This is a topic originally posted from my Wordpress blog. I am posting this here to share with the Steemit community and pretty much to give it more exposure. All the credit for this goes to my friend Brian Blackwell.
By the way, please share this blog to everyone you know.
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Some time ago, my friend Brian was involved in online conversations with vegans. I was at his side, and together – as non-vegans – we made our way through the YouTube comment section and on to The Philosophical Vegan Forum. The experience has given us a huge opportunity to reflect on where we stand as meat-eaters, but I will not be exploring on the things we learned. The aim of this blog is meant to focus only on the comment that Brian sent me in a private discussion, which I am happy to share with all of you (with his permission) because I find his wisdom to be a gentle guide towards veganism, and ultimately convinced me to finally move in that direction.
Strange irony — out of all the vegan videos I’ve seen dating back to 2015 and all the interactions with vegans — the one person who has been my biggest influence for veganism just happens to be a meat-eater. Before you read – It’s important to note that his comment here is not an argument against veganism or an excuse to continue eating meat, but primarily as a wake up call for carnists to realize WHY they’re involved in the meat-eating culture, and hopefully get them to take steps, or a giant leap towards veganism. However, I would also like to offer this comment to our vegan friends and ask that you adopt this wisdom into your modus operandi as you continue in your endeavor of protesting and converting meat eaters. Lastly, I want to point out that Brian and I are anarchists(1,2,3), and that is why you will see words like “statism“, “anarchy” and “self-ownership”. Thanks, and enjoy!
…increasing one’s logical and rhetorical prowess is probably the full extent of this conversation’s usefulness, as both sides are attempting to formulate crafty arguments to defend positions not actually born of logic.
In addition, I’m beginning to think we’re on the wrong side of this argument, though that’s no reason to desist from the intellectual practice of debate in the short term. I have come across some interesting perspectives on this issue, and also thought of an aspect of our position that we may have overlooked, which I’d like to share with you here…
We have spoken about the importance of following one’s own conscience and value system, lest we sacrifice self-respect (the loss of which fosters all manner of evil, including the implementation of, and acquiescence to, our current system of dominance). Passio brought up the documentary “Earthlings“, which I had viewed years ago at the behest of a friend who was involved with PETA. If you have not seen it, I am reluctant to recommend it, as it is disturbing in the extreme. I had not thought of it in years, but upon its mention, I remembered how appalled I was at the practices that support the meat industry. If you choose to watch it, keep a bucket handy, because you will no doubt be nauseated at the level of inhumanity demonstrated, and perhaps more so by the fact that you have been personally supporting it.
Assuming you would have a similar reaction, which I do not doubt, then we must recognize that THIS is our true moral position; the accurate state of our conscience on the subject. How we feel on a daily basis as we engage in a carnist lifestyle is NOT an accurate representation of our true position, but rather an expression of habit; a falling back into our previous state of indoctrinated cultural assimilation. This is evidenced by the fact that we would undoubtedly balk at the idea of eating a dog, tarantula, or rat, but think nothing of eating a cow, chicken or pig. The arbitrary and illogical nature of our preference, combined with our commonality with the overall society in this regard clearly reveals our programming.
This means that we are not actually acting from conscience when we eat meat, but are ignoring conscience because we’ve been trained to do so. Like with so many other issues, we have fallen victim to an imposed blind spot that creates a disconnect between our thoughts, emotions, and actions (not unlike the blind spot that caused me to accept statism for nearly 40 years, despite being cognizant of much relevant information surrounding the issue). Once expressly confronted with the ideas in support of anarchy, my true position was revealed, and I was able to quickly heal the disconnect in my personal trinity. But I needed it to land squarely upon my head in order for me to see it, because my peripheral vision had been purposefully obscured. In the same way, when directly witnessing the immoral dominance and subsequent suffering of animals, our gut reaction reveals our true position on the subject, regardless of what we choose to do afterwards.
Our relationship with food is often more intimate than our relationship with political systems, and so the issue of carnism may be a more difficult personal nut to crack than the issue of statism (which is certainly saying something). A disconnect in the trinity of thought/emotion/action is the flaw which births all evil, and thus cannot be abided within anyone seeking personal or societal uplift. This places a heavy burden upon the individual; one that tests our commitment to self-responsibility. In short, if you can watch “Earthlings” and feel perfectly comfortable with your participation in this practice, then you have no obligation to change; but if you cannot, then you would be remiss to not address the personal disconnect in short order.
I have much more to say on the topic, but will not impose upon your patience at this time. If you’d like to read an interesting essay on this topic, here’s a link to the writings of C.W. Leadbeater (It raises some interesting points, amidst the less-enthralling physical and economic considerations. If you wish to prioritize or expedite your reading, you may skip down to page 10 to find notes of a more philosophical nature).
