#veg interviews

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QuasiVegan's Christina Arasmo Beymer Discusses Her Thoughts on Healthier Vegan Living

Christina Arasmo Beymer ate eggs just so she could identify as an ex-vegan for this interview. "I figure if I eat eggs a couple times a year, I’m less pure and therefore I’m a better person, my ego is diminished and I can join the ex-vegan club, where the cool kids hang out," she explained. But I'm going to give Christina the benefit of the doubt and assume the eggs were from a rescue hen who nudged the eggs toward Christina with her beak and clucked with approval as Christina hesitantly reached for them. For all intents and purposes, Christina is still vegan. Or at least, quasi-vegan. 

Christina created the blog QuasiVegan in late 2010 because of the shock she experienced upon learning that ex-vegans exist and that the vegan diet is not the "one diet to rule them all". Though she doesn’t post as often now due to a shortage of time, QuasiVegan was and is about Christina’s exploration of nutrition within the boundaries of a plant-based diet. She is not an expert, but she reads the good ones and uses their insights to figure out how vegans can live more healthfully. 

Who, what, where, when, why?

I exist the way I am now, because you exist, Rhys. In the fall of 2010, I read the Vegan Outreach newsletter. In the back, I believe, was your interview with Jack Norris. The first thing I noticed was the word “ex-vegan”. 

Actually, this shouldn't have been so surprising for me. Years before, my vegetarian mother had dropped eggs from her diet and within a week she said she felt foggy; she felt better once she started eating eggs again. 

I became a vegetarian — no animals with eyes — in 1986 because I read in the St. Petersburg Times that Haitians were eating cats in the city. Cats are my all-time favorite animal. Instead of judging the Haitians, I judged myself as a hypocrite and quit eating animals immediately. My health didn’t suffer or get better. 

My vegetarianism wasn’t based on ethics. It was based on my personal sense of hypocrisy. 

In 1978, my family and I briefly lived on a strict vegetarian hippie commune in Tennessee. No one ever explained to my 12-year-old self why they didn’t eat animals, dairy or eggs. We went to McDonalds on the way out of town.

In mid 2004, a thought came to me as I reached for the cheddar: ‘I wonder how the cows are treated.’ This didn’t prevent me from making a grilled cheese sandwich. It didn’t provoke me to find out, either. I did and didn’t want to know at the same time. At the end of 2004, I heard about veganism on the Internet. In early 2005, I met a vegan Buddhist who invited me to a picnic. There I met a lovely couple who gave me a Vegan Outreach booklet. They also lent me a Tribe of Heart film called Peaceable Kingdom. I watched it a few days later. In it was a brief piece of footage of a farmer or farmhand removing a calf from his mother rather forcibly. The desire to eat anything from a cow completely vanished. Poof. 

Once I became vegan, I noticed that the excruciating sharp pain that I’d felt almost every day in my breasts went away.

Soon after I became vegan, the The China Study was released and I gobbled it up. I also gobbled up lots of vegan treats. I got very fat — 178 pounds and I’m only 5’ 3.5” tall. In 2008, I stopped eating sweets, ate small meals every few hours and biked every day. Then I joined the vegan body building forum online and started lifting weights and doing a lot more exercise. With the guidance of a vegan fitness nutritionist and trainer, I also increased my protein to 1 gram per pound of lean mass, which was about 120 grams a day. I was never healthier. I felt 20 again! 

I had a lot of faith in the vegan diet and very, very narrow information on which to base this faith.

In 2010, I got married and moved to Northern California. After one month in California, I was so tired, my bones ached. I thought it was because I missed my family in Florida, or the stress of a new marriage. I felt old. After a week or two like this, I looked at my diet and saw no obvious difference, but then I realized I was missing sunshine. I took 2,000 IU of D2 and I didn’t notice any improvement. I got a container of D3 and took 6,000 IU for a few days. I felt better. Not great, but better. 

Then I read your interview with Jack Norris. After that I started googling and reading anything I could find about ex-vegans. It was now around Thanksgiving. I found out about the vegan pot luck in town. There my husband and I spoke with various people separately and he introduced me to a vegan family on their way out the door. I spoke with the mom and asked her a few questions. I discovered they had a vegan doctor. I asked the mother about her children’s teeth. Regarding her daughter, the older child, she said that all her front permanent teeth had decayed and they were replaced with permanent dentures. I was appalled. A seven- or eight-year-old with dentures! Regarding her son, she said his teeth were much better. She told me that their doctor told her to give both children vitamin D. She asked me why I asked about her children’s teeth and I just replied, “Oh, something I read,” and left it at that. 

I was so sad and pissed off. It’s like my friend named Vegan died a horrible, painful death that involved getting her teeth punched out. 

I didn't do a wrinkle count or look at everyone's teeth, but it appeared to me they looked older than their same-aged counterparts in Florida.

After meeting that vegan child with dentures, I started reading as much as I could about nutrition and failed vegans. I met three ex-vegetarians and one ex-vegan in person. At least two mentioned craving fish. I was trying to figure out this "ex-veg*n" thing with very limited knowledge. My mother got brain cancer, and I moved back to Florida to take care of her. Nutrition for healing cancer and other immune compromised people is more important to me now.

A lot of vegans tell us not to listen to our bodies when our bodies seem to be telling us that we are deficient in something and that animal products would make us feel better. Do cravings have nothing to do with nutrition? Should we listen to these vegans instead of to our bodies?

I can only answer this from my own perspective. I listen to myself without regard for other people's opinions. My sister might be perfectly healthy; I am not her. If I craved meat, and the situation were desperate — as in severe depression, for example — I'd eat it from the cleanest source possible. Then I would discuss with Jack Norris what I could do. In the here and now in the vegan world, Jack is here and his websites are open 24/7. His email address is not hard to find. 

If you had Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome (SLOS), you’d need dietary cholesterol to survive. You’d be mentally retarded, autistic, have facial deformities and other severe health problems. It requires both parents to have this SLOS gene, so only 1 in 60,000 people are born with SLOS. However, being a carrier of this gene will not result in any facial deformities or other health issues, if you eat food containing cholesterol. It is estimated that about 1 in 100 Caucasians in North America carry this gene, and between 1 in 30 or 1 in 50 Central Europeans carry this gene. If you were a carrier, your ability to make your own cholesterol would be drastically diminished compared to someone who is not. Do the math. That’s a lot of people.

Research has shown that low cholesterol and/or low fat is linked to depression, sometimes suicidal depression. If you are a vegan (particularly — but not necessarily — a low-fat vegan) who is a carrier of this SLOS gene, you’d never know it without getting a test. You don’t even need to be a carrier to get depressed from having low cholesterol. You would need to raise your fat intake, though. Might I suggest coconut oil? If you were a carrier, you’d be severely depressed and that depression might result in craving anything with cholesterol and it may not. Your ideology or ethics, call it what you will, might get in the way. 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-breakthrough-depression-solution/201106/low-cholesterol-and-its-psychological-effects

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200304/the-risks-low-fat-diets

DHCR7 Mutation Carrier Rates and Prevalence of the RSH/Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome

"They" say that pregnant women crave odd foods. Some pregnant women crave dirt and some people with anemia do too. Craving dirt is called pica. Dirt contains iron. People with anemia may also crave chewing ice, which would soothe the pain in their tongue from a lack of this metal. I would not dismiss cravings. You might not know why you are craving something but it’s not something to dismiss no matter what anyone says.

What do you think of Jack Norris' and Ginny Messina's nutritional recommendations in their book Vegan for Life? 

My hobby is nutrition; it’s not my profession. From this standpoint, I think the book is a very good template — a starting point — for a balanced vegan diet for a lot of people. One would take their guidelines and tweak them for their own needs. 

I’m happy that Vegan for Life includes:

lightly cooking certain vegetables to increase the nutrient content;

adding fat to your vegetables in the vitamin A and K sections;

reducing phytic acid;

getting more protein;

the need for iodine;

hair loss;

exercise;

not sweating the small stuff, such as trace amounts of animal-sourced elements in your food.

I wish the authors would have addressed tooth decay. However, if you eat like they recommend, the issue would not be what you’d find if you listened to some raw vegan cultist, or MDs with guru-like status.

They missed the boat on K2, which I’ll discuss later.

What have you discovered by reading up on nutrition? Is there more to vegan health than just supplementing b12?

I'm going to break this answer up by topic.

Choline

One thing that really reduces brain fog is enough dietary choline, if you are certain that your B12 status is good. What is enough choline? I don’t know. Your body does, though. I didn’t find choline in Vegan for Life, but I did find it on Jack’s site. Unless you eat a massive amount of beans, you will not reach Adequate Intake (AI) of choline on the vegan diet, as far as I can determine. Your personal choline requirement depends on your dietary levels of folate, betaine, B12 and B6 too. There are great levels of betaine in quinoa, spinach and beets. There’s a lot to learn about choline and betaine. Start here:

http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/othernuts/choline http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2010/12/meeting-choline-requirement-eggs-organs.html

Chris Masterjohn’s work is fantastic and rather thorough. He’s getting his PhD in nutrition science and I read his work with fervor. Here’s a very important point Chris made about choline: “Thus, folate, vitamin B12, B6, and betaine can spare choline, but only methionine can be used to make choline.”

Cysteine

Dietary cysteine directly affects how much glutathione you generate. If you don’t know what glutathione is, learn today. It’s vital. You can’t take a pill for it because the molecules are too big. My mom and I are chowing down a lot of broccoli sprouts here! I switched my mother from a plant-based protein powder, one with very good levels of cysteine, and started her on undenatured whey from pastured cows. Here’s a good place to start learning about glutathione. Remember to research everything he recommends because you don’t want to puke from too much N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC). Get your cysteine from your diet before resorting to NAC:

Low protein intake exclusively of plant origin, significantly lower protein levels with 16% frequency of hypoproteinaemia, significantly lower glutathione values in blood in comparison to omnivores and lactoovovegetarians confirm the risk of a vegan diet also in adult age.

Once you learn about the vital importance of glutathione, you will need to be very sure that you get a complete protein at every meal. I don’t care what anyone else says about this. You will need to eat more protein than your omni counterparts. That's about 10-15% more, I believe. Plant protein is simply not as bioavailable as animal protein. This is why it’s important that vegans exercise so they can consume a lot more protein without gaining a lot of weight.

Vitamin A

Regarding Retinol Activity Equivelants (RAE) and conversion to vitamin A, everyone is different. I wouldn’t assume that vitamin A is the only vitamin whose conversion from the raw material varies from person to person as this research indicates.

That research is about genetic differences. There could also be conversion differences due to high levels of sugar and omega 6 in our diets. I think, especially with sugar, that it wreaks havoc on our beneficial gut microbes and digestive enzymes, and promotes inflammation. Too much omega 6 is also inflammatory. This contributes to various health problems. Too much sugar and too much omega 6 could inhibit our ability to absorb and convert RAE to A, and very possibly other nutrients.

Vitamin K2

Vitamin K2 (MK-7) is found in natto and some brands of sauerkraut. You can get it in a supplement made from natto in a veg cap. I seriously disagree with how little importance Ginny and Jack put on K2, saying that we convert enough of it from K1. Some people probably do alright; others not so much. K2 is a separate nutrient with a different role than K1. There’s valid research on it, especially The Rotterdam Study. This is information you won’t find relying on the Institute of Medicine (IOM). 

You can learn more about K2 here: 

The Rotterdam Study 

Vitamin K2: The Missing Nutrient

Menaquinone studies: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15630245  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18722618 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19179058

I learned about the importance of K2 before my mother was diagnosed with brain cancer. Having this knowledge provided crucial information because Mom’s nutritionist put her on 10,000 IU of D3 a day. K2 directs calcium toward your bones, teeth and nails and away from your heart. K2 prevents hypercalcemia. It’s vital. For the first time in her life, Mom has hard nails.

Through Chris Masterjohn’s research and the research of Lara Pizzorno, MDiv, MA, LMT, I learned that vitamin A prevents the toxicity of D and vice versa. From the Vitamin D council, I learned that magnesium is lowered, quite a lot, by large amounts of D.

Vitamin D

I’m pleased that Jack and Ginny emphasize the need for making your own D and/or taking a supplement if you fall short of the requirements. There’s more to D than rickets and bone health. I believe that vitamin D is the driving force behind an excellent immune system and that the natural vitamin D in the vegans I met in Florida is why they are so outrageously healthier than the vegans I observed in Northern California.

Humans used to walk around a lot without sunscreen. We’d make a lot more D than the RDI or even the upper level of the IOM’s recommendations, but natural vitamin D is not the same as taking a supplement, so you need to be well informed and get a test. From all the research I’ve read, Vitamin D2 is not as effective as D3.

Here’s some research to start learning about vitamin D:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21177785  http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/vitamins/vitaminD/  http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/time-for-more-vitamin-d.htm

There’s a real problem with Vitamin D deficiency world-wide, and it's even worse with darker skinned people. There is a debate that they might need less because they use D more economically. If you mega dose an African American the same as a Caucasian, then it could be harmful. (I elaborate on this here.) There’s also concerns over fluoride in the water and in dental care products. Fluoride is a vitamin D antagonist.

The IOM’s Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) revised their Vitamin D recommendations in 2010. Apparently the FNB consulted with 15 vitamin D experts and then suppressed the reports from these experts. Suppressed. This suppression includes the feedback of renowned vitamin D researcher Professor Robert Heaney, MD at Creighton University, and the pioneering nutritionist Professor Walter Willett, MD, DrPH at Harvard. Interestingly, a pharmaceutical company is developing a patentable synthetic drug version of vitamin D. One of the FNB committee members, Glenville Jones, PhD, is an advisor for that pharmaceutical company. He’s quoted as saying things such as, “We think there has been an exaggeration of the public’s interest in vitamin D deficiency.” Nice.

People must understand that nutrition as medicine is not patentable and is therefore not profitable. Not in the billions upon billions that pharmaceutical companies reap. So research on nutrition is paltry compared with pharmaceutical research. That is true also for off-label, out-of-patent drugs that work better, with fewer side effects, than the new drugs that come on the market.

Phytic Acid

To reduce phytic acid, I take digestive enzymes containing phytase. I also soak my nuts. That sounds sexy. There’s plenty of resources on the web on how to reduce phytic acid. Read up!

Omega 3, DHA and EPA

I wouldn’t wait to hear from the IOM, especially with self-serving FNB committee members, about something that humans have been consuming in our diets for a long, long time and at balanced proportions in relation to omega 6. I think that all studies on omega 3, DHA and EPA are going to be confusing when you consider that the subjects are likely getting a shit-load of omega 6 in their diets, along with fructose. It’s like a Denial of Service (DOS) attack. That is, the processing power in our body is dealing with lousy food and not working optimally when we receive what we need.

Vegan for Life quotes Robert Mason, a paleontology student and a vegan, who wrote, “There’s no doubt that hominids ate meat...” 

