesism), there’s only one solution: be your own activist. (Plus, do you really think that throwing more money at PETA to put up half a million naked Alicia Silverstone ads will accomplish anything? Do you really think that the people masturbating to these ads are actually thinking “wow, I should go vegan?” My guess is that they’re not.)
Activism should not be left as the mere province of paid, professional activists. If we are to have the effect that we’re hoping for, we need to make the movement for veganism a genuine, grassroots social movement, driven by everyday people like you and me, working in our communities and in our lives to help create a base of vegan education and outreach. Only by working in our lives and in the spaces that we know best can we hope to affect real change and build a genuine movement built of people who genuinely wish to change the essential relationship of domination that humans have over animals. Without a genuine pool of social activists, without people who are willing to put their own talents and skills to use, we are going to be stuck with the so-called “victories” of PETA and HSUS, victories that celebrate killing more gently. Shouldn’t we be celebrating not killing at all? Shouldn’t we be celebrating veganism?
In her book The Dispossessed, Ursula LeGuin has a quote that sums up my feelings perfectly about activism. She writes:
You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.
The revolution is in your spirit — I know it is. If you’re vegan, something got you to go vegan, to decide that you would not have a part in the human domination of animals. You knew it was wrong, and you decided to have no part of it. Find that original fire and use it! You must be the revolution if it is to mean anything or change anything in the long run. You have to do it; no one will do it for you. Considering that, here are three things that you can do to be the revolution:
0. Yeah, 0. If you’re not vegan, go vegan now. ‘nuf said.
1. Use your talents and skills to educate people about veganism
We’ve talked about this at length various times on our podcast, but we’ll repeat it again: every single one of you has some kind of talent that you can use to support this cause. You are a unique and special snowflake! We’re so used to beating ourselves down and to accepting that we don’t have much to offer that we often forget how we can be of use. You may think you have no skills to offer, but that’s impossible. We need everyone. We need people who can write and speak and cook and organize. We need people who can hand out literature. We need people who can sew and sing and entertain. In short, we need everyone. Get creative: use your skills to raise awareness or in support of others who are raising awareness or educating others. Which brings me to point two:
2. Work in small, consensus-based affinity groups
Find a group of people who share your vision, get together, and make some change. Leverage each other’s strengths to promote veganism and to be vegan educators. For example, one of you may be an excellent public speaker, one of you may be a quiet person but a fantastic cook, and one of you may have excellent organizational skills. Why not get together, get a room at your local library, give a talk on veganism or vegan cooking, and bring some food along to convince people that eating vegan isn’t as horrendously subpar as everyone imagines? There are a million different possibilities here and a million different talents. The point is to use your creativity and your understanding of the world to make the most impact.
3. Start asking questions
Why would an organization ostensibly opposed to animal suffering give an award to a slaughterhouse designer? Why would the so-called “father” of the animal rights movement say it was okay to eat animal products? Seems to induce a bit of what the psychologists call “cognitive dissonance,” doesn’t it? It is time that we all start asking questions and stop assuming that because PETA or HSUS or Peter Singer (or anyone, including me) says that something is good, it is. Think. Examine the issues. Ask hard questions. Consider the situation and the context, and think about the issues. I know that thinking is often scorned within this movement as a “luxury,” but you have to stop and think before you can act wisely. Don’t skimp on thinking: it is the most important thing you can do.
Effecting change is never easy and is often inglorious, but it doesn’t have to be onerous; you can work little by little to educate others, and you can work with others to deepen your impact. We need to build a vital movement of people doing genuine, abolitionist vegan education. We don’t need another set of stupid stunts, sexist ads full of naked people, or overcompensated suits declaring yet another false victory.
We don’t blog much about food around here, but I can never forgo an opportunity to wax poetic about fresh fruits and vegetables (just ask Bob).
When one mentions local food, unfortunately many people instantly conjure up images of “local grass fed beef,” because most locavores are also omnivores who can’t pass up a good steak - but if it was treated well before it was killed, then it’s okay and it’s better for you, right? Can you feel me rolling my eyes right now?
