The following blogs are about two different attitudes at the heart of the animal debate. On the one side there is often a boiling anger felt by vegans, towards people who brag about their meat eating and who don’t give a damn about the animals who die for them. On the other side there’s a discomfort felt by people who feel they are being forced to consider animals when they don’t feel they need to. There’s a gulf between people over the subject of animals - not the cute, cuddly ones, the “edible” ones. Until a couple of decades ago it didn’t get a mention, but then it all came out - how animals were being treated on farms and what was going on in abattoirs.
In the early eighties The Animals Film and the book Animal Liberation shocked people. We realised for the first time how much of our food relies on animals and what actually happens to the animals themselves. Slowly this information seeped into public consciousness, then, surprisingly, it came to a standstill. At least it did in Australia. Why? It has been a matter for some discussion on vegan websites and magazines but nowhere else. In the general community there’s a reluctance to face up to animal issues - probably because we feel too guilty to think about it. In private, if there’s any talk of it at all, it’s argued without much intellectual rigour. We like our animal food too much to want to put it down. We’re addicted to it. The matter of eating animals is just usually the butt of jokes.
Recently I was visiting an elderly friend of mine and her youngest and eldest daughters were visiting at the same time. The younger one ‘needed’ to joke with me about her choice of food at her sister’s birthday dinner in a restaurant. She let everyone know(particularly me), that she had had “the lamb”. This was her way of saying “up yours” to me, a reminder of how much her views differ from mine.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Judging the vulnerable
Take a different example, the arsonist. Even if he or she is a child, an arsonist is easy to judge. They are responsible for burning the forest, causing mass death. A teenager, old enough to dream up this plan, may not be old enough to foresee the damage the fire will cause. So when they light the grass and an inferno ensues, how deliberate is the intention? The arsonist may know but no one else knows, unless under close questioning we can really find out all the reasoning behind such an act of destruction.
But in a million living rooms that night, how does each person think, when watching the fire on TV news. We feel the loss, we mourn the loss of bushland and the loss of life and property. We might feel impotent rage. We might want revenge. We might become judge and jury when we say out loud, “Hang the little fucker”. It is surely much rarer to think along the lines of finding out why it was done. And even rarer for anyone to admit to being thrilled at an exciting story in the news or having an excuse to get angry at someone we don’t know. It could be something that lifts our otherwise dull day, giving us pleasure in the misfortunes of the victims. But of course we keep all this well hidden. We hide it behind our judgements of the evil of it. The evening’s news fertilises the judgemental mind.
Our judgemental feelings are far closer to revenge than we’d like them to be, and usually a long way from any wish for the rehabilitation of the wayward teenage arsonist. I mention all this because it has parallels with the same bubbling up anger that many of us feel towards even our friends and family when they waste the lives of the animals they eat.
But in a million living rooms that night, how does each person think, when watching the fire on TV news. We feel the loss, we mourn the loss of bushland and the loss of life and property. We might feel impotent rage. We might want revenge. We might become judge and jury when we say out loud, “Hang the little fucker”. It is surely much rarer to think along the lines of finding out why it was done. And even rarer for anyone to admit to being thrilled at an exciting story in the news or having an excuse to get angry at someone we don’t know. It could be something that lifts our otherwise dull day, giving us pleasure in the misfortunes of the victims. But of course we keep all this well hidden. We hide it behind our judgements of the evil of it. The evening’s news fertilises the judgemental mind.
Our judgemental feelings are far closer to revenge than we’d like them to be, and usually a long way from any wish for the rehabilitation of the wayward teenage arsonist. I mention all this because it has parallels with the same bubbling up anger that many of us feel towards even our friends and family when they waste the lives of the animals they eat.
Judging
Saturday 5th Dec
Making value judgements of others is a big waste of time, but we like wasting time. Most of us procrastinate the use of our time to avoid using it for more productive purposes (difficult tasks), which we try to put off. Instead we indulge in judgement as a sort of entertainment. I often catch myself passing a judgement on this or that to fill an empty space in my mind? I suppose that most others do that too.
If this is a popular ‘sport’ it may be spurred on by a sort of schadenfreude impulse, where other peoples’ behaviour makes ours look better. It’s where we might try to step into the affairs of other people, and try to clean them up. Maybe we try to throw a rug across other people’s dirty floors, so that we can step towards them without getting our feet soiled.