Yes. We ate pristine meat, not the fouled up 20:1, or thereabouts, omega 6 to omega 3 ratios that people eat from factory farmed cows, for example. I have not researched this, but we probably didn’t eat meat morning, noon and night. It was precious, considering the effort alone, and I think it should be viewed that way now too.

I believe Ginny Messina takes a DHA supplement and I think all vegans should too. 

I take about 400 mg of DHA a day. That’s 28 drops of the micro algae DHA oil that I use. 

I spoke with the first author of this DHA and EPA study for 1 hour and 48 minutes a couple weeks ago. He’s a PhD in lipids. He said, “If you take DHA, EPA is your interest rate.” EPA has 20 carbon molecules and five double bonds. Your body typically needs more DHA than EPA. You’d have to manufacture two additional carbon bonds and an extra double bond to convert EPA to DHA. The reverse is easy for us to do when we need it. 

Regarding vegans, he said that they are conducting a science experiment on themselves. This was about the ill-informed parroting in the vegan world of the low-fat mantra.

This PhD said that it’s been known for a long time in his circle that if you simply remove the sugary drink from your burger, coke and fries, you’d significantly reduce your risk of a heart attack.

Right now, there’s amazing new discoveries about sugar and cholesterol that indicate that dietary sugar, the fructose part of it, is the cause of rampant heart disease and possibly cancer. Many of us may have seen the recent 60 minutes report on April 1st where it was explained that fructose, separated from the fruit, or in HFCS, is responsible for the 'ultrabad' cholesterol, called MGmin-low-density lipoprotein (LDL). This particular type of LDL is not separated out in your total LDL levels. 

To get a picture of heart disease risk, look at triglycerides. However, don’t underestimate the hideous imbalance of omega 6 to 3.

Once I added DHA, in a therapeutic dose, to my mother’s diet, her eyesight improved in about a month.

Taurine

What I understand about taurine is that we synthesize it from cysteine, methionine and B6 in our diets. This synthesis assumes you have the enzyme Cysteine dioxygenase. I only found one study on vegans, which reveled that they have very low levels of taurine. No surprise there. I found one study on human infants which indicated that by adding taurine, vitamin D absorption was improved. Perhaps it works with grown-ups as well. When I was suffering from severe Florida sunshine withdrawal in Northern California, I took 500 mg of taurine and felt a lot better. I didn't know about this Vitamin D link before I took it. The woman at the health food store said that I would experience more energy. So, it could be that I was having a placebo effect. However, I did feel better.

Let's look at the Wiki article on Taurine. Taurine is the major component of bile. Bile aids in the digestion of fat in our diet. That's vital. Straight out of Wiki, "[taurine] is an organic acid widely distributed in animal tissues." That's a big deal to me considering we evolved eating animals. In the Mayo Clinic's report "Metabolism of [35S]Taurine in Man" they write, "Taurine is one of the most abundant amino acid analogs in the body." From the Human Metabolome project, I learned that "Taurine has many diverse biological functions serving as a neurotransmitter in the brain, a stabilizer of cell membranes and a facilitator in the transport of ions such as sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium." Important. People who have inherited errors with taurine metabolism experience depression, fatigue, sleep disturbances, lethargy, depth perception impairment and more. Parkinson's Disease is indicated with low taurine status.

I think it's foolish to ignore taurine. How would you know if you're synthesizing enough?

Mom had a comprehensive nutrition test last month. The test indicated that she needs 256 mg of taurine per day. She eats eggs and some dairy, yet she needs more.

Here's some research to start learning about taurine: http://www.hmdb.ca/metabolites/HMDB00251 http://www.news-medical.net/health/Taurine-What-is-Taurine.aspx http://www.vegan-supplement-checklist.com/2008/10/taurine-and-l-glutamine.html http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306987704002178 http://www.smart-publications.com/articles/taurine-protects-heart-eyes-and-improves-glucose-tolerance#fn-320-4 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12436202 http://jn.nutrition.org/content/105/9/1206.full.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8241636

Summation

There’s no one-size-fits all vegan diet, or any diet as far as specific individual needs go. That being said, the nutritional information on Jack and Ginny’s blogs and in their book is a huge leap for significantly better vegan nutrition than you’d find anywhere else. 

Let’s replace the word “vegan” in that sentence with “human”. This is where I have a problem. I wouldn’t just rely on one source for my nutritional information. I look at many other sources; even if those sources advocate eating in a way that doesn’t align with my ethics, or a sense of hypocrisy in my case. I learn from those sources, and if the information seems worthy, I find ways to apply the advice with plants, fats and supplements if I am so inclined.

Do you think a lot of ex-vegans gave up too easily? Could many instances of failure to thrive on a vegan diet be solved with the right vegan foods and supplements?

I have no idea what any ex-vegan personally went through, but I bet it was difficult to say the least. Difficult in their hearts, heads and within their nutritionally deficient bodies.

With more applied information about nutrition and preparation, any diet can be improved. There are so many variables inside a human being: genetics, conversion, allergies and so on. Whether or not any individual vegan can be improved with supplements or plants, Jack has experience with that. From what I've read, the answer is: yes. As far as thriving: that's individually determined.

Do you think it's easier to have better health as a vegan or as an omnivore?

Better health can be achieved on any diet when you remove sugar and you add exercise.

Better health on a vegan diet can be achieved when you remove sugar, you don't demonize fat and you eat more protein from a variety of plant sources. These are general examples.

Vegans and omnivores should learn about good fats and bad fats and not just from one source. Here's a source that will piss off the vegans.

Everyone should learn how to prepare their food correctly. This includes sprouting and cooking methods like adding fat to your vegetables to increase absorption of the nutrients. If you eat animals, you can't just simply cook your grass-fed beef with high heat and think it's okay — slow roasting is better. Learn.

A lot of vegans follow their diets because of their love for animals. Not ethics, but love. She sees part of herself in the eyes of a pig, a cow, a bird and so on. Perhaps she sees no difference between a cat or a dog and pig and a cow. She's entitled to have her feelings and follow her heart as she sees fit. A vegan like this will work damn hard to adhere to her diet; not because it will save the world, improve her health, or do anything but be an expression of her heart of hearts. She doesn't have to suffer either. I am certain there are ways to improve any vegan diet*. Some examples are: adding more good fat, proper cooking methods, more protein and a few different supplements. Not exactly "all natural", but whatever. These changes could allow a loving-vegan to adhere to the vegan diet if his or her health is currently suffering from it.

However, these "loving-vegans" need to realize that not all people feel this passionately about animals. They just don't. I tend to think that a lot of people feel like this comedian.

*This assumes that there is no genetic requirement for animal cholesterol, or some other health condition.

Many people will be skeptical of all your thoughts about nutrition because you're not a professional. Should they be?

Everyone needs a healthy dose of skepticism and critical thinking, no matter who is providing the information. Rather than a knee-jerk reaction, though, I think that it should be based on being informed. Do your own research.

If you've ever had the pleasure of listening to Christian proselytizing broadcasting, you'll find that thinking for one's self is being outsourced. During one advertisement for a book, I heard this phrase over and over again: "We will tell you how to think about..." That's just brilliant. No matter who is sharing their knowledge about anything...religion, nutrition, ethics, car insurance, and so on...research it and make your own decisions.

Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn is a proselytizer, but in a different way. So is Sally Fallon. And John Robbins too. Each one has good intentions, but good intentions are not what makes you healthy as a human being. You must figure that out for yourself. You might find that John's diet rocks your world. You might find that Sally's diet is the bees knees. You might find a middle path between both. It's up to you. I recruit you for you.

Being a skeptic is perfectly fine as long as it doesn't make one a closed system. Here's an example: About 15 years ago, I watched an NBC news program with a segment on Glucosamine Chondroitin. In that segment a women with arthritis took this supplement and her condition improved. This was shown physiologically; her inflammation diminished and a doctor presented the evidence. A vet was consulted and he said that when he gives Glucosamine Chondroitin to old dogs with arthritis, the dogs also improve. Then a skeptic came on and said that it was a placebo effect. Unless the dogs are holding back on their ability to understand English, this skeptic's skepticism is getting in the way of his well being and he looks like an idiot.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

Food is medicine. That medicine is only as good as what the animals ate, the soil your plants were grown in, and the water where the fish and/or seaweed came from. Source your food well. Individual nutrients don't work in isolation — better health requires improved nutrition across the board. They didn't invent a daily vitamin and mineral supplement for just vegans.

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Les U. Knight on the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement

Les U. Knight is a leader in The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, a self-explanatory movement that takes the "Profoundly Deep" ecological view that humans are inescapably a blight on the planet and should therefore stop reproducing altogether. Knight does not, however, agree with David Benatar that we should stop bringing more humans into this world because life contains suffering and so is worse than nothing. In fact, Knight thinks life is quite nice. He and many other VHEMT defenders just think that humans can't help but muck it up for everyone else here. 

Why do you advocate voluntary human extinction?

It's so much nicer than involuntary extinction, don't you think? I mean, we're going extinct one way or the other, but if we go voluntarily we'll avoid taking most of Earth's biosphere with us. The involuntary extinction humanity is working so hard to bring about is just way too messy.

My personal reasons for advocating our extinction combine ecological and humanitarian benefits: as we phase ourselves out, there will be more habitat for wildlife and potentially more of everything for everyone. We might even cease our constant battles for resources. Others have their own reasons for suggesting that we all stop breeding and for doing so themselves.

What makes you sure that humans are destined for extinction?

Most humans have a drive to live and create offspring. The same is true for probably all other life forms. One of your objections to humans is the harm we cause to these other life forms, preventing them from living and procreating in peace. But why are other beings' drives to live and procreate more important to honor than our own?

The ability of Earth's entire biosphere to live and procreate is threatened by the existence of just one of the tens of millions of species sharing this space and time. In the same way one of our toes isn't as important as our bodies as a whole, Homo sapiens isn't as important as the rest of creation.

What is it about humans that makes us uniquely destructive compared to other animals?

Our enlarged frontal lobes enabled us to become super-predators, while retaining the short-term thinking which helped us survive earlier in our evolution.

We are exotic invaders everywhere except Africa. Each time we arrived in a new ecosystem, a major extinction event followed. Some native animals just stood and stared at us bewildered until we clubbed them into fresh meat. In Africa, we have evolved into virtual exotic invaders, and now the species we co-evolved with are mostly limited to parks and preserves.

What kinds of harms do humans cause other life forms just by existing?

We convert wildlife habitat into human habitat, where only domesticated, exotic and hard-to-kill species are allowed to live. We might also ask what benefits humans offer other life forms by existing. Except for our parasites and maybe our companion animals, the best we can do for other life forms is undo what we have done.

Many vegans want to end the exploitation of animals at the hands of humans. They typically want to do this by either giving animals rights and having humans respect those rights, or by advocating whatever it takes to decrease the suffering that animals endure because of human activities. Do you think that human extinction, then, is the logical conclusion of vegan goals?

Voluntary human extinction is the logical conclusion of many goals. Often, someone's reasons for maintaining a vegan diet mesh with the concept of not breeding and even human extinction. The proportion of vegans and vegetarians among those who agree with VHEMT is far greater than the general population. It's hard to say which came first for many of us—sort of a chicken and egg question.

When might a vegan VHEMT member say their vegan and pro-human-extinction views align?

Seems to me people avoid animal products for a combination of reasons, like concern for exploited animals, the biosphere, other people and themselves. Since we amplify our impacts by creating more of us, and exploitation of non-human animals will continue as long as there are humans, it's a natural progression to VHEMT. If someone is mainly concerned about their own health, they're not as likely to make the connection.

Are you a vegan or vegetarian?

I'm a vegetarian who keeps his lacto/ovo intake small.

Most vegans are not proponents of human extinction, despite the harms that even vegan humans inevitably rain down on other life forms. These pro-human vegans believe that the harms humans cause just by existing are "accidental" and are thus justifiable. The real crime, as they see it, is intentionally harming animals in order to use them as resources. Where do you disagree with this rationale? 

Just by staying alive we have to accept our negative impact, though we can reduce it somewhat. When people don't realize the harm they are causing, they can't be blamed for it, but nescience doesn't justify it. From an ethical perspective, our knowledge of the harm we are causing makes it worse when we don't ameliorate it. From the perspective of the creatures whose habitat we destroy, it doesn't matter what our motivations are.

Some people say that it's human civilization rather than humans per se that is the problem. Would disarming humans of our agriculture and civilization make us harmless enough to justify our continued presence here?

No. Although the mythical culture of humans living in sustainable harmony with whatever species we haven't killed off is something to strive for as we become less dense, we have been adversely impacting ecosystems since before we became Homo sapiens. Our misuse of fire as Homo erectus likely altered grasslands and wiped out species which couldn't adapt. Our agricultural, industrial and electronic revolutions have accelerated destruction and allowed us to overshoot Earth's carrying capacity while postponing the worst consequences of doing so. Even before modern culture, we eliminated many species, and there's no guarantee we wouldn't regain tools of mass destruction in the future.

If humans decided to voluntarily make themselves extinct, would you want them to first try to phase out other sentient creatures (perhaps through birth control) to spare future beings the suffering they would experience even in our absence?

Our domesticated plants and animals would naturally phase out as we go. We created them and it's our responsibility to remove them from ecosystems. Perceived suffering of wildlife is mainly anthropomorphizing. Yes, it's red of tooth and claw, but not for long. When a lion brings down an antelope, the rest of the herd quickly reverts to normal activity. Sometimes they watch with no apparent concern as the lions tear their former herd mate apart and eat. It takes self consciousness to live in fear as humans do. Most wildlife suffering today is imposed by humans. For example, there are more wolves in captivity in the US than roaming freely in the wild.

Transhumanists want humans to use technology to evolve into another -- perhaps more ethical -- species. One idea is that humans could possibly genetically engineer themselves into herbivores capable of digesting grass, thus lowering human impact on the world's resources, and "morality pills" could cause humans to care more about other beings. Would this be a satisfactory way for humans, or human-like beings, to continue?

Suggestions of ways to improve Homo sapiens are valuable thought experiments which help us figure out what it is about us that makes us so incompatible with the rest of life on Earth. Herbivores will overgraze, so that alone wouldn't be enough. Increased empathy would help us develop an Earth-centered orientation, though occasional sociopaths could go off their meds and rise to power, exploiting people and planet.

Physical evolution takes too long, though genetic engineering could speed things up, for better or worse. Social evolution is always behind reality by a generation or two, and since change is needed fast, it's not adequate. Personal evolution can happen with an epiphany, or with a lot of little advancements adding up to big ones. However, when people must exert all their energy just to stay alive and feed their families—as a couple billion are—they aren't likely to make much progress toward Earth-centered thinking.

Is there anything else you suggest that people do for animals and the Earth on top of not having kids?