When I think of local food, this is what I picture:
Food that is able to be picked at the height of ripeness by someone that I actually know, not loaded with pesticides, and not trucked across the country or shipped from another part of the world. (Thank you to the Kent Family Growers for their amazing produce!) I eyeball the strawberries in the grocery store and feel sad that someone is going to eat the sour, tasteless berries in the plastic package. The strawberries pictured above taste so amazing that we don’t ever put them into a pie or a strawberry shortcake - we just eat them as is, or on top of our morning muesli.
I think I’ve actually blogged about this topic before on here, but since our archives never made it through the move to our new design, you lucky people get to read about it again. It’s just that when every summer rolls around, I am so awed at the quality of the produce we can get, how amazing it tastes, and and wonderful it is to eat whole, fresh foods, especially after a long, harsh winter full of sad, tasteless produce.
I’m not a diehard locavore and I don’t think that it’s the be all end all to any food crisis, but it certainly can’t hurt, and it is nice to support the local economy and eat healthier as a result. If you are able to, visit your local farmer’s market, farm stand, and/or look into joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in which you’ll get a weekly delivery of whatever’s in season. It is probably too late for this year, but it’s a good time to start looking into joining for next year. It’s a great way to connect into the local community, learn what is in season when in your area, expand your produce horizon (every year we get a new vegetable that I haven’t cooked before), and eat healthy, whole foods.
I love Ursula LeGuin’s science fiction. The work of hers that I’ve read almost always contemplates some aspect of the human character, and of our nature as social creatures. Most recently, I’ve begun working my way through The Lathe of Heaven, which has an enticing premise. George Orr is your average guy, except that he has what he calls “effective dreams:” dreams that change reality. Caught by the government for using prescriptions illegally, Orr is put in the care of a doctor who specializes in sleep disorders. Realizing that Orr has the ability to change reality, the doctor induces in Orr particular kinds of dream states which he uses to change the world. Set in the not-so-distant future, the world is rife with war and hunger following a global collapse of the human population. Wishing for a better world, and with wholly honest intentions, Orr’s doctor uses the “effective” dreams to change the world, willing into existence new circumstances that he feels are for the better.
The problem, of course, is that it becomes more and more difficult for the doctor to account for all of the potential issues that spin off of his relatively simple prescriptions for the way the world should be. When the doctor urges Orr to dream of the earth at peace with itself, Orr dreams into reality a humanity forced into a peaceful unity by its need to fight off an alien race.
Orr realizes that he’s being used to change the world, and in this realization, he comes to the point that, for me, is interesting in the context of social movements, including the animal rights movement. Each time Orr’s doctor uses him, he creates unintended results, even with completely beneficent intentions. As Orr says:
The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.
And this is the essential point: all we have is means. In other words, we can dream of alternate realities, and plan for them, and even work towards them, but if we’re going to work towards them, the way that we work towards them must be consistent with our principles. As I wrote in Making A Killing, we cannot sacrifice what we think is right in a principled trade-off for a better world in some distant tomorrow that may never come.
In the animal rights movement, we’ve largely lost sight of the importance of this kind of thinking. The bulk of the movement is preoccupied with negotiating with the industry for better treatment of exploited animals, keeping in place the essential relations of property and commodification that condemn animals to be mere instruments to human want and profit (and indeed, many of the arguments made for welfare reforms highlight the cost-effictiveness of the reforms for producers). As long as the agricultural industry can hold animals as property, it can exploit them effectively for profit. Welfare regulations may modify the way that property owners treat their animal property, but ultimately, as long as animals can be treated as property, they will never gain equal consideration.
The problem is this: fighting for welfare reform doesn’t significantly reduce the desire for animal foods, nor does it significantly impact the productive relation at the heart of animal exploitation. It is thinking in which the presumed end justifies the means. Yet, as Orr points out, all we have is means. Every day that we live, we remake the world. The question is, are we remaking the world in the way that we really want it to be? Would we prefer that animals be nicely treated commodities, still exploited, albeit more gently, or would we prefer that the world be vegan, and recognize the inherent worth of animals as beings with their own subjective experience of the world?
