The Ethics Of Vegetarianism

(you can click on the cartoon to enlarge it)

This cartoon beautifully illustrates the issue of the morality of free and responsible human conduct. It exemplifies the question of right and wrong in man's (or Hobbes') conscious and deliberate activity. We are forced to make these choices hundreds of times a day.

The question as it pertains to our decision to eat animals I think it is very clear:

Is there anything that can justify taking a life just to satisfy my palate?

Some people find this a ridiculous point of view and are quick to point that out. But in any debate the animal eater loses. In every "is eating animal flesh unethical" debate I have witnessed, no one has been able to provide a valid reason to eat meat other than satisfying the palate. This, to harm animals for the mere pleasure of it, is unethical.

It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed. It was once considered foolish to suppose that black men were really human beings and ought to be treated as such. What was once foolish has now become a recognized truth. Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life.              -- Albert Schweitzer

Stories Of Coming Over

James Cromwell (actor) went vegan after a few months of hanging out with Babe. Prior to that he had been vegetarian for 21 years after seeing the stockyards in Texas and experiencing the "smell, terror, and anxiety." "I was so moved by the intelligence, sense of fun and personalities of the animals I worked with on Babe that by the end of the film I was vegan."

I became a vegetarian in the latter part of 2007 after reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and seeing animal cruelty videos made by PETA and decided to be even more selective than I already was in terms of what industries I was willing to support with my money. ~ David

I just realized that raising animals for food made no sense (environmentally or ethically, for me personally). And after attending the TED Conference this year, where the oceanographer Sylvia Earle spoke about net-based fishing resulting in 10% of the fish making it to our table and 90% being considered waste (so tossed back, dead, into the ocean), I opted to give up fish until I can draw up a "line caught" "farm raised" list to use when dining out (it's been about 6 weeks and I haven't missed fish in my diet at all). One other thing that had an impact on me was the repeated showing of Sarah Palin's interview while turkeys were being slaughtered in the background. Whenever I think, well, maybe... nope! That interview pops into my mind and replays over and over (it was shown so often that it Really stuck with me). ~ Rucy

Moby (musician) "Growing up in Connecticut, breakfast was Frosted Flakes that I would actually put sugar on, lunch was McDonald's, and dinner was usually meat loaf with egg noodles. But as I got older, I became more socially and politically aware, and I started trying to reconcile the fact that although I loved animals, I was also eating them. I feel very simply that if you have a choice between one action that causes suffering and one that doesn't you should always try to choose the action that doesn't cause suffering. So I guess when I was around 19, I became a vegetarian; that same logic eventually led me to become a vegan." (Interview with Katy Neusteter in Delicious Living, 2008)

I haven't eaten meat in over 9 years. I could no longer live with the idea that some animals are "meant" to be consumed while others are "meant" to be pets. For some of us, either everything is sacred or nothing is. Even if I stopped caring about animals, I know too much about the environmental impact of meat production to justify consuming it (for more information, start with "Diet for a Small Planet" by Dr. Frances Moore Lappé). My aim is to do the least harm possible. ~ Stiletto

Many people go vegetarian/vegan after watching the documentary called "Earthlings". Narrated by Joaquin Phoenix this film covers all the ways we mistreat animals for our own material reasons. It is very difficult to watch. Even though I had long been a vegetarian I made myself watch it because I decided that as a human it was my responsibility to educate myself about what is being done and to experience these realities even if just from my living room. I had to keep pausing the DVD to collect myself. No wonder so many people give up eating meat after watching this.

I became a vegetarian when I was 12. I had always eaten a lot of meat up to that point, but one day, it just didn't seem right anymore. My joking way of explaining it is that I see animals as friends, not food. Really, I love animals, and I empathize with them too deeply to enjoy having them killed on my behalf and eating their flesh for fun. The thought is genuinely horrifying to me, actually, the stuff of nightmares. The health, ecological, etc. issues are all side benefits for me. I became vegan when I was 17, and that was over 10 years ago now. If, someday, for some unforeseeable reason, I had to eat meat to survive, I would--but until then, no thank you. ~Hyzen

I stopped eating meat 18 years ago when my mother learned she had breast cancer. We decided as a family we would stop eating meat, mostly because of all the hormones and chemicals that were injected into animals, and the effect that these would have on our own bodies. I was only 10 when we decided to stop. My parents gave us the choice to stop or not but let us know they would no longer be serving meat to us. So although it started as a health issue. It grew into and environmental issue and also an ethics issue for myself. I always loved animals and to learn how they were treated and just the mere thought of eating them grew to be more than i could bear. ~ Robyn

For many people reading Animal Liberation or Diet for a New America made them give up eating meat. In the John Robbins book one learns all about factory farming and the harm it does both the animals and the humans that eat them. In Singer's book the issue of how we treat animals is discussed from a more philosophical point of view, that the interests of animals must be considered due to their capacity to suffer.