Each of us can decide for ourselves which methods are best for reducing our ecological impact. We could do everything recommended on the 100 Easy Things lists, bicycle, and eat low on the food chain until the cows come home, but producing one offspring would more than negate it all.

Why do you think people are so attached to the continuation of the human species, even if they won't be here to see it?

I suspect it grows out of a fear of death, though many proclaim that we are the greatest creature in all of creation: the planet, perhaps the entire universe, was created for us and would be meaningless without us. This species chauvinism might be an attempt to rationalize fear—if we can call that rational.

Life could be seen as essentially nothing but molecules organizing and re-organizing themselves in order to perpetuate their particular molecular structures. If humans are dominating the planet, then, that just means humans are winning the DNA duplication battle at the expense of other life forms who apparently arrange molecules in less effective ways. If humans ended themselves, the molecules they had been composed of wouldn't disappear. These molecules would be scrambled and re-arranged by different life forms seeking to propagate their own particular molecular alignment. Reductively speaking, wouldn't this be pretty much a neutral change rather than a positive or negative one? If this is all life is -- a kind of interesting but meaningless vanity project by molecules duplicating their particular arrangements as far and wide as possible -- does it really matter which molecular arrangement is dominating?

Life is not the molecules it animates. Mixing all the ingredients of a life form in one pile won't bring that life form to life.

Every life form in existence today can trace its existence back uninterrupted to the earliest one-celled bacteria, evolving at the expense of 99.9% of other life forms. A flame of life has passed unextinguished from progenitor to progeny over billions of years against astounding odds. For us to extinguish the very existence of any species is an egregious crime against nature, not pardoned by mounting its molecules as trophies on our walls.

The same may be said of our species, and it's sad to think that we aren't going to continue on into the future. However, when we consider how many species will have a chance of continuing thanks to our voluntary extinction, there's cause for celebration. Lions and tigers and bears, elephants and so many others teetering on the brink of extinction today might live on if we simply stop repeating ourselves and each other.

May we live long and die out.

[letthemeatmeat]

Dr. Joel Marks on his Amoral Veganism

For some professors and authors, making a career out of philosophy means developing a theory or set of principles that they then elaborate on -- and never seriously question -- for the rest of their productive lives. Not so for Dr. Joel Marks, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of New Haven and a Bioethics Center Scholar at Yale University. For instance, you don't have to travel too far back in the works referenced on his main website to figure out that Marks used to believe in morality.

His 2009 book Ought Implies Kant: A Reply to the Consequentialist Critique took the existence of right and wrong as a given, and argued for a version of Kantian ethics that would extend moral duties to animals and universally obligate humans to follow a vegan diet. Now, however, Marks is putting the finishing touches on a new book titled Ethics Without Morals, suggesting that he changed his mind about a few things in the past two years. What changed is that Marks stopped taking right and wrong as a given. In fact, he had an epiphany and decided they were myths. His "Moral Moments" column at Philosophy Now magazine became "Ethical Episodes," he took to questioning some key components of animal rights philosophy such as inherent value and announced his new thinking in a New York Times column called "Confessions of an Ex-Moralist."

But none of this affected how Marks felt about animals. He still wants people to go vegan -- it's just that now he emphasizes that his call for a vegan humanity is based on his own desires and aversions, not innate rules that he deduced by objectively observing the workings of the universe. Since its tendency toward moralizing is the main thing I don't like about standard vegan proselytizing, I admire Marks' amoral "desirist" approach (and can't wait to read his next book), even though I don't share his desire for everyone to stop eating animal products.

Some ex-vegans use amoralism to escape vegan moralizing. For them, the lack of proof of right or wrong is the best argument against giving rights to animals, and doesn't preclude human rights, since we all selfishly benefit from rules against murder and so on. But you don't believe in moralism, yet you remain a vegan and would like to convince more people to go vegan. However, there appears to be no human benefit to giving rights to animals, so if there's no right or wrong, why should we do it? 

The main difference between a moralist and an amoralist such as myself is not at all about altruism versus egoism or hedonism. Most of the reasons that a moralist has for treating other animals with caring and respect are also reasons for an amoralist. The only difference is that the moralist treats these things as matters of duty incumbent on both him- or herself and all other human beings. But that is a big difference because of the consequences of having that sort of attitude about one’s own preferences, namely, that it is wrong for anyone not to have them. It leads to a way of interacting among human beings that, I would argue, is contrary to our considered desires. A very good source on this is Ian Hinckfuss’s The Moral Society.

As to our treatment of nonhuman animals, then, I would expect – perhaps I should acknowledge that this is my faith – that once we become fully aware of the nature of other animals as revealed to us through evolutionary theory and ethology, as well as of their actual treatment in animal agriculture (not to mention the clothing industry, animal circuses, biomedical research, etc.), and of the facts of human nutrition and the huge variety of non-animal culinary (and other) options, we will be moved by our natural compassion to adopt a vegan diet.

This was certainly my own story. And it is also another reason for my opposition to moralism. For I had become convinced of the moral wrongness of eating animals long before I became a vegan. But it was only when I had the opportunity (which came about largely by chance) to immerse myself in information about all of the above that I just spontaneously found myself motivated to make the final leap to veganism. So it’s really just cause and effect, I believe.

And that’s why I am also motivated to try to educate as many people as possible about the facts about other animals and how we treat them. The truth shall make the animals free, you might say. My peculiar angle on that project as a philosopher is to help those facts “sink in” for people through logical dialogue and reflection on them.

My main objection to veganism is that it is often preached as a mandate, the so-called "moral baseline." A lot of vegans who are not particularly moralistic about other issues slip into moralism when it comes to human treatment of other animals, to the point that animal rights outrage sometimes reminds me of fervent, religious anti-abortion activism. Why has veganism become so wrapped up in moralism, is this ultimately bad for animals and is there any hope of extricating veganism from moralism?

One reason, I would surmise, there has been such an emphasis on morality in veganism (or vegetarianism more generally) is that so many people who become vegetarian, probably the vast majority in fact, do so for reasons that have nothing to do with concern about the animals who are being abused and slaughtered for our food, but instead for dietary reasons. Meanwhile, in the minds not only of animal advocates but of just about everyone, being caring and respectful of others is associated with being a good person and doing the morally right thing (and not being so or doing so is morally wrong). Therefore, especially if you want not only to be morally pure yourself but also to help the animals as much as possible by spreading the good word about not exploiting them, it seems incumbent on you to emphasize your moral motives. For if other people assume you are vegetarian or vegan because you are only concerned about your own health or fitness or weight, they may be less likely to become vegetarian themselves if they happen not to care about “dieting” for such reasons. So morality may seem to be the only alternative to (human) health (and possibly environmental) appeals for getting people to stop aiding and abetting cruelty and disrespect to nonhuman animals.

Of course my role as a philosopher would be to disabuse folks of the idea that there is a necessary dependence of caring about and respecting animals (human or otherwise) on being moral. You can have the former without the latter. This is very similar to the equally mistaken notion that without the belief in God, everybody would just go around raping and pillaging and murdering. If anything, I would say, it works the other way: Religion and even morality cause more such behavior than would their absence.

As for what hope there is to turn this around: I haven’t a clue. The human (and animal) condition in general strikes me as hopeless. But my preference would be to rid veganism (and everything else) of its moralism, and my hunch is that doing so could only help the animal cause by removing yet another barrier between animal-consumers and their giving up the habit – that barrier being the defensiveness that inevitably arises from being labeled immoral or bad.

I would expect an amoralist veganism to be relatively understanding of animal users, since it rejects dogma. However, an amoralist can be just as appalled at Nazism as a moralist is, despite refusing to call Nazism objectively wrong. Do you think amoralism would soften the judgment of most moralist vegans, making them generally more accepting of meat eaters, or might it have no discernable effect other than cutting out the "right and wrong," "immoral and bad" phraseology?

If it were only a matter of using a different terminology, it would not be very interesting or important and hardly worth the effort to “convert” everyone to the amoralist way of speaking. So my belief, or as I put it before, faith, is that changing the way we talk about things we are used to thinking of as moral matters – whether it be meat-eating or genocide – would also change the way we think about them and hence feel about them and ultimately how we behave. Now on the face of it that would seem to count against the switch I favor since who among us would want to lessen the outrage against Hitler and his ilk? And who among us ethical vegans would want to lessen the outrage against the abuse and slaughter of nonhuman animals?

But as I have suggested, the moral outrage against the practices we don’t like really has two quite distinct components: an extreme and universal aversion on the one hand, and a moral judgment on the other. It seems to me pretty clear that we can retain the former while relinquishing the latter. And the point of doing this, I have further maintained, is that it would enable us to be more rational in our attitude toward those with whom we disagree, and perhaps even, as a consequence, more effective in achieving what we desire. We would cease to see the others as evil or evil-doers and instead as people who are for the most part just like ourselves but perhaps with a very different background or in very different circumstances or even with some very different inborn tendencies. Isn’t this likely to inspire in us greater tolerance, greater willingness to give the benefit of the doubt, to negotiate, to compromise, etc.?

Now that may sound rather appealing in the abstract, but a further worry implicit in your question is that this transformation of the moral psyche into an amoral one could lessen our commitment to causes that we are used to deeming of the utmost urgency and importance, like stopping Hitler or bin Laden (if we are not their acolytes!) and ending the exploitation of nonhuman animals (if we are animal advocates). I think my only response can be that in life there are always tradeoffs. So on the one hand the amoralist program would indeed tend to remove a certain ferocity from one’s advocacy, a certain self-assurance and judgmentalism that can give one all sorts of motivational and rhetorical advantages in the struggle against opponents. On the other hand this kind of attitude, besides being based on sheer falsehood (that is, the belief that there is such a thing as objective value in the universe), has well-known tendencies to take people over-the-top in their characterizations of others and what they do, resulting in both figurative and literal overkill. Indeed, Hitler and bin Laden themselves could be prime examples of this phenomenon: moralists to the nth degree.

So which kind of effect is more aversive to our considered opinion: a somewhat lessened, because less fanatical, allegiance to our causes, or the world as it is? I hope this is not just the grass is greener phenomenon, but all I can say is that from my present outlook – surrounded as I and we are by people who are forever berating and slaughtering one another out of moral conviction – the former looks more attractive. Especially when, as I must keep reminding folks, we would still be fully susceptible to appeals to our compassion and allied motivations. When the victims of Hitler cry out to us, when the animals in factory farms cry out to us, there is something quite natural in us that will respond (other things equal). But at the same time we need not vilify those who are responsible for these things. The only rational question is: What is the most effective way to address the situation in keeping with one’s own considered desires? In the case of Hitler this could mean killing him. In the case of factory farms it means, I believe (following Gary Francione), promoting veganism.

I will add one more thing with respect to the plight of other animals at human hands (or mouths). If the animals themselves had the mental and physical means to do so, they might well mount a violent rebellion against humanity. More power to them, I say in the abstract. But given that I am a human being, and even one who is fully committed to so-called abolitionism or animal liberation, my strongest desires are human-centered. And so I have no sympathy for mounting any kind of violent overthrow of the tyrannical human regime. I possess a strong desire to live in a peaceful community with my human neighbors and friends and relatives, the majority of whom eat animals and animal products, and, further, to be on friendly, respectful, even loving terms with them; and to live in a society where major decisions are taken on a democratic basis in an environment of maximal, informed dialogue. So I will cheer for the chimps in the movie theatre as they wrest control of the world from human hands; and I most certainly admire intelligent animal-rescuers and undercover videotapers. But I do not support violence against animal-users, nor their demonization, nor even an attitude of contempt, nor intimidation, vandalism, arson, etc., in the cause of the animals. Fortunately the more extreme acts are rare, and in fact many animal advocates have explicitly ruled them out on moral grounds. But mine is not a moral statement; it’s just how my personal desires pan out in light of reflection on relevant information and experience.

The issue here is not even specific to the human/animal situation, I suspect, but has generally to do with our subjective allegiances. Furthermore, these things need have nothing to do with judgments of “inherent worth,” another item from the moralist’s toolkit. Thus, we all show various preferences to our own children; but does this rest on a belief in the lesser value of other children? Of course not. This is also why I would not consider it necessarily speciesist to refuse to take certain steps on behalf of nonhuman animals that one would take or support as a matter of course on behalf of other human beings. For there need not be a judgment of superior worth of the humans in order to have stronger bonds of commitment to them. As things stand, I believe inherent worth is a myth anyway; but if I believed in it, I would probably attribute equal worth to all sentient beings. This still would not eliminate my having preferences.

I don't see why amoralism should force anyone into total consequentialism, but does amoralism tend to encourage a more consequentialist attitude, and could this have implications for how an amoralist animal advocate promotes veganism?

For instance, there are subsistence hunters who believe they are responsible for less animal suffering than vegans; they sometimes argue that by hunting wild animals for food (sometimes singling out destructive invasive species for bonus ethical points) rather than purchasing, let's say, vegan meat replacements, they have less of a harmful impact on wild animal habitats than vegans and are less responsible for the exploitation of factory farmed animals in the form of factory farmed manure that goes to agricultural crops. Someone who believed in right and wrong might focus on intent and say that it's always wrong to intentionally kill an animal for food outside of extreme hypotheticals, and so fail to see anything positive about the hunting, even if it helps animals overall. In contrast, would an amoralist vegan be more likely to see the potential defensibility of intentional harm in order to avoid greater foreseen (but unintentional) harm?

Basically, are amoralist vegans more likely to be concerned with suffering reduction than "animal rights", and thus be more likely to think that non-vegan behaviors are sometimes the most preferable?

That is a brilliant question. But I don’t necessarily agree with the implication. I see the point that morality is often preoccupied with motives, so that these motives could lose a great deal of their significance if we were not concerned about their moral quality. But I don’t think that the features of motives that interest the moralist would necessarily be a matter of indifference to an amoralist. Take your example. It is true that an amoralist would not be bothered by any supposed immorality of intentionally killing animals for food when there were vegetarian alternatives available. But what is to prevent someone from “simply” disliking the killing of animals for food when there are other options? Nor do I think this is only a logical point. It strikes me as quite plausible that many people just don’t like to see human beings killing other animals (or any animals, including humans) unless there is a clear and present necessity to do so. And this is so even if, as in your example, the net outcome may be the deaths of still more animals.

In other words, your suggestion seems to presume that human beings are natural utilitarians, or would be in the absence of moral considerations. But I doubt that this is true. I think human responses tend to be nonutilitarian. We love our family and our pets, then our friends, then our country, our religion, and on and on, without regard to how it all plays out for “the greatest good for the greatest number.” Just so when it comes to specific phenomena, such as killing (versus letting die or inadvertently causing death), and so on. The practice of utilitarianism requires focused effort, which is why somebody like Peter Singer has to keep trying to convince everyone to behave in accordance with the results of utilitarian calculations.