If we want a vegan world, we have to work to produce one, and the only way to produce one is by living one uncompromisingly on a daily basis. Vegan education works to effectively remodel social relations, and to hit at the heart of the problem with animal exploitation. For this reason, our work should focus on the inglorious, quotidian work that’s required for creating a broad-based movement of people who live abolition in their daily life, who work to change the conditions that condemn animals to being mere instruments and property, and who work to educate others about the importance of veganism as a lived form of protest. No amount of negotiating with KFC or McDonald’s or whatever fast food restaurant will have such an impact; no amount of banning gestation crates, or producing cage free eggs will get us there. Only veganism can bring the kind of world we’re after, and only veganism can be the means if we are truly serious about respecting the inherent needs of animals to live free of exploitation and suffering.
Lots of people seem to think that veganism is hard. It isn’t. At first, it may be a bit overwhelming, but that fades fast. In a few weeks, it is like second nature, and it is easy. It doesn’t require a huge amount of will power, all that much discipline, or any kind of elaborate rituals. Yet, I think people make it more complicated than it needs to be by not just stepping up and simply making the commitment to do it, and do it fully.
Every so often, I get email correspondence from people who tell me that they’re vegan, but for one exception. One of the most common things that I hear and read is “I’m vegan, except when I eat out.” This perplexes me, in all honesty. People who are on the verge of going vegan like this clearly have a pretty good handle on why one would go vegan. They clearly want to do it. And they understand the ethical reasons involved. So, I’m left wondering....do the animals that produce dairy and eggs for restaurants not suffer as much as animals that produce them for your home? When you break it down, the same dynamics of production are still involved, the exploitation is the same, and the suffering is the same. There’s no ethical reason to eat non-vegan foods when you’re out of the home.
The only reason that people do it is convenience.
Yet, for someone who has decided that the suffering of animals matters, convenience is not a solid justification. I realize that this may seem radical, or fundamentalist, or divisive, or whatever, especially when we have people like Peter Singer advocating for the “Paris exception” of eating just about whatever the hell anyone wants every so often. What I’m advocating is not radical: it is simply recognizing that some ethical principles matter, and that living by those principles is important, even when it is inconvenient. This may mean that on occasion, you don’t have as many choices, or that you have to appear “weird” in front of friends and waitstaff. But so what? Living your life as a vegan matters, because you’re standing in for the animal. You’re the living witness at the table, the lone objector who says, by their actions, “Exploiting animals isn’t right, and I won’t do it.” By failing to do this, you fail not only to live up to your own principles, but you fail to make as big an impact as you could. You fail to introduce the necessary cognitive dissonance into the lives of those around you. In short, the visceral protest of veganism becomes limp and falls flat if you can’t actually be bothered to go to the trouble to be vegan.
I live in a extremely rural area. People around here have no clue what a vegan is, yet I’m able to get vegan food when I go out to eat, simply by asking nicely for it, and being clear about my needs. It isn’t complex.
I’m not trying to argue that I’m an exceptional model of veganism. I’m not. I’m just another guy trying to live as a vegan as best I can. But in the end, if your principles mean anything to you, they should mean something even when they’re inconvenient. When it comes down to it, people make going vegan harder than it is. I see a lot of people pity themselves for their “sacrifice” as a vegan, which is absurdly misplaced pity. The pity shouldn’t be for yourself, it should be for the animals that you claim to be caring about when you decide to make this commitment. Ultimately, going vegan isn’t that hard for most of us, and the sooner that people recognize that it is doing the right thing by their ethics, step up, and begin living by the principles that they say are important, the sooner we’ll actually begin to make changes in the world.