One of our harshest judgments is reserved for peoples’ routine un-thought-out habits, actions that aren’t self-directed but largely directed by others, or copied from other people’s behaviours. Take for example my reaction to the routine eating of meat or wearing of ‘animal’ clothing. Maybe I don’t believe it right to eat meat or wear leather but how justified would I be in judging you for still doing that? If I, as a vegan, am judging you wrong, I think it’s best to keep quiet about it. Because if I approach you and express my judgement of you, you’ll know immediately that I intend you to feel my disapproval. I’d be using it to get you to agree with me, to get you to throw out the meat and toss out your shoes. In my reckoning, if you do this I will release my judgment of you, start to form a better opinion of you, and we can all be friends again. This may sound absurd but it’s close to what many of us do to each other on many counts where we have different views.
If this is a popular ‘sport’ it may be spurred on by a sort of schadenfreude impulse, where other peoples’ behaviour makes ours look better. It’s where we might try to step into the affairs of other people, and try to clean them up. Maybe we try to throw a rug across other people’s dirty floors, so that we can step towards them without getting our feet soiled.
One of our harshest judgments is reserved for peoples’ routine un-thought-out habits, actions that aren’t self-directed but largely directed by others, or copied from other people’s behaviours. Take for example my reaction to the routine eating of meat or wearing of ‘animal’ clothing. Maybe I don’t believe it right to eat meat or wear leather but how justified would I be in judging you for still doing that? If I, as a vegan, am judging you wrong, I think it’s best to keep quiet about it. Because if I approach you and express my judgement of you, you’ll know immediately that I intend you to feel my disapproval. I’d be using it to get you to agree with me, to get you to throw out the meat and toss out your shoes. In my reckoning, if you do this I will release my judgment of you, start to form a better opinion of you, and we can all be friends again. This may sound absurd but it’s close to what many of us do to each other on many counts where we have different views.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Victim and victimiser
The arsonist lights a bushfire. Great judgement rains down on this act and its perpetrator. The act and the person are as one. And we might say “but there’s a difference between the one who is guilty and the other who is not”. But it makes no difference. Most of us have lost our sense of fairness, we judge with a knee-jerk reaction and without careful consideration, and therefore without fairness.
To judge is a weighty business. The professional judge and the judicial process can spend months and cost millions of dollars, just to get to a decision, namely the judgement of a person’s guilt or non-guilt. So much depends on this sort of judgement (the possibility of taking away their freedom). The result of the amateur judgement may result from us being too quick to condemn. It’s the negative value judgement that can be so damaging, so whether I am an arsonist or a meat eater or doing something you disapprove of, I’m given no chance to defend myself because you have given yourself no time to make sure your judgement is fair.
To judge is a weighty business. The professional judge and the judicial process can spend months and cost millions of dollars, just to get to a decision, namely the judgement of a person’s guilt or non-guilt. So much depends on this sort of judgement (the possibility of taking away their freedom). The result of the amateur judgement may result from us being too quick to condemn. It’s the negative value judgement that can be so damaging, so whether I am an arsonist or a meat eater or doing something you disapprove of, I’m given no chance to defend myself because you have given yourself no time to make sure your judgement is fair.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Dangerous judgements
Meat is symbolic of strength and it’s symbolic of the rich, successful life (despite the fact that most people in the West can afford to buy it). This is the problem for vegans when they are trying to communicate on this subject. Meat, rich animal foods (even luxury leather shoes) seem to be regarded as ‘quality goods’. They are attractive to our ‘trained’ tastebuds and expensive enough to make most people associate them with good living. Quality consumer items appeal to those who “appreciate the good things in life”. Vegans seem to want to deny people their pleasure because they deny themselves, acting in a ‘fox and the sour grapes’ way. And so if vegans show dislike of meat eaters and make them feel like criminals, that will be reciprocated; people will dislike vegans and the food they recommend.
As a part of the ‘vast majority group’ people do what most others do, and their conformity leads to stereotyping and the need to make judgements about others. For example, those unfortunate people whose facial features aren’t considered to be beautiful probably know that almost everyone who has ever seen them agrees that they are ‘not good looking’. It doesn’t have to be anyone’s fault, and it certainly isn’t fair to be making that sort of judgment but we are probably (privately anyway) in common agreement about facial beauty. And there are other things we all agree about it, and in agreeing we show our judgements are like others’ judgements, and that makes us feel ‘normal’. By expressing a judgement we show others in our group what our values and standards are.
I say someone is “ugly”, others agree. It might help us to dislike that person and give us an excuse for not being friendly with them, almost as if they deserve to be ugly, along the lines of bad people are ugly: ugly people are bad. That’s how unfair and damaging a crude judgement can be – notably for the facially challenged. For example, their whole life can be spent thinking they are ugly and being disliked and avoided because of it.