The approach I would therefore recommend (and which Singer does employ in fact, along with his arguing) is to try to engage people’s nonmoral and, indeed, nonutilitarian feelings … even if it turns out that this is in the cause of some utilitarian objective. So for instance, to get the ex-moralist animal protectionist to condone hunting under the conditions you describe, you might want to portray (by verbal portrait or photographs or video or cartoon or imaginative novel or theatre or whatever) the suffering and death of wild animals via loss of habitat for vegetable farming versus their relatively quick and less numerous demise by subsistence hunting. This could work. But in the end it’s an appeal to emotion, not a utilitarian argument. I would only comment on behalf of the anti-hunter that such examples may be (for better or worse) relatively rare in the modern world.

Amoralism doesn't undermine compassion for animals, but does it undermine the specific logical arguments that the major animal rights philosophers make, such as the argument from marginal cases and inherent value? Are either Singer, Francione or Regan at all equipped to argue with those who don't believe in an objective morality?

Honestly, I don’t think it makes much difference one way or the other. This is because the belief in objective morality does not guarantee that one will subscribe to any particular moral theory. A moralist could be a utilitarian or a deontologist or an egoist or a virtue theorist or a feminist or whatever. From my amoralist point of view, all those theories simply manifest some strongly held desire or “intuition,” which the moralist then – due to the very strength of the desire – wants to impose on everyone as if it were a law of the universe. “Thou shalt” (or “shalt not”) do x in morals as in logic (as opposed to “obeying” a physical law, where one has no choice in the matter).

When I say it makes no or little difference, however, I mean that, without morality, we would still be left with our strong desires that the world be a certain way and that people behave in certain ways. So: a nonmoralist Singer would presumably still desire that the capacity for pain, even absent certain cognitive abilities, determine how we treat other sentient beings; and Regan would still desire that we treat all subjects of a life with a certain type of fundamental respect; and Francione would still desire that everyone refrain from eating any animal products (whenever it is feasible so to do) and from owning animals, because of the detrimental impact such practices and institutions have on nonhuman animals; and so forth. It’s just that their desires would no longer be supported by certain metaphysical underpinnings, such as inherent value or objective good. But such fictions are not necessary, are they? Is not compassion sufficient to motivate the same desires? Do we really suppose that Singer, Regan, and Francione do not care about other animals but only about certain abstract values and Ultimate Reality?

Furthermore, Singer, Regan and Francione will still be able to adduce all of the evidence they are accustomed to do. Singer can still point to the painful procedures employed in animal agriculture; Regan can still point to the psychological lives of other animals; Francione can still point to the counter-productivity of welfarist schemes of using other animals “humanely.” All of these things and more are available to influence the beliefs, feelings and behaviors of animal users.

The only things denied by amorality to Singer, Regan and Francione are these: some presumed objective truth or categorical imperative that requires everyone to leave off using or abusing other animals, and the attribution of wrong-doing or evil to those people who do not leave off doing those things. Neither of these has any basis in reality according to our best theory of the world, it seems to me.

I should also mention that some would argue that morality is not only not necessary to motivate people but it is also not sufficient to motivate people. An excellent article that makes this very point is Maxim Fetissenko’s “Beyond Morality: Developing a new Rhetorical Strategy for the Animal Rights Movement” in the Journal of Animal Ethics (Vol. 1, No. 2, Fall 2011, pages 150-175). (Alas, Fetissenko argues that compassion is not very effective either and suggests instead a focus on self-interested motives such as concern about health and the environment.)

Vegans don't often talk about illegalizing animal use, perhaps because that idea is too far off to consider seriously (and it would make them look bad), but a lot of vegans do see that as a goal, ideally. Is that, however, not the case for amoralist vegans?

Even people who believe in morality sometimes say "you shouldn't legislate morality," usually in reference to rules with a religious taint, since people have conflicting religious beliefs. So if the issue of ethics were openly acknowledged as unsettleable because there is no right or wrong, wouldn't this encourage a relatively ethics-agnostic governance that wouldn't want to ban too many behaviors that didn't violate social stability? And assuming there are always some humans who want to eat meat, wouldn't that leave out animals from major legal protections?

If animal advocates were undogmatic and recognized that their desires to protect animals were based on subjective feelings - subjective feelings that many humans do not share - would they feel less justified than moralist vegans would in legally overruling the desires of meat-loving, animal-indifferent humans, given that banning animal use can't be justified for practical reasons like mutual self-interest and keeping order?

This is just another of the infinity of practical questions that one could only have more-or-less educated hunches about. Also, there may not be one-answer-fits-all. As a philosopher I am not professionally in the business of judging things like this, although I often have my personal opinions (but likely based more on desire than knowledge). But I can say that the moralism/amoralism divide is not necessarily the most relevant consideration. As you point out, even moralists can be political libertarians, or selective libertarians. And when they are so, they are as often as not being pragmatic about the most effective way to bring society ‘round to their particular moral ideal. (And recall also that an amoralist could have the same ideal as a moralist, the sole difference being that the amoralist does not believe there is any obligation to achieve or live that ideal but simply desires it to hold sway.) So while your question is a very interesting one, my answer is boring: “It depends.”

But to say something a little more specific: The desirist form of amoralism I have espoused holds that we have desires regarding means as well as ends. Thus, in my own case, while I desire (as an end) that there be no use of nonhuman animals for human purposes, I also desire (as a means) that coercion be minimal. Therefore I would want to avoid legislating the abolition of animal use not only because that might be an inefficient means of achieving that goal but also because I find that means to be intrinsically aversive because coercive. Someone else, however, might find the horror of animal use to be so compelling that any means whatever, even if likely futile, would be desired by that person as a means of eliminating animal use (or, perhaps more correctly to say, as a form of expression of their strong opposition to what they are nevertheless unable to eliminate). So that person and I could end up being opponents regarding means even though we shared the goal of animal liberation.

There seem to be a lot of atheist vegans. One theory for this is that without religion, we don't have the concept of Dominion to soothe our consciences. Believing in evolution instead of God could make us feel less superior to other animals - though it could also make some of us more prone to use blood-drenched nature as our guide. Some people say that those willing to question religion are more likely to question other traditions, like meat eating. Others say that humans have a need to believe in something, and the atheist who doesn't have a personified higher power will seek substitute meaning devices, like veganism. Does it seem to you that vegans are often atheist? What's your take on it?

I am becoming repetitive since mainly what I have to say is that I’m a philosopher and hence not professionally knowledgeable about the religious or irreligious tendencies of vegans as a matter of empirical fact. Like you I can lay out the logical possibilities, and surely there are reasons both for and against veganism being allied with religion (all the more so of course because religion is hardly monolithic). But as it happens I have taken personal note of a certain phenomenon that is relevant to your question, but I put this down as no more than an impression based on my limited experience. I have been struck by the opposite tendency from what you suggest: I see much of veganism as having a religious flavor (and fervor), even among those who make no explicitly religious references. (I here take veganism to be shorthand for animal advocacy or animal liberation, both because I find Gary Francione’s brief persuasive that dietary veganism is the royal road to animal liberation and because I find Lee Hall’s brief persuasive that veganism, conceived broadly as the non-use of animals, is the very expression of the ultimate goal of respect for all animals.)

Now this should not be surprising if my general amoralist critique of morality is correct, namely, that morality even in its secular form is just another form of theism (see for example my “Confessions of an Ex-Moralist”). But the association of veganism with religion is even more specific than that. To take the most obvious example: Who among animal advocates in the West can resist the comparison of animal liberation to the Garden of Eden? The images that the Biblical narrative brings to mind are the very model of the abolitionist goal:

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

Even the animals are vegan! Indeed, I suspect (even if only generalizing from introspecting my own ideals) that a certain romanticized – and surely false -- view of animals in nature derives from the pleasant idyll of the wolf dwelling with the lamb and so forth in Isaiah’s prophecy of the new Eden. Also, I find it quite natural to recoil at the abuse of animals as a violation of their God-given life and preciousness – even though I fancy myself an atheist.

But religion, being a pervasive influence in any culture, will offer us “grounds” for whatever position on anything. It has worked the way it has in my personal journey to veganism due purely to contingent features of my life, no doubt, such as having gone to a Quaker school for 12 years. But religion could function in someone else’s life as the foundation of their carnivorism (“Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you” says God to Noah after the Flood), in which case embracing atheism could become that person’s route to veganism.

In Beyond Morality, Richard Garner argues against morality and then discusses amoral approaches to living that he thinks may lead to more pleasant lives for most people. He cites Stoicism, Epicureanism and aspects of Buddhism as useful philosophies that may reduce suffering by encouraging adherents to temper their desires and not fret about things they cannot control. Has your approach to living changed since you gave up a belief in morality? Did anything arise in morality's place? And do you find that you are happier in a "post moralist state of mind"?

Garner and I are pretty much twins about this, although I see moralist thinking and attitudes as more pervasive and ingrained than he and hence am perhaps less optimistic about the prospects for an amoral regime. But I am much happier now, indeed. Let me only begin to count the ways. A great weight of “guilt” and second-guessing is falling from my shoulders, slowly but surely. Life is so much simpler, now that, besides figuring out what I most informedly and reflectively and deeply want and how to get it, I need not also try to figure out what is the right (i.e., obligatory or permissible) thing to do (which is not only a difficult task but an impossible one, as thousands of years of inconclusive moral argumentation attest). I also thereby avoid making my own life and other people’s lives unnecessarily more difficult by opposing strong desires with mythical injunctions and prohibitions. I also am lowering the moral chip from off my shoulder; thus, I avoid countless pointless hassles with people. In fact I can now say that I hate no one, and I respect everyone; and I wish everyone well.

When I come up against a person who is doing something that I had hitherto considered wrong, even an outrage, I will now likely react only with some combination of aversion, sadness and puzzlement, but also rational reflection on how to turn the situation around to my liking. So I certainly have not become any kind of quietist. And neither have I become an egoist, a common misconception of the amoralist (or what I call the desirist) position. Although my desires are the only basis for whatever I do, my desires are just as other-directed as any moralist’s – the case in point being my unadulterated desire for the well-being of all nonhuman animals.

So I would recommend the amoralist way of life to anyone and everyone, but it is also not for me to say if everyone else will take to it as I have. For those who reject it, at least if we agree on all relevant factual matters, I would seek to live on tolerant terms to the greatest degree that is compatible with my considered desires regarding both ends and means. But therefore if my contrary desires were strong enough, as in cases where my opponent’s desires adversely affect third parties (such as animals) about whom I care, I might strive to circumvent or even overpower my adversary. I have already spoken about how this plays out (for me) with respect to veganism.

I close my remarks with a friendly request that my interlocutor and readers reconsider any resistance they may still harbor toward veganism. For people who, like myself of yore, are daunted by the apparent difficulty of becoming vegan, I have put together a dedicated Website: www.TheEasyVegan.com. For people who are skeptical about the amoralist approach to veganism (and ethics in general), I recommend the follow-up article I wrote in reply to objections that readers posted to my “Confessions” article (cited above): Atheism, Amorlity and Animals: A Response. 

Thank you for this opportunity to reflect further on and share these ideas. I look forward to additional dialogue.

[letthemeatmeat]

Interview With a Vegan: Speciesist Vegan

If you think humans are better than other animals, you're a speciesist, and you might as well be judging humans on the color of their skin.

At least, if you believe anti-speciesist vegans. 

Speciesism, they say, is no more acceptable than other forms of discrimination; looking down on organisms because of their biological classification is just as arbitrary and loathsome as doing the same to humans because of their gender or sexual orientation. We're not nature's most impressive creation -- we're just nature's most arrogant, our delusional sense of self-importance blinding us to the reality that we're just one of many kinds of sentient creatures who happen to inhabit this planet, none more or less valuable than the rest. 

Many who go vegan for ethical reasons believe that anti-speciesism is a key component of any serious vegan philosophy, and that vegans who don't accept it are vegan for the wrong reasons and are part of the problem. For this reason, vegans who can't quite get into the idea that species is a meaningless division which shouldn't really be considered at all tend to be private about this view. 

But not Speciesist Vegan, the anonymous vegan writer who uses his blog -- also named Speciesist Vegan -- to discuss why he thinks anti-speciesism doesn't make sense, as well as why there is still an argument for veganism anyway.

The blog is only about a month old but is already one of the most fascinating vegan blogs I've read. Which is why I did this interview. 

And in case you prefer your speciesist veganism in small doses and can't commit to the full interview just yet, CarpeVegan has the abridged version.

Many vegans say that speciesism is a form of discrimination akin to racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, ableism, classism and heterosexism. You, however, are speciesist, yet maintain an opposition to prejudice against different groups of humans. What makes speciesism different than those others?

Well, to state the obvious, all the -isms you mentioned in the first sentence concern intraspecies relations and speciesism deals with interspecies relations. 

Basically, for various reasons, but largely because I AM a human and not some other type of animal, I feel that humans have more moral worth than other animals. I hope it will be more clear why by the end of this interview.

And just to be clear, it's not like I don't see any similarities between how some people treat animals and how some people treat (or used to treat) other humans who are different from them. There are plenty of analogies to be drawn. I just have a general distaste for moral argumentation by analogy. Even if there are some legitimate parallels that can be made between dairy farms and slave plantations, the analogy is offensive to me (and almost all non-vegans). If I have to explain to you why the analogy is offensive, you're definitely a vegan and your name might be Gary.

Yet you're vegan. Doesn't accepting speciesism allow for an anything-goes treatment of animals?

It doesn't preclude such a course of action, but it certainly doesn't demand it or even encourage it. The vast majority of people are already speciesist and most of them are in favor of at least some measure of protection for animals. I just don't think that something has to be like humans for me to respect it and choose to leave it alone rather than destroy it.

This is something I find problematic with the idea of species equality being the reason for animals having "rights." A rigid anti-speciesism seems to make the case that animals deserve rights/protection because they are like us. Why do we feel that only beings who are like us have value? In the same way that we say the differences don’t warrant poor treatment, isn’t it also folly to argue that the similarities are what should warrant good treatment/rights?

Why can’t we just decide that animals have value because they have their own interests and just leave similarities and differences out of it? I think it’s enough to say that it’s wrong to regard sentient beings as objects or property simply because they are sentient and especially because using/regarding them as property is unnecessary the majority of the time.

So, no, I don't think that admitting that you're speciesist is the gateway to puppy punching. I think it's actually a more honest, acceptable position to most non-vegans and therefore it is potentially a position that is more likely to win converts to veganism.

I was once debating with an abolitionist vegan in the comments of one of my blog entries, and I admitted to being a speciesist. She then said that further discussion would be impossible and left the debate. Is disagreement over speciesism so wide a gulf that it makes arguing about other animal issues a waste of time?