When we were interviewing Gary Francione the other day for our podcast, he remarked that humans are unwilling to see similarities between themselves and other sentient beings. To most people, anthropomorphism is a bad thing – it is ascribing human characteristics where they do not belong. It's usually dismissed as an emotional response, so that those who anthropomorphize can be considered merely crazy animal lovers who imagine that these similarities exist (and we do so love to downgrade emotional responses in our society, since they are usually associated with women). Gary pointed out, however, that we can and should find similarities since we are all sentient, but the problem is that we have an epistemological limitation in being able to understand the world through their point of view.
Language is one of those areas where humans are quick to create a hierarchy to separate themselves from other beings and to justify categorizing other sentient beings as somehow inferior. Our manner of communication is quite impressive and interesting, I must admit, or I wouldn't have chosen to study it for a living. But, when we get down to it, it is just another example of a semiotic system, and I would argue, has more similarities with how other sentient beings communicate than we realize. (And no, I'm not just talking about gorillas who know sign language and birds who can talk.)
Everyone, whether they realize it or not, communicates semiotically; it's how we understand the world. Language is but one example of a semiotic system. In brief, semiotics is the study of signs: how we devise categories of meaning in our lives. A sign is made up of a signifier and a signified. The signified is what that sign represents, and the signifier is how we represent it. The two always go together (think of a sign as a piece of paper – you always have two sides, back and front, and cannot separate the two.) In English, we represent the idea of a chair (the signified) with the word chair (signifier). Other languages choose a different signifier: silla, chaise, stuhl to represent the same signified. Of course, this gets more complicated when you add layers of meaning to this understanding of the world (which I'm not going to discuss in too much detail here, for fear of turning into a semiotics lecture). We can add connotations to certain signifiers (such that a red rose doesn't just represent a flower, it also represents love). There are also different types of signs, and not all are represented with language. We can think of hand or body movements as signs (raised eyebrows = surprise or suspicion), colors, art, and music as signs, etc. It just so happens that we value language as one of the most important and useful semiotic systems for communication; technically, though, we make sense of the world through signs first, language second.
I would argue that other animals also use semiotic systems to communicate as well, giving another area of similarity between us and other sentient beings. I'm going to use the examples of dogs here, not because they are any better than any other animal, but because I spend a lot of time with my dogs and know them best. (I don't want to create a hierarchy among the animals which gives them special treatment. Many times in the news we hear reports about apes, dolphins, dogs, etc. doing things that are similar to humans or something we see as quite intelligent, meaning that we'll give that group special treatment while relegating other animals to an even lesser category, e.g. the ones that we'll eat, shoot, step on, etc. As Gary Francione has written in the New Scientist, this is counterproductive, since all sentient beings should be given consideration.)
Our dogs Mole and Emmy have certainly shown signs of communicating in a semiotic system. Anyone with dogs knows that they have different barks for different situations. When someone walks past our house, one of the dogs gives a series of barks and the other then joins in. When Emmy gets frustrated at one of her chew toys, she looks at it and gives a single, sharp bark. When Mole wants to get the attention of our neighbors (in the hopes that they'll give him biscuits), he'll do a kind of "hey, hey" double bark. It's obvious that both Emmy and Mole understand what the other's barks mean. Therefore, a bark is a sign. It has a certain signifier (double bark), and a signified (hey, come out and give me a biscuit!)
Mole and Emmy (as well as our cat Michi) are also good at using iconic signs – signs that point to something else. When we leave something interesting on the kitchen counter, like a loaf of bread, some tofu, etc., Mole will sit under the counter, look at the bread, look at us, and look at the counter again. It's obvious that he's trying to point to what he wants, and then point at us indicating that we should do something about the fact that he can't get to the bread. (From experience, I have also assigned the connotative meaning that Mole is saying, look, I'm being good by not jumping up on the counter and just taking the bread, so don't you want to give me some?) Whenever Michi can't get into the bedroom because the door is closed, he'll go find one of us, meow to get our attention, and then walk in the direction of the door, in a way, pointing at it. If this isn't successful, he'll do it several times, and each time the meows get a little louder. When Mole wants his kong filled with biscuits, he brings it over and drops it on one of our laps. There have even been studies on bees that show that they do a complicated dance (movement of their bodies) to tell other bees where to find a good patch of flowers or other important feature of the landscape. If this isn't semiotic communication, I don't know what is. (Although I'm sure some would argue that it is different, because we assign meaning to things in different ways. Fine – it's different, but it's still a semiotic system at its core.)
