I believe that Al Gore is a rather enlightened fellow. Mr. Gore's positions on global climate change, gay marriage, and foreign policy are forward thinking with a critical eye on the past. However, as an example of what I believe to be a rather telling example of how far the struggle to live in a vegan world has to go, the following is an exert from Mr. Gore's "The Assault On Reason":
When I was a boy growing up on our family farm in the summers, I learned how to hypnotize chickens. You hold the chicken down and then circle your finger around its head, making sure that its eyes trace your hand movement. After a sufficient number of circles, the chicken will become entranced and completely immobile. There's a lot you can do with a hypnotized chicken. You can use it as a paperweight, or you can use it as a doorstop, and either way, the chicken will sit there motionless, staring blankly. (What you can't do is use it as a football. Something about being thrown through the air seemed to wake that chicken right up.)
Al Gore was using this "humorous" anecdote as an example of the fear stimulus and immobility in animals. However, the details are not important, the fact that Mr. Gore believes it's acceptable to introduce this anecdote in such a morally detached manner is striking.
If Mr. Gore had raped a woman in his childhood and if it would have sufficed to further the point he was attempting to make, would he have so nonchalantly used that experience as an example? I believe Mr. Gore's shame for his action would be so great that he would in fact not use this as an example.
People inappropriately use humor in many situations, but as I hold Mr. Gore to a slightly higher standard (perhaps unfoundedly), this passage truly made me feel as though the movement to end the exploitation of animals has an exceedingly long road ahead of it.
Notice also Mr. Gore's use of the word "it" when discussing the chicken he used as a football during his youth. In this sentence, "What you can't do is use it as a football," it is difficult to distinguish between the two things in question: the chicken and the football. Mr. Gore, chickens are not footballs: When you flung Tipper the chicken through the air, she subjectively experienced the fear of awaking while flipping uncontrollably round-and-round and the trauma of striking the ground - Tipper the chicken is a person, not a thing.
Jen discussed the negative environmental impacts of meat production previously, which further illuminates Mr. Gore's inability to move beyond his prejudice against non-human animals, and the actions, thought processes and beliefs that are derived from this prejudice. Throughout "The Assault on Reason," Mr. Gore does not mention a single time the many contributing factors of meat production to global climate change. Researchers have found evidence that suggests that the consumption of cheeseburgers in the U.S. alone, creates more metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions than all the S.U.V.'s combined.
James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10, "...As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves."
Mr. Gore praises reason and logic, however, it is clear that if reason was indeed so highly valued he would have made the connection between global warming and factory farming. Even more, perhaps Mr. Gore's reason would have allowed him to recognize the absolute lack of humor in using another sentient being (a person) as a bookend.
"I've eaten meat my whole life" is self-love and mere passion Mr. Gore; such an argument is similar in kind to "I don't buy into the whole global warming thing." Both arguments are derived from the absence of reason and logic, not the expression of them.
Mr. Madison's word's hold true for even the pseudo-enlightened like Al Gore, but so it goes.
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