I got kicked off of the Vegan Freaks Forum for openly admitting that I'm speciesist. For some people, there are certain philosophical differences that simply preclude further debate, and I think that's terrible. But that's how some of these hard-liners see it: since animals and humans are coequals, denying this supposed equality is tantamount to making claims of racial superiority, and they just won't stand for it. These are the types of positions that a rigid anti-speciesism, taken to its logical extreme, can force people into. They see no point in arguing with someone who actually cares about the issue and who they might actually have a lot in common with philosophically. I fail to see how that makes for good activism.

On that same forum I requested on one thread that people stop making arguments formed on analogies to racism, sexism etc. and one prominent user there got quite mad that I would try to tell other people how to argue. But that wasn't the reason it upset him, in my opinion. So much of Francione/abolitionist logic and argumentation is predicated on being able to equate speciesism to all the other -isms, so if you take away that rhetorical device, they feel like you've taken away their ammo.

How sad is that? Argument by analogy is just one way to make an ethical argument, so one shouldn't feel disarmed if someone requests that they talk about the thing at hand. Analogies can sometimes illuminate, but analogies always shift focus AWAY from the thing at hand. There is no such thing as a perfect analogy because the moment two things become perfectly analogous, they're the same thing and you're just comparing something to itself. So analogies are always imperfect and it's not unreasonable for a participant in an argument to request that the focus stay on the thing actually being discussed. But this is lost on certain AR/abolitionist types. If they can't compare Dean Foods to Auschwitz, they just don't want to talk to you.

I'd rather spend my time discussing issues with people who can build bridges rather than burn them or preempt them being built. The vast majority of people who profess a belief in anti-speciesism really don't believe it as much as they claim to, and they are willing to discuss things with people who show good faith and a genuine interest in the issues. Let the hardliners try to impress each other with their intolerance for other views. It's what they do best anyway.

Are a lot of vegans secretly speciesist, but deny it because they think it contradicts veganism?

Absolutely, except most of the denial is to themselves. Most of them are telling others "the truth" insofar as they basically believe that they are truly anti-speciesist. They basically have to proclaim it to be a "good vegan." There are certain abolitionist types who simply brook no deviation from the anti-speciesist dogma. They would oust a dissenter or terminate an otherwise productive conversation before they would allow anti-speciesism to be seriously questioned. And I think that the more prominent you get in the abolitionist world, the more you feel pressured to display and enforce a rigid anti-speciesist view (and the more you internalize the sentiments and arguments).

And what is all this dissent quashing and self-censorship done for? Veganism can exist without belief in human/nonhuman equality. Maybe I'm the minority, but I suspect there are more people who think like me than many in the "vegan establishment" would guess. Some are probably reading what I'm saying right now and finding, possibly to their surprise, that they agree with a lot of it. I hope they do something about it. The problems associated with this are too big to dismiss this as a petty squabble between vegan factions.

What's the problem with using anti-speciesism as a litmus test for being a real vegan?

The problem is that it inevitably turns the focus away from what people do to what they think. It turns vegans who don't have AR as their primary motivation into "fake vegans." It's beyond me why vegans want to turn their already small group into an even smaller group by raising the bar for entry. It limits the pool of potential vegans to only those who will accept the idea that their life is only as valuable as a rat's life. Most people will NEVER accept such a premise. Learn to work with it or fight it. I choose to work with it.

Is it even possible to be truly anti-speciesist?

I think maybe it is possible, but to be truly anti-speciesist, you would need to have some opinions that would disgust your fellow humans. You would have to say that you'd just flip a coin to see if you'd save the baby or the puppy. You'd have to say that killing a child to feed your starving dogs is morally equivalent to killing a dog to feed your starving kids. So, yes, I think technically one could be truly anti-speciesist, but that would make you a total psycho in most people’s eyes.

And consider that even the most extreme, radical, reckless animal rights activists, the ones who blow shit up and burn shit down, still go to great lengths to make sure that they don't harm humans. If all life really is equal, why wouldn't killing an animal researcher or hog farmer be justified? Answer: because humans have more moral worth than animals. Even the hardest of the hardcores acknowledge this through their actions if not their words. If a crazy AR activist ends up killing or even hurting a fellow human (intentionally or accidentally), they will be reviled by 99.9% of vegans and 99.9999% of humans. I think for all intents and purposes, most vegans are actually on the same page as non-vegans on this one. Some of them are just loathe to admit it.

Do you think the animal rights movement will eventually become violent against humans? And if so, will it be because of anti-speciesism?

I think it's inevitable that part of the AR movement will eventually become violent against humans, sure. But I don't see it becoming widespread. And, yes, if it does occur (especially if it's intentional), I think it's likely that the perpetrators would consider themselves anti-speciesist. One would need to have a way to rationalize why killing a person is okay. Anti-speciesism, plus either some kind of utilitarian logic or Old Testament "eye for an eye" reasoning could get you there. But I want to emphasize that I do NOT think that anti-speciesists are inherently anti-human or prone to violence.

Pretty much the only problem I have with veganism, philosophically, is that it claims to be a moral obligation for everyone who is capable of surviving as a vegan. But you don't think veganism is a moral obligation. Why not?

While I was an abolitionist in training, I was told (over and over and over) that veganism is the "moral baseline." But I could never really internalize it. I just didn't think that my friends and family were being immoral when they ate meat. I thought that I was making the ethically better choice (and I still think it), but I stopped short of thinking of meat eating as being straight up immoral. Moral and immoral are such stark opposites of each other and I never felt like such a dichotomized understanding of the ethics of meat-eating described my actual feelings.

I really started to rethink it all after reading your posts on how vegans still contribute to animal death and how veganism is ultimately an arbitrary line. I had given plenty of thought to the former (and found ways to explain why it was just unintended, collateral damage, and therefore okay), but I had a mental roadblock about the latter. How can one have a moral obligation to achieve one arbitrary point along a continuum? How does that make sense? It doesn't.

So I eventually did come to see that what I had previously thought of as a totally logical line in the sand was actually an arbitrary line (but that’s not necessarily a bad thing). It was around this time that I became okay with admitting my own speciesism. So when I read about the concept of supererogation on your site, all this started to click for me (although it took me a while to sort through it all).

I view being vegan not as a moral obligation, but as an act of supererogation. But I also believe that one should really always be striving to make the best choices available to them. So, I think that there is still a way to make an ethical argument for why one should be vegan (or veganish, or vegetarian, or whatever). And that argument is pretty simple: "being vegan causes less harm, causing less harm is good, so go vegan or at least try to reduce your animal consumption."

I know that lacks the emotional, prescriptive thrust of "go vegan or you're a fucking murdering scumbag!" but what can I say? It's more in line with the way I actually think about these things. I am still unequivocal in my assertion that being vegan is ethically better than not being vegan, but I'm not saying that not being vegan is immoral. Hence, one does not have a moral obligation to be vegan.

As you've mentioned on your blog, one of the reasons that a lot of vegans say they don't eat non-vegan freegan food (NVFF) is because of representation. They say that eating NVFF demonstrates that animals can be food (as if most people aren't already aware of this), and also that someone might see them eating meat and not know it's from a dumpster and then be confused about what veganism is. What do you think of the excuses vegans make to avoid freeganism?

It's well known that some non-vegans are always on the lookout for signs of inconsistency in vegans, so I can understand why, given the predominant definition of veganism, some would view eating NVFF as inconsistent or hypocritical. What I am proposing is that we should have a new kind of veganism (or veganishism, or call it what you want) where the ability to eat NVFF is part of the "rules." Eating NVFF doesn't violate the ethics of veganism as I understand them, so we should give non-vegans the benefit of the doubt and assume that they're intelligent enough to grasp this. Some won't, but we shouldn't design a movement around people who will never understand something that makes sense.

I don't have a problem with vegans not wanting to practice elements of freeganism. For the same reason I don't argue that anyone has a moral obligation to be vegan, I don't argue that anyone has a moral obligation to go further than veganism. If some vegans just can't or don’t want to get on board with it personally, that’s fine. Just don't look down your nose at me if I choose to eat the end of a slice of pizza that my friend is about to throw in the garbage.

How does your speciesism change your attitude toward meat eaters?

When I was freshly vegan, I kinda tried to make myself buy the whole "meat is murder" line because once you do, all these other things fall into place, all this supposed consistency. And during that time I did have more antipathy toward meat eaters. But I always viewed it as a personal choice that everyone has to make for themselves, even when I (sort of) believed that it was immoral to eat meat. Maybe it was the libertarian part of my brain that made me think this way, but I never was on board with the idea of forcing anyone not to eat meat.

Now that I’ve come a long way in figuring out my philosophy (veganism as supererogation, admitting my speciesism, allowing for freeganism etc.), my attitude allows me to get along with people of all dietary persuasions much more easily. And life really is better this way. It can be draining to feel like you’re surrounded by sinners while you’re a martyr nailed to a tofu cross and no one gives a shit.

What do you think of the anti-speciesist "Why Love One But Eat the Other?" campaign, which tries to make us see the similarity between farm animals and pets?

I don't know much about Mercy For Animals, so I don't want to comment specifically on that organization or campaign, so I'll just give my reaction to this poster and the idea itself. I like it. It probably makes some people question if there really is much difference between puppies and piglets, or chicks and kittens. I think their choice of animals indicates that they’re trying to manipulate the cutetarian sentiments that many people have, but overall, I like the idea.

But what I think you’re getting at is this: if I'm a speciesist, how can I make a case that the puppy and the piglet deserve the same treatment and protection? Well, I can't really do that as a speciesist. I can only say that treating animals with respect is almost always the more ethical choice.

I don't view the embracing of speciesism as a panacea, an all-encompassing ideological shift that will make everything better. I'm just trying to work within current reality. Anti-speciesists, on the other hand, view anti-speciesism (an idea that is embraced by an embarrassingly small percentage of people) as the linchpin that will usher in the Vegan Utopia. I just think this is naive.

It's easier to convince people to take steps toward the vegan end of the spectrum than it is to convince them that all forms of animal life are equal. In four years of being vegan, I've seen one person become vegan, one become vegetarian, one become "freegan" vegetarian, two people become pescetarian, and a whole slew of people dabbling in making more veg*an choices. I’m not saying that I take credit for all of these, but I am saying that not ONE of these people would consider themselves anti-speciesist.

How does a speciesist veganism differ from an anti-speciesism veganism, in practice and theory?

I won't pretend to have the right to define what speciesist veganism is, because I know there are other speciesist vegans out there (and a lot of them are probably afraid to be open about it, like I was). But I do have some ideas about things that could help veganism (or veganishism) find a wider audience and have a greater long-term retention rate. Only some of these points are a natural conclusion drawn from approaching veganism from a speciesist perspective.

The following list (which is in no particular order) is just an abbreviated list of the maxims on my blog. It is a work in progress. If any like-minded individuals want to help me hash out some new ideas (or even tweak or argue with me about existing ones), I'd love to have the added brainwaves:

*buy only vegan food

*eat any food (vegan or not) that can be obtained by freegan means

*one needn’t believe that animals have rights equal to or even similar to the rights of humans to be vegan

*acknowledge that not all forms of speciesism are bad

*avoidance of animal foods is supererogatory, not morally obligatory

*approach all debates and info with an open mind. The case for veganism is not absolute

*take nutrition, and critiques of veganism based on nutrition, seriously

*avoid analogies to slavery, rape and genocide

*be vocal about the fact that no one should have to sacrifice their health to be vegan

*promote the idea that veganism (and freegan veganism) is the ideal, but that near-veganism (or being veganish) is a laudable goal and may even be the end goal for a particular person

*take seriously the critiques of locavores, animal welfare activists, fair trade activists, anti-corporatists etc

*veganism is not, and needn’t be, globally applicable to be the right choice for the majority of people

*be realistic and honest about the dietary/culinary/taste/nutritional/lifestyle advantages and disadvantages of being vegan

*recognize that vegetarians, near-vega*ans and “conscientious omnivores” are allies, not enemies to be either converted or denounced as weak-willed

*Admit that veganism is an arbitrary line in the sand

One point that I want to stress (especially since this is appearing on the blog of a person who left veganism for health reasons) is that a speciesist vegan would be okay with someone eating non-vegan food if they were having health problems that they felt were due to nutrition. No one should have to sacrifice their health to be vegan. A speciesist vegan can admit that their life and well-being is more important than the well-being (or even the life) of a chicken or a cow. Instead of having a definition of veganism that forces someone with health problems to abandon veganism so that they can eat the food that makes them feel better without feeling like a murderer (and then start an anti-vegan website - ha!), why not have a definition of veganism that allows them to "stay in the club" while eating whatever they need to eat to feel right? I think speciesist veganism has the potential to do that.

Many vegans will feel very adamant that what I'm describing here is unequivocally NOT veganism, and that's fine, because I never did and never will have interest in those types of arguments. I eat the way I do because it's what I’ve found to be a good balance between my ideals and my own comfort and health, not because I want to maintain my membership in some elite group of hypermoralistic, specialized eaters. I advocate for a "big tent" type of veganism because I see that having a much better chance for growth than the culty, puritanical version now in vogue. If vegans object to me calling it speciesist veganism, they can offer alternatives.

In one of your early entries, you mentioned that discovering CarpeVegan inspired you to start your blog. How did that get you going?

I live a pretty lonely existence as a vegan. I have a pretty fulfilling social life, but my curious "mix" of beliefs often makes me feel like I have no real home when it comes to what I eat. So whenever I find a blog or a person who is thinking in a somewhat different way about all these issues that I care about, I get excited by the possibility that there are people out there who think like me.

I just want to talk to (and read posts from) people who are trying to do something different with veganism (or any kind of philosophy that takes issues of animal use seriously), like CarpeVegan is doing. PCrank is cool too. He seems to be attacking the anti-science "woo" in veganism, while I am exploring the problems of theory, argumentation and rhetoric. I think that veganism (or something substantially like it) really could have an increased role to play in our future (out of necessity, because of changing mores, or both), but I have really come to dislike most vegan rhetoric.

I specifically dislike the Francione / "veganism is the moral baseline" crowd. I feel they have exerted undue influence on what it means to be vegan. I think a lot of vegans are attracted to that camp because the ideas seem so radical, but the more I engage with their ideas, the more I realize that they’re really just the most simplistic - they keep repeating the same things over and over again. Lack of nuance is a good thing to them. I have debated many abolitionist types and I don't think there is any winning with a lot of them. I just hope that some of us newer vegan bloggers will expose some cracks to the rank-and-file abolitionists and fence-sitters and that they'll slowly start peeling off from that camp.

And it wasn't just CarpeVegan that inspired me. More inspiring than that, oddly enough, was Let Them Eat Meat. One thing that reading LTEM has opened my eyes to is the number of ex-vegans out there. It seems that a lot of the more vocal ones became ex-vegan for health reasons, which makes sense, because leaving for health reasons gives you better cover than just saying “I just got sick of all the idiots.” Not that all vegans respect when people leave for health reasons, though. Some are the asshole types who say "you didn't do this right, you didn't do that right." But what does that do? All they are doing is being an apologist for something that is imperfect. I think there has got to be a less vocal contingent of people who left veganism for other reasons. I would really like to talk with them and find out why.