Animals also have other ways of signifying things without vocal or visual cues. Dogs communicate by smells. All the neighborhood dogs know where the others have been based on where they pee. Because that method of communication is so foreign to us, we give it little credence when thinking about the intelligence of dogs. Our language must be superior to dog communication, because they are but simple creatures who sniff each other's asses. But if you're a dog, sniffing asses is a most logical way of finding out about each other. They experience the world much more through smells, and to be a successful dog and exist in the dog world, you have to understand what the smells mean. If you were a dog and tried to communicate like humans do, you would be screwed in the dog world. If we tried to survive in the dog world with our limited sense of smell, we'd be screwed. One of the reasons that dogs and cats don't often get along is that the signifier of a tail wagging has a different signified to a dog than it does to a cat. To a dog, it is happiness or excitement, to a cat it is anger.
We as humans give primacy to language, and therefore put every other semiotic system on a lower rung in the hierarchy of communication. We like to think that our language is special because we have a history of beautiful prose and poetry, we are able to argue using logic, we analyze and write blog entries, and we can sing, shout, and clap. It is wonderful what we can do. But at the root of it all, language is just a semiotic system, and is more similar than we'd like to admit to the semiotic systems of other sentient beings because the unit of a semiotic system is a sign, not a word. When it gets down to it, we all share that commonality of having semiotics as the basis of way of understanding the world, and we should recognize that instead of creating yet another category where we are seen as superior.
I’ve been doing some background research on la Nueva canción movement in Latin America for one of my classes, and I came across a quote that I really liked from Chilean poet, musician, and activist Victor Jara, thanks to wikipedia. He was asked what the word Love meant to him, and he responded:
Love of my home, my wife and my children.
Love for the earth that helps me live
Love for the education and of work.
Love of others who work for the common good.
Love of justice as the instrument that provides equilibrium for human dignity.
Love of peace in order to enjoy one’s life.
Love of freedom, but not the freedom acquired at the expense of other’s freedom, but rather the freedom of all.
Love of freedom to live and exist, for the existence of my children, in my home, in my town, my city, among neighboring people.
Love for freedom in the environment in which we are required to forge our destiny.
Love of freedom without yokes: neither ours nor foreign.
He said these lines four days before the September 11 (1973) coup in Chile, and eight days before he was tortured and murdered by Pinochet’s goons. I wanted to share these lines for two reasons. First, I thought it was fitting on the day of Pinochet’s death to celebrate the life of one of his victims. Second, these lines remind us what liberation really means – for everyone.
A few weeks back, I was re-reading the book Dreaming in Cuban by Christina Garcia, and I was struck by this passage:
"She doesn't like to admit to herself that, despite all her activities, she sometimes feels lonely. Not the loneliness of previous years, of a reluctant life by the sea, but a loneliness borne of the inability to share her joy."
I immediately thought to myself that this really explains why many vegans feel lonely or isolated. Amongst many of the complex emotions that the notion of veganism brings out (sadness, horror, anger, peace), joy is definitely one of them, but many people would never suspect it. To the omni or the vegetarian, veganism seems like a hardship; it is a life of deprivation rather than abundance and fulfillment, of bitterness and sorrow rather than joy and serenity.
