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Thinking: May 2008 Archives

Not just my opinion.

Tuesday May 27, 2008 2:47 PM by Jen

When I was a vegetarian, I justified my lack of activism by using the ol' "everyone is entitled to their opinion/ethics/morality and you can't tell other people what their morals should be" excuse. I don't know if I ever really believed this, but I certainly said it. Maybe it was to justify the fact that I hated being yelled at, hated being in the confrontation that invariably ensues from trying to tell someone that their dietary habits are directly responsible for the death of sentient beings.

Also, I hate being told what to do myself. I could sympathize.

I still get nervous about confrontation, but like my fear of heights, it's under control. Although I no longer subscribe to the above argument, I still get it thrown at me on a semi-regular basis. Don't get me wrong, I think many things are simply a matter of opinion. Sexuality, for example. There's no rational explanation for why it is wrong to be homosexual. Thus, it's an opinion. A lot of the people I know from school have a tendency to extrapolate that same thing to animal rights: "Veganism is just your opinion." Which is to say given our reasoned argument supporting animal rights, "Morality is a matter of opinion." An argument that lets them off the hook.

That may be so, but I'm willing to bet there are some things encompassed by "morality" that don't fall under the sphere of mere opinion. For example, when we pose the question about whether or not it's okay to kill babies, we get a resounding no. Even if your culture said to? Even if you had a really good reason? What if it saved lives? Are you sure? No, no it's not! (Interestingly enough, the same holds true when we ask if it's morally okay to burn kittens with a blowtorch.)

That's why we fight for human rights, because we've identified a common morality that we believe should hold true across all cultures. I don't know anyone who would say that we should forgo talk about rights in the human context. When we talk about rights, we're not trying to say you should believe what we believe. This isn't religion. If I refuse to convert, I harm only myself. If I refuse to recognize rights, however, I will probably harm other sentient beings, which is about justice. What we're saying when we speak of animal/human rights is that they exist whether or not we choose to recognize them. Maybe that's not really a hard and fast truth (everything is subjective, right?) but if you argue that then you commit yourself to saying that no moral rights exist; for example, slavery, when condoned by the law, is beyond moral reproach. Likewise, just because the law says we have a right to skin an animal alive doesn't mean that it is okay anymore than when the law said it was okay to own human slaves.

If someone makes the assumption that veganism is simply an expression of opinion, they should have to defend that assumption. What they are saying, without actually saying anything at all, is that our efforts to collapse speciesism into the same moral tent as racism, sexism, bigotry, etc. is erroneous. Therefore, they must tell us why animal rights is an opinion while talk of other rights are a moral baseline. If your relegate speciesism to the status of an opinion, you must in turn make the claim that racism, sexism, sexual prejudice, agism, etc. are merely matters of opinion, and that we should simply remain quiet about these 'personal views' even when we see them being violated.

Crossposted @ Vegan Soapbox

Self-evident animal rights?

Sunday May 25, 2008 11:44 AM by Alex

Lynn Hunt responds to the apparent inconsistency of the claim that human rights are "self evident" (see the Declaration of Independence), while necessarily having to write them into a document articulating what form these rights take. Hunt argues, "The process had and has a kind of circularity to it: you know the meaning of human rights because you feel distressed when they are violated. The truths of human rights might be paradoxical in this sense, but they are nonetheless still self-evident."

Hunt's insight, I believe, can be applied to animal rights as well: we know the meaning of animal rights because we feel distressed when we see a "downer" cow being dragged to slaughter behind a forklift, for example; when a dog is being forced into combat with another dog we know that both of the animals' rights are being violated. Our "inner sense of outrage" demands the proper response when a hen is sexually assaulted by a slaughterhouse employee. If a horse is starved by her human our moral intuitions say "This is wrong!"

However, the object(s) of our moral outrage is limited by our collective irrational biases, and prejudices against certain species' of animals, which seems to suggest that the truths of animal rights are not truths at all in the moral sense: animal rights are not universal but culturally relative, subjective constructions. I mean, we all continue to gleefully eat the bodies of billions of animals annually, while Michael Vick spends time in prison for his actions.