What I think about when I ponder ex-vegans is: what KIND of veganism might have allowed this person to want to continue to be vegan? What KIND of veganism would have allowed this person to address their health concerns without feeling like they were questioning the sanctity of an inviolable concept? What KIND of vegan community could help foster and support such a new concept of veganism? It certainly isn't one that shuts down debate and parrots decades-old dogma.

Veganism as we currently know it is flawed. If I can play even a small part in helping people to find "A New Way" then I will feel like my effort is worth it. That's why I started my blog.

[letthemeatmeat]

That's an interview with Vegan Represent founder Dave D that I posted to CarpeVegan. 

But don't worry, I haven't abandoned Let Them Eat Meat for Carpe Vegan. I promise to post at least two real entries this month. In the meantime, read Forks Over Knives: Is the Science Legit?, which puts my Forks Over Knives review to shame. Writing mine a year earlier doesn't get me off the hook - I should have used charts.  

Also, since this review is nothing but links... in England, you can't be fired for your animal rights views. Hopefully this applies equally to people who don't believe in animal rights. I would hate to move there and then find out I can't hold down a job because of my controversial pro-animal-use views.

[letthemeatmeat]

Interview With a Vegan: Adam Weitz......

Adam is a graduate student and instructor of philosophy, maintains the food blog H.E.A.L.T.H., and is a film review editor for the Journal of Critical Animal Studies. He emailed me in March of this year; he'd come to my blog wanting to hate it, but found himself appreciating some of my arguments, and hoped I would discuss veganism with him. I didn't follow up on the email, but Adam got harder to ignore once he became one of my most challenging and intriguing commenters. I'm relieved when Adam agrees with me, because when he doesn't, it's not an easy fight. I once took an entry down in defeat after Adam thoroughly dismantled its core point. But hey... only once.

The problem with debating Adam is that he doesn't rely on the standard animal rights or suffering reduction arguments, both of which I believe have fatal flaws. It's not hard to poke holes in the arguments positing an (unattainable) logical perfection though "cruelty-free" consumption, but Adam doesn't fall into that trap. He argues for veganism from a "perspective of care," a concept that is harder to explain than other cases for veganism — drastically curtailing its mainstream appeal — but one I’m not sure I could debunk. If anyone could convince me that I'm wrong about veganism, it's Adam. 

Many of Adam's answers could stand alone as individual essays, which is why Adam posted longer versions of some them as entries on his blog. (Be sure to visit it if you want to see more.) But the interview is worth reading if you're curious to see the strongest formulation of vegan beliefs that I've seen.

You don't agree with how mainstream veganism is often practiced. What do you believe is wrong with the standard consumer veganism that the most mainstream advocates promote?

The mainstream discourse and practice of veganism as an individual’s (abstention from) the consumption of animal products, I believe, is problematic in three interrelated ways: practically as an economic boycott, socially as a privileged consumerism, and philosophically as an equivocation with a vegetarian lifestyle.

Practically, positioning veganism as an economic boycott is a very limited tactic given the prevalence of global capitalism. Mainstream veganism only addresses the content (i.e. animal products) and not the form/structure (i.e. capitalism) of the global market that facilitates the exploitation of animals as commodities and obstructs people from transforming society. This is evident in several ways.

First, many mainstream vegans tend to regard the very culprits of animal exploitation as the remedy. Veganism is now sold to people in the form of products (sometimes explicitly labeled “vegan”) by the very corporations (i.e. Kraft, Dean, Con-Agra, Burger King, etc.) that exist and profit off the exploitation of animals.

Second, even if consumer vegans extend their boycott from the individual product consumed to the company who profits from it, without also challenging the present political-economic order of capitalism in which the interests of corporations persistently trump the interests of the general public, vegans remain complicit in the system that entitles businesses to exploit animal others (and human others as well). If consumer vegans were able to make significant dents in the national market, all this will be reversed by the rise of the affluent animal-eating class in the developing world to whom animals raised nationally will be exported, or—in “a race to the bottom”— to where the industry will be exported, displacing farmers and wildlife and externalizing production costs upon their communities.

Third, veganism as an economic boycott does not even universally empower people to practice a wholly vegetarian diet. Since wholesome food is presently regarded as a commodity rather than a socio-political right, large populations of disadvantaged people who have little to no financial and/or geographic access to vegetarian food and goods are thus are severely disadvantaged from living a secure vegetarian lifestyle. In sum, mainstream vegan discourse and activism's focus on economic boycott is problematic, not because it is ineffective, but because it is insufficient. Without challenging the political, economic and social structure of society, veganism as a movement will make little progress reducing and abolishing animal exploitation. If vegans are sincere about creating a vegan society, veganism ought to be a social space to which people are generously provided access. Veganism will have limited success so long as it remains a luxury reserved for those with privilege, independent of human liberation movements.

Socially, what is so troublesome about understanding veganism as primarily an abstention from the consumption of animal products is that it facilitates a number of objectionable social practices: self-righteousness, identity politics, maliciousness, colonialism, classism, and privileged consumerism. These objections to veganism, however, are not universal to all vegan practices. That veganism has been a medium for such unfavorable sociality is due to veganism being understood as a single-issue to which all other social movements are subordinated, backgrounded, or separated. For instance, consumer vegans are often content calling their food or products “cruelty-free,” even as human animals are exploited and tormented during the production. While I do think most mainstream vegans have very good intentions, the effects of some of their actions and discourse alienate potential allies. There needs to be a shift away from individual consumption to social relations. A politics of alliance that addresses the social structures of oppression in which the degradation of human and animal others are interrelated offers a more promising dialogical medium for vegan advocacy.

Philosophically, when veganism is reduced to personal consumption or political action it becomes an instrument of morality rather than an ethics itself. If veganism is primarily a lifestyle that concerns nothing other than (an abstention from) consumption, then veganism is nothing more than a proper extension of or purification of vegetarianism: veganism is simply a vegetarian lifestyle. It logically follows that, if veganism is the moral baseline, that one’s consumption is the only qualification for being vegan, then one can very well be a speciesist vegan. This may sound peculiar because it is.

According to Ida Hammer, veganism is no “accident.” Veganism is a revolutionary praxis: “an anti-oppression framework that views the abolition of animal exploitation as part of a wider struggle for social justice” and “leads to a way of life (or lifestyle) that is based on noncooperation with, and divestment from, exploitation.” Hammer’s liberation and anti-oppression discourse is notably different from Francione and Singer’s discourse on suffering and equality. Francione fails to recognize how the principles and rights he advocates have not even stopped humans from being oppressed. For instance, Afro-Americans may have been emancipated from slavery, however a new institution was created, the prison-industrial-complex, to place them back into bondage. Hammer explains that “[t]he property status of other animals… is just one piece of the structure of human supremacy, just as human slavery was just one piece of the structure of White supremacy.”

The theoretical discrepancies and historical failure of these principles can be traversed by focusing on renouncing human privilege and the corresponding institution of speciesism. “[S]ince speciesism is an ideology of oppression that legitimates the existing social order, we need to see veganism as a counter-ideology of liberation.” Removing the “-ism” from veganism, risks alienating veganism—an anti-oppression framework—from being a vegan, a “consumptive pattern that is increasingly self-interested and individualized” in contemporary discourse. Actions may speak louder than words, but veganism cannot be reduced to one's (consumptive) actions alone. The fetishization of consumption practices misplaces the potential of veganism as a transformative social and ecological justice modality.

How would you describe the form of veganism that you advocate?

 The most fundamental difference between the veganism I advocate and that advocated by others is focus. Veganism as a purely vegetarian lifestyle typically focuses on consumption practices associated with the individual, abstention, and identity; however, I’m interested in veganism as a social practice, a mode of being with others, that is relational, affirmative, and transformative.

I understand veganism as a  social modality, an affiliation and solidarity with others beyond (species) boundaries. Veganism is an affirmation of our curiosity about and especially our care for the lives of nonhuman animals. It is a relationship with nonhuman animals that enables us to interact with them as social beings, not merely biological, cultural, or symbolic objects. In other words, through veganism we relate to nonhuman animals first and foremost as someones and not somethings. Through it, we care for and are curious about who animals are in their particularity not what they can do for us. Veganism as a social relation with nonhuman animals requires that we are receptive of and respect their interests and points of views, even when these interests and views are inconvenient to our own. 

Veganism is like a conversation: it requires we care and be willing to listen to others’ “voices.” Like a good conversation, a vegan social modality is incompatible with asserting oneself onto and over others. If their singularity and agency are to be recognized, affirmed, and cared for in conversation, we must act least violently toward them. The predominant (social) relationship to nonhuman animals as resources to exploit requires and facilitates an “emotional deafness” to their interests and perspectives. By killing nonhuman animals, we terminate the very possibility of conversation with them. By exploiting them, we end our care for how they feel in response to our actions as soon as caring becomes inconvenient to economic, biological, and cultural ends. By baring us to the responsibility of our care for animal others, veganism is the practice of intersectional and interspecies participatory justice, not  personal purity (i.e. cruelty-free, body-as-a-temple), moral pragmatism (i.e. “the best choice for our health, the environment, and animals”), or political protest (i.e. economic boycott).

A point I want to make is that care for animals is not a modern addition to our care for human beings, but a byproduct of that care and something that preceeds moral reasoning. Marti Kheel excellently articulates the direction of my inquiry into the social, cultural, and psychological conditions for veganism and the consumption of animals:

[T]he arguments for why someone should be vegetarian may have little to do with the actual factors that influence people to adopt vegetarianism…the focus on developing compelling arguments for why it is morally correct to become vegetarian may be missing the mark.

Kheel’s shift of inquiry, I believe, is of the utmost importance. Before considering why eating animals is compelling, let’s consider why not eating them is: given how few self-identified vegans are raised in vegetarian (friendly) households, how and why are people persuaded into an alternative, less convenient and respected lifestyle?

I don’t believe it is because people simply choose to be vegan by a commitment to logical consistency. To choose to abstain from animal products and the exploitation of animals may be deliberate, but it presupposes that their relationships to animals are something they are already concerned about. Rather than “choosing” to be vegan, people come into veganism—as they would a conversation—through a transformation of their previous social relationship with an animal other. Animal others becomesomeone other than a resource. Thus, people come into vegan practice through an affirmation of the care and regard for animal others that preceded the event of deliberation.

Veganism as a social modality is not something people are normally subjected to by other people. On the contrary, it is something we identify with from within our particular relationship with animal others. Veganism only has the appearance of being a threatening foreign element to the self because we live within a society in which popular opinion is on the whole antagonistic to the idea of veganism. Nonetheless, veganism is a condition—our concern for the well-being of animal others and our suffering-with them—that invites us to inhabit it more maturely when we witness the disturbing social reality of human-animal relations (i.e. debeaking, veal crates, vivisection, etc). Often, people are so discomforted by the social reality of human-animal relations that they are overwhelmed by guilt. The sheer magnitude of the guilt they feel from transgressingtheir own modality of care may move them to anger directed at the culprit or situation and/or remorse for the animals. These affections are productive and transformative; they inspire personal as well as social change.

However, more than likely, people stagnate in their fixation on their self and privilege. They try to alleviate their guilt that calls them to responsibility by either completely disavowing (i.e. “I don’t care”) or reactively asserting themselves against their modality of care for animal others (i.e. “they are just animals,” “we are at the top of the food chain”). Through a superimposed foundation of rationalizations, people can secure themselves from being vulnerable to being transformed by others. I think Chloë Tayloris spot on when she writes that

the reason that only a fraction of those convinced [by arguments for vegetarianism] transform this conviction into a practice does not correspond to the moral superiority of some or the weakness of will of others, but with the sort of selves that the individuals in question wish to be.

It is simply not the case as Francione argues that people simply eat and exploit animals because of “pleasure, amusement, and convenience.” Eating and exploiting animals is permeated with cultural narratives that give people a sense of identity, meaning, and self-worth. And this is a large factor in why people feel so threatened when they are confronted by the disturbing reality of our relationship to animal others, by the inconsistency in their professed care for animal others and their actual social relationship to them. Not only is their personal “freedom” at stake because it is in conflict with their other values, but also their self-esteem because it becomes difficult to reconcile one’s belief in the goodness of their society and self with the reality of the terrible things done to animal others that they are complicit with.

People do not like to renounce all the privileges they have accumulated in society at the expense of (animal) others’ subordination; they do not like to feel insecure about who they are and how they live; they resist the responsibility they are called to by a world that challenges their self-certainty and goodness. This is why a disavowal of their care and/or rationalizations become necessary to reconcile this discrepancy in their values. Through focusing on one’s guilt rather than one’s care for the other—a pre-condition for the guilt—, the human self becomes the subject of veganism, not the animal other.

Certainly, the same criticism applies to many self-identified vegans—like consumption-based vegans—when they dogmatically dismiss moral consideration for non-“animal” others (i.e. insects, plants) or when they attempt to secure their theory and practice as consistent by confidently excusing or simplifying very complex moral issues (i.e. the removal or killing of insect “pests”, managing companion animals’ diet and sexuality). Whatever someone’s identity or consumption practices, when they rationalize their indifference toward the existence of others, disavows their own fallibility, and disallow their own personal and social transformation, they have privileged themselves or their ideology above particular animals. This is counter to veganism as I understand it.

You wrote, "Veganism, in other words, is fundamentally an affirmation of and care for the “voices” of animal others through “listening” (i.e. receptive curiosity and regard). Since careful listening takes place between particular responsive beings, not abstract or inanimate ones, killing animals irreversibly terminates conversations, silencing animal others."

Since humans and other animals cannot interact in the same way that humans can interact with other humans -- and other animals cannot integrate into human society -- most vegan solutions for ending the exploitation and killing of animals (animal liberation) seem to require a human/animal separatism. How would your idea of veganism avoid that? How would we have an opportunity to communicate with animals in any way if we did not have pets and if we did not have animals on farms?

First of all, it’s not as if all human-animal social interactions are with domestic animals. Many modern humans take for granted or simply overlook their interactions or opportunities to interact with free animals in backyards, parks, abandoned lots, the outskirts of town, forest preserves, national parks, etc. (I highly recommend checking out the work of David Rothenberg who plays music with animal others). Do these relationships typically involve the same intimacy or reciprocity as in domestic human-animal relations? No, but then again, we have no entitlement to demand they speak for or to us. To expect so is an abuse of human privilege. My understanding of veganism does not make (reciprocal) human-animal communication a right. Nonetheless, we can have a social relationship with them (vs a merely biological or symbolic one) through accepting their indifference to, fear of, or curiosity towards us because we respect their perspective and preferences as other sentient beings. One could draw the analogy to the anthropologists’ who respect uncontacted peoples by recognizing their self-determination to choose to communicate with modern peoples or not. Silence can be a powerful way to communicate not only disinterest but also respect. 

