Pac Veg

Suffering We Can Recognize

2011-12-16T18:40:00.013-06:00

At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis posts this image and writes:

"This image from Life Magazine disturbs me. I guess because it looks like the shot is set up like giving a dying solider a last drink of water."

My first thought was perplexity: does Loomis really need to "guess" why this image "disturbs" him (might it be because an animal is quite obviously suffering)? This led me to the sincere speculation that Loomis was being ironic: he can't really have to guess why the image is disturbing, right? But on further thought, I realize that Loomis is onto something: this image is disturbing precisely because it creates a connection between the turtle and a human.

Most people are not remotely disturbed by the idea of a living animal being killed to be eaten. It is commonplace. Most people are not, I suspect, disturbed at seeing images of the animals that will ultimately be killed to be eaten. Do you get disturbed merely by looking at images of farm animals? But in this image, the turtle is in a pose that can be recognized as human: a prone, dying creature opening a mouth wide to receive some desperate succor for its sufferings. That this turtle can remind one of a human means that this turtle can make one empathize.

That may be the source of the disturbing feeling this image evokes. A creature is suffering, but we are made to actually see its suffering, because the pose has made its suffering relatable to a human viewer.

Animals are capable of suffering, even if we choose not to see it. And when we do choose to see it, or are forced to, we may be less inclined to have them end up in our soup.

What war does.

2011-11-28T19:59:00.001-06:00

Glenn Greenwald's "The fruits of liberation" at Salon.

Nonviolence at work

2011-11-19T11:48:00.003-06:00

There is something moving about watching these people slink away as the crowds shout "Shame on you!" Violence can make your opponents feel just in thwarting you (including thwarting with violence): nonviolence can shame them.

Many Men and Vegetables

2011-11-16T17:46:00.004-06:00

Herman Cain, via Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon:

"...'A manly man don’t want [pizza] piled high with vegetables!' [...] Cain then explained that a real man would dismiss any pizza contaminated with vegetables as 'a sissy pizza.'"

This is pretty typical gender policing: "manly" men are supposed to want to eat meat, and it is inappropriately feminine ("sissy") for a man to want vegetables, and for that he should be shamed. One can only speculate how Mr. Cain will react to discovering that pizza is, in fact, itself a vegetable. I hope he doesn't doubt his manhood as much as he evidently doubts mine.

On being a vegetarian guest

2011-10-19T19:41:00.006-05:00

Ecorazzi notes that Anthony Bourdain uses the argument that vegetarians/vegans are bad because they are bad guests. Bourdain himself:

“They make for bad travelers and bad guests. [...] you’re unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don’t understand that, and I think it’s rude. You’re at Grandma’s house, you eat what Grandma serves you.”

It's a bit annoying that one even needs to refute the "You're bad if you don't betray your morals for the sake of a host's feelings" argument (after all, shouldn't "hosts" be at least as concerned about their "guests"?). Certainly one could come up with absurd hypothetical examples of behavior no guest would be expected to engage in out of politeness. But it seems that food comes with a whole different set of rules when it comes to discussion of both ethics and hospitality. Food is intimately tied up in hospitality, and behavior around food is central to a host-guest relationship. There are all sorts of social customs, even rules, about it. But we don't have to invent outrageous hypotheticals to show how silly this line of argument still is. In fact, we can turn to another central behavior of hospitality, of the expected relationship between hosts and guests: conversation.

Talking is a regular part of hospitality. Hosts and guests chat, sometimes engaging in small talk, sometimes discussing current events, sometimes catching up on each others' lives, sometimes even just trying to amuse each other. That's common and expected, and there's a certain expectation of politeness surrounding the conversation.

But let us say that you are a guest, and your host begins telling racist jokes. Would it be rude not to laugh? Would it be rude to tell the host that you don't like racist jokes? Furthermore, should you care if it is rude? Would you say "Well, I'm at Grandma's house, so I have to talk about what Grandma decides we'll talk about?" Maybe an otherwise hospitable host telling racist jokes makes for an awkward, uncomfortable moment. Maybe it will be a strain one way or another no matter how you decide to handle it. But would you really say that one is "rude," a "bad guest" if he or she didn't want to engage in racism? And would you really put the burden of rudeness on the guest for this situation?

Of course not. But this is the sort of logic that happens around eating animals, because people often have such wildly different ideas of what it means, or whether it matters at all, to be eating animals. Because food is necessary, everyday, social, and personal, we have whole different rules of logic about it. And for some who focus a great deal of attention on the eating of food but who have no regard for an animal as a creature deserving of ethical treatment, it will of course be a greater sin to offend a host (even if you politely decline!) than to eat an animal for your own pleasure. But those same people wouldn't expect their logic about food to be applied to similar situations.

Animal Research: Emotion and Vantage Point

2011-06-04T16:35:00.004-05:00

At NPR, Neal Conan talks to David Martin Davies about using chimpanzees for medical research. There are many things in Davies' framing and word choice to show his function is to defend animal research and convince listeners to support animal research, but I don't want to spend too much time dissecting his language. Instead, I will focus on Davies' framework of rational scientists versus emotional animal rights activists. Davies says:

"The entire scientific community is nervous about this. They're concerned that they are losing a national debate about this topic, which is based mainly on emotional issues. And, yeah, Neal, of course, it's an emotional issue. No one wants to mistreat our great apes, our great cousins, but they realize that there is a need for this and it could benefit humanity."

I would argue that support for animal research relies more on emotion than opposition to animal research, due to the vantage point of who benefits.

Personally, emotion plays no role in my opposition to animal research. I know there is a great deal of suffering in the world, and I have little meaningful emotional reaction to a few specific chimpanzees suffering more. I am, however, a human with people I love and whom I wish to protect. From an emotional standpoint, I would actually prefer that absolutely anything be done to potentially save those that I love. That's not reason: that's emotion.

My individual personal reaction doesn't matter much, of course. But it does connect to what does matter: the human vantage point. When humans discuss animal research, it is always in the context of humans benefiting. Us. We benefit. It is difficult, then, not to have an emotional stake. One group (humans) discusses an activity that benefits itself, even if it exploits another group (animals). There are all sorts of logically framed arguments supporting animal research, but there is always a personal, emotional appeal. We benefit. We get helped. People we love get helped.

Davies' framing of opponents of animal research as dealing with emotion (in opposition to scientists dealing with reason) is particularly bothersome as Davies in fact uses an emotional argument to support animal research:

"the person you got to bring into the conversation is if you are about to undergo an experimental treatment or if you have a condition, do you - you would want to know that everything is possibly been done on this drug before it reached a human person. The first person who takes that drug is going to be the experiment now instead of a chimpanzee."

Here Davies is not asking listeners to examine the situation from an objective position. He is not asking listeners to dispassionately use reason to assess the ethics of a particular practice. He is asking listeners to imagine themselves in a position of need for medical treatment that might require animal research. He is asking listeners not to reason, but to take on a particular emotional state. What would you do if... The attempt of this appeal is to put the listener in a particular vantage point where he or she would benefit from this research. This is a bit superfluous, because as I said, when we discuss animal research we already have the vantage point of the group that benefits. But we can also use this imaginary situation to put ourselves in a different vantage point.

In "Human Morality and Animal Research: Confessions and Quandaries," Harold Herzog discusses The E.T. Dilemma. Herzog says the logic of animal research is that a superior species has the right to use an inferior species for the superior species' benefit. What if, Herzog asks, an advanced alien species, obviously superior to humans, were to use human beings for medical research to help itself? Could this advanced alien species kidnap, imprison, and perform invasive tests on people? If, in terms of superiority, we are to the aliens as great apes are to us? If you assess this hypothetical logically, there really is no getting around it: if we are allowed to use inferior species for our benefit, a superior species would be allowed to use us for its benefit. If you feel otherwise, you are using emotion: you now have the vantage point of the victim of somebody else's benefit.

Opposition to animal research is, I am sure, often based on emotion. But it is also based on a quite logical, quite reasonable question, one that can be asked in a spirit of dispassionate objectivity. How do we justify using animals for research? By what right may we do what we will with animals if it benefits us?

You don't even have to look for the hypocrisy of our treatment of animals; it just reveals itself

2011-05-25T09:43:00.002-05:00

Paging through a Sports Illustrated magazine from a few weeks ago, I came across a praising profile of a bullfighter. Sports Illustrated is the same magazine that did much to vilify Michael Vick. I can't help but wonder, why is torturing dogs to death for sport evil, but torturing bulls to death for sport worthy of a lengthy profile piece in a respected sports magazine?

On effecting change

2011-05-14T07:36:00.008-05:00

At Feministe, Jill endorses Nicolette Hahn Niman's proposals to end farm animal cruelty ("1. State laws should protect farm animal welfare." "2. Congress should prohibit overusing antibiotics in animal farming." "3. Government should better enforce environmental laws." "4. Farm subsidies should foster grass." "5. The United States should launch a domestic Peace Corps for farming. "), and then writes,

"That’s a lot more effective than 'go vegan.'"

That depends on what one means by "effective;" if it means to effect change, I'm not so sure. Surely Jill has considered the great difficulty of effecting even one of Niman's proposals. There are powerful economic interests, structural impediments, and cultural norms that entrench the status quo and make these changes difficult. It requires strengthening a political movement to elect the representatives willing to make such changes, and then the political pressure to make them do so. It takes cultural work of building the political will to make it possible (or necessary) for politicians to take on those entrenched, self-interested opponents, and to change people's attitude that being able to eat lots of cheap meat is a priority over concern for animals.

On the other hand, going vegan simply requires you to stop consuming animal products. As a movement, it also means convincing others to stop consuming animal products.

It's possible the political reform movement can effect change greater than the attempt to convince people to change their personal behavior (obviously people's personal behavior is quite entrenched as well, as you can see by the lengths people go to defend eating animals), but I'm not sure.

Jill's argument also raised a theoretical question: why is an animal worthy of enough moral concern that it should be treated nicely before being killed for your pleasure, but not worthy of enough moral concern to not be killed for your pleasure at all? The position that animals should be treated nicely before being killed assumes that an animal's suffering matters--yet it still assumes that the meat eater's pleasure is more important than that animal's suffering. That's not terribly much moral concern, however much better it makes a meat eater feel.

What the Live-And-Let-Live Argument for Eating Meat is Really About

2011-05-13T14:29:00.002-05:00

Sometimes meat eaters make an argument like It’s fine if you don’t want to eat meat, but don’t be preachy about it/push your values on me/tell me what to do. I’ve often taken to parodying this line of argument with something like If you want to abstain from kicking elderly people in the shins, that’s your choice, but don’t bother me if I like to kick elderly people in the shins. I hope this parody shows the flaw of dismissing a moral argument about harm to other beings as if it is a matter of personal preference that you shouldn’t push on others.

But I think we could go further: there is a moral principle underlying the Mind-Your-Own-Business dismissal. That principle is obvious: animals are not beings worthy of moral consideration; their suffering doesn’t matter. If you accept this principle, then eating meat is a matter of personal preference, not an ethical choice. Think about it: very few people would say something like It’s fine if you don’t like child abuse, but don’t tell me not to abuse children. (I am not making a moral equivalence, but using a parallel argument for analogy). That’s because most people accept children as thinking, feeling beings, worthy of moral consideration, who should be protected from cruelty and unnecessary suffering. It’s harder to dismiss ethical consideration about behavior that causes harm with the Mind-Your-Own-Business dismissal. By using the Mind-Your-Own-Business dismissal, the meat eater is implicitly arguing that an animal’s suffering and death is not a matter of ethical concern, because nobody whose suffering matters is being harmed.

But the Mind-Your-Own-Business dismissal is annoying because it refuses to discuss this underlying principle. It refuses to engage in an ethical discussion about behavior that causes harm. It instead turns it into a Live-And-Let-Live argument. It’s not hard to make an argument like If you don’t like Diet Coke, fine, but I’m not hurting anybody else by drinking it, so leave me alone. When people engage in behaviors that don’t hurt anybody, we should live and let live. When people engage in behaviors that don’t hurt anybody but themselves, I think we probably should live and let live. But is an animal a Diet Coke?

I can summarize my (mostly vegan) vegetarian principle concisely: If I choose to eat meat, I am choosing my own pleasure over the death and suffering of an animal; given what we know about animals’ capacity to think, feel, and suffer, I do not think my pleasure is more important than an animal’s suffering and death. Those using the Mind-Your-Own-Business dismissal choose their pleasure over the animal, but refuse to engage in a discussion of what comes after the semicolon. They have a principle, but the dismissal leaves that principle implicit and often unacknowledged.

Alienated

2011-04-12T20:39:00.005-05:00

I've been feeling a political despair. How can there be mainstream discussion about significant cuts on spending on the poor and in need, but discussion of cutting a massive military budget is still left to the lefty, antiwar fringes? How is reducing the social safety net a matter of serious discussion, but reducing the world's largest military budget is barely talked about? And whatever I could convince myself in the past, it is now abundantly clear that Democrats in general are barely less interested in military solutions than Republicans, as we now have a Democratic president proposing and maintaining a massive military budget and continuing to use violent military solutions around the world. So who among the politically powerful is actually going to call for reduced military spending?

But this Gallup Poll (via Kevin Drum) reminds me that it is not strictly a political problem, but a cultural problem. Only 14% of Americans think the military has too much power, 53% think its about right, and 28% think it doesn't have enough power. Twice as many people want the military to have more power than want it to have less, and a strong majority of the country thinks the military's power is what it should be. Put another way, 81% of Americans support the military's current power or want it to be greater.

It is not so much that we have elites ignoring the needs of struggling people to maintain military spending and warfare against our own wishes. It is that, evidently, Americans are devoted to militarism.

The Temptation to Justifiable Violence

2011-04-03T14:19:00.007-05:00

A conscientious person who wishes to do good in the world faces the temptation for violence. When one looks at the brute evil that causes harm in the world, there is a temptation to use violence to prevent harm or to cause good. The temptation to violence for a good cause is a strong one, and one that requires vigilant, committed resistance. Men like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Cesar Chavez certainly had just causes, and they deliberately chose means of nonviolence to strive for their causes.

According to John Howard Yoder in The Politics of Jesus, Jesus was tempted greatly by violent political action, that he "perceived the Zealot alternative, was tempted by it as by no other, and nonetheless rejected it" (52). By "Zealot option," Yoder means "the issue was whether violence is justified in principle for what one considers to be a very righteous political cause" (58). Yoder's thesis is provocative: even Jesus, who taught his followers to love their enemies, who even forgave his murderers and mockers as he suffered painful death, who was willing to sacrifice his own life, was tempted to righteous violence.

Nicholas Kristof devotes his life to traveling the world and exposing suffering and injustice: he is a man who does and desires to do good for the world. He is eloquent and passionate in his efforts to do good and prevent evil. And so he makes a worthy tempter for supporting military action in Libya, as here and here. Kristof's is the liberal case for military action, it is the argument that sometimes, however rarely it may be, a positive impact of military violence can outweigh the negative. Kristof's is a reasoned, realistic rather than idealistic argument, and a tempting one. Why reject it?

There are, of course, practical reasons: the cost of war, the suffering that come with war, the unpredictability of war's outcomes, the tendency of violence of war to spread and cycle over distance and time and to leave long-term problems. There is also the argument that war puts aside creative nonviolent intervention strategies. I find these arguments compelling: the fear of war's unpredictable, lingering effects makes me wary of any argument for war. Yet Kristof's argument is practical too.

This is where the religious grounding of pacifism is important for me: when the practical argument is tempting, I must stand with the theological commitment to peace. This is where I have to rely on Jesus's teachings and example of nonviolence, of loving and forgiving enemies, of what Yoder calls "revolutionary subordination." I have to remember that he too was tempted. This is where I have to remind myself that Martin Luther King Jr., with firm knowledge that his cause was just, with belief that God had called him to this cause, as he faced violent opposition to his cause remained committed to the principle of nonviolence, and his cause was the better for it.

Peace, too, can look scary. Practicing nonviolence, too, means uncertain, unpredictable outcomes, and can mean suffering. But I place my faith in peace rather than war.

Works Cited

Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus (2nd edition). Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994.

Why be a pacifist?

2011-03-28T23:04:00.007-05:00

"All the others. The others who spend their lives believing that we still believe. It is our task in the world to believe things no one else takes seriously. To abandon such beliefs completely, the human race would die. This is why we are here. A tiny minority. To embody old things, old beliefs. The devil, the angels, heaven, hell. If we did not pretend to believe these things, the world would collapse. [...] We are left to believe. Fools, children. Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure that they are right not to believe but they know belief must not fade completely. Hell is when no one believes. There must always be believers. Fools, idiots, those who hear voices, those who speak in tongues. We are your lunatics. We surrender our lives to make your nonbelief possible. You are sure that you are right but you don't want everyone to think as you do. There is no truth without fools. We are your fools, your madwomen, rising at dawn to pray, lighting candles, asking statues for good health, long life."

--Don DeLillo, White Noise

Why be a pacifist? When the world dismisses us as naive, ignorant, stupid, immature? Why be a pacifist, when our cry is dismissed, mocked, marginalized, and ignored? Why be a pacifist, when we turn to the liberal writers you've come to read for their insight and find some of them embracing military violence? Why be a pacifist, when there are evil people filling the world with brutality and blood and our beliefs feel utopian and ideals feel sheltered?

Because in this world, there needs to be somebody there to always preach an antiwar message to the others. There needs to be somebody there who will always be skeptical of war's aims, that will always fear war's consequences, that will always remind people of its costs. There needs to be people there to point out the horrors and atrocities of war. Somebody, even a very few, must be there to always reject the rationale for war, no matter how just or humanitarian it seems. There needs to be somebody that will reject war regardless of who calls for it. Somebody must be there to try and find other solutions (for nonviolence is not isolationist, not opposed to intervention but opposed to violent intervention). There must be somebody to claim that violence is always immoral.

If pacifists gain the power of decision making, then you can tell me how hopelessly naive and lost we are, how harmful or wrong-headed our beliefs are. But until then, while you are running things, we need to be here, rejecting violence and demanding peace.

Addendum

See Eric Stoner on "Why war on Libya is wrong" and "Is there no other way in Libya?"

Wars do things you don't want them to do.