I sat behind a girl in 10th grade Chemistry class, she was a vegetarian, and I wanted to impress her. That was in 1993, and I don't even remember her name. After that it kind of made sense for me. I couldn't think of myself slaughtering animals, so what right do I have to do it. I think everyone who wants to eat chicken should have to grab a hatchet once a year and chop off a head. ~ Bill

Aside from what I have learned from documentaries over the years about the benefits of a plant-based diet, I was once driving down the highway and saw a semi-truck full of cows stacked on top of each other. As in no floors, just layers of live cows pushed into a truck and piled on one another like inanimate objects. I had never seen a more miserable set of animals in all my life and it just broke my heart. That's when I decided I could no longer be part of the problem. That was over 6 years ago.~ Jennifer

A little closer to home... Saeed lived with three vegetarian women for years due to Shirin coming home from high school one March day in 1996 with the following proclamation: "You know, I just don't think I want to eat animals any more." Three weeks later I joined her and a year later Anahita too. Saeed, a good vegetable eater from day one, was fairly happy eating vegetarian fare at home but still ate meat dishes at restaurants or friends' homes. We argued with him about the logic of loving animals and still eating them and he accused us of ruining his life (he was just kidding, sort of.) Then one day we were driving home from Charlotte on I-77 and a chicken transport truck passed us on the left. It was cold out and the truck was going fast. Feathers were flying out behind the truck and Saeed looked with horror at the cages stacked on top of each other with the poor chickens crammed inside with no protection from the elements. It broke his heart. "That's it. I can't eat them any more. I refuse to support people who would do that an animal." It's amazing how all the words in the world don't have the impact that one visual experience does. Since then Saeed hasn't had one bite of meat and speaks out for vegetarianism every chance he gets. Happy ending. :-)

Clever Sci Fi Story

Terry Bisson wrote a piece titled They're Made Out of Meat which was nominated for the Nebula Award which is given each year for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction short story. This story appeared in OMNI magazine in 1991 and was collected in a 1993 anthology of short stories.

Why do I reproduce it here? Because all month I've been talking about how we humans think of animals as meat. Now we get the chance to laugh as we think of ourselves as meat. Read on...

"They're made out of meat."

     "Meat?"
     "Meat. They're made out of meat."
     "Meat?"
     "There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."
     "That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"
     "They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."
     "So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
     "They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."
     "That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."
     "I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."
     "Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."
     "Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"
     "Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."
     "Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."
     "No brain?"
     "Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."

     "So ... what does the thinking?"
     "You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."
     "Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
     "Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"
     "Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
     "Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
     "Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"
     "First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."
     "We're supposed to talk to meat."
     "That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."
     "They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
     "Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
     "I thought you just told me they used radio."
     "They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
     "Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"
     "Officially or unofficially?"

     "Both."
     "Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."
     "I was hoping you would say that."
     "It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"
     "I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"
     "Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."
     "So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."
     "That's it."
     "Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"
     "They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."
     "A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."
     "And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."
     "Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"
     "Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."

      "They always come around."

     "And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."

     the end

I believe this to be a clever and humorous satire which exposes the belief we have of ourselves as superior beings. And isn't it interesting that when it becomes uncomfortable for the two space entities to imagine having to interact with what they think are lowly beings, even though they cannot deny this "meat's" sentience, they decide to erase the records and forget the whole thing? Does this remind you of anything? It should. We do this every day when we disregard the very animals (who we feel are inferior to us) we use for our own purposes.

This also gives me a new mental image of the term "meathead".  :-)

Vegetarian Cartoons Courtesy of Dan Piraro

Dan Piraro is a surrealist painter, illustrator and cartoonist best known for his award winning syndicated cartoon "Bizarro." Piraro is a vegan who is active in animals right issues but many, indeed most of his cartoons are about other topics. I like the way he thinks outside the box and makes insightful comments about our culture and the illogical 'bizarro' way we do things. He seems to be a deep, progressive thinker.

I've selected a few of his vegetarian themed cartoons for today's post.

 

Famous Vegetarians

Continuing Vegetarian Awareness month...
I'm not that impressed when actors, artists, and musicians are vegetarian, but when I learn that intellectuals and thinkers make this choice it lends some credence to my way of thinking.

Of Dogs And Pigs

This video shows some pet pigs at a dog park. The dogs' reaction to the two mini pigs is intriguing. Watch a bit of it and then scroll down.



I watched over three minutes of this video before it hit me: Why do people(*) feel comfortable eating the flesh from Bomber and Prissy's species but not the flesh of Canis lupus familiaris? Does that make ANY sense? Is it not surreal to bend down to pet your dog, then ooh and ahh about the cute pigs and your dog's reaction to them, and then go home to eat a ham sandwich?

Having a double standard of this kind is called "speciesism", a word that means assigning different values or rights to beings simply on the basis of their species. This is what allows us to pet the dog but eat the pig, kiss our parakeet's tummy and then eat chicken. Speciesism is not much different from the other "isms" but hasn't yet gathered the validity that racism, for example, currently possesses.

I feel sure that one day speciesism will be looked at the way we now look at racism. Leonardi da Vinci is quoted to have said, "The time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men." He also said, "Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places." Today it's hard to understand how white people felt comfortable lynching black people but it was acceptable during that dark period of our country's history. If da Vinci was right then one day murdering animals for their flesh will also become unacceptable.