The logic of this response, however, can and must also be applied to the context of human rights. I live in Washington D.C., a city populated by thousands upon thousands of homeless men, women and children, who suffer from malnutrition, the elements, psychological trauma, etc. And yet, this continues. Everyday we walk past these individuals, preferring to spend our money on alcohol at one of the local bars instead of spending those dollars on a meal for some pitiful looking homeless women. Rape is used as a weapon of war throughout our world today, but we prefer to bicker about which consenting adults ought to have the opportunity to marry (the right of marriage, of course, is also considered a human right). Infant Chinese girls are considered replaceable, less in value than their male counterparts, but this does not prevent us from enacting policy favoring trade with China. Genocide in Darfur continues. Our government sanctions torture, a form of punishment and interrogation explicitly condemned as immoral in the Declaration of Independence's articulation of those inalienable, universal human rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Does this suggest that the truths of human rights are in fact not self-evident, but a prudent creation - a fiction? I only have the "right to life" if my government say's so. If not then I don't, and you don't either. "Liberty" is like health care, it's a privilege. Was Jeremy Bentham correct when he argued that talk of moral or inalienable rights is "nonsense upon stilts."

Is this correct? I think, or rather I know, the answer to this question is no. And so do you. Where do they come from? Perhaps reason, Nature or god, our shared sentience; I don't know, but they're real.

For selfish reason T, U, and V, and for other reasons W, X, Y, and Z we fail to demand action in response to our inner outrage over various moral wrongs; however, we experience that inner outrage nonetheless. This holds true for both human rights and animal rights.

Will be crossposted @ Vegan Soapbox

Knights of infinite faith.

Saturday May 24, 2008 1:00 PM by Jen

Last semester I took Western Philosophy. Our professor was an amazing little woman who had done her master's thesis on the existentialist Soren Kierkegaard. When we covered his essay "Fear and Trembling," I discovered that his definition of faith is one that speaks to me. Kierkegaard characterizes his knight of faith by his "faith in the absurd," his paradoxical belief that even though what is, is, he knows that God will provide. He relinquishes everything, but knows things will come out right in the end. Minus the God part, I believe this idea can characterize the vegan view of the world.

A few days ago I was talking to a friend online about veganism, animal rights, and what she likes to refer to as 'my point of view'. She's a very down to earth person and she's always willing to listen to what I have to say, but for some reason she always pulls out the same argument when we talk. This particular conversation was about horse racing, and even though she hates what's happening in the industry, she believe in more regulation, not abolishment. Why? Because "That Will Never Happen".

That Will Never Happen is a terrifying concept, and yet it is one we all deal with every day. There are some days in which the sheer magnitude of what we're trying to change are completely overwhelming. Days when I come home and want nothing more than to curl up in my bed with the sheets over my head and not come out. There are times when all I want is to make my life easier and forget what's going on and just have a slice of cheese. There are days when I want to resign myself to fighting for a lost cause, and become nothing more than a martyr.

And yet, if we give in to That Will Never Happen, we loose all hope of change. Daunting though the task may be, we act so that That Will Never Happen doesn't become a reality. We must be the knights of infinite faith. Even on those days when we are faced with the idea that in our lifetimes, our ideas will never come to fruition, we solider on, refusing to believe. When someone says to me That Will Never Happen, I smile and point to the Lincoln-Douglass debates where Douglass declared that the abolition of human slavery was nothing more than a pipe-dream. I smile and point to our laws against murder and abuse, and our efforts to combat poverty, racism and sexism. All these things could fall into the category of That Will Never Happen, and yet people fight passionately against them. Not for their reduction or regulation, but for their cessation. Perhaps we are looking at a thousand year battle, but that battle has to start somewhere.

I could just sit on my couch watching Family Guy re-runs and scratching my arm pits. This is my summer vacation, after all. I could forget everything I know, or try to. I could face the 'inevitable' and become instead a knight of infinite resignation. But I'm holding myself out for something better.

Then again, who are we kidding - I'm probably scratching myself inappropriately at this very moment anyway.

We'll call this an experiment.

Friday May 23, 2008 8:32 PM by Jen

One of the main problems I see in the animal rights movement is that, not unlike the women's movement, we're a fractured groups made of a lot of different people with some very different opinions. We do share one thing, and many of us share one desire, but we have very different ideas about how to go about this. We're a little confused about how best to do this, and how best to go about helping advance our goals.

Case in point: Vegan Freaks is a blog with a community forum, catering to us vegans who also happen to be freaks. I came across the community and blog ages ago, but was rather put off by the level of hostility. There are some things I really do like about the VF community. As I've said, I liked parts of it so much I wanted this blog to take on some of the tone. I also like that they provide a place for vegans to go and just be vegans. Much like I love going to Sticky Fingers and being able to order anything off the menu, I like the idea of going onto a blog and not being attacked or having my views mocked. I like the idea of helping people with their transition to veganism. I like the idea of taking out my frustrations on people who will understand.

In short, I like this idea very much.