2011-03-24T19:59:00.006-05:00

Matthew Yglesias on "The Mostly Hypothetical Case for Armed Humanitarianism:"

"I think it’s telling that enthusiasts for this kind of war typically have to make the case with reference to hypothetical success stories about military operations we didn’t undertake. These are useful cases to deploy in arguments, because since the intervention didn’t happen one doesn't need to wrestle with the potentially problematic consequences and downside risks. [...] I think it’s a problem when all your best evidence is drawn from scenarios that didn’t unfold." (emphasis mine)

One reason to oppose war, to avoid war, and to be skeptical of claims calling for war, is that wars almost always have unpredictable, unforeseen consequences. These unexpected consequences, which can be deeper, wider, and go on longer than war proponents' imaginations seem to grasp, are almost always negative. When you unleash a war, that war becomes a thing itself, going places and doing things you didn't know it would do and certainly didn't plan for.

Why Antiwar

2011-03-22T13:49:00.005-05:00

Because shit like this happens every goddam time.

A pacifist cannot easily claim that without war, everything will be just fine. Jesus said "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword," shortly before being violently killed (many of his nonviolent followers were also violently killed; it was some time later that his followers quit practicing nonviolence). The world, in addition to beauty and love, is filled with evil and brutality. A pacifist does not look at the violence in Libya with blindness toward its awfulness, and does not suffer the illusion that Libya's problems will go away if left alone. But a pacifist knows not only the moral problem of attempting to use violence to stop violence, but also knows the practical problem of humanity, of atrocity, of blood.

The Pleasure Argument

2011-03-17T15:01:00.005-05:00

At Feministe, Jill makes the pleasure argument for eating meat:

"A lot of people also (and this is my personal reason) view food as a fundamental pleasure, and see it as something to be experimented with and shared and tried and tasted in all of its forms. The idea of removing a major source of food from the list of options isn’t going to fly if you believe that food is for something more than just to fill you up. But that pleasure-centered view of food — that it’s not just fuel, but also something that should nourish your body well and should be variable and exciting..." (emphasis mine)

The defense of a behavior based on its pleasure only works if it is a harmless behavior. If your pleasure causes no harm, then it is very easy to defend it. But if the behavior you take pleasure in does cause harm, then it is extremely difficult to defend that behavior on the grounds of pleasure itself. For example, if I were to argue that I view kicking elderly people in the shins as a fundamental pleasure, and see it as something to be experimented with and shared and tried in all of its forms, you would rightly recognize that regardless of how much pleasure I might get from kicking elderly people in the shins, I would be wrong to do it because of the harm it causes.

So to defend eating meat on the grounds that food is supposed to be pleasurable is to implicitly claim that your individual pleasure is more important than the life and suffering of an animal.

Offering Peace

2011-03-13T08:34:00.003-05:00

Should a pacifist eat meat? There are of course many sources, and many expressions, of a pacifist ethic. But if one is practicing nonviolence, does it not seem strange to rely on violence against animals for one's daily living?

By their actions

2011-03-10T18:27:00.003-06:00

I grew up believing that public education is a social good, and that teaching is a noble vocation that serves the social good. I can't help but feel that the contingent in power in Wisconsin right now simply does not believe this. When they consider making massive, deep cuts to public education a viable solution to a budget problem (when they see any tax increases as a bigger social problem than serious funding cuts to education), and when their actions show how little they respect teachers (some public professionals have been exempted from their attack on collective bargaining rights, after all; those professions they evidently do respect), it's hard to believe they even think what we do is important.

Whose side?

2011-03-10T15:38:00.017-06:00

"I don’t believe God picks sides in politics. I believe God calls us to be on His side."

--Scott Walker, quoted in Matthew Rothschild's "Scott Walker Believe He's Following Orders from the Lord"

The Republican Bible is repeatedly filled with passages showing that God is on the side of the rich and powerful. Weirdly, the Bible I've read says exactly the opposite.

I don't need to take seriously the claim that the Republican Party is about Christian values--not when its primary goal is to enact policies that benefit the rich at the expense of everybody else. Whether it's working to eliminate governmental environmental regulations so that industries can pollute the air, land, and water the rest of us share, or staunchly opposing tax increases and instead cutting and eliminating institutions and programs for social good (Amanda Marcotte notes, "Consider that the top 400 wealthiest Americans have a combined wealth that’s almost equal to what the bottom 153 million Americans have. Consider that Republicans are saying that’s not enough, and they will do whatever it takes to break working people and turn this country into a banana republic"), Republicans are squarely on the side of the rich and powerful. Gross economic inequality is of no concern.

This is not a partisan attempt to claim that the Democratic policy platform is sanctioned by God--but then, Democrats rarely claim that it is.

Addendum

Peter Laarman in Religion Dispatches:

"It is simple class violence, waged (as always) by the powerful against the vulnerable. It’s nice, I guess, that Scott Walker loves Jesus. He’s clearly not acquainted with the Jesus who lifts up the lowly and pulls down the powerful from their thrones."

"Rather than..."

2011-03-07T13:22:00.004-06:00

I agree with Monica Potts (and others) who have criticized attempts to criminalize exposing animal cruelty on farms: there's something cracked in punishing X for exposing Y's sins. But this sentence sticks out, too:

"What's interesting here is the lengths people will go to in order to avoid responding to consumer demand. Because they're increasingly aware of the violations against animals we commit in the name of feeding ourselves, a growing number of American consumers are calling for changes in the way we produce meat. Rather than respond to that demand [...] companies try to use their power and influence to get out of changing." (emphasis mine).

Let me borrow Potts' structure to make a different, but related point:

What's interesting here is the lengths people will go to in order to avoid giving up meat. Because of efforts to expose and reconsider the problem, they're increasingly aware of the violations against animals we commit in the name of feeding ourselves. Rather than respond by giving up meat, many people try to use their influence as advocates and consumers to reform and improve the system in order to get out of changing their own habits.

Industrial agriculture (through its political enablers) indeed appears to be taking efforts to avoid making changes. But in advocating for reform of a system, a system they could choose to abstain from if they were willing, many consumers are also taking efforts to avoid making changes.

On Being a Leftist Christian

2011-03-03T14:20:00.004-06:00

Most of the ethical, political concerns that I believe my religion requires (concern for the poor, opposition to war, striving for social equality, care for the environment) are today more likely to be concerns shared by secular minded folk, while religious minded folk (at least politically) often seem opposed and even hostile to these concerns.

So to see goals that I consider deeply Christian goals be achieved, it is better for society to become much more secular.

The Logic of Justifiable Violence

2011-02-25T07:33:00.003-06:00

Mother Jones has reported on some attempts at the state level to make killing in defense of a fetus "justifiable homicide," and many have interpreted the language of the bills as allowing for the murder of doctors who provide abortions.

I think this is related to the problem of underlying axioms. When you accept an underlying axiom, you can debate about degree, but you will have excesses following the axiom. The underlying axiom at work here--violence can be a moral means to prevent evil--is largely accepted. So when some view a particular action as abhorrently evil, they may consider violence to prevent that evil as morally justified. The same logic that allows some to justify war (the general principle, specific wars, and particular practices of warfare), torture, and capital punishment, can be used to justify murdering.

Many grapple with this underlying axiom to try apply it responsibly in a complicated world. Some abuse the axiom for their own ends, while others ignore it and use violence to their own ends. Some will apply the maxim in ways that most of us find dangerous and immoral. And some (very few) reject the principle altogether as a matter of ethical principle.

Religion and Justice

2011-02-20T12:40:00.002-06:00

Today in church, the Old Testament reading included the following passage from Leviticus:

"The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning."

It is a simple, specific rule, but it is typical of the Bible's concern for social and economic justice. The writers of this text tell us that according to God, employers are to deal fairly with their employees. According to God, there is a righteous and an unrighteous way for workers to be treated.

What does this mean for us today?

The Journal Sentinel's Annysa Johnson cites a Catholic Archbishop, a Methodist Bishop, and a Rabbi expressing support for unions and collective bargaining in Wisconsin. Johnson also cites Illinois churches and synagogues that have offered sanctuary to the Democrats from Wisconsin that fled the state to avoid a vote stripping state workers of collective bargaining rights. These religious leaders, with their conviction and faith in God, are standing up for the rights of workers and the usefulness of unions and collective bargaining.

I am a Wisconsin state worker.

2011-02-19T10:00:00.004-06:00

At one rally I attended, a speaker said (something like) that if this was happening in the 1800s, it would be a riot, but we've learned nonviolent protest, we've learned what works. And that's not only the legacy but the lesson of Gandhi and King: they not only showed us that nonviolent protest can work, they actually taught us how to do it. Today, around the world, people know the shape and form of a protest. People know about the strength of numbers, about passive resistance, about why but also how to gather into large groups and nonviolently express protest. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't (sometimes it is even in opposite causes), but this is the form that protest takes today because we were taught that this is the form that a protest can take. We have power in and through peacefulness.

Gender and Meat

2011-02-18T23:31:00.002-06:00

When I teach units involving popular culture, and particularly about advertisements, I focus a lot on gender stereotypes. We discuss things like what foods get associated with a particular gender ("Close your eyes and picture 'beer drinker.' Who are you picturing?"). And we discuss meat. There are so many representations of Men in popular culture as voracious meat eaters (when men are shown cooking, it is usually over a grill), that Manhood and consuming animals are closely associated. Sometimes I perceive that in American culture, I'm not seen as a "Real Man" because I am a (mostly vegan) vegetarian (and a pacifist too at that).

At Grist, Holly Richmond complains about a trend of mainstream media articles, ripe with gender stereotypes, featuring shock at discovering male vegans. She's right in what she says, though I wonder if baby steps toward less rigid gender stereotypes about food and eating are still steps worth taking. Those steps are definitely still worth critiquing too, of course.

Gluttony

2011-02-15T06:24:00.005-06:00

Amanda Marcotte is critical of B. R. Myers' crusade against foodies, because Myers' emphasis on the sinfulness of gluttony is, Marcotte says, anti-pleasure. I can see validity to her critique, if the gluttony stuff is taken literally. But I took the trope of gluttony as a framework for Myers to make his central thesis: in general, foodies have little to no regard for ethical concerns about eating, and when they're not outright dismissive of ethical questions, they find ways to argue that their own desired forms of eating are ethically superior to everybody else's.

In that sense, Myers' crusade scratches me right where I itch. I have little time for Michael Pollan, whom I perceive acts like and is treated like the moral compass of eating, but whose public function largely features defending eating meat, assuaging questioning consciences and assuring meat eaters not to worry about their lifestyle of eating animals. Myers' negative review of Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma similarly had me reading with an attentive rush, finding some of my vague perceptions articulated concretely.

The new wishy washy

2011-01-31T20:22:00.006-06:00

As I listened to Stephen L. Carter on NPR telling us about the kind of conversations we need more of, I realized he's hardly the first commentator in recent years I've heard tell me what kind of conversations we need to have more of. It's actually quite frequent. Somebody points out some of the moral ambiguities of (drone attacks/indefinite detention/escalation of war/torture/targeted killing), talks about how complicated the issue is, and then rather than saying these things are morally wrong (or bad policy), the person will say something about how we need a more open debate about these matters, about how people aren't discussing these matters enough.

I suppose that's of a piece with having a hawkish liberal president who appears thoughtful: the morality of a drone attack that might kill civilians is somewhat dependent on whether the leader who orders the attacks is sufficiently reflective about it.

I might suggest that having a conversation in which you argue for more conversations is just sort of a way to avoid actually having that conversation. But I'm unsure: I think we should have more debate about that.

Are animals part of "the environment"?

2011-01-25T19:52:00.005-06:00

At Mother Jones, Kate Sheppard discusses the "eco-friendly" nature of fake leather versus real leather,

"thinking about whether fur, or for that matter, any other animal-derived material used for clothing, is inherently a bad environmental choice."

Plenty of commenters to the article brought up the obvious animal rights part of the discussion (Sheppard barely hinted at it), but I think Sheppard's language is typical of a seeming blind spot shared by a lot of environmentalist writers. Sheppard can write an article exploring whether using animal products can be "environmentally friendly," because she basically doesn't consider animals part of the environment.

This is that blind spot. I heard a colleague once say at a presentation that when we talk about the environment, we usually think of something green. Sheppard, like some other environmentalist writers, seems to view the environment as something green and blue that needs to be saved for humankind's pleasure and usage, and the sentient animals are just objects that happen to live in the environment, evidently not part of the ethical consideration about what needs to be saved, protected, and preserved.

"No life is worth a sandwich I don't need"

2011-01-12T22:37:00.013-06:00

At The Atlantic (via Andrew Sullivan), James McWilliams argues why it is wrong to eat animals, no matter how they are raised:

"Say I'm stranded on an island with a pig. And say the island is stocked with an endless supply of fruits, vegetables, grains, and nuts—enough to feed us both. Am I justified in killing the pig?

"The application of equal consideration would require me to consider if the suffering I would cause the pig—indeed, taking its life—was worth satisfying my own taste for pork—something that I hardly need. My answer would have to be no. The pig's sentience—its status as a non-object capable of suffering—morally trumps my desire to eat a BLT, no matter how much pleasure it gives. No life is worth a sandwich I don't need."

This is the heart of the argument that I would make against eating meat (though there are others): it is unnecessary. For most people living in a developed society, it is not necessary to eat animals to survive, or even to thrive. There is a mess of traditional, social, personal reasons people do eat meat, but if you try to pull eating meat out of this mess, and turn it into a rational, conscious, ethical decision, you have to address a question:

Is my pleasure more important than an animal's life?

If you wish to get more specific, you might ask:

Why is the pleasure of fulfilling my tastes worth more than the suffering and death of a creature that is capable of thinking, feeling, and suffering?

In my view, the only way to consider these questions and reach the conclusion that it is OK to eat animals, is to reach the conclusion that an animal's life really doesn't matter. Yet most Americans haven't actually reached that conclusion. Anybody arguing for humane treatment of farmed animals has reached the awkward conclusion that an animal is worthy of being treated humanely while it is alive, before being killed and eaten. It is a strange compromise to suggest that an animal has some inherent quality (such as the capacity to suffer) that makes it worthy of humane treatment before slaughter, yet not quite such a quality to make it worthy of not being unnecessarily slaughtered in the first place.

And many other Americans think mistreatment of certain animals is wrong, but evidently not mistreatment of other animals. I might direct your attention to public reaction to Michael Vick's involvement in dogfighting, and to Jonathan Safran Foer's argument "The Case for Eating Dogs" in Eating Animals. Most people with pets would seemingly balk at the conclusion that the suffering of a dog, or a cat, or a horse, doesn't matter, yet evidently don't much care about the suffering of cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, or fish.

Is there a willed blindness or willed rationalization in this? I think so, but it is not only on the individual justifying his/her pleasure and taste. We are socially formed, and there are cultural and traditional reasons people eat meat. Eating meat is built into many people's daily living, personal lifestyles, social customs, and family relationships (Foer addresses the role of food in family and socializing in Eating Animals). It is something held dear. If meat eaters are defensive, that defensiveness is for bigger reasons than their own pleasure.

That's why the questions I posed above aren't really that effective or convincing. It's also why the logical ethical argument McWilliams makes is necessary, but so too is the novelist's gaze at what deeper role eating has for the meaning we make in our lives.

How we find always find a rationale for what we want to do

2010-12-12T22:02:00.010-06:00

In an interview/talk with Dan Barber on public radio with Krista Tippet, Barber talks about citrus fruit. He lives in a cold-weather climate where citrus is not local, but he wants citrus on his plate even in the winter. And so he gets citrus through the distribution/transport system for non-local food. He says he loves citrus. It's a good thing to get non-local citrus in winter and there's nothing wrong with that.

Later a questioner asked him why he's not a vegetarian. His region: geography. He's from a region that's conducive to producing meat, and he says you need to listen to the ecology, not force values onto the ecology. He eats meat because that's what his local region allows.*

When it comes to eating the citrus fruit you want to eat, well, call it a luxury and take advantage of the system for transporting non-local food. When it comes to eating the meat you want to eat, well, listen to the local ecology.

* (He also goes to the *vegetarians have blood on their hands too* argument because of manure or shipping or something. Well, no shit: anybody living in modern developed society has indirect blood on his/her hands for something, even lots of things. Does that exonerate people for killing animals for the pleasure of their taste? Is that an argument against those who try reduce their complicity in death and suffering?)

Ad Hominem

2010-12-08T17:57:00.010-06:00

At The Atlantic, James McWilliams writes a column arguing that treating animals well while they're alive doesn't absolve one of the moral wrong of eating them, since that still causes harm and is still unnecessary. At Grist, Tom Philpott responds not be engaging in McWilliams' argument, but in the classic Ad Hominem fallacy of attacking McWilliams.

Philpott starts by pointing out and criticizing other things McWilliams has written. Later he suggests McWilliams' article is part of "a careerist strategy." He labels McWilliams' arguments a bunch of nasty names: a "tedious moral screed" (Erik Marcus has criticized the word "screed" at Vegan.com), he calls McWilliams "moralistic" (when somebody says "X is wrong," if X is something you do and would like to continue to do, then that person is labeled "moralistic"), and he says McWilliams "adds nothing new or interesting" to the discussion of the ethics of eating meat (1. most of the arguments against eating meat are old: that doesn't mean they shouldn't be restated to reach new audiences and reframed to convince old 2. by writing about something quite specific--free-range meat is still morally problematic--McWilliams isn't merely repeating old talking points here 3. just because the arguments are not new, does that mean they are wrong). He questions why McWilliams is bothering to turn his attention to the wrongs of eating free-range meat.

Philpott writes a response to try convince us McWilliams is bad, untrustworthy, annoying. He hasn't written a response to engage with the content of McWilliams' argument. And I suppose that's understandable, since it is extremely hard to argue against the claim that killing animals for the pleasure of eating them is unnecessary. Pilpott then doesn't have to argue against McWilliams' conclusion:

"by choosing death for an animal, humans choose the seduction of taste over an animal's right to its future. Until someone can convincingly prove that this denial does not constitute unnecessary harm, I'll continue to view free-range farming and factory farming as gradations on the scale of cruelty."