Writer Alice Walker, who is best known for her 1982 novel The Color Purple (which won her the Nobel Prize for Literature) once wrote, "The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men." She touches on a very important idea that supports speciesism, which is that some people believe that animals were created for us to use any way we see fit. PeTA's slogan is "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment," and I've always said that just because we can take advantage of animals (kill and eat them) doesn't mean we should (kill and eat them.)

So I urge you to watch the above video again. Watch it with a new understanding of what we choose to believe about our position in our relationship with animals. See if it doesn't hit you differently this time.


(*)The people I'm referring to are those of us in developed countries who pet the dog and eat the pig. There are many people on this planet who eat dogs, cats, and horses. Although that bothers me very much they are, in some strange fashion, less hypocritical about what they're doing.

"Off The Warpath" by Ben Shaberman

Here is a humorous yet poignant essay by humorist Ben Shaberman. He has written for papers such as the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post, a variety of magazines, and has been on NPR. Enjoy.

As a longtime vegetarian, I know we can be a self-righteous lot. Even though 97 percent of Americans eat animals, we’re convinced that we’re right—and the meat-loving majority is wrong. And there is not a vegetarian out there who hasn’t tried to convert a meat fanatic at one time or another. We use all sorts of arguments, citing strong moral, environmental and health examples, when debating. Inevitably, the response we get is, “I just need my meat.” To counter this, I have tried all sorts of tactics to plead my case to friends, family and coworkers.

My favorite ploy was the “cannibalism theory.” It goes like this: Among prehistoric humans, cannibalism was commonplace. Talk about convenience food! Just conk a few neighbors on the head and you could feed your family for days. But over time, some cave people became sad. Feasting on the neighbors meant they were running out of friends. So they decided to try eating an animal instead. They even learned how to prepare the animal so it tasted just like a human. “Honey, is this antelope or one of the Dickersons? I can’t tell the difference!” Thus began a new evolutionary period; cannibalism became passé.

According to my “theory,” we’re again at a key evolutionary moment, and the more forward-thinking people are now moving away from eating animals and going toward vegetarianism. Sounds like a logical progression, right?

Well, it didn’t take long to figure out that the cannibalism argument didn’t inspire people to change their diets. When I’d explain my theory, they’d only grimace and make jokes about cult horror movies with flesh-eating zombies. Not exactly the reaction I wanted. So over the past few years, I gave up initiating conversations about vegetarianism.

Surprisingly, I found that the less vocal I was about by my animal-free diet, the more curious people were. They asked what I ate, where I ate, how I got my protein and if I missed meat. When it came to fully exposing my feelings about being a vegetarian, I played hard to get, and my mild-mannered meat-free persona attracted more attention and more interest than ever. Now everyone I know is aware that I’m a vegetarian and is respectful of my choice.

What’s most heartening is that these days my friends and coworkers go out of their way to make sure I get vegetarian food at parties, retreats and other events. It’s become a mission for them, and they enjoy the process. I’m gratified when they realize vegetarians have a variety of tasty and healthy dietary options like tofu and seitan. And even though they might not be going meat-free themselves, at least they’re participating in my meatless world. Maybe someday one of them will cut back on meat consumption or even make the leap to vegetarianism because of a health issue or an encounter with a suffering animal. And because of what they learned while accommodating me, they’ll see it’s not so radical. But I now know that I can’t change their habits for them.

A final point of clarification: The cannibalism shtick was not only a lousy idea, it had a lot of holes. Yes, the practice of eating one’s peers did exist, but after doing some research, I discovered that it wasn’t as pervasive as I made it out to be. So I am guilty of creating a little historical propaganda … and the rather dubious feat of grossing out a few carnivores.

You can find more funny essays in Shaberman's book The Vegan Monologues.

Jane Goodall

I have always admired Jane Goodall. Only recently did I find out that she is a vegetarian. Her epiphany occurred in the 1970's when she read Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. "I knew I would not be able to keep from thinking about the images conjured up by the pages I had just read," she writes. "When I saw meat on my plate, from that moment on, I should think of pain-fear-death. How horrible." Jane Goodall carries this same message a bit further by emphasizing that what's on the meal plate impacts not only a person's health but also the health of the entire planet.

Here is a lovely National Geographic video about her life's work.

A Mama And Her Baby

More for October's Vegetarian Awareness Month:
Instead up posting those gut-wrenching horrible factory farm videos I will post this of a mother hen and her chick. This is the way a chicken's life should be and why I don't eat meat:

Happy Birthday Azizams!

A brief break from Vegetarian Awarenss month to celebrate a very special birthday. I chose a random photo album and picked a few snaps of my sweetiehearts. It's hard not to get lost in my memories of those wonderful happy times. Happy Birthday girls.

Anahita and Shirin get married... to each other!

True togetherness- sharing one beach towel.

Dreaming together.

Anahita was always getting kissed whether she wanted it or not!

Pure silliness.

(I apologize for the quality of these photographs but my scanner isn't working.)