For a strange psychological or, in my view, philosophical reason, human beings of most walks of life have a generalized tendency to become deeply upset at the sight of animal suffering. I don't know if that pity makes any sense from an evolutionary point of view, but the simple truth is that, in our day and age, we don't like to witness the suffering of any animal. Still, we do, even if only subconsciously, create a stark distinction between animal suffering and animal cruelty. The latter is wholly contained in the former by sheer logical necessity, since cruelty, by definition, would involve some kind of suffering. However, we can immediately distinguish the source of the suffering. If we deem the animal's pain to be natural or necessary, we consider it to be an instance of animal suffering. If we deem the animal's pain to be unnatural or unnecessary, we consider it to be an instance of animal cruelty. So we don't particularly appreciate it when teenagers burn dogs alive, or when psychopaths crucify cats, or when strange people abandon their dogs by throwing them out of a moving car on the highway. All of those actions we would consider to be unnatural because we deem the person who undertakes them to be mentally deranged, and we would also consider those actions to be unnecessary because there are better ways to abandon a dog, should you no longer be able to care for it. Now, as far as I understand, vegans don't particularly see a great distinction between animal suffering and animal cruelty, and with good reason I guess, because by my own admission, one inherently involves the other. But that inherent involvement is precisely the reason why, in my recent investigations into veganism, I've come to see it as a losing struggle.
Cover artwork of “Atom Heart Mother” by Pink Floyd
Still, I'm not particularly convinced. I can't see how the talk of morality regarding animals can be achieved when we live in a world where every living thing simply has to kill. If you're a vegan you're probably expecting the old “lions eat meat” argument, and as such I won't disappoint you, but I'll take the liberty of adding a bit more to it. Because that argument is often brought up with the same speed with which it is dropped, I've come to realize people haven't fully fleshed it out. When they do so, they seem to hope for a kind of appeal to nature argument, but they quickly abandon it when they are told that animals also do some crazy things we'd be remiss to call moral. For instance, if during mating season a male polar bear comes across a female with cubs he will kill her cubs so that she's basically forced to mate with him. Copying that particular behavior would be bad news for all stepsons and stepdaughters out there, but thankfully we don't copy it. Thing is though, the argument shouldn't be used as morality because, truth be told, there is no morality to speak of. The argument should be rephrased as the typical “it is what it is” saying we often hear in mafia movies. A lion will kill a gazelle because he has to, and he doesn't feel any pity probably because he can't have those feelings, but even if he could, he would surely hold his belly in a higher regard than the gazelle's life. The point with mentioning wild animals shouldn't be to bring up morality because, at this stage, there is no morality. As we were all told by our parents the first time we witnessed violence in a nature documentary, it's just the law of the jungle, buddy.
Vegans will likely counter that argument with two points – one, with the aforementioned mention of generalized brutality in the animal kingdom, and two, with the claim that we in civilized society should not be subjected to the law of the jungle. But what is the jungle? As far as I can see, it's the entire world. As far as our continued survival goes, civilization is just a fancy word for cars and cellphones... You can take the homo sapiens out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the homo sapiens. And I now preface my next sentence because I realize how strange it might sound, but it seems to me that vegans, in understanding nature and wholly considering humans to be animals, are simultaneously striving to somehow overcome nature...
Veganism appears to involve a rational acceptance of “it is what it is” and yet it's still trying to change it. If so, then that's where my admiration comes from, truly. But I still feel like it could ultimately be pointless. If our biological necessities demand that we consume certain things, and those things are only found in animals, then those animals will have to be killed for our well-being. If so, then we could discuss the conditions in which they live and die, because maybe having little piglets wallow in absolute filth isn't the way to go. The vegan argument though is that those animals don't need to be killed, and that we can have perfectly normal and healthy, or healthier, lives without their deaths hanging on our consciousnesses... But can we though? Again, in my ignorance of nutrition, it is not expedient for me to comment in depth on this, but from what I can understand, I'm not convinced that the vegan diet as it currently exists is sufficient. Call me a skeptic, call me a conspiracy nutter, call me an idiot, but from what little I saw, vegans experience a lot of health problems, both physical and mental, some of which might be attributed to other causes but I'm not prepared to completely discount their diet, especially because they report feeling better after changing the diet, or they admit to have felt the need to cheat by including fish and fifty eggs. Then we often hear about vegan children being hospitalized due to malnutrition, and the concerns are waved away as simple bad parenting. But why is it that people who have so much love and compassion for animals, the environment and their own health still somehow manage to be completely careless with their own sons and daughters? At that point it's tempting to bring up the lions again and say that the cause of the malnutrition is something equivalent to making a lion eat grass. It is, at the very least, strange, more than enough to be reluctant about giving the vegan diet the old college try...