Christians and Eating Animals

2010-12-07T07:09:00.005-06:00

(portions reposted and revised from December 9, 2006)

There are objections one can make if Christians insist that humans can eat animals because God has made the animals for us to eat, or that the purpose of animals is human use. These are objections that either come from within Christian thought, can fit into Christian thought, or do not contradict Christian thought.

According to the Book of Genesis, in God's perfect plan for creation, humans did not eat animals.

At the creation of the world in the book of Genesis, God gives man dominion over the earth and all the animals. He says in 1:26 "let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth" and in 1:28 "have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

Interestingly, in 1:29, God says "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food." Even after giving man "dominion" over the animals, God specifies that man can have the plants for food. The text repeats the point. Again in 2:9, "And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food..." And then before prohibiting man from eating from one particular tree, God says in 2:16, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden." Again, God explicitly tells people they can eat the plants He created, but there is no explicit mention of whether the animals are available for food.

So before the Fall, there is no mention that people eat animals. I find this absense striking. God commanded man to have dominion over the animals, AND God explicitly commanded man to eat plants. With such explicit mention of dominion over animals AND explicit mention of what people are supposed to eat, it seems like a loud silence on animal consumption. It would seem perfectly within context to mention eating animals at this spot, but it doesn't happen.

It seems that the permission to eat meat was a later accommodation for sinful humans. This all makes theological sense, too: it was humanity's sin that tainted creation and brought death into the world.

And the fact that according to Genesis, God made the animals first suggests that they have his special concern and consideration. It is not that God made humans and then gave them food: they existed for some purpose other than the benefit of humans when they were first made.

So did God create animals for the purpose of humans to eat them? In the perfect plan for creation, God didn't tell people they could or should eat animals, and in fact the text makes explicit that plants are meant for human consumption.

Simpler: what is an animal made for?

What did God create animals for? I don't know. But I think it is hard to argue that God, say, made a chicken so that it could have its beak cut off and spend its entire life in an extremely small cage. There are all sorts of ways that humans have manipulated and limited animals in ways that run contrary to any biological understanding of what the animal was designed for.

Even if at a fundamental level, a Christian understanding of animals is that they are ours to use, that would not justify the extreme cruelty and suffering of current animal agriculture.

They know the score: Isaiah

2010-12-06T23:25:00.003-06:00

A portion of Sunday's Old Testament reading stuck out to me (Isaiah 11: 6-8):

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,

and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;

and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze;

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,

and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.

Maybe these animal references, rich and diverse and detailed as they may be, are symbols to illustrate coming peace and reconciliation of enemies (though the specificity and power of the language shows a voice with understanding and attention to animals). But maybe also this is a reminder that animals are a part of God's creation, that they are imbued with dignity, and are included in some way in God's plan of salvation for the world.

PETA's Problem

2010-11-29T22:03:00.006-06:00

When I read criticism of PETA, like this at Feministing, my first instinct is to defend PETA. The animal rights organization is an easy target, and people are, I think, rather comfortable lambasting animal rights advocates as extremist weirdos. And PETA is, after all, fighting the good fight, even if their tactics are questionable. Animal rights/welfare advocates face such a daunting task and resistant society that I feel we should try stick together and defend each other.

But, of course, Vanessa at Feministing is right. Advocating for animals does not require objectifying women. PETA doesn't need to offend or trivialize in order to actually promote its message.

I've long thought that PETA has two primary goals--help animals and promote PETA--and it is sometimes unclear which goal is #1. But I think I see why self-promotion is so ingrained in PETA's DNA. PETA is a somewhat older animal rights organizations, and when PETA began, the issues being raised by animal rights and animal welfare advocates may not have been very vivid in mainstream discourse. These issues were new and strange, and promoting the idea that animals exist for reasons other than human exploitation faced (and of course still faces) fierce resistance. As the primary organization devoted to such issues, self-promotion was actually a necessary strategy for the other goal of, in the short and long term, improving the lives of animals. By making people aware that there even was an organization devoted to the ethical treatment of animals, PETA was making people aware of some of the ethical concerns with how to treat animals. In that sense, any publicity is good publicity, and raunchy, shocking, and controversial advertisements and protests were effective in raising awareness.

But, in part because of PETA's work, many of the issues that PETA now highlights (don't buy fur, don't test on animals, don't eat animals, etc.) are well-known issues. People today are, I think, more aware of the ethical issues surrounding exploitation of animals than ever (which doesn't mean that exploitation doesn't continue rampantly, but people are aware of the issues). There may no longer be a need to be shocking and sensational to get people to look at an issue--in fact, shocking and sensational may actually hurt the cause by making advocates look like, well, extremist weirdos.

And there's the problem: PETA never grew up.

I think PETA still operates on the idea that self-promotion of PETA is good for animals, and still operates on the notion that any publicity is good publicity, because it brings attention to the issues. But a lot of this publicity actually harms PETA's reputation, including among people who might otherwise be receptive to PETA's messages. And a lot of this publicity actually offers nothing, nothing at all, new to an issue with which people are already aware. Does this provide new perspective, or give positive encouragement, on the issue of fur? I'm doubtful.

An organization that is more mature, that advocates in a provocative but serious way, is Mercy for Animals. Ads like this and this advocate without self-promotional sensationalism or offensive sexism. My hope is either that organizations like Mercy for Animals become the more prominent, influential, and visible animal rights organizations, and/or that PETA matures and advocates without sensationalism for the sake of sensationalism, without sexism, without such overt self-promotion.

I'll continue to support PETA, and I'll continue to defend allies. But spreading the message itself is difficult enough: we don't need to use advocacy strategies that themselves turn otherwise receptive audiences away.

A system of cruel indifference

2010-11-23T22:44:00.004-06:00

Thesis One: an animal is a conscious being capable of suffering.

Thesis Two: an animal is a being whose suffering should be of concern to humans.

Via vegan.com, The Human Society has a new video about the treatment of turkeys in industrial agriculture. A telling line from the Star Tribune article on the matter:

"Willmar [Poultry Co.] said much of what the video shows is acceptable industry practice..."

When we see video like this, we are not seeing unique aberrations of cruel indifference: we are seeing evidence of a system of cruel indifference.

And this is where things get fundamental: for animals to be treated the way animals are being treated in that video, people must either fail to see animals as conscious beings that can suffer, or they must fail to see the suffering of animals as something that should matter. It's quite obvious that a system in which this is "acceptable industry practice" fails to accept at least one of those two theses above. And for consumers/eaters who view such video, the consequence of accepting the above theses should evoke a desire to no longer support such a system.

Small Government Violence

2010-11-21T20:44:00.003-06:00

In today's political discourse, the rhetoric of "small government" is entirely divorced from state violence, and evidently makes no reference to it.

If you rail against the incompetence of government, but support the death penalty, then you have faith that the government will be mistake-free in investigating crimes, prosecuting the guilty parties, and carrying out executions.

If you say that government cannot solve problems, but support a massive defense budget and interventionist wars, then you believe that the government can solve problems through the use of government military force.

If you decry government tyranny over the individual, but support torture, then you want government officials to have power to inflict devastating harm on the individual.

In other words, if you support many forms of state violence while decrying the size and power of the state, your rhetoric is empty.

I can't change your mind or behavior: I can only try help you be conscious and aware of what you are doing.

2010-11-18T15:53:00.006-06:00

"The Hidden Lives of Turkeys" from PETA.

"Turkeys: Factory-Farmed Torture on the Holiday Table" from PETA.

Conscience and Public Policy

2010-11-08T17:21:00.007-06:00

At NPR, Kathryn Jean Lopez implores Barack Obama to make "permanent and universal" a policy that calls for "No federal taxpayer funding of abortion, period."

She argues:

"You and I don't have to agree on the morality of abortion to keep my money out of it. [...] It would show you respect the moral consciences of many Americans — and that you don't view us as enemies."

As a pacifist, I am intrigued by Ms. Lopez's line of argument. I believe war is morally wrong. Since Ms. Lopez believes that government money should not be used on activities that violate citizens' private consciences, I am certain Ms. Lopez would also support a ban on using federal taxpayer funding on foreign wars. After all, we don't have to agree on the morality of warfare to keep my money out of it.

I am also intrigued by this argument as an animal rights advocate. I hope Ms. Lopez would join me in supporting an end to government subsidies for animal agriculture and a ban (or very significant limit) on government funding for scientific research using animals. Such a policy would show that those in power respect the moral consciences of many Americans.

It may be that sometimes good public policy violates the consciences of individual citizens. But if it is the case that we will tie the use of federal taxpayer dollars to individual consciences, perhaps the government should cease funding any activities that violate any citizens' consciences, even if it doesn't violate others'.

Torture and Impunity

2010-11-04T22:13:00.005-05:00

Amy Davidson, in "Torture is Free" at The New Yorker:

"Maybe what is meant is that torture is illegal but you don’t actually get punished for it..."

Torture is the philosophical cousin of war. When you convince yourself in the pursuit of a given end, inflicting violence on human beings is an acceptable means, you have war and you have torture. When you believe that an enemy is so fundamentally not like you, and thus is not worthy dignity or rights, you have war and you have torture.

Why won't torturers ever be punished, even though torture is illegal? Why can they boldly confess and defend torture? Because, I think, the same impulse that convinced (and convinces) people that war is justified (or at the very least can be carried out in good faith) convinces people that torture can be justified (or at the very least not a crime worthy of punishment).

On the need to out ourselves

2010-11-03T21:30:00.002-05:00

Here is a generalization, but I think it is true: most people feel very comfortable publicly expressing contempt for animal rights groups, disdain for PETA in particular, and derision for vegans and vegetarians. I've certainly heard it plenty. And I think one reason is obvious: people expressing such attitudes don't think that anybody actually holding any animal rights views could possibly be in their company. Most people, in most situations, seem unlikely to say they hate a group in front of members of that group, or to claim that anybody holding such views is crazy. At least in most polite, sociable or professional situations.

And that's why I think it is worthwhile, in the company of those we are often around but who may not know us well, to out our vegetarianism, veganism, animal welfare, or animal rights views. I think there's value in showing people that somebody quite near to them, and maybe somebody who doesn't seem radically different from them, and probably doesn't appear to be crazy, might hold such views. That people right around them, friends, family, coworkers, teachers, students, readers, might be members of PETA, might choose not to eat meat, is something they might not expect (I've seen the looks and heard the sounds of disdainful surprise). It might be good to show people that a reasonable, calm, maybe even "normal" seeming person might hold views they hate (for some reason) or consider crazy. Or maybe I'm reaching to think I might seem "normal" to anybody.

agape

2010-10-31T21:45:00.002-05:00

“The gospel is that everyone being loved by God must be my beloved too, even if they consider me their enemy, even if their interests clash with mine."

-John Howard Yoder, He Came Preaching Peace

Today at the church I attend, the pastor led us in prayer, and asked that U.S. soldiers are able to show and feel agape in what they are doing.

I'm not entirely sure how a soldier can show agape, short of laying down his/her arms. Can you love your enemy while killing him/her? Does taking up arms, in any cause, allow for a godly, selfless, forgiving love?

The need for nonviolent response

2010-10-19T21:26:00.005-05:00

I join others, like Glenn Greenwald and davenoon, in being disturbed and angered by the story of a reporter detained and handcuffed by a politician's security guards. But one thing rankles me about the story. From the Anchorage Daily News:

"After Miller walked away, Hopfinger said, he was surrounded by Miller supporters and security guards and felt threatened, so he pushed one of them away.

"Fulton said the man shoved by Hopfinger was not hurt.

"Hopfinger said that after he shoved the man away, the guards grabbed him, cuffed his hands behind his back with steel handcuffs and sat him in a chair in the school hallway, Hopfinger said."

It's that shove that bothers me here, that makes a story possibly, just slightly, morally ambiguous. At the most charitable level, I think it's possible that people who go into private security might see a shove, whether justified, even committed by somebody who was surrounded and felt threatened, as something that they were responsible for dealing with (not to justify the response, but this is possible). It is also possible that at least one of these guards is a thuggish authoritarian type looking for an excuse (thuggish authoritarian types usually are), and by shoving somebody, the reporter gave him the excuse. At the very least, that shove gives the security guards a chance to claim that the reporter's actions justified their action, whether it is true or not. They can claim their actions were justified by an assault, a disturbance, a burgeoning situation, whatever they want. They are probably not right. But it might look like it could.

I am not writing this to defend security guards, hired by a political candidate, who detain a reporter (and certainly that video shows a person threatening to detain somebody over less than a shove). But the story illustrates the need for those in the moral position to restrain themselves from any display of force. Any element of force can create the possibility or even perception of possibility that one is in fact in the wrong. Nonviolent resistance allows those in the moral position to keep the moral position.

5 Reasons to kick elderly people in the shins

2010-09-22T12:04:00.004-05:00

First, read Tim Love's five reasons not to be a vegetarian (via vegan.com).

1. Because kicking elderly people in the shins is fun. It's not a matter of taste--it just is.

2. Because it stimulates senses, such as sight (it's fun to see the elderly person wince) and sound (it's fun to hear the elderly person groan). You may think this is basically a restatement of my first point, but it deserves special attention.

3. Imagine walking into a room full of people who think it's wrong to kick elderly people in the shins. Enough said. I'm kidding: some of my best friends choose not to kick elderly people in the shins, though they are a little holier-than-thou about it. If I want to kick elderly people in the shins, let me do it in peace. Nobody is forcing you not to kick elderly people in the shins, so why do you force your values on me?

4. Not kicking elderly people in the shins may seem like a healthy lifestyle, but kicking elderly people in the shins in moderation can be part of a healthy lifestyle.

5. Because you'd get a lot of funny looks if you showed up at a party where people tend to kick elderly people in the shins, and chose not to kick elderly people in the shins. Evidently, people who kick elderly people in the shins give a lot of judging looks to those who don't, and we should be very concerned about getting funny looks.

At least I'm willing to poke you in the eye myself.

2010-09-10T16:06:00.005-05:00

At Grist, Rebecca Thistlewaite offers up suggestions for people to really make a difference in the food system. The article is frustrating because many of Thistlewaite's suggestions feature consuming animals,* she doesn't suggest eliminating or even reducing meat consumption to make a difference,** yet she poses the article as a sort of "You're proud of yourself for your food choices, but you're no better than anybody and here's what you should really do." To me, suggesting conscientious ways to kill and eat animals for our own pleasure really isn't a solution, but a way to make people feel better about doing what they want to do anyway. It's also frustrating that some of Thistlewaite's suggestions would take a great deal of energy and effort, while "stop eating animals" is by comparison fairly effortless.

It would be easy to write a lengthy post expanding on these points, but I want to focus on one suggestion Thistlewaite offers:

"Participate in the death of an animal that you consume."

Though perhaps not Thistlewaite's point, this seems like an argument I've heard from people with various points of view about eating animals. It is somehow wrong to consume an animal if you don't confront, witness, or even participate in the actual death of the animal, but the act becomes acceptable if you are willing to confront, witness, or participate in that death. For example, Tracy H. at Digging Through the Dirt cites Monica Eng:

"I didn't want to see a pig get killed. Heck, I don't think anyone does.

"But I felt like I couldn't continue eating meat if I didn't. So this summer I embarked on an unpleasant pilgrimage to bear witness to the death of every kind of animal I ate. And in some cases, to kill the animal myself."

This logic is, I think, flawed whether or not it is morally acceptable to eat meat or not. If a given act is wrong, then it is wrong whether you commit the act yourself or pay somebody else to do it. If it's wrong to pay somebody to steal a car, it's wrong to steal a car yourself, too. And if a given action is morally acceptable, then in most cases it's morally acceptable whether you do it yourself or pay somebody else to do it. I can paint my own house or I can pay a person to paint my own house, and either way I'll have few moral qualms and face few moral judgments. There are some cases where asking somebody else to do a job you should do is considered itself an ethical breach: you shouldn't send somebody else to break up with a significant other, for example. But those exceptions are often for things we already feel squeamish or guilty about, where we recognize that somebody is getting hurt. So does the argument itself indicate qualms?

I think this argument itself suggests some moral anxiety about eating animals. Some people recognize that there is a moral dilemma in an animal suffering and being killed for pleasure, but still want that pleasure, and thus will find some logic to still engage in that pleasure (which is also a reason I resent it when some food writers try to tell people it's OK to eat meat as long as you do it in this particular moral way--if people feel moral qualms about eating meat, I'd rather those qualms not be assuaged). In some cases, such a pose might even be an attempt to continue to claim moral superiority over others ("I'm willing to face the consequences of my choice, so that itself makes me good"--even if the choice itself is bad, and even if other choices that don't have the same consequences are ignored).

I think that killing animals for the pleasure of eating them is wrong. I see little moral difference in buying the dead animal that somebody else killed for you, or killing it yourself. I think the argument that there is a moral difference tries to take what is essentially the same behavior, draw a line through it, and call one side (presumably the side of the speaker) more righteous.

*In some cases, her direct advice to readers is to eat meat--just particular types. No caveat like "if you do eat meat" or "when you do eat meat"--her advice to change the food system, then, apparently requires the reader to eat meat.

**she does say if a waiter can't give a satisfactory answer about how the animal was killed, then order vegetarian--not quite advice to reduce or eliminate meat consumption for its own sake.

Avoiding Conflict

2010-06-28T22:33:00.005-05:00

I love Curb Your Enthusiasm. I love watching Larry David get into meaningless conflicts and hilarious shouting matches with strangers, friends, salesmen and colleagues. Watching the show is like getting immersed in a world with such commonplace amusing conflicts. And I relate to Larry: I'm often running scenarios through my head about what I might say in a hypothetical imagined situation, or what I should have said in some situation past.

Today a door to door salesman came to my door. I always attempt to be friendly with the people who knock on my door, whether they are selling windows or a religion. Generally I try to make it quickly clear (while smiling and friendly) that I won't be interested, so both the salesman and myself can just get back to our business. I was friendly and smiling with this salesman, who was really working it. He seemed to be selling some sort cleaning product, and when he asked me a question, I told him I just use water to clean things and that I wasn't interested. He kept pressing, but I insisted I use water and no soap, and said thanks and bye.

The salesman started talking loudly to my next door neighbors (whom he had evidently just spoken to). Loudly enough for me to hear, he said something like "He wasn't nice like you said. Actually, he was kind of a jerk." He talked a bit more and once more said that I had been a jerk.