But vegans know otherwise. If you speak with a vegan (although I'm sure there are the odd exceptions as there is with any generalization), they will most certainly tell you that going vegan was one of the best decisions of their lives. They are extremely happy not to participate in what they consider to be horrendous practices of cruelty to other beings, they feel peace at mealtimes and going about their daily lives, and they are happy to have awoken to a new abundance of foods and flavors. This isn't to say that we don't feel sad or angry when we think about the realities of factory farming or other cruel enterprises, or that we don't sometimes get pessimistic about change for the future. Nevertheless, most vegans are extremely happy to be vegan, and want to share this experience.
Many times, we try to convey this sense of joy to others, but they just don't understand. Even if they can see our happiness at our decision, they can't participate in it because they have no sense as to how we can feel this way. Thus we get questions like "but don't you miss meat/milk/cheese?" No, not in the least. "But I want to enjoy life and eat whatever I want." But I do eat whatever I want and I do enjoy life - I just don't want to eat meat or dairy or eggs. Nothing had to suffer for my meal and that makes me happy. It is refreshing to me to talk to other vegans since I do not feel so alone in my joy for these things. Now we just need other people to understand this side of veganism so we aren't dismissed as the weirdo who has gone too far. I think simple things like sharing good vegan food and responding positively to queries about our veganism (when possible) can help.
Btw, Dreaming in Cuban is an excellent novel and I highly recommend it if you haven't read it before.
This post over at vegblog reminded me that I wanted to write an entry about an interview I read with Donald Watson in the latest Veg News.
For those of you who don't know, Donald Watson was the first to coin the term vegan back in 1944, and he started the Vegan Society in the UK. He's turning 95 next month, is still active in the vegan community, and still goes hiking (if that alone isn't a good advertisement for a vegan diet I don't know what is).
In the interview he comes across as being very sensible about veganism, yet of course compassionate. His six reasons for veganism are "it's humane, it's healthy, it's esthetic, it's pleasant, it's economical, and it's sustainable." He says other great things during the interview:
I thought yesterday ... the biggest industry in the world ... is animal exploitation, which is the one thing that veganism is opposing. Not just farming, but ... making [clothing] and everything else: medicines, vivisection, everything that comes from animals. And ... probably the second biggest industry in the world ... is the healing industry.
To a large extent man's illness comes from his trying to turn himself into something he never was intended to be, a carnivore or a parasite. If they are directly connected we are really on to something big. Aren't we? I should think mainly to my conviction that man is biologically not a carnivore or a parasite. I'm thinking particularly of milk drinking. We've got over 500 different mammals throughout the world and man is the only one who takes milk throughout life. All the others drink it as infants, then they're weaned and it's not available. It's only man who is capable of exploiting the reproductive nipple system of cows and goats and other animals. As a general system it wouldn't work. And although Nature gives us lots of examples of carnivores and vegetarians, it gives us no examples of lacto-carnivores or lacto-vegetarians. These are freak groups that never could have been intended as part of the natural scene.
I love how he makes dairy milk drinkers look like the freaks! It's great. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this interview with a vegan pioneer, even though some of the questions that he was asked were a little strange. Even so, the interview is interesting because it gives us a little perspective on the development of veganism throughout the 20th century.
We were watching the first episode of Star Trek Enterprise on DVD last night (yeah, yeah, we’re fans of Star Trek – we’re nerds, what can we say), which is set during the pre-Kirk days, after they first developed a warp ship and started exploring.
In one scene the captain is having dinner with another officer and the Vulcan assigned to the ship, and the officer makes some sort of crack about eating spare ribs. The Vulcan looks at him in horror, and says “how can you consider yourself an ‘enlightened’ species when you still eat the flesh of animals?” Shortly after that, the humans are served steak, and the Vulcan a plate of roasted vegetables (apparenly all Vulcans are vegetarians).
My first reaction was damn straight! My second reaction was this is what, 200 years in the future and they’re still serving vegetarians roasted vegetables? Apparently humans haven’t progressed that much if they still can’t come up with something more creative for vegetarians to eat.
But I still thought it was cool that they made the humans look like barbarians for still eating meat in the future.
I’ve been reading various things about the connections between animal agriculture and the environment lately, and I’ve been saddened about what it does to wildlife. It’s been making me think about another contradiction inherent in meat eating, and in the way we treat animals in general.
