How can we Vegans employ moral relativity when dealing with carnist cultures?
I am a vegan from a trod-on background. I come from people who were herded, bred, farmed, and killed with impunity because (even today) we were and are considered non human animals (beasts of the field). And as carnivores feed on herbivores, likewise us human omnivores ate both plants and animals. The difference here is that, in ancient times, animal life was sacred. So were the lives of trees, yams, forests, rocks, stones and water bodies.
Killing was not taken lightly, and heavy superstitions and tribal law ensured that extinction was not possible. Even when slash and burn techniques were used for farming and planting, the jungles were still thick and the lower population density and the lack of money (we used cowrie shells or traded) meant that massive land destruction was unnecessary because eating and feeding our families was not a corporate enterprise. We had no need to import or export food. We farmed, we gathered, occassionally we hunted. Humans are of course, majority practicing omnivores despite our very frugivorous biology.
Now we are all in the 21st century. Us wild folk and us industrialized folk. And now, thanks to decades of progressive thought, vegans can be found among us all. But a big problem with mainstream vegans and purely animal rights vegans is a tendency to forego moral relativism when dealing with omnivorous/carnist people. This is a grave mistake that not only is ethnocentric, speciesist in itself, ableist, classist and downright wrong, but it further isolates all creatures from the cause of veganism REGARDLESS of how the fate of non human animals is tied in with human animals and the environment. Using arguments like health, aesthetic and the frugivore theory do not help veganism either. A first world, educated, westernized/industrialized person can not begin to understand the complexity of the relationship between peoples and their food and their beliefs if they grew up in a society and world that offered them CHOICES at every turn.
Choices are not something that comes freely and easily to individuals who were moulded and shaped by an environment that has existed for thousands of years longer than veganism. Change has never been a quick or easy process. Evolution of thought may be quicker, but not by much. When approaching populations who sustain themselves on hunting, just imagine how absurd it would be to stop lions from hunting. Lions do not kill for sport. They have been seen in the wild saving the lives of helpless prey animals. Their carnivorism is biological. You may say, well, humans, we have a choice because we are not carnivores. True, but the illusion of a choice is relative to your society and sustainability. Some tracts of land are very dry and NOT abundant in adequate plant foods. Thus, patterns of eating are highly dependent on historical, geographical and cultural eco systems.
Importing corn to a desert could very well cause digestive issues or make indigenous farmers poor. Look what happened in Haiti when Monsanto flooded it with FrankenRice, causing native farmers to lose their entire food security and independence, and how Big Government made the native (tropical adapted) Haitian pig go extinct over a swine flu scare. Now there is HUNGER that is virtually irreversible. This same patronizing attitude is being adopted by vegans: "Why can't they just grow kale and wheat and almonds to make almond milk? We can just send it there! Presto!".
And watch a country starve?
As vegans we have to accept the FACT that the world will not be vegan ANYTIME soon. It is up to us to decrease as much as practically possible, the suffering of our fellow animals (human and non human) and our environments. It is not as simple as forcing people to give up eating meat.
Also consider Food Deserts. When all you have ever been exposed to for generations are cheap, calorie dense packs of Oscar Meyers bologna and other awful scrap cuttings leftover by the privileged, plus, being ridiculed and debased for enjoying fruits like watermelon (cheap, filling, healthy, abundant) there is no way you can safely just go vegan without first reversing years of (psych+phys) damage and relearning everything, yes, everything you know about food. Some populations' relationship to their foods has been damaged beyond recognition and it will take time, patience and understanding to help fix that. We have to wear their shoes to understand how to approach their change. You have to wear our shoes.
You have to put on that skin, and see yourself made out by society to be a monkey, ape or beast for enjoying a f***ing fruit. Imagine having to show up to a job interview and the employer thinking, "I'm supposed to hire and pay a comical creature like this, when I can hire a person to do the job?" All because of decades of damaging imagery. If you can't feel what it's like to wear the pelt, don't discourage anyone from wearing the belt.
The lowest cancer rates in the world are found amongst us "primitives". We also lack the eye, dental + heart issues, high blood pressure and lactose-caused diseases of our Westernized breeds. Our populations in modernity tend to die from DIET based disease rather than environmental ones like malaria. Yes, meat plays a large role in that, but the root cause itself isnt general meat consumption but industrialized meat consumption. Meat was never the largest portion on the plate for "primitive" people. It was the smallest.
While modernization can alleviate some of those problems, we have to understand too that most of these "gifts" from the elite (yes, that includes all 1st world beneficiaries of 1st world perks) come with a catch and are built on centuries of exploitation: human, environmental and non human.
"I'll feed you, clothe you and cure you if you eat like me, talk like me, sh!t like me, sit like me, do this for me, and live like me" and that is NOT the answer. Building American toilets instead of squat toilets? The gift is double edged: better sanitation and, as a bonus? colon cancer. Likewise, veganism in its current mainstream form cannot simply be applied to any given people or place. It has to be bio-suitable and enviro-suitable. Acknowledging unique needs is not politically incorrect, it is necessary. Tarzan is not the answer. Grassroots is.
I am lucky to come from a population that is 90% lactose intolerant. But that doesn't mean going vegan was easy, but I am glad for every single one of the 6 years that I have been and won't be turning back. However, being that I and the cows are one and the same in our plight, I know what it feels like to be so domesticated and severed from my instincts as to be heavily reliant on the elite (which yes, does include you vegans of privilege as much I love you and thank you). For a while, cows were fed other cows. It hurt them but they were hungry and it was what they knew. Likewise, severing reliance on our breeders requires an overhaul of identity that moves away from the corporate (national) to the environmental (natural).
Please approach cultures armed with knowledge AND understanding before proposing Veganism. Transitions can only be relative, and the world will never be 100% vegan. It was pristine before veganism. The culprit is western civilization, not carnism. And we have to reimagine "civilization" (colonial elite corporate hegemony) before we can reimagine carnism.
I'd like to end this piece by saying thank you to all the western vegans who use so much of their time and power to further the vegan cause. Your work is valuable wonderful and is making waves in the push for a safer, more sustainable, more beautiful world. Just remember that being a savior should never be the goal. A savior has a position of power and we do not need any more of those. We need grassroots level change.Meaning, learn from us, do what you can, then move on.
A creature that cannot feed itself is a PET.