For half a second, I actually thought of opening the door and saying "Hey now. You don't need to stand here in my yard calling me a jerk." I really think I could have, and would have been within my rights. I probably wouldn't have gotten the chance to go further, but if I could, I might have continued: "I was friendly enough, but I'm not interested in your product. You're the one who knocked on my door: what do I owe you? How am I a jerk for declining the product you're selling, and trying to do it quickly enough so you can go on your way? You don't have to stand here and insult me: I really didn't do anything to you. That's rude."

For half a second--I mean, it wasn't just an idle thought, I actually thought about opening the door and saying something. But I didn't. I realized I wasn't mad at all at this guy. I wasn't annoyed. I wasn't really insulted--he doesn't really know me and I wasn't really a jerk, so what do I care? Actually, it was pleasant to find out the neighbors told him I'm nice (best compliment I've received in months!). For what reason would I have opened the door to say something to him? To yell? For what? For pride? My pride wasn't wounded. To assert my authority? I felt no need. To defend myself? Why?

I could have opened the door. I could have said something to the person. I probably would have said it reasonably, but who knows? Could it have turned into a shouting match? Probably not, but the discussion certainly might have gotten testy. I didn't feel any real emotion about a salesman who doesn't know me calling me a jerk, but if we started an open conflict, who knows what emotions, from him or me, might have gotten sparked.

A little thing. I had nothing to gain from opening the door to complain to a man I didn't know that he shouldn't call me a jerk. Nothing to gain at all. No benefit to me, no benefit to the man. An open conflict could have erupted, and over nothing. I let it go because I didn't really care.

In He Came Preaching Peace, John Howard Yoder writes:

"The only way to end the war is to make peace, and for that someone has to die. Someone has to back down. Someone has to be humiliated. Someone has to come up with an alternative, a vision of a new order for which one is ready to sacrifice one's future, one's popularity and even one's life."

Overly dramatic words to use in relation to my brief encounter with a salesman, no doubt. But there is a point here relevant to our personal relationships and encounters. Sometimes to escape a conflict, somebody must be willing to back down, to let things go, to be willing to cede something to the other party. When I read different details of the Henry Louis Gates arrest incident, regardless of who was right or wrong, I thought this: if either of these men had been interested in resolving the situation without major conflict, it could have been done. It would have taken one of the men backing down, letting things go, accepting briefly being "subordinate" (a word from Yoder), but that would have done it. Sometimes it is little things, little moments of letting things go, that matter--or more accurately, that make things not matter.

So even when I want to, I don't pull a Larry David. I'm glad he does it in his fictional universe: it makes for hilarious television. In my real life universe, however, I'll avoid conflict as much as I can.

The Logic of Warmongers

2010-06-28T11:43:00.011-05:00

We must commit military violence until we succeed, because if we fail we will have to commit more military violence for a very long time.

We must continue this war, because if we don't, we're going to have to continue this war for a long time into the future.

What, that's not what Ross Douthat is saying?

I'm never quite amazed at the arguments for starting or for perpetuating military violence. Strip them down, and they'd be silly if they weren't so devastating.

Douthat also has some problems with language in this column that are worthy further critique. There's no real "paradox" in saying if we succeed we get to leave more quickly, but it's this sentence that disturbs me with its inherent contradictions:

"We can’t hold the current course indefinitely, and we won’t: President Obama’s decision to set a public deadline was a mistake, but everyone knows there are limits to how long the surge of forces can go on."

We can't keep this up "indefinitely," but it's a mistake to actually state a deadline publicly, but everybody knows there's a limit--a limit which is, evidently given the mistake of a public deadline, "indefinite." That sort of argument--it can't be indefinite but we can't actually say what the limit is (so it's actually "indefinite") is the sort of logic used to perpetuate long-term war.

Reading Masson's "The Face on Your Plate"

2010-06-27T22:30:00.004-05:00

My experience reading Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food.

Personally Motivating
Masson's argument against eggs and dairy is compelling and utterly convincing. I have a mostly vegan diet, and reading this book has motivated me to make the exceptions to that "mostly" as few and limited as I can (and perhaps doing away with the "mostly" part altogether).

Masson's discussion in the final chapter on the health benefits of a vegan diet and general prescriptions for healthy eating is also convincing for me. There's not too much he suggests that I haven't already heard about (and have been moving toward), but I still found reading it motivational and convincing.

It's not often I read a book that I can say will directly impact the way I live my life. I can say this about The Face on Your Plate. I want to point out that it makes some of the critiques I offer below seem a bit shallow.

Eating and Words

Masson discusses language of animals and food:

"The word 'veal' was chosen because it has no resonance in English. In fact, it is simply the translation of the French veau (calf) because it would offend some people's sensibilities to be asked if they would like to be served calf for dinner. It's not dissimilar from "pork," which comes from the French porc, meaning pig. Americans don't like to ask for a pig for breakfast. "Bacon" means nothing to us beyond its use for breakfast; we have no other associations. "Hamburger" or "burger" do not resonate with us or conjure up images of cows peacefully grazing, minding their own business and getting on with their own lives (We do, however, speak of chicken, lamb, and calves' liver without blushing--so, go figure)."

Masson is talking about the ways people often distance, distort, or hide our food choices so that they don't have to think about the animal they are actually consuming. This is, in my view, a real phenomenon, and there are many ways people do this (including the way we use language); Masson explores this well in the later chapter "Denial." But Masson states that the words are chosen deliberately to hide the animal ("was chosen because," "because it would"). I do not believe this to be the case: the history of the English language actually offers an explanation why our words for animals-as-food are often different from our words for actual-animals.

C.M. Millward explains in A Biography of the English Language that the English language has thousands of French "loanwords," brought in after the French speaking Normans conquered English speaking England in 1066. These loanwords entered several semantic areas, including food; Millward lists some French loanwords in English associated with food and eating:

"dinner, supper, taste, broil, fry, plate, goblet, serve, beverage, sauce, salad, gravy, fruit, grape, beef, pork, mutton, salmon, sugar, onion, cloves, mustard."

There are historical reasons why our words for animals-as-food feature French words (which seem disassociated with actual-animals to English speakers) and not match our words for actual-animals. Words involving food and eating feature a lot of French loanwords in part because "English household servants would have learned French words like table, boil, serve, roast, and dine." However, as Millward explains:

"With this pervasive influence of French in so many semantic areas, it is surprising (and even consoling) to discover that some aspects of English life remained relatively untouched by French loanwords. One [...] area was farming and agriculture in general. The word farm itself is from French, and agriculture is a loan from Latin. However, the Norman masters themselves apparently left their English servants to work the fields by themselves, for most basic farming terminology remains native English to this day."

Millward then provides a list of words associated with farming that "come down directly from Old English," including many words for animals: "ox, horse, cow, swine, sheep, hen, goose, duck."

There is the linguistic history of English that suggests Masson is inaccurate here: we have a lot of French words for animals-as-food and Anglo-Saxon words for actual-animals not as a deliberate con, but for specific historical reasons. But there are also a couple of tells in his paragraph which hint themselves that he's not quite right. One such tell is in his "go figure" parenthetical. In fact, we do have French loanwords for animals-as-food for chicken (poultry) and sheep (mutton), yet English speakers still often use the more familiar actual-animal word for these types of food: this suggests there is something other than distancing/distorting going on with the less familiar French words. And secondly, Masson's argument implicitly suggests that English speakers from around the world are subject to and party to a linguistic conspiracy to distance and distort the reality of meat from eaters, but that French speakers around the world are, apparently, more naturally comfortable linguistically admitting they are eating animals. This may be true, but I doubt it, especially since there is an historical linguistic explanation for French loanwords for food.

Perhaps Masson isn't indicting the English language itself of this distortion, but is referring only to the word "veal." But the Oxford English Dictionary (available online via subscription) defines veal as "1. The flesh of a calf as an article of diet" and "2. A calf, esp. as killed for food or intended for this purpose. Now rare." For the first definition, the OED cites Chaucer using the word around 1386, and a couple other references in the early 15th century. These uses almost seem to conflate the word "veal" as actual-animal and as animal-for-food: Chaucer writes "'Bet is,' quod he, 'a pyk than a pikerell, And bet than olde boef is the tendre vel'," and around 1400 Mandeville writes "Thei eten but lytille or non of Flessche of Veel or of Beef." These uses of "veal" are quite old, and appear not long after the French influence altered the English language. It would seem odd to me to argue that the word was "chosen because" it doesn't remind people they are eating a baby cow; it seems far more likely that the word wasn't really chosen at all, but simply entered English organically from the French influence.

The distancing of actual-animal from animal-as-food in an English speaker's consciousness may certainly be an effect of having different words for animals-as-food than for actual-animals. That is not, however, the cause of this difference.

This is not the only part of the book where I found Masson's argument sloppy (I'm not nearly as comfortable with the science as with the English language, but I'm pretty sure in the introduction Masson counters the argument that meat consumption had an evolutionary impact on human brain size relative to other primates by citing evidence that human brain size is impacted during infancy, and that the breast-feeding mother's diet--whether meating-eating, vegetarian, or vegan--has no impact on brain growth and size. Showing that meat-eating has no impact on contemporary human brain size relative to other humans is interesting, but doesn't seem to address the argument of how meat-eating affected human evolution to get us to this point, relative to other primates. But like I said, I'm not nearly as comfortable interpreting science as language, so I could be wrong--hence being stuck in parentheses). But these very occasional lapses in sound logic and evidence do not cause me to doubt Masson's larger points or his specific claims: he is generally narrow, specific, and diligent about identifying sources.

Personal Problems

I suffer from two problems when I read books that detail the reality and consequences of factory farming. The first is the repetition: no matter how informative or well-written, a lot of the material Masson presents I've already encountered in other books, articles, and blogs I've read as somebody who follows these issues. However, I don't see this as a significant problem: I still learn things, and I still find re-reading material educational and edifying.

My second problem is more existential: when I read about the ways humans are wrecking the earth, I tend to despair, losing hope that anything can or will be done about it. I used to be, on the whole (despite some obsessive-compulsive tendencies, paranoia, and anxiety) a largely optimistic person, seeing affirmations of life everywhere and feeling hopeful for the future. As I've learned more about the ways humans are devastating the environment, my long-range view has become, alas, rather pessimistic. Sometimes my greatest hope is just that the things humans are doing to wreck the earth don't take major effect until my children have lived long, happy lives.

I wouldn't blame reading about environmental issues alone on my nearly despairing pessimism. The hope I felt for political change in '06 and '08 was strong, but now I can't even envision the serious political will to end the military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. And then there are the Minnesota Vikings. It may seem trivial in the big picture, but for over a decade, I believed at the beginning of each season that the Vikings were going to finally win the Super Bowl that season. After all the massive hopes of the 2009 season, for it to end the way it did in that NFC title game, I've gone into sports despair, which no doubt effects my broader view.

And I'm also now a parent. I love my children too dearly for words, and the strongest hopes I have are for them: that they are healthy, that they are happy, that their lives can be filled with joy and purpose, and that the world can be beautiful for them, that they can bring their beauty to the world. Having children is also nerve-wracking, filled with anxiety, fear, and (for me at least) near-constant worry. So to think about the future, while being aware of the impact humans are having on earth's environment, while hoping and fearing mostly for my children, can lead me toward a sense of dread.

Writing Problems

There are some repetition issues and some odd organizational choices in the book that do not negatively affect the reading. There was another problem, however. I think when vegetarians and vegans write about food and eating, it is necessary, effective, and understandable that they would insert themselves into the book to a certain degree. I think, however, this book features just a bit too much of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson sharing how interesting Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is. That may sound harsh, and it's probably not that bad, but it's certainly the impression a reader can be left with as Masson ends the book by talking about which foods he likes best (and why) and describing the types of food he regularly eats. Sometimes Masson's inclusion of his own experiences or tastes don't really contribute much to the argument, and his use of himself as an anecdotal argument for veganism occasionally comes off as "Look at me: I'm 68 but look at all the amazing things I can do and how amazing I am."

Having said that, this is the kind of book Masson wanted to write, and frankly if I were going to write about the topic, I'd be constantly tempted to inject my own experiences and tastes, too. The subtitle of the book seems to suggest a more objective than subjective approach to the subject, but that doesn't mean that would actually be preferable, and that can be found elsewhere too. Just as Jonathan Safran Foer did in Eating Animals, I think on the whole it works for a vegetarian or vegan writer to inject his/her own idiosyncratic style and personality into the book.

That last chapter, "A Day in the Life of a Vegan"

The final chapter of the book features two parts, really: Masson gives a pretty good overview of the health impact of a vegan diet and advice for how to eat healthy, and then gives a description of the wide variety of healthy foods vegans can eat, as well as a description of the foods he eats. And while I criticized this point just a few sentences earlier (right up there!), I actually found the latter part interesting for reasons I don't understand. I have no idea why: there were a lot of plant-based foods discussed (most that I already know about and eat a lot), and Masson shared a lot of his personal history and liking for this food (which shouldn't interest me at all, but did). I know that as a mostly vegan vegetarian (who has also lost over 50 pounds and is concerned with living healthy), food is directly on my mind quite a bit, and I'm always conscious of what I'm eating, so it's what I want to talk about. I try to avoid it (why do others care what I'm eating), but I am glad Masson wrote about it.

However, I would make two points. First, in this chapter Masson does a great job selling the health benefits of a vegan lifestyle, but he doesn't do much to make it sound appealing to people who don't already like fruits and vegetables. I do, and found this interesting. If my brother (hi there, buddy) read this chapter, he wouldn't find the food terribly appealing. Having said that (I'm going to deliberately use this phrase frequently from now on to honor Jerry Seinfeld), how else can a vegan advocating a healthy lifestyle write about it? "You're supposed to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. Here are a bunch of the wide varieties of healthy and delicious fruits and vegetables." What are you supposed to do to convince somebody who doesn't like something that he/she should? It's like saying "Oh, you think soccer's boring, but you're wrong, you should find it interesting." It's a tough sell.

Second, while Masson seems to think he's describing his typical day as a vegan in order to show how easy and simple it is, his description is not, in fact, easy and simple. Hey, a writer describing his day as a vegan can only really describe his own day as a vegan, so it's hard to blame him. But I think a lot of readers would find his description a bit intimidating. Having said that, when a person adopts a way of living, it quickly becomes simple to him/her. In comparison to Masson, I think my typical vegan day is much, much simpler. However, if I started to explain it to others, the specifics of the description might make it seem more complicated than it really is. I take it for granted as easy, even lazy, but I think to others it may not be so.

On the whole

I'll finish with a melodramatic statement that I nevertheless believe is true. I wish for more people to read this book; I think the world will be a better place if they do.

Knowing the score

2010-06-23T13:27:00.001-05:00

Shane Claiborne's "Confusing our Kids" at Sojourners' blog.

Response to "Humans first"

2010-06-12T19:08:00.002-05:00

At not one sparrow, Dean Ohlman explores how Christians can respond to the question, "Aren't people more important than animals?" This is a question posed to animal advocates not only by Christians, and I would like to propose another response to this question.

I think an individual with literally zero concern for the suffering of animals, but compassion and concern for human beings and humankind, should be a committed opponent of the way animals are currently used on our planet.

The first chapter of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's The Face On Your Plate, "The Only World We Have," focuses not on the suffering of animals, but on the environmental and health impact of factory farming. The chapter offers us many examples to raise questions about how current animal agriculture impacts human beings.

Animal agriculture is a major contributor to global warming. How does this affect human beings?

Factory farming creates a massive amount of animal waste (the poop and pee), which has a devastating impact on the local environment, and a history of making people living nearby such farms sick. How does this affect human beings?

The conditions of factory farms, including the excessive overuse of non-therapeutic antibiotics on animals, may lead to superbugs resistant to our drugs, and may one day become responsible for a global flu pandemic. How will that affect human beings?

Raising animals for food requires massively more resources, including fresh water and arable land, than growing plants for food. How will scarcity of water affect human beings? Will we deplete the earth's good soil? How does use of resources for meat affect worldwide hunger and undernourishment?

It is important that we continue to inform people about the impact factory farming has on the world, and on us. A person with zero regard for animals, when informed of the truth of factory farming, may emerge as an ally and opponent of factory farming. When I read about such things, I am, frankly, terrified (more on this in a later post). I only became serious about environmentalism after and because of becoming a vegetarian, but more and more I'm coming to see the cause/effect direction can go the other way too.

And that's how the question could be answered. To a religious person committed to a belief that God granted us the right to dominate animals, or to a cynic unconcerned with the suffering and death of animals, or to a conscientious person sincerely struggling to make life better for humankind, I would say, for now, forget about the animals. I would ask another question: can we continue and support an industrial activity that has the potential to wreak such catastrophic consequences on human beings, and that wastes so many resources that might otherwise be used to help human beings?

Christianity and Eating Animals

2010-06-06T09:22:00.003-05:00

"Churches are paying closer attention to connections between humans and animals" by Lisa Black (via Mark Hawthorne)

It is a deeply ingrained belief in Christianity: God gave humans dominion over the animals, interpreted to mean we can use them for our own purposes in whatever way we choose. I think, however, that a discussion of our relationship with animals can fit into mainstream Christianity. Christian animal advocates can focus on two areas when discussing animals with fellow Christians.

Stewardship. Stewardship is a regularly discussed, mainstream concept in the Lutheran churches I've been a part of. God grants us many gifts, but they still belong to God: we are stewards of God's things, and we must be good stewards. The focus on stewardship leads directly to a Christian environmentalism: God granted us the earth, and it is our duty to take care of it and protect it, not use it up however we see fit, ultimately destroying it.

Stewardship, I believe, also leads us directly to concern for animals, for even in a mainstream Christian view, we are also stewards of the animals God created. So we can ask questions. We can be specific: is it good stewardship to cut off a chicken's beak and make it live its entire life in a very small cage? We can also be broad: is any part of the factory farming system really good stewardship of God's creations?

Compassion. I come back to this argument again and again: if you eat animals, you choose your own momentary pleasure over the life of an animal. In the modern developed world, we do not eat meat for our survival, but for tradition and for pleasure. As Christians, can we really selfishly choose our own pleasure over the life of a living creature? A creature that thinks, feels, and suffers? As we learn more about the mental and emotional capacities of animals, and as we learn more about the ways they suffer in the factory farming system, I wonder if we can set aside our basic Christian principles in order to continue our focus on superiority and dominion.