The problem is that VF can be tricky to get into. That's right, there's an application process. And a lot of people fail it. I understand they why behind it, but for some reason no one seems to see how many intelligent, dedicated people are being turned away or turned off by the 'secret club mentality'. I'm not talking about unwanted omnivores or hunters, but vegans and people who are trying to go vegan.

EDIT: I've been informed by another source that it's actually not that hard to get in to the VF forums. They just (understandably) want to keep their privacy intact. Like I said before, makes sense. And I've totally been there.

If we vegans can't pull together and support each other, if we reject each other because of petty issues, if we're too busy sniping at each other, how on earth are we going help anyone?

The other problem is that while communities like this may provide some much needed rant room, they also provide a breeding ground for the very things vegans are constantly accused of being. Namely:

"self-righteous, holier-than-thou, and elitist".

As a friend once said to me about her vegan roommate and friends, "all they do is sit around telling each other things they already know, saying the same things over and over and over." The short and long of it is that we shouldn't be representing ourselves as some special club that only the best, the most vegan-vegans, can get into. We need our private places, but we should be open to helping people, not scaring them away.

We are, after all, helping them.

Wednesday May 21, 2008 3:53 PM by Alex

Recently, hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives or have been subject to unimaginable suffering due to an earthquake and typhoon - natural disasters that occur and re-occur continuously. At any given moment, many thousands of people will die from starvation, lack of nutrition, genocide, war, and disease throughout Africa, Asia, and South America. Many of our fellow citizens went hungry last night, will go hungry tonight, and will go hungry tomorrow night; they will sleep on park benches or in filth, "burden" our healthcare system, fall further into psychological despair, and die slowly, miserably. This is existence - it characterizes the lives of many millions of human beings.

[The year] 2000 began with 24 million Africans infected with AIDS. In the absence of a medical miracle, nearly all will die before 2010. Each day, 6,000 Africans die from AIDS. Each day, an additional 11,000 are infected.

Would it be acceptable to remove many, or any, of these individuals from their environment, house and feed them, provide them with antibiotics, some health care, and protect them against external threats? This would have to be done in an economically efficient way, therefore, these individuals would have to be used instrumentally - perhaps some would be used for their labor, others for their bodies (e.g., toxicity testing). However, their lives would undeniably be more satisfying than their natural condition: slow death from AIDS, and hunger, war, etc.

Imagine, we could remove those 11,000 soon-to-be infected Africans from their homes thereby preventing their infection, provide them with a safe, albeit unnatural, home and life. Yes, these 11,000 individuals would have to be exploited, often at the expense of their health and lives; however, their other option is one of abject misery. Maybe a child grows to the age of 18 in good health until she becomes an unconsenting organ donor. But that's better than contracting the virus from her mother at birth, and dieing at the age of 5 from malnutrition, the absence of medical care, and everything else that accompanies AIDS in Africa.

Would you agree to support this situation? If not, why is this argument employed to justify our exploitation of nonhumans? Why is it argued that "they would most likely suffer and die in the wild anyways," when attempting to justify enslaving a pack of wolves in a zoo or hunting deer, when this argument wouldn't ever be thought to justify removing the starving infant population from a southeastern Asian country and providing each child with food (while exploiting them to our advantage)?

If we are to assume that we truly benefit nonhumans by removing them from "nature" thereby justifying our exploitation of them, why ought we not do the same to mitigate the plight of humans who similarly suffer and die because of "nature." If this assumption is valid, which would suggest that it is likely moral or "right," then it's reasonable to believe that we have an obligation to do the same for humans - afer all, it's the moral thing to do. So much so that this assumption is often used to justify the exploitation of over 9 billion nonhumans annually in the U.S. alone.

Will be crossposted @ Vegan Soapbox

Do we really need an association for this?

Thursday May 15, 2008 9:46 PM by Jen

When I was a little kid, people always asked me if I wanted to be a vet when I grew up. I guess this is something most adults ask an 'animal crazy' kid, and I remember most people being a little shocked about the voracity of my answer:

"No. I never want to be a vet. I don't want to kill animals."

That sounds harsh, but that's how I thought. I never once wanted to be a veterinarian because I knew I simply couldn't stand to be the one euthanizing an animal. It wasn't that I didn't understand why euthanasia is practiced, or support it, but I knew I couldn't be the one doing it. Plus blood and gore make me nauseous, as I found out when a vet forced me to watch him excise tissue from Rivet's injured knee and I fainted. Not the job for me, thanks.