But you would give me the obvious answer that a lion simply cannot eat grass. Even if he had the moral reasoning to not want to kill another sentient being, he still wouldn't have the biological build-up to subsist on grass. Human beings, at least practically and culturally, appear to have the capacity to eat just about everything, so it might stand to reason that we could adapt our diets so that they meet our needs in a way that eliminates death, right? Well, not exactly. Even vegans admit that vegan farming will cause animal deaths but that those animals tend to be insects that don't have the same awareness of their own existence as farm animals do. On that point I'm inclined to agree, and when opponents of veganism accuse vegans of hypocrisy they sorta miss the point. But then veganism becomes, not about eliminating death, which I admit I wrote with some literary freedom, but it instead becomes about minimizing suffering all across the board. Well, I'd say everyone is happy to agree with that, though they might not act on it in a way that vegans would find at all satisfying, and indeed they'd accuse non-vegans of hypocrisy. On first glance I'd say they have a strong point because we get quite mad at the person who killed one dog but we don't get mad at the millions of pigs and cows that are killed in equally horrific ways. However, intent and the nature of the animal matter here. The dog was tortured and killed by an individual who, for whatever reason, thought it was fun to do so, whereas the pig was killed to bring food to a table. The methods may be ironically similar, however we find it easier to stomach the convenient machinations of an industrialized world, we see it as just the most efficient way to do something necessary. If that shows how evil people can be, so be it, but I call the consumption of animal products necessary because I'm not convinced that every single person on Earth could go vegan today and not experience any negative side effects, even if they did so with the full support of an expert. Thus, I'm inclined to believe that, though factory workers might become insensitive, I also don't see them as monsters. I would say that if they could do their work in easier, cleaner ways, they would do so. If a dairy farmer found a magical cow that gave rivers of milk without being forcefully inseminated he would gladly trade his entire farm for it, or her, if you prefer.
As far as the nature of the animal goes we enter into cultural territory. I've seen interviews of people in China justifying the consumption of dogs with arguments entirely similar to those we use for the consumption of pigs, cows and chickens. Vegans call that an arbitrary distinction, and thus it should be debunked. Personally, I've begun to wonder about pigs because if they truly are as smart as dogs, then I'd find it difficult to condemn the consumption of dogs as long as I eat pigs. However, at a certain point the distinction has to hold because vegans also kill in order to eat, though what they eat isn't sentient. But still, vegan foods have their own strategies to avoid getting eaten, they have toxins and shells and the like. Thing is we simply know how to get around them. Plants may not be sentient but I don't think they would willingly choose to be cooked, chewed up and digested. In other words, every living thing is subjected to the law of the jungle. We may be able to at times create roads over grass, but on that note, veganism can only exist as long as the technology for it exists. On one hand, I wanna instinctively agree that an advanced society should forgo outdated practices, and if vegan food becomes indistinguishable from non-vegan food, both in nutrition and taste, then a change would assuredly be in order, though I'm reluctant to call it a moral imperative. But on the other hand, I'm also reluctant to believe that mankind's ingenuity can render nature obsolete. If there is something innate in us that drives us to the consumption of animal products, then veganism as it's currently practiced is untenable.
When referencing vegan food there I made mention of nutrition and taste. Regarding the first I don't see any possibility of contention, because if a vegan diet was found to be inherently harmful to humans, then veganism as it stands would be refuted, and the minimization of suffering would have to draw the line further back to include some sentient animals. However, regarding taste I also think differently to vegans. I don't see how our cravings for certain animal foods can be waved away as simple sensory pleasure or as vain hedonism. It's not the case that on one side of the equation we have the systematic slaughter of millions of animals worldwide, and on the other side we have a cheeseburger. It's simplistic and fallacious to think so. I find it hard to believe that all of our gastronomic practices can be reduced to benign cultural reasons or malignant sociological pressure by way of advertising on the part of big companies. It seems to me that something as inherent as food has to have an origin that is deeply ingrained in us. So the point of the lion comparisons is also to say that hunger supersedes what we might call morality. Nature forces everyone to draw the line somewhere, vegans just draw it somewhere different.
As for me, my general belief is that most people aren't really evil, as tempting as it is to believe so when we engage in these kinds of discussions. Instead, I think people are just trying to do the best they can with what they have and what they know. And though I find the vegan cause very interesting, I also can't help to see it as a revolt against our very nature and against the world. Because it seems to be the case that either God or Darwin created us in such a way that is simply at odds with a perfect world with no death. But death just has to occur, it is inevitable in more ways than one, and hunger is just one of this world's many cruel jokes.
Now, having said all that, I could be completely wrong. It could be that a vegan diet really is good and can only improve with time, and thus animal consumption will become a strange relic of the past. But I'm not a prophet, and so I can't quite see how from here. As far as I know, our tribe has been killing and eating animals since before rainbows had color in them. And though we don't do the same outdated things we used to, as likewise we don't do all of the same things lions do, this might be a situation in which we simply cannot change. And so the vegan attempt to fix a seemingly broken thing might be exceedingly naive, but then again, like so many naive things, it can also be admirable.
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