Defensive Ethics

2010-06-02T07:13:00.003-05:00

There is no moral argument in favor of eating animals; at best, one can offer a defense of meat eating. There is no argument that eating meat is ethically superior to not eating meat; one can only attempt to offer a defense of eating meat as an ethically acceptable activity. Rarely does anybody argue that it is wrong not to eat meat; all that can be done is to defend eating meat (and such defenses are, in my view, weak). Both compassion and reason are on the side of not eating animals.

But the same logic applies to vegetarianism and veganism. At best, a vegetarian can offer a defense of dairy and/or eggs: it would be unreasonable to claim that consuming dairy and/or eggs is ethically preferable to not consuming it. That is not to say that meat-eating is to vegetarianism as vegetarianism is to veganism: I consider vegans and vegetarians to be on the same side (I know some see the firmer line between consuming any animal products and not; I see the firmer line between consuming animal flesh and not).* And not all acts calling for a defensive ethic are equal: obvious some acts of choice can be defended, some can't be (or can't be as easily). But the parallel is there.

*I'm still a mostly vegan vegetarian--I haven't shaken the "mostly" yet. The purpose of a little-read blog is for self-wrestling.

Ethics and Meaning

2010-05-24T22:41:00.003-05:00

Paul Starobin, in "Animal Rights on the March" (via Vegan.com):

"The animal-rights movement gives the lie to the trope that we are living in a postmodern world in which meaning is fragmented and values are relative. These advocates burn with an old-fashioned Enlightenment fervor -- an unhealthy zeal, critics believe -- in this quest to extend liberty to nonhuman beings. The ridicule that sometimes greets their cause is unlikely to deter it..."

Indeed: I stopped thinking of myself as an existentialist (mostly) as I became more committed to life as a pacifist and a (mostly vegan) vegetarian. I realized these deeply felt commitments did not match a worldview in which we create our own meaning and morality.

They know the score: W.H. Auden

2010-05-03T22:32:00.004-05:00

W.H. Auden's poem "Musee des Beaux Arts" explores, among other things, the way that suffering occurs

"While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along"

And

"That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree."

And

"how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure;

[...]

and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

How do we juxtapose horrors with the everyday? How do we ourselves ignore, or hide, or diminish, or show indifference to suffering on a grand scale? The United States currently occupies two foreign countries...and how many TV shows, and movies, and video games, and sporting events, and concerts, do we have to stop us from thinking about it? When historians look back and see the United States at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for a decade or more, and see that Americans amused themselves watching celebrities compete in a dance competition, what will they think? What will they say about us? Will it be a scandal? Will they wonder how we played while we kept electing leaders that kept it all going? That could even joke about it? That it seems it will never end, that it escalates, that the horrors and the violence continue on and on and on, but we've got American Idol and Tiger Woods to think about?

Don't we, too, turn away from the boy falling from the sky, keeping our eyes on the plough? Aren't we on a ship with places to go, while on our periphery, a splash?

But I don't know. I want most of all to watch my beautiful children be beautiful. I also want to follow the Minnesota Vikings. I want to watch funny television shows, I want to read good novels, and I want reflect on God. I want to teach students how to write and I want to teach students about a poem by W.H. Auden. I want to eat hummus and I want to go for walks on spring days. I want, in short, the small and large joys that can come from a life of peace. Can I enjoy that peaceful life, when others so obviously cannot?* Is that a sin? Should I be thankful for my life of peace, while praying and striving for peace to be spread? Or is it not enough?

In short, is the insight of Auden and "the Old Masters" a judgment, or simply an observation?

"a powerful, popular, and well-funded lobby"

2010-04-30T00:05:00.006-05:00

Via Vegan.com, an article in the Washington Times features a rather peculiar sentence:

"The agriculture industry is under attack from a powerful, popular and well-funded lobby - animal rights groups, which want to see it die completely, said two speakers at the Animal Agriculture Alliance 9th Anual Stakeholders Summit in Arlington, Va., Wednesday."

The idea that anything resembling an animal rights position is "powerful, popular, and well-funded" in America is laughable at best.

Powerful? According to the speakers themselves, these groups want to do away with animal agriculture altogether. Abolitionist animal activists are so far away from achieving this goal--so far from even convincing any meaningful number of people that this is a desirable goal--that it is beyond absurd to call them "powerful."

Popular? Vegetarians make up a very small percentage of Americans, vegans an even tinier portion of that. Furthermore, among many Americans, words like "vegetarian," "vegan," "PETA," etc., are treated with open contempt and derision, and consuming meat is either commonplace or celebrated. The claim that animal activists are popular in America is, well, pretty stupid, I think.

Well-funded? Compared to what? Compared to industrial agriculture? Compared to the companies that advertise and sell their food to us? I'd be very surprised.

I don't know if this is paranoia or propaganda, but it doesn't sound even reasonably close to being true.

They know the score: David Henry Hwang

2010-04-17T23:33:00.004-05:00

In M. Butterfly:

"The West thinks of itself as masculine--big guns, big industry, big money--so the East is feminine--weak, delicate, poor...but good at art, and full of inscrutable wisdom--the feminine mystique.

Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes. The West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated--because a woman can't think for herself."

I saw Hwang's M. Butterfly at the Guthrie Theater tonight: it was a superb production, and the central actors took to demanding roles with vigor. The play is one of my favorites--it's stylistically and thematically complicated and fascinating. One of the things the play explores is how a sense of (masculine) power and strength in personal affairs gets wrapped up in perception of power and strength at an international, geopolitical level.

Bumper Sticker Discordance

2010-03-30T15:20:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I saw a car with a purple "Stop the Violence" ribbon on one side; on the other side was a yellow "Support the Troops" ribbon.

Today I saw a car with a bold "God is Pro-Life" sticker; it was joined with a sticker for the "U.S. Army."

Perhaps you see no inconsistency in these messages (most, I suspect, don't). I think even staunch opponents of war could make a solid argument that the messages are not incompatible. But I see in these messages a divided mind, a failure to see one form of violence as violence, to see one form of killing as killing.

Science and Values

2010-03-30T10:22:00.006-05:00

On a topic relevant to an ethic of nonviolence

My first instinct on these matters is to say "Read your Dostoevsky, people." On the question of whether scientific knowledge can lead us to moral truth, start with Notes from the Underground, then try The Brothers Karamazov (along the way, you might find insights in Demons, The Adolescent, Crime and Punishment, and The Idiot). Dostoevsky was on it.

My second thought is to remember why I finally stopped eating animals. My wife forwarded me some articles regarding the mental, emotional, and social lives of animals. These articles were based on scientific research, providing scientific knowledge about animals. It was these facts about animals that finally led me to stop eating meat.

But then I remember that many people are aware of scientific facts about the mental and emotional capacity of animals, but still find little dilemma at all about eating meat. At best, science can inform our moral values (and it certainly can). Over the long movement of history, this informing of moral values might (usually in hindsight) resemble the source of moral values. But on that, I'm skeptical. There are still all sorts of irrational* sources of human values. Even when we are informed by scientific fact, we still use those irrational values to interpret how we are actually supposed to live in light of that fact.

*I don't use the word entirely negatively.

Happily, our age now has a firm grip on all truth, and our values are perfect in every way.

2010-03-19T13:43:00.005-05:00

(reposted and revised from August 6, 2009)

In "Anachronistic Arrogance" in Religion Dispatches, Peter Laarman is critical of a tendency to dismiss the positive ideas, accomplishments, or art of historical figures because their social politics are not up to our progressive standards. I think of John Fowles in The French Lieutentant's Woman, speaking to his ages' sense of superiority over the Victorians:

"So much the better for us? Perhaps. But we are not the ones who will finally judge."

Happily, Laarman explicitly addressed the thought I had while reading his article (and often have when considering this problem of "anachronistic arrogance," as Laarman puts it):

"A little generosity and humility are called for here. I predict that the rap on this generation, and on even the most progressive among us, will end up being homo sapiens “species-ism.” And how will we feel when our good works and thoughts are dismissed because we disdained the sensibilities of whales and dolphins and horses and frogs and (yes) even that little piglet who contributed to yesterday’s breakfast?"

A further point is that those who have the greater knowledge, who should know better, have greater moral responsibility. Jonathan Safran Foer writes in Eating Animals:

"We can't plead ignorance, only indifference. Those alive today are the generations that came to know better. We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the moment when the critique of factory farming broke into the popular consciousness. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?"

"The Outer Limits" and Authority

2010-03-16T21:50:00.014-05:00

Watching The Outer Limits, one frequently finds themes of fear and distrust of the government, as well as the corruption and insidiousness of authority (and those in authority). But these themes often focus on the negative power of the military, the dangers of an oppressive security state, and the potential tyranny of a secretive government.

But today's conservatives that rail against big government and government takeovers don't seem to have concerns about these issues. There is also a trend among many conservatives to trust government officials implicitly on all sorts of matters. They trust the government to know who should be tortured. They trust the government to know who should be detained indefinitely. On matters such as this, they certainly trust the government to keep them safe, and are happy to give government officials power. And do some of these same conservatives that distrust the government continue to support the government's military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan? Where was the distrust of the government when the Bush administration was selling the Iraq war?

This is not to exempt a Democratic administration from criticism on these issues: see this, this, remember this, of course we still have this, and there's this, and this. But what is striking me (while watching The Outer Limits) is the ideological disconnect in a conservative distrust of government in general with a conservative faith in the government on military and security matters.

The moral challenge of normalized violence

2010-03-13T15:25:00.004-06:00

David Brooks refers to

"the greatest moral challenge of our day: the $9.7 trillion in new debt being created this decade."

For Brooks, a massive debt is "the greatest moral challenge of our day." Not two wars/military occupations (that Brooks supported and supports) that have led to thousands of deaths and continue to lead to violent deaths for innocent civilians. Not government officials that tortured with impunity and continue to prance around the media bragging about and defending torture with no punishment. Not even climate change. Not even millions of Americans without health insurance. And of course not the gap between the richest and the poorest.

A giant debt is a serious policy problem, one that must be dealt with. But in a nation with a gigantic military budget and hundreds of military bases around the world and military occupations of two nations, a nation that continues military efforts that violently kill innocent people, a nation that has tortured people and because the torturers have not been punished, a nation that will torture again, it is obscene to call debt our "greatest moral challenge." To do so normalizes violence: such violence is so acceptable, so "necessary," so taken-for-granted-that-it-need-not-be-considered, that it is policy on debt that is our greatest "moral" issue.

And that is our true greatest moral challenge: the normalization of violence that allows people like Brooks to consider the problem of debt a more pressing ethical concern.

Meat and Environmentalism

2010-03-07T18:10:00.000-06:00

At Vegan.com, Erik Marcus responds to Cheri Shankar at Huffington Post by arguing that one can be an environmentalist and eat meat.

As a practical matter--how animal agriculture affects "the environment" (contribution to climate change, damage to local environments near factory farms, etc.)--Marcus has a point. An environmentalist could significantly reduce meat consumption, could actively push for more sustainable, environment-friendly agricultural practices, etc. Plastic bags are bad, but I wouldn't claim you're not an environmentalist if you ever accept a plastic bag at a store. "Environmentalist" is not a term to define some inner essence, whereby you either "are" or "aren't"; different people may have different levels or types of concerns for the environment, may express these concerns in different ways, and may take different actions (personal and political) to protect the environment.

From a ideological or philosophical perspective, though, I think an environmentalist eating meat is problematic. It comes down to what we mean by "the environment." Eating meat, generally speaking, means not considering animals a part of that environment. Thus an environmentalism that allows for killing animals for food (something unnecessary, relating to pleasure, not survival) is a human-centered environmentalism. Such environmentalism is concerned with the global environment and local environments, but primarily how environmental damage affects humans. A meat-eating environmentalist may still want to save the environment (or environments), but to do so for humans. In that sense, even saving endangered species isn't about the animals, but about saving species so that human beings can continue to appreciate and enjoy them.

I also think, from an educational perspective, it is good to publicize the connection between current animal agriculture and environmental damage. In recent years I've come across articles and books highlighting this connection fairly regularly. It is good to point out to people that their choice to eat animals has environmental consequences. Even if a writer makes a claim some will take as extreme (i.e., that you cannot be an environmentalist and eat meat), such claims still publicize the connection and require people to think about it. Will exposure to this connection convert many individuals to veganism or vegetarianism? Maybe not. Will exposure to an extreme claim cause individuals to say "Well that's too radical: to hell with environmentalists, and to hell with the earth!" I doubt it. Hopefully, though, people will learn something, think critically about their own choices and lifestyles, and make positive changes.

So yes, "environmentalists" can express concern and take action for the environment in numerous ways; this concern may include abstaining from meat, or it may only include reducing meat consumption, or it may express itself in ways having nothing to do with food. But meat-eating environmentalists may be denying animals' place in and part of "the environment," and insisting that environmentalists refrain from meat can only help, not hurt.

When do wars end?

2010-03-05T05:09:00.000-06:00

In order to win the Vietnam War, the U.S. is killing Laotians. Decades after the war ended (NPR).

If you are advocating for a particular war, you are advocating for something that will bring many long-term negative consequences, many which cannot be predicted before the war begins. Proponents of the Iraq War could not know that the specifics of Abu Ghraib would happen; however, they should have known that all wars bring about atrocities, and that something like Abu Ghraib would be likely to happen. Just as dropping bombs from the sky is likely to kill innocent civilians. In that sense, the many questions to ask before considering war should include: "Are the outcomes of this war worth the atrocities that are bound to occur?"

I think advocates of war must be forced to acknowledge the unknown, unpredictable, and largely negative consequences that large-scale violence brings about. If you use violence against a region, there are long-term consequences to the human beings living in that region. Many of these specific consequences may be difficult to predict at the time--but that there will be consequences, largely negative, is quite easy to know from the history of human experience.

Bias and Coverage of War

2010-02-27T20:45:00.001-06:00

Can a journalist cover a violent conflict objectively if that journalist's child serves in the military for one side of the conflict? The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg thinks so. He writes

"this is a somewhat obvious point except to propagandists, reporters are capable of actually separating out their personal interests from their coverage."

and praises a writer that discovers

"it is possible to cover the Middle East fairly, despite your entanglements."

I don't really disagree with Goldberg's take on the specific issue he writes about. I think, however, he is far too dismissive of the role unconscious bias plays in our assessment of reality. Goldberg claims only propagandists would think reporters are incapable of "separating out their personal interests from their coverage." But it is not merely propagandists that would question one's capability of objectivity: many psychologists would too.

Cognitive bias "is a person's tendency to make errors in judgment based on cognitive factors." It is not that a person knowingly behaves according to his or her biases, but that his or her biases affect how he or she views reality and makes decisions. For example, Confirmation bias "is a tendency for people to prefer information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses, independently of whether they are true." There are many other types of cognitive biases: the point is that even when we believe we are assessing the world objectively, or making decisions rationally, we may not be.

Of course, regular human experience tells us this is true. We expect judges with a conflict of interest to recuse themselves not merely to avoid the appearance of a biased decision, but to avoid actual biased decisions. Pharmaceutical representatives buy lunches for doctors and nurses, and I would think (hope?) doctors believe that has no influence on them--but the lunches keep coming. People do all sorts of things not only claiming but believing they are acting and thinking objectively, when in fact they are not.

It is beyond obvious that our assumptions and beliefs affect how we interpret reality, what reality one chooses to report, and how one reports on it. If you trust America's intentions in war, you may find 27 civilian deaths caused by U.S. military violence an unfortunate accident or collateral damage in a larger necessary cause; if you believe America's intentions in war are malevolent, or even if you believe they are empty, you will interpret those 27 deaths differently. Even if you attempt to be objective, you will still make decisions about whether and how to talk about them.

Is this to say that a reporter should not be allowed to cover a conflict when his or her child is directly involved in the conflict? Of course not. What sort of knowledge, context, background, and nuance would we miss if we insisted that our reporters be as disconnected from the realities of a situation as possible? If we expect a reporter to be knowledgeable about a situation, we must accept that the reporter's knowledge may come from his or her close geographic, cultural, political, historical, or familial connection to that situation. It would be absurd to claim that no Americans should cover American military conflicts because of the biases inherent in the venture. But so too, I think, it is silly to claim that reporters will be able to separate coverage entirely from their "entanglements," and it is disingenuous to think that only propagandists are skeptical whether reporters are "capable of separating out their personal interests from their coverage." The problem is in assuming something called "journalistic objectivity" is a sacrosanct concept that readers should believe in. One's vantage point matters. Different individuals will see the world differently due to a whole host of factors. As an observer of the world, I must always be aware that my own biases affect how I am viewing that world. And as a reader, I must always be aware that writers' biases affect how they are viewing the world. Instead of viewing this as a journalistic sin, I recognize this, keep an awareness of this, and (if I'm inclined) try to get coverage from a variety of perspectives.

It is not that I suspect journalists with personal entanglements will deliberately try to deceive. In many cases, I would expect reporters to try their best to report objectively, to rationally assess the world as it is and try to convey that knowledge. But I think they will do a better job at this not by pretending their biases don't exist, but by being aware of them (and perhaps acknowledging them to the reader). Self-consciousness about one's own likelihood to misinterpret reality can help one avoid misinterpreting reality.

I'm not sure how somebody can respond to a violent conflict objectively--from a human perspective, I'm not even sure they should. Of course, from a journalistic perspective, reporters should and must try present objective coverage. That doesn't mean, however, that we must pretend subjective responses play no part in how one describes a violent conflict. And one shouldn't assume it is only malicious propagandists that would have doubts about reporter objectivity.

PETA's Focus

2010-02-27T20:41:00.000-06:00

I used to believe that PETA had two priorities, but in order: 1) improving the lives of animals and pushing for major changes in the way society uses animals, and 2) self-promotion. It is stories like this that convince me I've had the order wrong.

They know the score: Robert Bolt

2010-02-25T22:19:00.000-06:00

Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons:

Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down--and you're just the man to do it--d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

I wonder: will there come a time when the Devil turns round on John Yoo? Will he turn around on Dick Cheney? Where will they hide then?