If it is our relationship to domestic animals after animal emancipation that you are curious about, I would say that non-exploitation does not require the extinction of domestic animal others. As an example, sometimes I imagine new agroecological communities that include nonhuman animal partners to whom we would respect to a similar degree as the inhabitants of animal sanctuaries: no forced work, no premature death, and free housing and healthcare. This would mean much fewer animals and much more diverse agroecological systems than today’s monocrop and industrial farms. As partners, animal others would contribute to the sustainable production of plants for consumption without synthetic fertilizer and toxic pesticides. Perhaps, too, curious people from the surrounding area can socialize with these animals and even volunteer in their care taking. These systems would thus require neither human nor nonhuman animal exploitation or separation/alienation. Is this possible? We’ll never know what is possible if we don’t imagine otherwise.

Why do you refer to animals that aren't humans as "animal others"? 

The short answer to your question is that the usage is a personal preference. From my background in philosophy, “the other” is a concept for that which is never known in its totality, and that which, because it is different, insists that we respond thoughtfully and generously to it lest we do it violence to secure a false sense of certainty in our selves.

The longer answer is that I don’t use this term to avoid offending chimpanzees, tuna, and stinkbugs. It’s a rhetorical device for reorienting human understanding of and social relations to animals other than H. sapiens sapiens. Rather than thoughtlessly accepting the dominant discourse on animal others as inconsequential, I deliberately change my rhetoric because I believe it does something: it reveals an alternative understanding of human-animal relations, and this in turn changes how we relate to animal others on a social and ecological level. 

Addressing those animals who are (what David Abrams calls) more-than-human as "animal others," on the contrary, neither assumes an opposition (i.e. humans vs animals) nor a human center (i.e. a human could be an animal other to a pig); animals are referenced in their singularity, not the generality of their species or their deviation from humanity. By discursively framing "the other" as the subject and "animal" as the adjective, I'm highlighting the historical relationship whereby humans have marginalized animals as others--that this designation is a cultural construction--and that the otherness of animals, their unique differences, ought to be taken into consideration.

I've seen you imply that it is not necessary to have a vegan diet to be vegan in your understanding of the term. Could you elaborate? 

Yes, I have written that one could theoretically be a non-vegetarian who practices veganism, however, I wouldn’t put it in the same words you do. I’m not interested in the identity politics that surround the “vegan” label and do not want veganism to be reduced to a vegetarian diet. I don’t think of veganism as a noun to be identified with, purchased, consumed, and secured, but as a relationship with others that is never yet complete. By labeling goods, organizations, or oneself “vegan,” people become complacent that they are doing enough through their purchasing power and by addressing animal exploitation as a single-issue divorced from social and ecological reality.

Several months ago, I provocatively asked an audience, Could someone practice veganism without being vegetarian? I did so in order to challenge vegans’ complicity or even dogmatic adherence to a particular understanding of veganism. Since, I’ve started experimenting with creating a more productive tension between veganism and vegetarianism. This experiment began as a result of two other aspects of mainstream veganism I felt uncomfortable with.

First, after reading The Vegan Ideal, I became dissatisfied by people who identified as “vegan” who were not allies in ending the institution of speciesism or even advocating for animal rights. The original meaning of veganism has been lost and emptied of all its historical and revolutionary significance as vegan is increasingly appropriated by yuppies and youth subcultures. Second, as I became more cognizant of food allergies and abelism, I was less confident that there was an optimal diet universal to all human bodies. Given that bodies vary in their ability to digest certain foods, it would be pretty shitty for one to judge someone for eating animal products if they were, say, “digestively disabled.” I say all this while believing that the great majority of humans can flourish or at least maintain satisfactory health on a fully vegetarian diet. My objective is simply to not see difference (where it truly exists) as a moral failure or exception to "the vegan ideal." One can theoretically inhabit veganism without being able to be vegetarian.

One of my major concerns—especially after reading your blog—is that people simply give up on veganism because vegetarianism didn’t work for them for (presumably) reasons beyond their control. The fallacy is that if there is something wrong with vegetarianism (i.e. that it cannot be universalized to all human bodies, cultures, and ecologies), then the animal etiquette of veganism must be wrong as well. Thus, ex-vegans rationalize speciesism, adopting often an entirely new worldview and an instrumental, biological relationship to animal others. Chloë Taylor describes this phenomenon well:

It is not the case that we first determine that we are superior to non-human animals and then we conclude that we have the moral license to eat them. Rather, it is through our very eating of other animals that we constitute our superiority… Human superiority is not a fact from which the permissibility of our practices is deduced; on the contrary, human superiority is something which we construct through our instrumentalization of other species.

Taylor’s assertion is not mere philosophical drivel. Just last year, research psychologistsSteve Loughan and others found evidence that eating animals

appears to both narrow the breadth of moral consideration (fewer animals deserve it) and lessen the extent of moral concern (cows deserve less moral consideration)… eating meat might lead people to withdraw moral concern from animals, which they then rationalize via a perceived reduction in animals’ capacity to suffer.

Jonathon Haidt and other’s work in the field of moral psychology provides some explanation for Taylor and Loughan’s conclusions. They argue moral reasoning is most often post-hoc, after-the-fact. In other words, people assign reasons to their (socialized and habitualized) moral intuitions in an attempt to understand and defend their feelings and actions as reasonable. People like to feel as if they are in control of themselves, like they act for good reason (especially in modern “enlightened” societies), but the reality is that people are normally rationalizing the feeling and social structure that they find themselves “thrown” into by circumstances outside of their control.

When people find themselves in a circumstance where applying their vegan etiquette by consuming a strict vegetarian diet isn’t an option for their physiological well-being, or if they find themselves in an embarrassing slip-up (i.e. eating and taking pleasure in a burger on a drunken dare), it is disheartening that they throw the baby out with the bathwater. That is, they are so quick to rationalize their behavior in order to secure their self-esteem in a unified sense of self consistent with their practices. They lose focus on the animal other and the open social relationship they have to them, and withdraw back into self-interest. Perhaps this is something out of people’s control. Nonetheless, what is so sad is that to alleviate their guilt of transgressing their values, they abandon said values rather than simply forgiving themselves for being imperfect in an imperfect world.

Although you’ve exposed the deconstruction of vegan logic and critiqued its failure to come to terms with its inability to be at all times consistent in a violent world, many so-called “ex-vegans,” likewise, seem to be unable to deal with the irreconcilable imperfection with themselves and their former vegan worldview. Perhaps they feel more consistent in supporting “humane” animal agribusiness and DIY slaughter; however, this sense of consistency comes at the expense of foreclosing one’s previous social sympathy for animal others. Perceiving oneself as failing the all-or-nothing “vegan ideal,” one’s moral commitment to animal others, is like a second trauma—the first perhaps being a video that catalyzed their coming into veganism. One’s existence becomes a wound. One is compelled to sew it up, to not be tormented by the specter of care. However, one does so in bad faith.

One thing you wrote in your post, “Why Ex-Vegans Eat More Meat than They Must,” really demonstrates this moment of bad faith and validated my effort to re-understand veganism’s relationship to vegetarianism:

[I]t isn’t easy to recalibrate your internal guilt alarm to permit some animal products but then go off whenever you exceed a limit determined to be the minimal amount needed for health. Few ex-vegans are willing to venture back into eating animal products with guilt still being an issue, so they find a way to lose the guilt entirely… [my emphasis]

By privileging the feeling of guilt for being a hypocrite over empowering people to exercise their care for oneself and animal others as participants in our social and agroecological communities, vegans set themselves and others up for abandoning their values and the veganism movement entirely so that they can live a life without self-contempt. Creating a gap in meaning between vegetarianism and veganism, consumption and social practice, has enabled an articulation of veganism in which people who are active and sincere anti-speciesists are accepted in their imperfection--a state that no self-identified vegan has or will probably ever escape to some degree.

Let me be very clear: I’m not saying vegetariaism is trivial, only that it is inessential. Far from being trivial, vegetarianism is an invaluable performance, especially as a critical praxis. If morality is post-hoc, then a diet free of the consumption of animal bodies, their labor, their products, and products tested on them is less likely to facilitate our rationalization of their exploitation. Privileging vegetarian consumption over animal-based consumption enables the positive re-construction of our world away from one in which speciesism is institutionalized. Therefore, a vegan modality motivates vegetarian practice and vegetarian practice facilitates a maturer veganism. So I am neither condemning and othering people with digestive “disabilities,” nor am I saying vegetarian consumption is impractical or supererogatory.

Is veganism a moral obligation? 

Veganism isn’t a moral obligation because of some transcendental principle like God or reason. But then again, neither are human rights and prohibitions against cannibalism. Veganism is not the application of a principle of obligation, but the phenomenon of obligation from being addressed by the animal other to respond in return as a social being. I’m not saying that a pig or salmon speak to us or voice themselves as a human might, but that we experience the phenomenon of being addressed, being called to ourselves as social and ethical beings, by recognizing the other's different perspective, interests, and shared vulnerability. This phenomenon is with us from infancy. Just observe a child's expression of wonder while watching the expressions of other species. It’s similar to their gaze into the face of a human. Children are not born bifurcating the moral considerability between humans and all other animals. Just recently, psychologists Patricia Herrmann and others found that anthropocentrism is a perspective acquired around the age of five, not something innate.

The veganism I advocate fits well with Ralph Acampora's articulation of ethics as aphenomenon of the body’s existence as an ecologically and socially interrelational being in contrast to popular thought that ethics is the product of transcendental principles of pure reason or codes intersubjectively consented to. Reason may be valuable in that it exposes latent prejudices and inconsistencies in how one treats others, but only by presupposing our existence as social, caring, vulnerable, and potentially violent bodies. From an ethical paradigm of the interrelational lived body, the “burden of proof” is not placed upon veganism as an extension of ethics, but rather the “ethical isolationism or contraction” of a an ethics based upon self-interest. For example, reflect upon the times when reason has been used not as a preventative measure against violence and prejudice, but as an instrument against our sociality with and care for others (e.g. “just war,”  “ethnic cleansing,” “honor killings,” vivisection etc). It is through manufacturing a code and imposing it upon the world that we can justify acting violently toward others because of the class we place them into. Arguments for fending off veganism and vegetarianism are usually no more than an elaborate game of logic to preserve one’s power and privilege over others by making violence reasonable. They defy our underlying capacity to recognize others as social beings.

On the momentous importance of recognizing and embracing our shared vulnerability, watch Brene Brown’s powerful TED presentation on “The Power of Vulnerability”.

In a comment discussion you had with Royce Drake, Royce said, "I'm just at a moment where I don't care much for this this ever-expanding slave morality." Do you think veganism, particularly your take on veganism, fits into Nietzsche's idea of slave morality?

No, I don't think so. My understanding of veganism is not founded on a "morality of good and evil," not the kind Nietzsche critiques anyway. I'm not appealing to any metaphysical principle or value such as God, the authority of pure Reason, the "good" society or person, or "best" consequences.

I do, however, think that mainstream veganism could be argued to be founded upon a "slave morality," if by that, you mean the metaphysical values of the Enlightenment (and modern democracy): rationalism, egalitarianism, individualism, universalism, progress, autonomy, non-prejudice, etc. I think Erim Bilgim brilliantly describes (mainstream) veganism:

Veganism presents itself as a rebellious movement, but in reality it doesn’t go against the core values of the system at all. It takes the system’s existing values, enlarges the sphere these values apply to, and then blames society for not consistently abiding by its own rules… Veganism defends these values, in fact wishes to enforce these to an even greater extent on the population, and then it goes and calls itself rebellious… they become model citizens. But then they look around and see that the very society whose values they loyally adopted don’t actually abide by those values themselves

  I think his critique is limited to consumer vegans, not radical practitioners of veganism like myself, Hammer, Torres, and many others who are critical of the "civilizing mission" of neoliberalism and globalization. Likewise, I think his astute description of some self-identified vegans using the label and rhetoric of "compassion" to mask their privilege and give them an ego-boosting sense of superiority over others, doesn't apply to those inhabiting a veganism of care and forgiveness.

I also find his claim that veganism is somehow the next logical step in “civilization” is absurd given the power of global capitalism, the animal industrial complex, the existential investment in human supremacy, and developments in biotechology (i.e. cloning, new feeds, non-sentient animals, in-vitro flesh). As I said, veganism will not prevail until the present social, political, economic, and existential paradigms are overturned.

When you first emailed me, you mentioned an interest in Ernest Becker's Denial of Death, which is a book that was influential on my thinking after I quit veganism. To me the book provides a good case for skepticism toward ideological thinking, by framing ideology as a psychological armor against death and the reality of our powerlessness. In my interpretation of Becker's main point, the stated intention of a given ideology is not actually its main purpose; the real goal of a firmly entrenched belief that becomes an important part of who we claim to be is to build our identities and give our lives an illusion of meaning.

Looking at beliefs that way made it easier for me to discard the ones that weren't doing anything for me or others. If a belief is essentially a mirage to give my life meaning and compel me onward, I might as well have beliefs that make my life enjoyable. Veganism, then, certainly does not qualify as a belief I would want to take on again, since it made my life worse and doesn't seem to help anything else. However, you believe Becker's arguments could work for veganism. How so?

I was first introduced to Becker’s work in 2007 as I was researching a paper on animal ethics. While researching moral psychology, I stumbled upon a reference to a publication by Jamie L. Goldenberg and others called “I Am Not an Animal: Mortality Salience, Disgust, and the Denial of Human Creatureliness" (PDF). In the article, two studies on humans’ perceived relationship to animal others were performed and interpreted through the lens of Terror Management Theory, a theory in personality psychology based off Becker’s ideas. Their conclusion from the data collected and numerous similar studies was that humans distance themselves from animal others in order to disavow their own animality and mortality. 

After reading many TMT publications, I was compelled to read their inspiration: The Denial of Death and Escape from Evil. For those of you have never heard of Becker until now, basically he argues that people have a need for self-esteem because they are symbolic animals who are conscious of the inevitability of their own deaths. Confronted with death, humans like other animals are powerless. Death—the absolute limit of our existence—paradoxically confronts us with (what seems to be) the utter meaninglessness of our existences and projects, but is also what compels us to find and create meaning for existential security.

Although I’ve become increasingly critical of the universality of Becker’s meta-narrative, I still believe—as I did four years ago—that it explains our cultural commitment to specieisism, which is sustained by human-animal dualism, human exceptionalism, and human supremacy. The question of the animal lingers throughout Becker’s later works, particularly the will to transcend the finitude and vulnerability we share with animal others. Becker writes that

An animal who gets his feeling of worth symbolically has to minutely compare himself to those around him, to make sure he doesn’t come off second-best… ‘civilized’ society is a hopeful belief and protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal.