Then, I showed him these two articles written by ex-vegan Rhys Southan (feel free to read them at your own leisure):
1) Article #1
2) Article #2
Take note, meat eaters, as you may benefit a wider perspective from Brian’s response, in case you try to defend meat-eating the next time around. Here’s his comment:
I did not read the article yet, but I want to comment on this issue of degrees of morality, as I was thinking of this very thing just last night.
Firstly, vegans and their arguments are rather irrelevant to our own decision-making process, aside from being perceptual experience that we must process as we sort all this out. In other words, their success or failure at making persuasive logical arguments should not be permitted to reflect on the spirit of their position. With this in mind, the title of the article evokes a red flag rather than a chuckle for me. I know you know this already, but I want to establish that acknowledgement as a basis for our evaluation of the article.
What you said makes perfect sense: if a man reduced his meat intake by any amount, he would be achieving the goal of reducing suffering in some measure. Any vegan who won’t accept this fact is just soldiering a cause and not thinking or speaking truthfully. This is particularly relevant because morality can only be measured in degrees, not success or failure. A maximally moral person would be one who makes a maximal effort toward moral action, not one who achieves perfect success.
I think all ethics must be thought of as “practical ethics” as opposed to a system of ironclad philosophical morality, as the latter may very well be an absurdity. There is a certain amount of relativity inherent in the topic, as intent and circumstance are clearly relevant factors. If I unintentionally swallow a bug, or hit a squirrel while riding my motorcycle, it could not be deemed an immoral act, though suffering was surely caused by my actions. All we can ever do is reduce the suffering we cause, not eliminate it with certainty, and so any reduction would be a move in the right direction. Even if veganism is an arbitrary cut-off, that does not necessarily invalidate its appropriateness or efficacy as a method for living a more ethical life.
Our effort must be in earnest; it’s a clear cop-out to say “since I cannot entirely eliminate suffering, the moral argument is fundamentally flawed, and therefore I am under no obligation to make any effort toward reducing it”. This is a point that both sides of the argument must acknowledge, as it is equally flawed to say that a less-than-perfect effort (such as eating meat just once per month) is an utter failure. As you and I both know, most of these conversations are not rooted in honesty. The philosophy is often of the armchair variety and the goal is to best the opponent, not to improve one’s self. This lack of honesty isn’t always intentional. I’ve been guilty of getting caught up in the debate and losing sight of the goal, and the belligerence often encountered in these discussions often draws the ego out in force.
P.S. - An interesting note about the relativity of morality as it regards veganism is that it may very well be the case that mankind was not morally bound to refrain from eating meat at previous stages of history, but it is now. As we evolve in consciousness and capabilities (both on a personal, and species-wide level) the moral landscape changes. This is the same circumstantial aspect of ethics that differentiates murder from self-defense, though the action and result are the same. These are very muddy waters, as a boy raised in the 18th century American south could be said to be wholly unaware of the immorality of slavery, and thus not culpable for participating in its wrongs (though one could make the case that such truths are revealed via earnest introspection and spiritual practice, and that such practice is a duty of man in all times and places). If, someday, mankind figures out how to compel a housefly to escape through an open window right in front of its face, it may become a moral imperative to refrain from swatting it for the crime of trespass. In my experience, however, we have yet to reach that point, as I have had little success in this endeavor.
Ok… that first article was pretty funny at parts. And yeah, the second one was very thoughtful and made some great points. I think these address everything we’ve seen in the forums, and they handle the debate side of this issue very well, but where does that leave you and me?
As I see it right now, here are the hurdles to be overcome by us, the honest truth-seekers who are not emotionally married to either position:
1. Conscience. Aligning our thoughts/emotions/actions after sufficient exposure to food production practices.
2. Self-ownership. Animal slaughter is a claim to ownership over the lives of animals; a claim that exceeds the role of stewardship that we hold in regard to children and domesticated pets (earnest stewardship being for the benefit of the stewarded entity, not the steward). How is this claim justified?
3. Energy distribution. The transference of fear/suffering energy into our body by eating the bodies of animals flooded with this energy; and the contribution of this negative energy to the energy balance of the planet via our support of this institution.
4. The principle of correspondence (Sowing/reaping, law of attraction, “as above so below”, etc.). The effect on our efforts to free the world of human domination and human rights violations while supporting an institution of animal domination and animal rights violations.
After all the debate, these are the questions to which I have not found a satisfactory answer, which makes me question the wisdom of our position in defense of carnism.