They know the score: Philip Roth

2010-02-25T22:16:00.001-06:00

Philip Roth, "The Conversion of the Jews:"

"Mamma, don't you see--you shouldn't hit me. He shouldn't hit me. You shouldn't hit me about God, Mamma. You should never hit anybody about God--"
"Ozzie, please come down now."
"Promise me, promise me you'll never hit anybody about God."
He had asked only his mother, but for some reason everyone kneeling in the street promised he would never hit anybody about God.
Once again there was silence.

It is indeed a promise we should all make. Let us never hit anybody about God.

They already knew

2010-02-21T08:27:00.000-06:00

Not long ago, I asked a friend what commentators of contemporary events he reads. His response: "Kafka." I begin to see his point. The only contemporary commentators worth reading today are those that point out the complete absurdity and utter insanity of it all. When a former vice president is able to boast on national television of the war crimes he's responsible for because he knows that the current administration (despite condemning torture) nor any other American body will ever, ever try to punish him for it, we probably need Kafka. When a movement develops to supplement a major political party in decrying government spending and debts, but few words from this side are spoken against the expensive wars and massive military budgets that make up a giant part of the spending and debts, we need Kafka. When an election is held which whittles all ideas down to two candidates, and the least warmongering candidate is the one that escalates one major war (and uses the Nobel Peace Prize lecture to defend the use of violent force), we need Kafka. But in all this we also need Orwell and Aristophanes, Homer and Shaw, Wilfred Owen and David Henry Hwang. They already knew the score.

God's Creation is populated by God's Creations

2010-02-17T22:31:00.001-06:00

on animals

At God's Politics, Tracey Bianchi writes about giving up meat for Lent. Most of her reasons for doing so, she writes, are

"rooted in my love of God’s Creation."

She goes on to write:

"And since raising beef and other meat places a heavy burden on our ecosystems, and because it is considerably kinder to the planet if I eat grain and vegetable products, I’m going to skip it altogether for this season."

and

"since God made this place, it seems wise to take note of that fact and make a commitment for a few weeks to help honor that Creation."

Bianchi is writing about vegetarianism and about environmentalism. However, at no point in her post does she even hint at any actual concern for animals. I find that absence glaring. She is skipping meat to help the environment, but not mentioning helping the creatures that share this environment with us. She expresses sincere love and concern for God's Creation, but in this context creation seems to include the earth itself, but not the sentient creatures that God created. She advocates skipping on eating animals to protect the earth, not to avoid causing death and suffering to those very animals.

I am aware, of course, that vegetarianism is not traditionally associated with Christian thought or practice, and that furthermore Christians can cite scripture to justify eating animals (I might only point out that Genesis strongly suggests Adam and Eve did not eat meat before the Fall--perfect creation did not involve killing animals for food). But an environmentalist concern for God's creation, I think, should not leave the concerns of animals out. They are a part of God's Creation, and are in fact thinking, feeling beings created by God. Being Christian did not teach me to be a vegetarian; however, being Christian taught me about compassion and integrity, virtues which led me to be a vegetarian.

I am glad that Bianchi is concerned for the environment, and using a medium to encourage others to reduce their meat consumption. If Christians can eliminate (or even reduce) consumption of animals during Lent, that is a good thing. And I would encourage Christians to consider Lent a beginning, and to try make a long-term change to avoid eating animals.

Torture and Christians

2010-02-17T20:53:00.002-06:00

I am particularly disgusted when Christians advocate and defend torture. It is not primarily that Christians worship a Lord who was himself unjustly tortured, but about what that Lord taught. Jesus commands that we not return evil with evil. He commands that we love and bless our enemies. More broadly, the gospel of Christ insists that we see all human beings as children of God, all men and women as brothers and sisters in humanity. Torture denies that.

Andrew Sullivan, a Catholic, further details the wrongfulness of torture.

Torture

2010-02-15T00:03:00.000-06:00

Andrew Sullivan continues.

Lit and War: "As if [...] Man had not hellish foes enow besides"

2010-02-10T19:59:00.000-06:00

on peace

From John Milton's Paradise Lost:

O shame to men! Devil with devil damn'd
Firm concord holds, men only disagree
of creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly grace: and, God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife
Among themselves, and levy cruel wars,
Wasting the earth, each other to destroy:
As if (which might induce us to accord)
Man had not hellish foes enow besides,
That day and night, for his destruction wait. (II. 496-505)

As if man had not hellish foes enough besides. As if enough Americans don't have health insurance, America can still spend over seven hundred billion dollars to wage wars. As if there is no poverty, there is no hunger, there is no pestilence, humans work on killing each other. As if no children suffer. As if there are no earthquakes or hurricanes to wreck havoc on communities. As if we don't each face a death no matter what. As if nature itself offers no challenge, as if there would not be enough human suffering to alleviate, as if there are no other problems to occupy our resources, our energy, our souls. As if there is nothing else to do, we have (as Thomas Hardy has it in "Channel Firing"),

All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder.

Commercial Life (2)

2010-02-08T21:00:00.000-06:00

on animals (reposted and revised from February 1, 2009)

It usually seems to me that a high percentage of Super Bowl commercials feature animals of some sort. I have theories on the appeal of seeing happy, funny animals in the context of consumerism and consumption (in addition to the point, noted by Eric Schlosser in Fast Food Nation, that kids love animals and a lot of advertising to children features animals). Mostly I think they provide comfort: by seeing animals as either happy and contented creatures, or as comical and silly figures, people can feel mildly comforted about consuming them. Suicide Food examines advertising featuring animals that want to be eaten, or that are eating their own food product, and suggests there is thematic comfort in such images. I think perhaps the animals don't need to be suicidal to provide that comfort--happy animals mean we don't have to feel bad for exploiting them (they're happy, after all), and funny animals suggest they're hardly worth any dignity anyway (they're just ridiculous and silly, after all).

This year Denny's screaming chickens made a rare explicit connection between consuming animal products and animals suffering. But the comedy (chickens in human contexts acting like people and looking ridiculous while screaming) still kept the necessary distance between guilt and consumption (and at any rate focused on eggs, where the animal does not need to be killed for the product and we can imagine it being happy even if that isn't so, rather than meat, which we cannot deny requires the killing of the animal).

Pleasure

2010-02-04T09:14:00.000-06:00

on animals

Eugene Cho at God's Politics writes:

"I personally don’t care what you eat, drink, hunt, or watch as long as it isn’t porn."

This line stuck out to me because I think you could argue that "what you eat" or "hunt" is at least as fraught with necessary moral consideration as watching pornography. The connection is pleasure. People watch pornography for their pleasure (and if you consider there to be immorality either in its production or its viewing, you'll consider that pleasure problematic). In the modern developed world, people eat meat (or hunt) for pleasure. There is no other compelling reason. It is not necessary for survival or health. It is tied up with tradition and socializing, but that in itself would not be justification for otherwise immoral activities. But to enjoy this pleasure, an animal is required to suffer and die. If pornography is to be worthy of moral condemnation, I think that partaking in the suffering and death of an animal for one's own pleasure is at least worth moral consideration.

On a C-Span2 Book TV discussion, Jonathan Safran Foer tried to develop this point. When Frank Bruni raised the point about eating for pleasure (seeming to defend meat-eating on the grounds of pleasure), Foer responded by asking why the pleasure of taste seemed to trump morality in ways our other senses do not. While sex is pleasurable, humans place moral limitations on its enjoyment, and we wouldn't allow people to slaughter animals if it pleasured their sense of sight or hearing (as we wouldn't allow a person to rape an animal for pleasure). Unfortunately, Bruni never responded to the issue Foer raised (he used that moment to take offense that Foer uses language for animals that we typically reserve for humans). But I think the connection is worth considering.

Should pacifists care about policy on gays in the military?

2010-02-03T19:33:00.000-06:00

Blatant discrimination from a government institution is of course wrong and should be rectified. But as military values are antithetical to my own values, and as the military's function is to carry out policies that I find morally reprehensible, I ask myself how much I should care about the military's policy on openly gay soldiers. As a pacifist, how much should the military's internal policies really concern me?

I find, however, that it does matter. Whether the military allows openly gay soldiers to serve or not has little impact on the militarism inherent in American culture, has no impact on the United States' obscene defense budget, and has no impact on the violence of U.S. foreign policy. There may, however, be a domestic impact. When another American institution (and one revered by so many) no longer tolerates discrimination against gay people and insists on policies of equality, we move a step in a positive direction. We should strive toward full equality in our society, and eliminating barriers of inequality wherever they are is both an end and a means in that effort.

See Also:
"What's wrong with a radical gay agenda?" (Waging Nonviolence)

Blind to our own evil

2010-02-03T19:27:00.000-06:00

on peace (reposted and revised from November 14, 2007)

In the last season of The Sopranos, Bobby Baccala talks about why his grandfather could not get into America through Ellis Island, and instead snuck in through Montreal. His grandfather had a police record in the old country. He was involved in anti-government activities.

After telling this story, Bobby and Carmela Soprano each agree that they should build a wall to protect the border now. Presumably to keep out immigrants and terrorists.

Bobby Baccala is a captain in a crime syndicate. His father was a hit man. His anti-government agitator grandfather snuck into America. But now they should build a wall? Now immigration is a threat? Immigration was good in the past when an anti-government agitator could sneak in and father a murderer who would father another criminal, but new immigrants must be kept out?

This is the sort of theme that we see repeatedly in The Sopranos: characters blind to their own evil. There are many, many examples of characters who not only justify their own evil deeds, but occasionally appear entirely blind to the very evil of their deeds.

It is a common affliction, of course. This blindness appears when we justify acts of violence from "our" side that we would never tolerate from another (would American advocates of torture advise other nation's to adopt policies of torture when they deem it necessary for security, or is America exceptional here?).

J.D. Salinger

2010-02-01T22:54:00.000-06:00

J.D. Salinger's short story "For Esme--with Love and Squalor" is clever and haunting. The first part of the story is a rather charming encounter between a soldier and a girl, though we learn the girl has experienced the loss of war, and there are suggestions the soldier may have already experienced some of the trauma of war. The second part of the story shows the soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder, obviously debilitated by his experience of war, but saved, perhaps, by the possibility of innocent human connection.

Commercial Life

2010-01-31T18:57:00.000-06:00

on animals

PETA responds to the Super Bowl commercial advocacy controversy by pointing out that CBS rejected a PETA advocacy ad for the Super Bowl in 2004 (in fact, the same CBS spokesperson is quoted). In 2009, NBC rejected a PETA Super Bowl advertisement, and also rejected a PETA advertisement for the Thanksgiving Parade. Don't cry for PETA: they rarely have a difficult time finding ways to get attention. But this trend does show how far out of the mainstream vegetarian advocacy really is: major networks find reasons to avoid the subject for major broadcasts, even when an advocacy group wants to pay the network to run an advertisement.

This gets at why I believe vegetarians and vegans are on the same side. You respond to the society you live in. In a different world, those advocating that we merely not eat animals and those advocating that we never use any animal products might be on opposite sides. But in the world we live in animal exploitation is everyday, the overwhelming majority of people eat meat, and mainstream society views both vegetarians and vegans as fringe outsiders with radical ideas. As it is, vegans and vegetarians respond to the same culture, with similar purposes and from a similar place.

Literature and War

2010-01-31T17:19:00.001-06:00

At The Guardian, Charlotte Higgins discusses the resonance of The Iliad in how we understand war.

Temptation and Violence

2010-01-14T23:05:00.001-06:00

on peace

"Into the merits of these idealizations it is not here necessary to inquire: suffice it to say, without prejudice, that they have convinced both Americans and English that the most high minded course for them to pursue is to kill as many of one another as possible, and that military operations to that effect are in full swing, morally supported by confident requests from the clergy of both sides for the blessing of God on their arms."

--Bernard Shaw, The Devil's Disciple

Philip Berrigan was imprisoned for his act of protest against the Vietnam War, and he explores some of his ideas in Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary. For Berrigan, the crime of war is directly connected to inequality, racism, wealth, and economics. He writes that

"A sober student will find it hard to avoid the conclusion that Americans have institutionalized war to maintain capitalist prosperity, and that institutionalized warmaking may now have a life of its own."

Berrigan opposes the Vietnam War as he opposes much American foreign policy because it is exploitative. What becomes clear, however, is that Berrigan is not opposed to violence because it is violence. When addressing problems in Latin America, Berrigan explicitly defends violent revolution: he does not take the stance that violence is against the will of God or the command of Christ:

"the Christian is neither for nor against violent revolution; he transcends such a choice by his dedication to a more basic change, the spiritual revolution commanded by Christ. On a given occasion, he may tolerate and approve--but not actively join--a violent revolution, having judged that political and social injustice had reached insufferable limits, without reasonable hope of redress."

Berrigan goes on to make other arguments defending the necessity of violent revolution (among other things, he claims that "the respect accorded life by revolutionaries is vastly superior to the contempt given it by tyrants," a rather dubious claim, further muddied by the reality that violent revolutionaries typically become the tyrants when they take power). Berrigan, then, is not opposed to violence itself. He opposes violence when he opposes the desired ends of the violence, but when he sees the cause as just, he supports violence. Because he thinks the cause of social justice is right and necessary, he is willing to support violence to achieve those ends.

But this is merely what Christian ministers have done for centuries. He chooses a side in a conflict that he thinks is right, and then defends that side's use of violence to achieve its ends. This is not "chaplaincy," where the Christian church works to defend and support the existing social order,* but it is still a Christian supporting violence because he sees its ends as just, righteous, and necessary.

In defending violent revolution, Berrigan diminishes the humanity of those whom the violence would be targeted against. How does violent revolution fit into the command to love and bless one's enemy? No matter how noble one perceives the cause to be, no matter how just the grievance, no matter how righteous the end, Christians are commanded to love our enemies.

In "A Declaration on Peace: In God's People the World's Renewal Has Begun," Gwyn, Hunsinger, Roop, and Yoder seem to speak directly to Berrigan's impulse:

"The royal servant people will resist temptations to the righteous crusase or holy war, whether defending democracy from the right or just revolution from the left. The church's sharing in God's favoring of the oppressed and exploited cannot partake of violence against the oppressor. That tactic finds no precendent in Jesus. It can at best achieve a trading of places between oppressor and oppressed, aggressor and victim."

Violent revolution, just like violent defense of the nation-state, is unchristian. It goes against the commands of Jesus, the unity of the church, and, I think, does not present a good witness of Christ to the world. Elsewhere in the book, Berrigan recognizes his need to love all people, and he most certainly acted on antiwar, nonviolent principles. I think Berrigan's defense of violent revolutions in Latin American demonstrates just how strong that "temptation to the righteous crusade or holy war" can be, of how "sharing in God's favoring of the oppressed and exploited" can tempt one to support any means to assuage the suffering of those oppressed and exploited.

Berrigan writes that the Christian's "sympathies lead him to identify with those afflicted enough and desperate enough to rebel." Indeed that is so, but the Christian must also resist the temptation of violence to aid those afflicted. In fact, in The Politics of Jesus, John Howard Yoder understands Jesus himself to have resisted "the temptation to exercise social responsibility, in the interest of justified revolution, through the use of available violent methods," that he rejected the "genuinely attractive option of the crusade." Jesus was revolutionary, but nonviolence was central to his revolution.

--

*John Howard Yoder is in many of his writings quite critical of the role the church plays in nationalism. In The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism, Yoder calls it "Constantinianism," where the church acts as "chaplain to society." Yoder suggests that since Constantine, the church has operated to sanctify and support the existing social order and power structure, whatever it may be in particular. Yoder suggests that the church needs to abstain from tying itself to the given social order, and that it is this close alliance with the given social order which leads the church too often to support wars (and wars that exist primarily to support the existing power structure of the particular society's self-interest) (the previous three sentences are reposted and revised from 8-14-07). In He Came Preaching Peace, he talks about

"the development of official Christianity (religion identified with the nation, with the state, with the world). [...] If Christianity is an official religion, it means that we can follow Jesus only by rejecting that kind of Christianity. We can call people to the Jesus Christ of the gospel only by calling them away from the "Christ" they already know--away from the official, conformist, power-related religion of the West."

and

"For Christians to seek any government's interest--even the security and power of peaceable and freedom-loving democracy--at the cost of the lives and security of our brothers and sisters around the world, would be selfishness and idolatry, however much glorified by patriotic preachers and poets."

I mention this here because Philip Berrigan seems to hold a similar view. Berrigan writes

"we embarrased the Church in terms of its own profession and rhetoric. Try as it might, the Church cannot entirely kill the Gospel or its Christ. It will always possess an inner dynamic rebelling against wedding with the powers of this world."

And his brother Daniel Berrigan writes in the introduction to the book,

"And what of the impact of the war upon the Church? Officially speaking, in the Catholic instance, the sacred power has quite simply followed the secular, its sedulous ape. Bishops have blessed the war, in word and in silence. They have supplied chaplains to the military as usual and have kept their eyes studiously averted from related questions--ROTC on Catholic campuses, military installations, diocesan investments."

Parallel Travelers

2010-01-13T00:13:00.000-06:00

on animals and on peace

At Vegan Soapbox, Eccentric Vegan writes:

"College students are particularly receptive to a vegan message because they are generally young and thus their habits aren’t quite as rigid as older people. Young college students are in a stage in their life when they’re learning and exploring; they are willing to experiment and try new things."

I think this is true, but I am also interested not only in what demographic features might make a person open to a message of nonviolence for animals, but also what ideological features. Some people already have ideological commitments and ethical stances about which they are quite passionate. Some people are already engaged in and open to exploring the realm of ideas. And some people may have ideological commitments which may be in line with an ideology of nonviolence for animals. In particular, I think there are two groups of people with particular values that animal advocates should try to reach.

Antiwar advocates
Opponents of warfare seem more likely to have compassion and moral consideration for death and suffering that is not directly related to them. Pacifists and other antiwar advocates have reached a conclusion that it is ethically wrong to use violence to achieve particular ends. I would not ask fellow pacifists to equate animals with humans, or to equate the suffering and death of animals with the suffering and death of humans. However, if an individual reaches the conclusion that violence against human beings, even for supposedly noble or justifiable ends, is wrong, how far would that individual need to go to reach the conclusion that violence against animals for mere pleasure is wrong?

