Finding similarities
30 January 2007

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.

  Posted by Jenna Torres    Permalink    Filed under: Opinion | 
Whole Foods, Veganism, and Beer
07 January 2007

Anyone who has listened to our radio show or read the blog here knows that we’re long-time critics of Whole Foods. And indeed, there’s so much to dislike about Whole Foods. From CEO Mackey’s near-pornographic love of unbridled neoliberal market capitalism as the great savior to his problems with unions to his promoting compassion while simultaneously selling dead animals, Whole Foods is a company that’s coopted an image of “ethics” and “compassion” to make money, expand suburban sprawl big-box style, and crush local natural groceries. Can someone remind me again why I’m supposed to love them?

Given this, it still came as something of a surprise to us to see an article that we wrote over a year ago linked in a recent article in Slate magazine about Whole Foods stock tanking. And though I don’t think our piece is particularly angry, we are linked as “angry vegans,” a particular kind of dismissal that satisfy the mind’s piece on the Slate article dissects nicely. Of course, as Satisfy the Mind points out, calling us angry for asking honest questions about the distinction between the marketing speak and the real treatment of animals serves as an effective (if cheap) way of marginalizing us and our concerns.

In any case, whenever we’re linked anywhere in the mainstream or non-vegan press, we inevitably get a variety of emails from our non-target audience that range from the polite to the insane. In this round, we only got a few, and fortunately, none of them were insane, though many of them did seem a bit confused and/or curious about ethical veganism. Some of them ask honest questions that could be answered by reading books about ethical veganism (and indeed, some of the questions are in-depth enough to require book-length answers), while others seem to want to goad us into argument by alleging that we’re fanatics (does wanting to see Anthony Bourdain eaten alive by predatory animals make me a fanatic? Well, hell, then I’m a fanatic1).

Seriously, though, some of the emails ask thoughtful questions and are from people who clearly care about animal suffering. They say that they don’t want animals to suffer unduly, but that they don’t mind eating them because the hierarchy of species is the “way of our world.” This, of course, ignores the logical consistency of making animals suffer unduly. If someone doesn’t want animals to suffer, a logical extension of this is that one should not want to kill them unnecessarily. Because eating animals or their products is not necessary for human health or survival, my argument would be that if you truly care about not creating undue harm, you should refrain from consuming animals and their products altogether. Gary Francione makes this argument most compellingly in his Introduction to Animal Rights and as far as I can see, there’s no compelling argument against it. It takes a moral and ethical position — that we should not cause harm to animals unnecessarily — and applies it consistently.

Another email raises this point:

“As for whole foods, your problems with them make me skeptical that you are very tolerant people. Whole Foods is not for vegans exclusively. They are very conscientious in catering to vegans. But they are a store for everyone. This makes you upset, it seems. So because Mr. Mackay is a vegan in a capitalist society he should court the ruin of the business he runs in order to enforce his ethical beliefs on others?”

I recognize that WF isn’t for vegans exclusively, but I’d debate that they’re a store for “everyone.” Instead, I’d argue that they’re a store for a relatively wealthy section of our population that happens to live in relatively wealthy suburbs, but that’s tangential to the point. What bothers me is not that they’re a store for everyone (I often shop at stores for “everyone”) but that they’re a store that falsely markets themselves as compassionate. It is this distinction between appearance and reality that disturbs me, and I think he’s making a buck on the back of the vegan movement, and — much more importantly — on the back of animal suffering. I see this as unethical. Most importantly, I don’t think someone who calls themselves a “vegan” should be in the business of selling and profiting from dead animals and animal products. Mackey need not force his ethics on anyone; instead, if he’s serious about preventing animal suffering, he should get out of the business of selling dead animals and animal products. I don’t believe that the logic of the market should trump all, nor do I believe that capitalism should be amoral, both of which seem to be implied above. I wouldn’t work in a business that depended on human slavery because of my objection to that institution, and similarly, I wouldn’t work in a business that depended upon animal slavery. Worse yet, I wouldn’t have a business that exploited slaves and then promoted itself as interested in compassionate slavery. I know, this makes me a fanatic. Oh well.

On a different theme, we also received this question from another correspondent:

“Is your veganism the result of environmentalism or simply your opposition to the use of animals, or both? Because it would seem to me that total veganism on a planetary scale (this must be the Apocalypse as imagined by Oscar Meyer) would cause (a) the exinction of some domesticated species, and (b) the requirement of large scale energy expenditures to move produce around to places where there is a short growing season. Understandably, some of the energy expenditure would be made up by the lack of animal industry, but still…it just ain’t natural.”

My veganism is primarily ethical, but the entire premise of this question is flawed. The person writing seems to think that somehow our food is localized, but this is nowhere near the case. We already use “large-scale energy expenditures” to move produce, meat, and dairy around the globe. The average food product travels thousands of miles before arriving on your plate. Granted, some people are trying (valiantly, I’d say) to relocalize our food systems, and I think this is smart — in fact, I belong to a local CSA, and try to buy locally when I can. But to argue that large-scale veganism “ain’t natural” because of the energy required to move products vast distances is a bit dishonest, if only because our current system uses such expenditures, including expenditures to move meat and other animal products long distances. And in any case, this is really a moot point: nothing about the argument above means veganism is impossible today, and even though I’m an optimist, I’m certain that a global vegan revolution is quite far off.

The same correspondent also asks:

“Bonus question: beer. Do you need to find special vegan beer? Does yeast count as an animal? If beer is not vegan then there is no hope of me becoming a vegan. “

Many beers are vegan. Some vegans avoid some beers because they’re filtered with animal products like isinglass. Others just drink whatever. Yeasts are not animals — they’re in the kingdom fungi.

In closing, I didn’t even get close to answering every question that came to us — I did a very selective answering here of what I saw as the most compelling questions. Nevertheless, I appreciate the contact from folks curious about veganism, about where we stand, and about how vegans might see particular scenarios. I wish we had time to answer them all, to dive into the particulars, and to have extended debates with people. If I ever plan to finish my current book, such debates are virtually impossible. But anyone curious about these issues should do some reading, open their minds, and think about whether there really is any logic to our needless exploitation of other species. If thoughtful people can be honest with themselves, I think they’ll come to the same conclusion that I did: that there is no “kind” exploitation, and that as sentient creatures, animals deserve better than what we’re giving them.

1 Calm down, compassion crew, “we’re-becoming-what-we-hate,” humorless email writers in waiting: this is a joke. I’d rather see him die of food poisoning. (I keeed!)

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under:

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