the system is a sociopath
30 March 2006

First, apologies for leaving the blog behind for so long. Things have become so busy with the podcast and our forums and new titles from Tofu Hound Press that we barely ever have any time to update around here. Fortunately, I think I see some space clearing, so hopefully we can give this blog a little more lovin’ and get our lazy asses back on track.

Okay, with that over with, let me get to what I came here to write about in the first place.

I recently picked up a copy of The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout. In this book, Stout argues that something like 4% of us in Western society are sociopaths—that is to say, people who are incapable of empathy, who feel no guilt when their actions injure others, and who are incapable of love or compassion (interestingly, the number of sociopaths is lower in non-western societies). The book is a quick and interesting read, though the contrived examples she uses are a bit hokey. Nevertheless, I recommend it highly.

Anyway, as I was reading the book, I found myself drawing some parallels to how meat is consumed in the United States and other industrialized societies. I don’t mean to say that meat eaters are sociopaths (though surely, some are). What I mean is that the way the system itself is structured allows us to consume just about whatever the hell we want without having to think too much about where it comes from and what it does to animals or people producing it. When the average omnivore walks into the supermarket and buys that pound of ground beef in the styrofoam tray, wrapped so neatly in plastic, she doesn’t have to think about the fact that some animal—some one—had to suffer the injustice of factory farmed confinement and inhumane, mechanized slaughter. Similarly, when someone buys eggs, they also don’t have to think about the millions upon millions of hens stacked on top of one another in ammonia-filled hen-houses around the country.

In this way, the system of production and consumption itself has set us all up to be sociopaths, at least on occasion. We can consume without regard to the consequences of our action, and worse than that, we’re rarely reminded of who suffers when we consume as we do. The beef wrapped in plastic is mentally a million miles away from the actual suffering and death involved in the production of that beef, and the system of production and consumption prefers it that way. If consumers don’t have to think about the potentially messy, upsetting, and real conditions of their consumption, well then they can go right on happily consuming. For those of you that are vegan out there, how often have you had someone ask you why you’re vegan and then immediately tell you that they’d rather not know, lest it put them off their dinner?

This basic concealment of the conditions of production is an essential element of capitalism. Marx called this the ‘commodity fetish,’ meaning that we tend to see commodities where instead we should be seeing social relationships of power, production, and exploitation. The brilliant part about only seeing commodities is that it helps us keep right on consuming those commodities without looking back. This is just as true for meat and eggs and dairy as it is for sneakers made with slave labor. Admittedly, this obfuscation is brilliant, and it works not only in the favor of the general human desire to remain blissfully ignorant, but also to help increase consumption.

I’m not saying we’re all sociopaths, because clearly we aren’t. Many people break through this and consider the origins of what they consume and what it means for others. Ethical vegans do this as a matter of course, and that’s a good thing. The problem is, the system itself produces a kind of passive ignorance that results in outcomes that might as well be sociopathic (economists call these ‘externalities,’ I think). We have to break through this separation, and at every turn, we need to remind people of the necessary linkages between animal suffering and the steak they’re eating.

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under:

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