Not all ideological opponents of warfare will reach the same ideological conclusion about animals. Some antiwar advocates oppose war more for practical reasons than moral reasons (economic waste, ineffective or counterproductive means to achieve desired ends, long-term consequences, etc.). Religious pacifists who see in their religion a moral demand to renounce violence against humans may not find in their traditions the same demand to renounce violence against animals (though they may find in their religious traditions demands that lead to care for animals). But I think pacifists and opponents of war have ethical consideration and compassion to be open to the topic.

Environmentalists
Jonathan Safran Foer writes in Eating Animals that

"someone who regularly eats factory-farmed animal products cannot call himself an environmentalist without divorcing that word from its meaning" (59).

I think there are at least two reasons environmentalists should be vegans/vegetarians. First, there are plenty of studies, reports, books, and articles detailing the negative environmental impact of animal agriculture. Animal agriculture's impact on climate change and on local environments is widely discussed. If you call yourself an environmentalist, can you repeatedly (most likely daily) engage in activity that is a major contributor to global warming and other environmental damage?

Second, if you wish to protect and preserve the environment, but you still believe that animals may be killed for your pleasure, then whom are you protecting and preserving the environment for? For you, for other people, for your children and descendants and future generations, surely. But not for animals. Such environmentalism does not see inherent value in nature itself, as such environmentalism allows for brutalization and death of nature's creatures, and for mere pleasure.

Environmentalists may be convinced to reach the conclusion that animals are a part of the natural world, and as such are a part of what deserves preservation and protection, not destruction.

The Opportunities
People with strong ideological commitments are often willing to talk about them, and may even make arguments for their commitments. Pacifists and environmentalists may be the ones to initiate such ethical or political discussions. In many social contexts, vegans and vegetarians may feel leery about initiating discussion about animal issues, for fear of seeming preachy, badgering, hectoring, or judgmental. But if somebody else initiates a discussion about peace, or initiates a discussion about environmentalism, then the discussion has begun, and a proper and fitting opportunity arises to bring up issues of animals, too. When a discussion about ideas arises, it is a perfect opportunity to discuss ideas about animals, and an opportunity to discuss these ideas with people who may be receptive.

I think another point is worth making here. Christians who proselytize should not see themselves as the ones performing conversions: they should see themselves as bringing the gospel or Word to people, and it is God who through grace changes hearts. I think a parallel is relevant. If you advocate for animals, it is not you that convinces, or manipulates, or leads to a conclusion. I actually think in the realm of ideas, it is not hard for animal advocates to win an argument, but winning an argument does not change the worldview or behavior of your opponent.

If I advocate for nonviolence for animals, I see myself as sharing information, ideas, values. Animal advocates can and should even see ourselves as living examples. But we present those ideas, and we can even argue with passion and with logic, but we must know it is still the individual that will change his or her mind and heart. I like Eccentric Vegan's word choice of "power to influence." We can influence, but we should be conscious of how we can influence, and that in our interactions with individuals in our lives, we are sharing in such a way that allows other individuals to consider these ideas with the the hope that they will reach compassionate conclusions.

Lit and War: Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man"

2010-01-09T16:55:00.000-06:00

on peace

The theme of Realism against Romanticism is common in Western literature, typically with Realism trumping Romanticism. Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man continues the tradition, but hardly predictably. If Shaw were a mediocre playwright, this would be a play where realists like Bluntschli and Louka confront, mock, and expose romantics like Raina and Sergius. But Shaw is a world-class playwright, so things aren't so simple.

Raina is a romantic, but from the beginning she has her doubts:

"It proves that all our ideas were real after all. [...] Our ideas of what Sergius would do. Our patriotism. Our heroic ideals. I sometimes used to doubt whether they were anything but dreams. [...] it came into my head just as he was holding me in his arms and looking into my eyes, that perhaps we only had our heroic ideas because we are so fond of reading Byron and Pushkin [...] Real life is seldom like that! [...] I doubted him: I wondered whether all his heroic qualities and his soldiership might not prove mere imagination when he went into a real battle."

Raina is encouraged by the story of Sergius' heroism because she needs to reinforce her faith against her strong doubts. She's a romantic (she wants to believe), but she's already questioning. And yes, Bluntschli does seem to set her straight, to shatter her illusions and tell her the truth about war. And yet it is precisely Raina's romanticism which largely inspires her to save Bluntschli in the first place. Bluntschli and Raina's confrontation is much more than just a Realist setting a Romantic straight.

Sergius, too, has his romantic, heroic ideals. Bluntchli the realist laughs at Sergius' cavalry charge ("We did laugh [...] Of all the fools ever let loose on a field of battle, that man must be the very maddest") and mocks his challenge to a duel ("Oh, thank you: thats a cavalry man's proposal. I'm in the artillery; and I have the choice of weapons. If I go, I shall take a machine gun."). But when we first meet him on stage, Sergius has already been disillusioned by the military establishment's reaction to his charge. Furthermore, Sergius' romantic life suggests a man that has always been in conflict with himself and his ideals. Sergius is a cad: he's engaged to Raina and uses the highest Romantic language with her, but he's also trying to seduce Louka (Raina and Sergius each put on an act for each other: I rather think if they were authentic with each other, they might actually hit it off). Sergius's seduction of Louka is hilarious: he steps back and forth from rakishly seducing of the maid and aristocratically defending the honor of the mistress. He's not a cynical hypocrite: I think he partly believes the romantic ideal even as it chafes at him and he abandons it.

Arms and the Man is not an anti-war play. Bluntschli is the hero, and he's a veteran mercenary soldier (in the artillery) that is good at and enjoys war. What the play does, however, is attempt to shatter patriotic, idealistic illusions about war. Sergius' aristocratic view of war is treated as a farce (particularly in the form of his cavalry charge of an artillery, thinking he was heroic but succeeding through luck). Bluntschli, the "chocolate cream soldier," doesn't really care who wins or loses the war. he's a "professional soldier," and while brave, he also will avoid a fight if he can, and talks about the soldier's primary desire and efforts to keep himself alive. He treats war realistically, without ideals of honor or courage or patriotism. Bluntschli tells the story of a soldier shot and burned alive rather in a matter-of-fact fashion (it is Sergius who responds "And how ridiculous! Oh, war! war! The dream of patriots and heroes! A fraud, Bluntschli. A hollow sham, like love").

In this play, Shaw does not reject a particular war or war in general. I'm not even sure he really challenges militarism or military values. But Shaw does mock ideals about heroism and warfare. Shaw won't let you leave the theater without challenging any ideas about heroism, honor, courage, or patriotism as unassailable virtues undergirding the institution of war.

Violence and Entertainment

2010-01-07T14:41:00.000-06:00

on peace

Paul Waldman at TAPPED:

"On film, guns are plentiful, evil is pure, and violence is nearly always the answer to any problem."

Indeed: popular entertainment provides us many images of moral violence and effective violence. There is of course a great deal of art that challenges the ethics and efficacy of violence, but popular entertainment generally shows us good guys prevailing over bad guys in a fight. We in the audience, no matter how peace-loving we may be, are asked to see particular violent acts as righteous, to see particular violent acts as effective, and to root for the heroes when they perform violent acts.

I've never been convinced that violent entertainment causes individuals to commit violent acts (see Richard Rhodes' "Hollow Claims About Fantasy Violence"). But I've become more and more convinced that our popular entertainment reinforces a militaristic culture that accepts and promotes warfare as a moral, effective solution to problems.

Irrationality

2010-01-02T14:18:00.000-06:00

on animals

"Everything is permitted"

"he solemnly announced in the discussion that there is decidedly nothing in the whole world that would make men love their fellow men; that there exists no law of nature that man should love mankind, and that if there is and has been any love on earth up to now, it has come not from natural law but solely from people's belief in their immortality. Ivan Fyodorovich added parenthetically that that is what all natural law consists of, so that were mankind's belief in its immortality to be destroyed, not only love but also any living power to continue the life of the world would at once dry up in it. Not only that, but then nothing would be immoral any longer, everything would be permitted, even anthropophagy. And even that is not all: he ended with the assertion that for every separate person, like ourselves for instance, who believes neither in God nor in his own immortality, the moral law of nature ought to change immediately into the exact opposite of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to the point of evildoing, should not only be permitted to man but should be acknowledged as the necessary, the most reasonable, and all but the noblest result of this situation."

--Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (tr. Pevear and Volokhonsky)

If I used reason alone, I would reach much the same conclusion that Ivan Karamazov reaches. If the earth is livable due to a random combination of the right matter and space, if human existence occurs because of random mutations over the course of evolution's work, then reason tells me that there is no such thing as morality. If human existence has no inherent meaning, but only the meaning we apply to it, than any morality we try to affix to human existence is arbitrary, malleable, and fleeting. Random processes that allow human existence could also destroy human existence, and there is no meaning in any of it. With no reasonable grounding for any morality, we can do whatever we want without any concern for the consequences. We can act morally, but we don't have to, and if our actions undo all earthy existence even, well, it was all random and meaningless anyway.

Rights
Using reason alone, can you explain to me why anybody--humans or animals--has any inherent "right" to anything? Intellectual and cultural traditions have given us the concept of "rights," but human traditions are often irrational (in Western tradition, it was supposedly reason that brought about belief in "unalienable" rights, but I cannot see this belief as entirely rational). Institutions grant individuals rights, but you also cannot cite these: these are legal rights, granted by an authority, and subject to change.

You also cannot cite any metaphysical concept, such as "inherent value," "intrinsic value," "dignity," or "soul." These are qualities we believe individuals may hold, but they are not based on reason. Empirical study and rational argument will, I think, fail to show convincing evidence of the "inherent value" of any living human or animal.

I do not believe that the ideas of "human rights" or "animal rights" are based strictly on reason.

Rational Consequences
I don't believe that "everything is permitted." I also believe humans and animals are imbued with inherent value. But I recognize that these beliefs are not based on reason alone (in fact my beliefs have been informed by religion). Using my rational faculties, however, I could reach the conclusion that everything is permitted, and I would struggle to find a convincing rational argument for inherent rights. I do not, then, believe that any morality, including non-violence for humans and animals, is based strictly on reason. I don't think animal advocates can be confident they've reached a position based on reason alone.

I do not write this to deny the validity of animal rights (exploitation of animals is hardly based on solid reason, either). But I do deny that reason alone will guide anybody to an animal rights position. I don't think anybody can rely on the hope that eventually most people will rationally accept that eating animals is wrong. However, reason combined with other human values may lead one to accept the animal rights position.

I think animal rights may be based on "rational consequences." The rational consequence of animal sentience is that some of our existing human values (the concept of "rights," the prohibition against physically harming the innocent or vulnerable, etc.) would be applied to animals, also. When we learn more about animals' experience (their intellect, emotions, social lives, capacity to suffer, etc.), we might reach the conclusion that those same ethical considerations we offer to other humans would justly be offered to animals.

Reason alone did not lead me to an ethic of non-violence. However, the rational consequence of my knowledge of animals means that I must apply this ethic of non-violence to animals as well.

Revenge and Violence

2010-01-01T14:47:00.000-06:00

on peace

In the New York Times, Stanley Fish discusses revenge fantasy film:

"The formula’s popularity stems from the permission it gives viewers to experience the rush violence provides without feeling guilty about it. [...] Once the atrocity has occurred, the hero acquires an unquestioned justification for whatever he or she then does; and as the hero’s proxy, the audience enjoys the same justification for vicariously participating in murder, mayhem and mutilation."

Revenge fantasies do not just provide images of moral violence for audiences. They also provide images of effective violence. Again and again in film, we see violence working to solve problems; in film, violence often works to save the day, to eliminate evil. But that's our fiction. In reality, violence begets violence, and rarely offers a clean story of good overcoming evil. We don't have an end of the film--the consequences of violent acts, however justified they appear in the short-term to the party carrying them out, usually linger on for a long, long time.

Two notes on the subject (unrelated to each other). First, the belief that Christianity forbids any sort of violence is a minority position within Christianity, but that Christ forbids revenge is, I think, orthodox and uncontroversial Christian belief. When Jesus preaches forgiveness of enemies, revenge is not an option. Second, William Shakespeare's Hamlet may be the most revered work of literature in the English speaking world, and this play can easily be read as a deconstruction of the revenge fantasy. To the very end, the play makes ambiguous the justice and efficacy of revenge.

Reading Jonathan Safran Foer's "Eating Animals"

2009-12-30T13:06:00.000-06:00

on animals

Overview
One might label Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals a book of psychology. The book explores the psychology (social and individual) of how and why humans eat what we do (and don't). Foer is interested in the stories we tell ourselves about the meaning of food and animals. Foer also examines the psychology of how we hide, deny, ignore, forget, or explain away what we are actually eating. And that takes us to the heart of the book: Foer examines and exposes the factory farm system and its consequences. His exploration of factory farming is visually descriptive, statistically informative, and rather idiosyncratic. It is also quite powerful.

Quibbling
Foer frequently addresses animals' intelligence and capacity to suffer. This is itself a powerful justification for vegetarianism, and was in fact the driving force of my own. Given our knowledge of animals' intelligence, emotions, social lives, and capacity to suffer, and given that it is unnecessary to eat them, I reached the conclusion that it is wrong to kill and eat them for the pleasure of their taste.

But while Foer has become a vegetarian, his stance seems based much more on repulsion of the factory farm system than on the morality of killing animals itself. This may be why his statement of commitment is vague if not incomprehensible: "Being a vegetarian is a flexible framework, and I've left mental state of constant personal decision making about eating animals (who could stay in such a place indefinitely?) for a steady commitment not to" (197). I teach freshman English, and this is still one of the most awful sentences I've had to re-read. It may also be why he can write that "For me to conclude firmly that I will not eat animals does not mean I oppose, or even have mixed feelings about, eating animals in general" (198). While Foer raises questions about the ethics of consuming animals at all (and allows other voices in: Bruce Friedrich, the narrator of "She Knows Better" [210-215], provides sharp, crisp, and clear arguments) and seems strongly to advocate a vegetarian diet, his book becomes primarily a scathing, damning critique of the factory farm system. This is good, but I don't think Foer takes animals' ability to think and feel to its full consequences.

Personally
I was most interested in Foer's discussions of "storytelling," of the way we eat and the ethical consequences of our eating. Like Foer, I am a new father, and many of his concerns about eating, ethics, and family are my concerns. The book does help reinforce and recommit me to a mostly vegan lifestyle, but also leads me to anxious despair of the future and may have enhanced my already burgeoning germaphobia.

The Importance
Many of the ideas Foer explores (or gives voice to) are not new, and he is not the first to expose the realities and consequences of industrial agriculture. But Foer's book is well-written and, I think, important. Jonathan Safran Foer is a well-known novelist, meaning some people may read his book about eating animals that otherwise wouldn't, that his book about eating animals will be reviewed in sources that otherwise wouldn't review such a book, and that he'll get to have interviews about eating animals at sources that otherwise wouldn't have interviews on the subject. We need writers with the insights and writing ability of Jonathan Safran Foer to explore and popularize this issue.

It is a very good book that I would like to recommend for anybody.

Realism, King, and Gandhi: Obama's Nobel Speech

2009-12-23T14:54:00.001-06:00

on peace

Barack Obama's Nobel Lecture was, in many ways, outstanding. His reflection, thoughtfulness, and realism about war and peace in our world remind me why he inspires. But policies of warfare ordered by the contemplative Obama are no less dangerous than when they are ordered by George W. Bush. The serious reflections of Barack Obama do not negate the horrors perpetrated when he orders bombings that result in killing innocent civilians. And while Obama tacitly pays respect to the non-violence of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, in the end I think he dismisses their non-violent message in the same way war proponents typically dismiss advocates (and practitioners) of non-violence: by treating their view as unrealistic.

Obama says

"I know there's nothing weak – nothing passive – nothing naïve – in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King."

And yet immediate after he dismisses them:

"But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms."

Does Obama imply that King and Gandhi did not "face the world as it is"? Does he imply that they were not aware that "Evil does exist in the world"? I think, rather, King and Gandhi were acutely aware of the world as it is. Both men recognized the evil that exists in humankind--in fact, they faced it directly in their lives.

Later in the speech Obama seems to offer a back-handed compliment to King and Gandhi:

"The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached – their fundamental faith in human progress – that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey."

This tactic feels familiar: it is the "realist" war-proponent dismissing the advocates and practitioners of non-violence as idealistic. We should admire the "love" and "faith" that King and Gandhi preached, but we have to remember that their views were not "practical." King used non-violence to strive for justice and equality against virulent hatred and institutional violence. Gandhi used non-violence to change his nation and face down an Empire. But Obama would have us view them as the idealists, whose view of the world we should strive after even as we recognize that their methods are impracticable in the face of real-life evil.

Underlying Axioms

2009-12-22T09:25:00.001-06:00

on peace and on animals (reposted and revised from June 2, 2009)

There is an axiom that underlies most human uses of animals: humans may use and kill animals for our own pleasure.* This axiom justifies most uses of animals that society sees as reasonable and moral, but it is this same axiom that also underlies human uses of animals that society deems as abusive and immoral. There are degrees, of course. Some treatments of animals are deemed acceptable and some treatments of animals are deemed unacceptable, but these treatments are usually based on the same underlying axiom: humans may use and kill animals for our own pleasure. What society deems as cruelty to animals, then, isn't a matter of crossing a line, but of following the existing line too far. When a society accept and acts on the axiom, there will be extremes and abuses.

Several times while the Michael Vick dogfighting scandal was prominent in the news, a public figure would compare dog fighting to deer hunting, suggesting the two activities aren't that different. This comparison usually elicited mainstream outrage, as hunters (and others) talked about how different the two activities are. But the same axiom underlies both activities: humans may use and kill animals for our own pleasure. Deer hunters can point out the differences between the acts (often focusing on the differing levels of suffering, pain, cruelty, and motive), but I'm stuck on the axiom. Once you accept the axiom that humans may use and kill animals for our own pleasure, if you separate deer hunting from dog fighting, you are arguing about degrees. And once you start acting on that axiom, you are also going to have excesses of degree following the same axiom.