This extremely unfair judgement is one of the worst we make, and yet one that most of us are capable of making. We may say what we are thinking and, out loud, most of us would condemn that approach as being uncharitable. But inside our own heads we decide to avoid the ugly person, avoid the bad person. Or we agree with others when they make a joke of this person’s looks. We’re all capable of making unfair judgements. Ultimately these become our downfall.
As a part of the ‘vast majority group’ people do what most others do, and their conformity leads to stereotyping and the need to make judgements about others. For example, those unfortunate people whose facial features aren’t considered to be beautiful probably know that almost everyone who has ever seen them agrees that they are ‘not good looking’. It doesn’t have to be anyone’s fault, and it certainly isn’t fair to be making that sort of judgment but we are probably (privately anyway) in common agreement about facial beauty. And there are other things we all agree about it, and in agreeing we show our judgements are like others’ judgements, and that makes us feel ‘normal’. By expressing a judgement we show others in our group what our values and standards are.
I say someone is “ugly”, others agree. It might help us to dislike that person and give us an excuse for not being friendly with them, almost as if they deserve to be ugly, along the lines of bad people are ugly: ugly people are bad. That’s how unfair and damaging a crude judgement can be – notably for the facially challenged. For example, their whole life can be spent thinking they are ugly and being disliked and avoided because of it.
This extremely unfair judgement is one of the worst we make, and yet one that most of us are capable of making. We may say what we are thinking and, out loud, most of us would condemn that approach as being uncharitable. But inside our own heads we decide to avoid the ugly person, avoid the bad person. Or we agree with others when they make a joke of this person’s looks. We’re all capable of making unfair judgements. Ultimately these become our downfall.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Good intentions
Being offended by vegans (who are up front about their diets) is a favourite defence of the omnivore. It’s the justification they most often use for ‘not listening’. But some are listening and taking what we say seriously. They may be deciding to alter the food they buy. But for what reason? Do they change because we’ve nudged them, or is it a naturally awakening compassion? Is it a wish for political correctness? Intentions not only test ideas but test resolve. If there’s any enthusiasm to become vegan can we marry it with real action. Becoming vegan comes down to a matter giving up favourite things and eventually giving up our MOST favourite things.
Intentions are interesting things, we all have them and we all know what a failed one feels like. It’s like when one sneaks in a sly hamburger or pretends not to notice the animal content in some delicious food. It’s not much different to having a smoke behind the bicycle sheds when we were kids. Stolen fruit tastes the sweetest - there could be an element of that in continuing to eat meat, as if stopping doing it would be giving in to the passive side of oneself.
Intentions are interesting things, we all have them and we all know what a failed one feels like. It’s like when one sneaks in a sly hamburger or pretends not to notice the animal content in some delicious food. It’s not much different to having a smoke behind the bicycle sheds when we were kids. Stolen fruit tastes the sweetest - there could be an element of that in continuing to eat meat, as if stopping doing it would be giving in to the passive side of oneself.
Vegan police
Tuesday 1st December
Whenever we gate crash the party, we act like the moral police force, or at least that’s how it looks to people who consider what they do, eat or wear to be quite okay. In their mind there’s no obvious damage being done (!!) when they’re only doing what others do … and which is anyway legal to do. Vegans may want to win points for being brave and forthright but our behaviour is always being measured against our current image.
If we go around opening fridge doors and pointing out that we disapprove of a cut of meat we find inside, and if we mention this, then we’re no better than peeping toms. We are stepping over the line, or more importantly we are showing a fundamental misunderstanding of freedom-of-choice: and some of the free-choosers will understandably react badly if we start to mention the contents of their kitchen. Perhaps they’d be too polite to object to our face but later, privately, they might be getting quite upset about it. And that’s the feeling that becomes associated with the self righteousness of the vegan activist who tries to barge their way into people’s private lives.
If we go around opening fridge doors and pointing out that we disapprove of a cut of meat we find inside, and if we mention this, then we’re no better than peeping toms. We are stepping over the line, or more importantly we are showing a fundamental misunderstanding of freedom-of-choice: and some of the free-choosers will understandably react badly if we start to mention the contents of their kitchen. Perhaps they’d be too polite to object to our face but later, privately, they might be getting quite upset about it. And that’s the feeling that becomes associated with the self righteousness of the vegan activist who tries to barge their way into people’s private lives.
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