Often when confronted by a veg*n, a meat eater will suddenly become a proud “carnivore.” They’ll boast about how much they love meat, they’ll wax poetic about their bbq, talk about being at the top of the food chain, and act like they eat nothing but meat.
Yet animals who are carnivores rather than omnivores in the wild are often killed for acting on their desire for meat; in a sense, they are killed because they are carnivores and humans can’t stand it. Big cats are rare and disappearing because they are threatening, wolves are killed when they attack farm animals, bears, alligators, and others are killed when they feel threatened and fight back, and so on and so forth.
Why are omnis so proud of their carnivorous side on one hand, but on the other they turn around and want to harm other animals for the same desire?
I think it has to do with the fact that people think they are at the top of the food chain, and feel challenged when they realize that they aren’t. Humans feel like they own everything (or have dominion over everything), so they can dispatch with the threats to their way of doing things without thought. As with animal agriculture, we see the wildlife as an “other” and can’t recognize it as having its own worth.
For shits and giggles, I wanted to make a list of all the words that our dog understands. That is, he knows the difference between one word and another, and acts differently in response. Here’s what I came up with:
sit
down
stay
come
leave it
let’s go
stand
shake
licks
no (well, he only understands that one when he feels like it)
good
paws up
paws down
roll over
speak
upstairs
downstairs
kennel
out/outside
walk
office
go get…
find…
where’s… & our names
ball
football
rope bone
bone
go for a ride
go for a walk
go for a swim
his name and all his nicknames
stick
kitty
post office
biscuit
scooby snack
hungry
wait
home
siéntate (sit in Spanish)
ven (come in Spanish)
That’s 42 words, and I’m probably forgetting some. Our cat probably understands a lot of words too, but he pretends not to. : ) The dog also recognizes different people (either by sight or smell, I’m not sure which) and he acts differently with children and the elderly than he does with other adults – much more gentle. Now who says animals have no cognitive skills? This is just one example of one animal, and if pigs are smarter than dogs (which I’m sure they are, I’ve just never met any pigs), and other animals are known to have evidence of reasoning, then how can anyone justify torturing them on the basis that they don’t have the capacity for thought?
I don’t eat veal and I don’t do bacon
...
I’ve got a non-dairy creamer
in my jeans
and I’m happy to see ya
if you know what I mean
“Soft Machine” by By Divine Right
I wonder if the lead singer’s a vegan?
MakingA Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights explores the intersections between human and animal oppressions and their relation to the exploitative dynamics of capitalism. Combining nuts and bolts Marxist political economy, a pluralistic anarchist critique, as well as a searing assessment of the animal rights movement, Bob Torres challenges conventional anti-capitalist thinking and convincingly advocates for the abolition of animals in industry — and on the dinner plate.
Vegan Freak Radio
 |
Listen Now 
Podcast (iTunes)
Freaky in Print
Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World
The best-selling guide for going vegan and staying vegan, available through our publisher for 15% off cover price.
Bob's Tweets
Please wait while my tweets load 
Jenna's Tweets
Please wait while my tweets load
Vegan?
we don't eat nothin' that farts. or anything with a face. or anything from anything that farts or has a face. Basically, vegans avoid animal products to the greatest extent possible, with the overall goal of abolishing animal exploitation. No eggs, meat, dairy, honey, wool, leather, etc. This sounds onerous, but trust us, it isn't. Why kill to eat when you don't have to?
Categories
Entries by Date
| November 2008 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 1 |
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
Archives by Month
November, 2008October, 2008
August, 2008
July, 2008
June, 2008
March, 2008
February, 2008
January, 2007
December, 2006
November, 2006
October, 2006
September, 2006
July, 2006
April, 2006
March, 2006
February, 2006
January, 2006
December, 2005
October, 2005
September, 2005
August, 2005
July, 2005
June, 2005
May, 2005
March, 2005
February, 2005