When we think of a veterinarian, we like to think of them literally as a doctor for animals. I have known many vets in my life, and many of them were amazingly kind, intelligent people. Rivet's current vet is an amazing man - he still makes house calls for small animals, for one thing, and he's able to calm down my horse, who recognizes the vet's truck by sight and sound and has more than once pulled a lead rope out of my hands trying to escape his bi-yearly shots. I appreciate him, and I trust him and his judgement. However, I recognize that his role isn't really that of doctor, it's much closer to that of car mechanic, as Bernard E. Rollin argues:

If my car is broken, I bring it to a mechanic and ask for his opinion. If the mechanic thinks that we can fix it for less than the cost or value of the car, we do; it's prudent to do so based on the market-value of the property. If not, we junk it and I get another one.

As a thought experiment of your own, substitute your dog or cat for the car and veterinarian for mechanic. The outcome is the same isn't it? Yes, some people spend more money to "fix" their animal-property but this is only so because they place a higher value on their property than the market dictates.

That sounds amazingly harsh, and I don't mean to suggest that all veterinarians fail to consider the well being of animals - not as property, but as living beings. Many vets do pro-bono work for just this reason. However, their relationship to animals is not the same as the relationship between doctor and human. Veterinarians have been forced to assume a role of trying to decide between the interests of humans, and the interests of those they are ostensibly supposed to be helping. Instead of being able to advocate solely for the interests (we'd say rights here, but animals have none) of their patients, they must instead consider the selfish needs of another party who has nothing tangible to loose and everything to gain if the interests of their patient are violated. In many cases, life is weighed against monetary interests, and because animals are not persons in the eyes of the law, money wins every time.

Consider this: by law, veterinarians must be allowed to examine laboratory facilities where animals are used. Many 'independent review boards' - groups established by research institutions to facilitate ethical practices - contain veterinarians. Veterinarians castrate animals without anesthetic. They examine slaughter houses. They agree to kill healthy animals because it is too expensive to keep them, or because they have been deemed undesirable by humans. They sanction these institutions by participating and condoning their conduct. What does that say about how they view those they are supposed to be helping/protecting?

Human doctors are charged with the role of keeping humans healthy, and of preventing their deaths at all costs if possible. Why should doctors for animals have a different one? When human doctors have participated in activities like those detailed above, we call it an outrage. Tuskege, the Holocaust - these are examples when human doctors have done just that, and we remember them with trepidation, and fight to keep them from ever occurring again.

Perhaps we need to redefine the role of the veterinarian in our society. One group has already begun - the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights. How strange is it that we require a subgroup to delineate that mission for veterinarians? What should their role in the lives of animals be?

"Real" or faux - what does our choice suggest?

Monday May 12, 2008 4:09 PM by Alex

If presented with two food options with identical taste - faux sweet and sour "chicken," or real sweet and sour chicken - and we select the latter, "real" option, does that imply that we not only take pleasure in eating meat but that we insist on killing an animal?

Bologna is a common food item that is easily mimicked in both taste and "dietary" bennefit. We can purchase mock-bologna that tastes, smells, feels, etc. like the real version from the majority of grocery stores. Now, if presented with the alternative version of this lunch meat and the traditional version, will we select the latter, "real" option? If yes, this suggests that mere taste isn't the impetus for our collective insistence on torturing animals; something internal to us is motivating our desire to kill somebody (NOT something).

As a former omnivore who thoroughly enjoyed sausage, I was eager to find a faux substitute - what my mom accurately calls "make-believe-meat." My search was short; vegan "sausage" is available, the taste is quite similar if not identical to the traditional version (depending on how it is prepared), and far healthier. Now, if X were to hold both the alternative and "real" versions in front of Y, after Y has been informed of the similarities, etc. between the two, and Y insists on eating a pig, is that telling of the type of person Y is? It seems that we are all Y, which say's something about our culture: we demand death, we insist on it!

I don't know what the impetus is for this; however, it seems reasonable to argue that whatever the motivation it isn't moral or good.

Crossposted at Vegan Soapbox

Shouldn't we simply avoid cruelty?

Saturday May 10, 2008 9:00 AM by Alex

Why are anti-cruelty laws theoretically impotent?

As Tom Regan argues, the term cruelty appeals to a certain state of mind: X's vivisection of Y is prohibited if the impetus for X's action was a desire to see Y in a state of persistent pain. If an act is prohibited by an anti-cruelty law, a certain "bad" intention must have motivated the prohibited action. It follows that a society's designation that using my family dog as a dart-board is an unlawful act, for example, is not derived from a duty owed directly to the dog, but the result of an outpouring of benevolence: "We as society shall take pity on you Jake-the-dog; our kindness has compelled us to choose not to throw sharp metallic objects into your body."