The same problem is true for many types of violence. Once you accept the axiom that war is sometimes justified and necessary, what it takes for those in power to wage the war they want is to convince people that the particular war is justified and necessary. John Howard Yoder has pointed out that when other theologians speak generally negatively about warfare, there is a palpable sense of relief from the audience when the theologian acknowledges that sometimes, in very rare situations, because of exceptional circumstances, war is sometimes justified and necessary. Once you accept that premise, even if you try limit that justification/necessity with extremely specific rules, with a very narrow, specific, and limited application of Just War Theory, you're going to have people justifying war, and feeling they can do so within your own standards.

It's the underlying axioms themselves which must be exposed, examined, and critiqued.

*another axiom might be humans may use and kill animals for our own need. That is a different axiom that requires a different discussion/argument. It should be noted that it is the "pleasure" axiom at work for almost all uses of animals in the developed world (though some substitute the "need" axiom when actually arguing the "pleasure" axiom"), but I think it is worth recognizing two different axioms exist.

Evil and Violence

2009-12-21T11:27:00.001-06:00

on peace

"...social evil cannot be resolved by violence. Whatever our theory of evil we know that in practice it lies in the heart of man. It is not something external to him which can be struck and smashed or carted away, or which can be destroyed by an atom bomb. The waging of war only aggravates and spreads the trouble, and the Christian must turn from this to the far more difficult and unpopular task of attacking evil at its root. The only way to end war is to cease to fight, for the devil cannot be driven out by Beelzebub."

-- from "Peace is the Will of God," by Historic Peace Churches and International Fellowship of Reconciliation Committee, Geneva, Switzerland, October 1953.

In Les Miserables, Victor Hugo, I believe, identifies the dual strains of Christianity. There is Javert, who believes in the essentialism of criminality. Once a person reveals himself/herself to be a criminal, then he/she is always a criminal, and so the focus is on sin, judgment, and punishment. And then there is Valjean, who shows a story of change, redemption, and human dignity. Javert's worldview is Manichean: there are the pure good and the pure evil, and it is the duty of the pure good to find and punish the pure evil. Valjean's story reflects more orthodox Christian belief: all humans beings are imbued with inherent dignity, are capable of spiritual redemption, and are worthy of forgiveness.

So when in "Obama's Christian Realism," David Brooks muses on the nature of evil in all humanity, I reach different conclusions than he does. I don't reach the conclusion that evil is out there in the world, making war "necessary." I reflect instead on the potential goodness of an enemy, and that war with the evil in a nation inevitably becomes a war against the goodness in that nation, too (civilian casualties, for example). I reflect on our own side's capacity for evil (something Brooks acknowledges without reaching the same conclusions), which makes me question our side's motives for war, our side's ability to wage it "justly," and our side's abilities to achieve the supposedly noble ends that undergird support for the war.

In the same column, Brooks simplifies, distorts, and straw-mans the views of liberal war opponents:

"But after Vietnam, most liberals moved on. It became unfashionable to talk about evil. Some liberals came to believe in the inherent goodness of man and the limitless possibilities of negotiation."

Far from trumpeting the "inherent goodness of man," many anti-war liberals cite our own side's capacity for evil, and reflect on the ethical and practical problem of using evil means to achieve what might otherwise be a noble end. And I know very few liberals who believe the possibilities of negotiation are "limitless;" rather, war opponents often believe the constructive possibilities and potential effectiveness of negotiation to be far preferable to the costly, destructive, deadly possibilities of war. This is a typical gloss/smear: the war proponent labels the war opponent as the naive idealist. I cite again John Howard Yoder, who in Nevertheless criticizes the "irrational leap of faith" required for the rhetoric that "by supporting a puppet government, we are enabling democracy to grow." Yoder goes on:

"There is no more utopian institution than an idealistic war. [...] War is utopian both in the promises it makes for the future and in the black-and-white way of thinking about the enemy, which it assumes."

Inherent to the argument of evil as a justification for American wars is this: America is good and the evil is out there, so America is justified in fighting the wars America chooses to fight. Evil exists, but America can never be evil, and so America may wage wars against that which America deems evil.

The very fact that "evil" exists is not itself justification for invading a country, for occupying a country, or for bombing a country. Given the death, destruction, and waste of war, including horrors inflicted on the innocent, I would say that war itself is evil.

The Onion and War

2009-12-21T09:26:00.000-06:00

"U.S. Continues Quagmire-Building Effort in Afghanistan"

Reading and Ethics

2009-12-21T00:03:00.000-06:00

on peace and on animals (adapted and expanded from material posted May 20, 2008, and February 8, 2009)

The power of literature is largely in imagination. Reading allows me to escape myself, to experience the world for someone, somewhere, somewhen else. The stories we read are largely imagined by the authors, and re-imagined by the readers. Reading takes us away from our own narrow experiences and into another experience.

But when I read, I do not set myself aside. When I read depictions of violence, I become hyper-aware: what is happening, why it is happening, how it is being represented, etc. I am still a pacifist while I read a book like Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, and so the violence of his book reaches me in a particular way. My encounter with the book (what I bring to the book and what I take from the book) is greatly affected by my pre-existing pacifism.

In The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri describes the food characters prepare and eat quite frequently and in specific detail. No matter what I do, I cannot read such descriptions of food without thinking as a vegetarian. In my daily life, I must be consciously aware of all the food I ever eat, and this heightened awareness of food is hard to set aside when I turn to a book. When fictional, non-existent characters in a book eat meat, or kill animals, I become self-conscious, and I bring something different to the reading than a meat-eater does.

Embracing ethics of pacifism and vegetarianism are transformative. For me, they change not only the way I behave but the way I think. And these ethics also tranform my encounters with art. An anti-war poem must speak to me in a slightly different way than it speaks to a non-pacifist, and perhaps a painting of an animal speaks something different to me than to a meat-eater. This is not to say I approach art in an overly moralistic way, or that every encounter with art demands ethical reflection from me. I am merely saying that I am still me when I read, and that the ideas that change the way I live and think also change the way I read (if just slightly).

The Onion and War

2009-12-15T12:34:00.000-06:00

"New 'War'" Enables Mankind to Resolve Disagreements:"

"War has also been employed on occasion to resolve disagreements over peace and to ensure that the world remained a harmonious place untroubled by fear, hatred, or the threat of violence.

[...]

"'We've come a long way from hashing out our differences around a fire,' Levin said. 'With the long-range nuclear missile technology we possess today, I wouldn't be surprised if, in a few short years, war solves the problems of mankind once and for all.'"

Co-opting Suffering

2009-12-13T00:18:00.000-06:00

on peace and on animals (reposted and revised from June 28, 2007)

The emotional energy of Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy" comes from her allusions to Nazis and the Holocaust to illustrate her own experience, feelings, and suffering. It is a raw, powerful poem--one of the best I've ever read.

Still, I can see something distasteful in using the industrial slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews to illustrate one's poor attitude toward one's father.

Alfred Hayes' "The Slaughter-House" begins with a description of animals suffering in a slaughterhouse. In the second half of the poem, however, the animal hanging upside down on its way to be butchered becomes a symbol for the poet's "private woe."

Again, I see something distasteful here: is Hayes' suffering, whether in a relationship or general existential suffering, comparable to a living creature hung upside down on its way to be slaughtered?

But then, poets look about their own worlds to illustrate their own feelings and ideas through poetry. Plath wrote "Daddy" shortly after Eichmann's trial. Hayes may have been at a slaughterhouse and felt it described his own sufferings. Poets find the image necessary to convey the idea--and it doesn't matter who finds it objectionable. It is in that sense that art is amoral, and in that sense art should be amoral.

Unpredictability of War

2009-12-13T00:13:00.000-06:00

on peace (reposted and revised from April 12, 2009)

David Samuels' "Why Israel Will Bomb Iran: The rational argument for an attack" in Slate illustrates one of the problems of war. Samuels makes a lot of predictions about what would happen if Israel bombed Iran. Most of these results appear as positives. But almost any act of war can seem sensible when justifying it by predicted results (especially if the war proponent is the one predicting such results). But nearly every act of war brings about unforeseen, unpredictable results. It is the unpredicted results that are often longterm negative results of acts of war.

Commodification

2009-12-12T15:48:00.000-06:00

on peace (reposted and revised from April 18, 2009)

If you walk around a mall, you'll find many, many, many different products featuring the Peace Sign. Many brands and many stores feature the Peace Sign.* I'm extremely doubtful any of these stores are actually interested in the political (potentially subversive) intent the Peace Sign may imply. They are capitalizing on a general mood (passive opposition to war) that contributes to a fashion trend.

So the Peace Sign has become a fashionable symbol in a consumeristic culture. And in some ways, this makes the fashionability of the Peace Sign representative for the American mood toward war. There are few "supporters" of the current wars--most are weary and skeptical about these wars. But most people are either not so opposed to these wars they're taking any action, or feel incapable of taking any positive action (it does often feel like a helpless situation, that opponents of war can't really do anything to stop it). Thus people are willing to passively express these (general, vague) negative feelings toward war with the passive means we're most familiar and comfortable with: consumerism.**

*In my experience, the overwhelming majority of Peace Sign products are for women, which calls for further--if obvious--comment. Just as "real men" are supposed to love eating meat (just ask Taco Bell--men shouldn't just want steak but they should want "triple steak," and the only way men can eat a salad is if it is "fully loaded" and the lettuce is buried beneath meat), men are not expected to embrace the cuddly, mushy, huggy Peace Sign (usually around pink, purple, and pastels)--that's for sensitive, softer women.

**I in no way exempt myself from this critique, as I myself wear many products featuring the Peace Sign.

Justifying War in "Richard III"

2009-12-10T23:20:00.000-06:00

on peace (reposted and revised from December 15, 2008)

In Shakespeare's Richard III, we see the Tudor hero Richmond and the Tudor villain Richard inspire their troops with different justifications for war. Both are familiar.

Good Richmond buoys the troops by claiming they fight for God:

"God and our good cause fight upon our side" (V.iii.241)

"One that hath ever been God's enemy
Then if you fight against God's enemy,
God will in justice ward you as his soldiers" (V.iii.253-255)

"Then in the name of God and all these rights,
Advance your standards, draw your willing swords" (V.iii.263-265)

Written at a time when belief in the divine right of kings was a foundational principle for government, there is sincerity here. Still, Richmond is making a power play: he's waging a war to remove another king and place the crown on his own head. He claims, of course, that he fights on God's side, but he's certainly not an objective student of God's will ("God insists I wage a war to make myself King" is hardly convincing). But then, many killers and warmongers justify their murders and wars by claiming God is on their side. it is often that in a war, the religious on each side calls on God to justify its own cause.

Evil Richard calls for war by demonizing the enemy and by calling on fears of what will happen if they don't fight and win.

"A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,
A scum of Britains and base lackey peasants,
Whom their o'ercloyed country vomits forth
To desperate ventures and assured destruction.
You sleeping safe, they bring you unrest;
You having lands, and blest with beauteous wives
They would distrain the one, distain the other." (V.iii.317-323)

"Shall these enjoy our lands? Lie with our wives?
Ravish our daughters?" (V.iii.337-338)

Richard dehumanizes the enemy, and calls upon fears of what this monstrous enemy will do to the good people's peaceful homes. They, then, become just warriors: they are merely defending peace by waging war. Earlier, Richmond makes a similar claim:

"To reap the harvest of perpetual peace
by this one bloody trial of sharp war" (V.iii.15-16)

Of course, perpetual war can be justified by both of these claims.

A Very Brief Defense of Anthropomorphism

2009-12-10T23:17:00.000-06:00

on animals (reposted from January 27, 2009)

Science has shown us that animals are intelligent beings (many species of animals experience emotions, have relationships and social structures, some studies even find animals displaying imagination and deceit).

But the specific intelligence of animals may be difficult to express to humans. So when childrens' books or movies give animals human characteristics, they are merely translating the animal's mental, emotional, and social worlds into human terms. Anthropomorphism can be seen as a translation of animal characteristics, not an artificial application of human characteristics onto animals.

Marc Bekoff makes a similar defense of anthropomorphism in Animals Matter. Responding to Wittgenstein's claim that "If a lion could talk, we would not understand him," Bekoff writes

"In order to talk about the world of animals, we have to use whatever language we speak. So, when we want to describe what an animal may be feeling, we tend to use the same words that we would choose to describe our own human feelings or intentions" (38-39).

I think the benefits of anthropomorphism extend into childrens' literature, television, and film.

"The Twilight Zone" and War

2009-12-10T23:01:00.000-06:00

Watch "A Quality of Mercy," a season three episode of The Twilight Zone available at CBS.com.

"Lisa the Vegetarian"

2009-12-09T23:02:00.001-06:00

on animals (reposted from December 19, 2008)

You don't usually expect to see such a thoughtful episode of a mainstream television show, but this episode of The Simpsons manages to:

--show the moral progression of a vegetarian.
--show the difficulties of being a vegetarian in a meat-eating society.
--savagely mock that meat-eating society.
--end with a message the vegetarians should show tolerance and respect for others, influencing people without badgering them.

It's the sort of episode I can show my kids, an episode not with a trite TV lesson, but an actual lesson.

Environmentalism and Religion: "the child is father of the man"

2009-12-09T22:58:00.001-06:00

on animals (reposted from May 1, 2009)

"It is understandable that Luther could have found this preoccupation [with personal self-acceptance] in the apostolic message since it was his own question. [...] It was also perfectly natural for a John Wesley, a Kierkegaard, or today for an existentialist or a conservative evangelical reader to make the same assumption and find the same message--for all of these are in their variegated ways children of Luther, still asking the same question of personal guilt and righteousness."

--John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus

In some strains of Christianity, you may find a human-centered chauvinist attitude toward the natural world. The thinking seems to go that since humans are the pinnacle of creation, the rest of the created world exists for whatever humans wish to use it for. There is, then, a divinely sanctioned human "dominion" over the rest of creation (this way of thinking may be opposed by the concept of "stewardship"--essentially the idea that God made all of creation for himself, and humans are caretakers. In this way of thinking, nature has transcendent purpose, and humans have a moral obligation to care for creation. I commend the concept of "stewardship" for finding in nature if not "inherent" value, then a value wholly separate from humankind's utilitarian use of it).

This religious human-centered attitude toward the environment actually eases into secular human-centered attitudes toward the environment (or do these secular views emerge from the religious thought?). In one business-friendly strain, what matters is human benefit, and if the environment is damaged for the economic interests of humans (or corporations, or governments), so be it--what matters is human use. Another strain can suggest that humans, as the most advanced species, have an inherent right to use the lower species for whatever purposes humans want. As Harold Herzog writes in "Human Morality and Animal Research: Confessions and Quandaries," "Research with animals is based on the premise that a 'superior' species has the right to breed, kidnap, or kill members of 'lesser' species for the advancement of knowledge."

I think it possible that these secular arguments about human use of nature (including animals) may develop from the same historical strain as Christianity's arguments about human use of nature (including animals). The child may be father to the man.

One might think that "Environmentalism" is an alternative, or a corrective, or in opposition to, a religious-based human-centered attitude toward the environment. But this is not always the case. It seems to me that some (I won't say many) environmentalists maintain human-centered chauvinist attitudes toward the natural world. Some environmentalists view the natural world as worth protecting and preserving--so that humans can continue to use it. What environmentalists? Environmentalists that eat meat.

If you claim to be an environmentalist but still think animals can be killed for your pleasure, then whom are you really trying to save the environment for? You're not trying to save the environment for the animals (you probably don't see inherent value in the animal, if you are willing to eat it for your pleasure). And you probably don't see inherent value in the natural world outside of human use. Environmentalism can maintain this chauvinism, can still see humankind in a power-relationship over the natural world. Secular environmentalists can still believe in human "dominion" over the rest of the natural world, can still see humans in a position of control, capable of using any part of the natural world (including animals) for our own purposes. It is worth preserving the environment, not for its inherent value, but for its value to humans.

The child is father of the man.

What does violence mean?

2009-12-09T22:51:00.000-06:00

on peace (March 10, 2008)

Peter King recently wrote about his USO trip to Afghanistan. It's mostly what you'd expect: an incredible experience being in a war zone, his experience talking with the soldiers, etc. After writing about one soldier that died, he writes about "guys [that] jump out of planes and hunt Taliban soldiers for a living." He writes about a guy that reminds him of Rambo, of another guy "as tough as they come." He writes,

"One of them talked about mowing down Taliban troops as they walked into death.

"'We heard on their radios later that we got 75 of 'em,' one of the Rangers said. The platoon members joked about what bad shooters the Taliban soldiers were, and if they had been any good, how many more of our side would be dead or wounded."

Later King describes a ceremony for a soldier that was killed. At the end, he writes about his trip to visit the military in Afghanistan that "They don't sell tickets for the experience of a lifetime, but if you can do it somehow, I'd highly recommend it."

During all this writing, King speaks nary a word critical of war. He doesn't challenge military values. Yet near the end of his column, he manages to do what he frequently does in his columns; he criticizes violence in film:

"While waiting for the flight out of Bagram on Sunday night, we watched the worst movie of all time. Death Sentence, with mindless killing until everyone in the world was dead. You're better than that, Kevin Bacon. I think."

Peter King talks about visiting with soldiers that were "mowing down" 75 real human beings. He speaks of two soldiers that were killed and being mourned. He doesn't condemn war. He doesn't suggest war is a bad thing. He doesn't show horror at real life killing.

But he doesn't like a movie that had a lot of killing.

Nonviolence and our lives

2009-12-09T22:50:00.001-06:00

on peace (reposted from November 27, 2007)

Jesus was nonviolent, and he taught his disciples to be nonviolent. When Jesus was being arrested, Peter tried to use force to defend Jesus. Jesus told him not to, saying "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword," suggesting that those who act violently are likely to come to a violent demise.

Of course, we know who else came to a violent demise: the nonviolent Jesus and most of his nonviolent disciples.

Turning the other cheek, loving and blessing our enemies, these are not maxims to live a cheerful and successful life. A life of nonviolence often comes with suffering.

Certainly those who live a life of violence may suffer a violent end. But so too can children, victims of wars they don't create or understand. So too can Christian martyrs, who willfully choose their death and do not fight back. So too can the victims of genocide, killed not because they lived by the sword but merely for who they were (and are).

Those who live by the sword may die by the sword--though they may not. Those who live a life of peace and love may also die by the sword.