This is clearly flawed as those who consciously exploit animals are in fact often not cruel. Those who consume animals or wear leather are not cruel. They are products, effects, of our culture. Granted, many hunters, scientists, etc. are callous people, however, many of them are not. Again, they are the results of societal processes that condition all of us to believe that animals are our resources. They are wrong, their actions are immoral, but they are not cruel.

Within the animal rights movement the concept of "rights" is employed because, as with members of our own species, certain actions are prohibited as a matter of justice.

As the dominant group men haven't chosen not to rape women out of kindness or because it's cruel to forcefully take sex from women, but because women ought to be respected as possessors of a kind of value that demands that their interests be protected.

We ought to extend the principle of "equal protection of interests" to all persons capable of caring that you are respecting their interests because that is what justice demands of us. Kindness is not the impetus, benevolence doesn't compel the movement; the logic of our own moral intuitions and basic assumptions about the wrongness of both unnecessary suffering and failing to respect the "inherent value," in Regan's conception of "rights," of all those who posses it ought to move our hearts and minds.

Of course we should be kind in our dealings with other sensitive beings. However, as a question of ethics, kindness, however this is conceived, is but a sufficient manifestation of acknowledging that suffering is intrinsically evil, an acknowledgment that necessarily informs the defining of ethical constraints on action.

The practical impotence of anti-cruelty laws has been expounded forcefully by Francione (see the property status of nonhumans), and are not in need of repeating here.

Of course fur!

Thursday May 1, 2008 10:38 PM by Alex

Isn't fur the ultimate expression, the inevitable result, of the social construction of our species' supremacy over non-human animals? And, isn't it exemplary of our cultures' crudity?

"Fur animals" are bred and harvested for the sole purpose of skinning them for their fur: the singular goal of bringing these feeling creatures into existence is "fashion." What compounds this moral wrong is the impracticality of the fur coat, and the explicit classism that animates this blase statement that cruelty-is-fashionable. All those animals are starved-to-weight as to allow their skin and fur to be more easily torn from their bodies, so an infinite minority of the population can "show off their wealth and status" over cocktails.

As if it is possible to make this epitome of our cultures' attitudes towards non-human animals more damning, after they're de-skinned - often while conscious! - their carcasses are not consumed, they are merely discarded atop a pile of dead or dying individuals.

In a world where being capable of having any interests at all is sufficient for entrance into the moral community this form of sadism would properly be criticized for its immorality - the unjustness of this practice would be unquestionable.

In the world's current form, however, this practice is the logical conclusion of our beliefs. It's inevitable and justified - this occurs because we explicitly support the world-view in which this practice finds its support.

Non-vegans, this is the logic of your position: non-human animals are tools for our use - possessors of value so long as they are of use to us - therefore, murdering an animal for his coat so that someone else can wear it is perfectly acceptable.

It's difficult for me to recognize the difference between these two actions:

starving an animal, beating him until unconsciousness, and then skinning him until he awakes, screams, and blinks, then using the product for clothing. And,
engineering a specific breed of chicken whose breast is so large, so unnatural, that they are incapable of standing up and moving forward, de-beaking them without anesthesia, shackling their legs, sending them to the "electric bath," and then chopping off their heads - whether they are conscious or not - and then consuming their bodies.

In both instances, the animals are tortured and killed unnecessarily: the products of their misery do not fulfill an essential need or a need at all, but a trivial human desire. We do not need to eat chickens, we prefer too; we don't need to wear another animal's fur coat, we prefer too. There simply is no other way to look at it, unless we divorce ourselves from logic and reason. I know you don't want to believe that it is the same thing, but it is. Just think about it, get beyond your own self-interest and what our culture "naturally" does.

Interestingly enough, "enlightened" omnivores often express their anger over fur, sometimes over a plate of pork chops, buttered corn, and a glass of milk, while failing to recognize the irony in that their advocacy for a world free of fur farms would logically lead to a world free from breeding and raising a hog to fulfill our preference for the taste of "ham." To justify the former is to justify the latter, and vis-a-versa.

Think about it: If you are, why are you angered over fur, it's just like eating meat, or testing on rabbits, or hunting deer, etc.? If an animal is a mere thing for our species to use, what the hell does it matter what we do to them - they are our tools!

If you're starting to believe that it does matter, please, let's talk about it. But don't you dare just rest in your hypocrisy; that is no way for a life to be lived.

Will be crossposted @ Vegan Soapbox.

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