In his last work, Escape from Evil, the human-animal distinction becomes more salient and threatening. The thesis of this book is that

Men cause evil by wanting to heroically to triumph over it, because man is a frightened animal who tries to triumph, an animal who will not admit his own insignificance.

I interpret Becker cautioning us against not only false moralities, but also human beings’ capacity for evil arising from their very humanity—their existential angst, their will to power, their categorization and ranking of the world. We ought to guard ourselves against not the finitude we share with animal others, but the compulsion to insist that “we” are more significant/meaningful than those who are different, to receive esteem primarily by placing oneself above others. Where is this practiced more perpetually, insistently, and confidently than the dominant discourse on animal others? The lesson I draw form Becker’s work affirms a commitment to call into question speciesism and human narcissism for the sake of both human and animal others.

Clearly, factors such as evolutionary biology (i.e. taste), history (i.e. tradition), culture (i.e. meanings), society (i.e. identity), psychology (i.e. habit), physiology (i.e. nutrition), media (i.e. subliminal persuasion), political economics (i.e. subsidies), and geography (i.e. accessibility) all play a role in whether someone eats animals. I really want to emphasize the existential significance of eating animals to compensate for this factor that has been grossly overlooked by animal advocates and their critics.

Maybe it is because I read Denial of Death not long after leaving veganism, but to me it seems like vegans who are most blatantly denying death. Death taints meat, dairy, eggs, leather and wool - all the things that vegans shun - in a way that it does not taint vegan foods. Vegans like to talk about the "rotting corpses" that meat eaters eat. Meat eaters cause death and they consume death, and they are rewarded with death in the form of cancer and heart attacks. Veganism is an attempt to not cause death -- is this not also a denial of death?

You might be right that meat eaters deny their animality in some sense by eating meat, but veganism denies animality in another way. Other animals eat each other because they don't have a conscience, vegans might say, but humans are above all that. We are special. We have morality. Unlike animals, we have loftier considerations than survival and pleasure -- and this means we should not eat animals even if animals eat animals, and even if we want to.

Meat eaters may deny death by separating themselves from animals by killing them, and temporarily feeling like it is animals who die and not rational, powerful humans. But the vegan approach seems like a denial of death in another form. For meat eaters, animals are different and expendable. For vegans, animals are like us and we can save them. If other animals don't have to die, then maybe we can feel like we don't have to either.

Some vegans definitely “deny death,” yes. Yet, because people eat vegetarian for so many reasons, it’s careless to generalize. For the most part, this representation of vegetarians and animal rights activists as alienated bourgeoisie city-dweller with a false ecological consciousness is nothing more than a popular motif in the arsenal of ad hominems romantic thinkers use to dismiss the moral arguments of others.

Many “ethical vegans” seem to welcome death with an open mouth, gorging themselves on mock meats with outrageous sodium levels and vegan cupcakes loaded with sugar and saturated fat. When most “ethical vegans” talk about eating rotting corpses, chicken periods, mammary excretions, and pus in milk, they do so rhetorically. I know, because I used to be one of the assholes who said these things. This rhetoric is meant to persuade people where they are most vulnerable: disgust. When vegans sound like they are disgusted by death because of the discourse they deploy, it is important to distinguish their intent from their attitude.

Empirical research carried out by Daniel Fessler and others provides support for the counter-thesis that vegetarianism is a moral response, not merely a reaction of disgust—an emotion linked with death denial. In fact, they found that “those individuals consuming the most meat were more disgust sensitive, both overall and in the food domain, than those individuals consuming the least meat.” The motivation behind many if not most self-identified vegans, I believe, is not a mere matter of guarding themselves from the question of the meaning(lessness) of their existence that their death confronts them with. As I’ve mentioned before, people come into veganism through sympathy or empathy with animal others. It would be sloppy to reduce caring for the lives of others to one’s attempt to self-interestedly fend off death.

Further, that vegans wish to avoid killing animals is not equivalent to vegans wishing to save animals from death. The moral wrong is not that animals die, but that moral agents cause their death unjustifiably. The difference between avoiding killing animals and saving them can also be understood as the difference between advocating negative duties to animals (i.e. animals have the right not to be killed by moral agents unjustly) and positive ones (i.e. moral agents ought to protect animals from death as long as possible with minimal pain).

Vegans admit that veganism is imperfect, and that we can't really follow the ethics to where they want to take us -- being truly anti-speciesist and not causing animal death and suffering. What is the point of having an ethics that we can't actually follow?

Your counter argument is that “veganism” is idealistic— an ideal that cannot be achieved in a world that operates on death and violence—and thus is impractical and meaninglessness. However, this can equally be said of any ethics based upon principles and values, including rights. The question of who is human and what rights are given priority are questions that have no closure. For instance, rights like “freedom” and “equality” are ideals that will always be in some level of conflict, yet we don’t give up on the ideal of either.

In any case, I don’t believe there is much value in perfection. Ethics presupposes our mortality, our finitude and fallibility. An ethics that seeks perfection becomes totalitarian, a slave to its own logic, in which the moral agent no longer is a social being, but an instrument of the system it has created. When I advocate veganism, I’m advocating it as recognition of a phenomenon, not a prescription of a principle. That is, veganism is recognition of the human condition of finitude, fallibility, and meagerness in a universe shared by other finite, fallible, and meager beings. As I wrote before, veganism as a social existence with animal others is not a foreign attitude. Rather, it is a mode we are “thrown into” when we become subjected to our own curiosity and compassion for other mortal creatures. Recognizing veganism as such holds us responsible to animal others’ interests, and holds us accountable for closing off this mode for relating to animal others as “killable” instruments for some so-called higher-value (i.e. profits, “life,” “humanity”). I’ve already described how veganism as a social attitude motivates and is facilitated by vegetarian consumption. They are the means and the end of a non-exclusive social responsibility.

When I see your critiques of veganism as it is typically practiced and your own reasons for being vegan, I think, "That's the best articulation of vegan values that I've seen." Yet I still fail to be convinced that it is worth reducing the quality of my life in order to possibly extend animal lives, to exploit animals less, and to be able to call myself an anti-speciesist, and I also don't think this vision -- though well worded and poetic -- does much if any actual good for the world. To me it is a beautiful abstraction that is not worth the downsides to my reality that comes with attempting to follow it. Why should I accept your vision and make the one life I have to live worse in order to say that I am against speciesism?

First of all, veganism has nothing to do with “extending life” (i.e. a biological, not a social duty) or calling oneself an anti-speciesist (i.e. an identity). Veganism is about entering into less violent and more dialogical relationships with other beings. Veganism is social responsibility.

Second, although my description of veganism is abstract in form, in practice, the reasons we assign to violence are the abstractions. Animal others are exploited under the justification that they belong to a separate race we’ve created and called “animals,” and they are institutionally exploited for the good of something we call “civilization” and the “market” for something called “capital.” Veganism is the immanent, not the abstract, relationship we have to animal others as social beings.

Third, to ask whether non-compliance with the oppression of others “is worth reducing the quality of my life” assumes that no one else is valuable except in their utility to one's self. It is a narcissistic reasoning most popular amongst males and the affluent who  have the most privilege to lose, or rather, share with others. Is this not how white middle-class males a couple of centuries reasoned against extending equal rights to blacks, women, and other minorities? Is this not exactly the argument affluent U.S. Americans use against reducing anthropogenic GHGs despite the devastation global climate disruption will have on communities across the world? 

I think it is crucial to highlight that the very logic that is being used here that puts the “burden of moral proof” on veganism to make an argument against domination and violence, is the very logic that held (and holds) back recognizing the equality of the colonized, laborers, women, and other Others. For this reason, your reasoning may in fact validate veganism as a project, because veganism holds us responsible for caring for others. By resisting veganism, one is on the way to resisting other social justice causes which threaten one’s privilege and convenience as well.

Finally, even if we were to follow your logic, I’d challenge you on the fact that somehow veganism would significantly reduce your quality of life, making your life worse. As I said before, it is possible to remain socially and politically committed to veganism without the guilt you might otherwise derive from eating animal others (so long as it is necessary for your physiological well-being).

Why should people become vegan despite the ineffectiveness of becoming vegan on an individual level?

A TED speaker put my thoughts on this matter very well. To paraphrase this speaker, it’s not that I’m optimistic about the future, but that I must do something (see Courtney Martin's talk on "Reinventing Feminism"). I am inspired by another TED speaker, Robert Sapolsky, who asserts that what makes us most human is "to take the impossibility of something to be the very proof that it must be possible and must become a moral imperative. The harder it is to do that, the more important it is."

Let me address a couple thing you seem to misunderstand about veganism, at least as I am advocating it. First, if everyone thought this way—“poor me, what am I ever going to do, I am one person”—, no social movement would ever begin and the world would be a much more awful place. I’m reminded of Cypher from the Matrix who is conscious of reality, but a reality that is so insurmountable that he becomes complicit with oppression for the comfort of ignorance.

Second, it’s naive to critique veganism as if it were not a social movement, but a matter of independent lifestyle activism, especially given my continual critique of consumption-based veganism. Veganism demands institutional change, not merely personal change. The movement is a collective political force organized to raise consciousness and oppose exploitation through campaigns and policies. It’s not comparable to changing one’s light bulbs or inflating one’s car tire.

Third, veganism as interspecies and intersectional social justice is not just about animal others; it is also in support of ecological and global justice. That the animal industrial complex is amongst the worst culprits of global ecological injustices is just one example of the intersections of animal exploitation and the exploitation and destruction of fellow humans and biocultural diversity. The best example I know of the intersectional veganism that I advocate in action is The Food Empowerment Project, which addresses interspecies, environmental, workplace, and food (access) justice all together. I hope the FEP, signals a new wave of veganism that further inculcates veganism into social justice, in which human rights and animal rights meet in ever more powerful ways.

A project a friend and I are working on now is envisioning institutions where human and animal other well-being can be cultivated simultaneously in what we call “trans-species cooperative living.” Research has shown the therapeutic effect contact with animal others can have on autistic, elderly, and imprisoned people. Imagine a system of restorative justice where criminals cared for domestic animals and learned a valuable skill for after release such as cultivating plants instead of picking up street litter and being locked up in cages like animals. Imagine children playing outside and cultivating the virtue of care as part of the school curriculum. Restoring our relationships with other species is not irrelevant to restoring our relationships and caring for humans. One of the themes in Philip K. Dick’s classic, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, is precisely this point: our empathy, care, and relationship to animals is what makes us “human.”

It’s my hope that my re-articulation of veganism will attract more people from other social movements to veganism and attract more self-identified vegans toward social and ecological justice work. By working together, activists motivated by care and social responsibility will discover the relevancy and value of each other’s work in-and-of-itself and also in its support of their own causes. The greater solidarity these interrelated social justice movements have, the greater the numbers and creativity we will have in dismantling institutionalized oppression. I hope transforming the definition can transform vegans, their potential allies, and the precarious world we all must share.

[letthemeatmeat]

Interview With a Vegan Paleontologist: "The Humane Hominid"

Robert, aka "The Humane Hominid", is the vegan paleontologist behind PaleoVeganology, a blog that looks at the evolution of humans and animals, as well as the paleo diet movement, from an ethical vegan perspective.

Robert went vegetarian in high school "to impress a pretty girl," and stayed that way for the animals. He has been vegan for six years. This didn't stop Hurricane Ivan from destroying most of his worldly possessions 2004, so he moved to Los Angeles, figuring that he might as well enjoy nice weather while natural disasters nipped at his heels. He got a spec screenplay optioned not long after moving to earthquake country, but Hollywood was only getting his hopes up in order to dash them (as it tends to do), and Robert gave up that dream to return to paleontology school.

The vegan blogosphere is lucky he did. PaleoVeganology is everyone's favorite vegan paleontology blog, and is one of the most important contributions to the burgeoning "vegan skeptic" movement -- the ethical vegan reformers who are more than happy to hack down fallacious arguments for veganism, like the myth that humans are naturally herbivores. To this end, Robert is currently engaged in an online debate with "The Permavegan," a vegan permaculture advocate who believes that it makes no biological sense for humans to eat meat.

I have my money on Robert. 

Are humans "omnivores"?

Yes, unequivocally. But I’m glad you put that word in scare quotes, because it’s possible for people to read too much into it. The description of humans as “omnivores” is observational, not taxonomic, and definitely not prescriptive. When researchers into human evolution use that word, they mean something a bit different than what, say, paleo dieters or other carnists do. Omnivory does not impose behaviors on us; it’s merely a description of our capabilities and our morphology. We’re neither specialized plant-eaters nor specialized meat-eaters. From the perspective of morphology, it can’t be inferred that we must eat either plants or animals, only that we can eat them both.

Why do you refer to meat-eating humans as carnists?

Honestly, because I just think it's a cool word, and I am often too lazy to type out the phrase "meat-eating humans." The word has its origin in the effort by some vegans to label those humans who continue eating meat after being exposed to cruelties of factory farming; i.e., those who eat meat because of a conscious ethical choice, and not out of habit. A carnist is someone committed to the ideology that it is acceptable to eat (some) animals, and is basically the opposite of "vegan." But like I said, I mostly use it because I think it's a cool word and a practical shorthand device.

It's obvious that you are not using your blog to try to prove that veganism is our "natural diet". What would you say your message is? That evolution is complicated and it doesn't make sense to try to base lifestyle choices on it?

That’s part of it. Though it’s not just that evolution is complex – far more complex than most people realize, actually – but also, paradoxically, that it’s limited. Evolution is a great tool for figuring out the ancestry of organisms and the mechanisms of speciation and such, but it’s fundamentally about populations, not individuals. As such, it’s not a great guide for figuring out what your “optimal” diet is. The human fossil record is too sparse for that, and even if it were more robust, I think it’d be problematic at best to try to base ethical or lifestyle choices on it.

I should confess here that the “message” of my blog is itself evolving. I started it because I kept running into vegans who, upon learning I was a paleontology student, would ask me for rhetorical ammo to use in their own arguments against eating animals. It’s common for vegans to argue that “humans are natural herbivores,” for instance. But things just aren’t that simple. At first, I was game for the effort, but by the time I decided to start blogging, I had become more skeptical of it.

At present, I’d say the message of my blog is that veganism is, first and foremost, an ethical stand, and should, first and foremost, be argued and defended as such. Paleontology and evolution can bring a great deal of clarity to our understanding of issues related to veganism and animal rights, but they can’t by themselves be used to build a case for (or against) veganism and animal rights.

Does our evolutionary heritage provide any clues for healthier ways for us to live?

Only in the negative sense of showing us what we can't do, at present, and not in the positive sense of showing us what we should do.

I'm glad you asked this question, too, because it touches on a fundamental, though very common, misunderstanding of evolution. Natural selection is about constraints on species development, and whether species develop adaptations to get around those constraints. It doesn't have anything to do with individual health.

There's a notion going around in many diet and health subcultures that evolution "wants" (for lack of a better word) us to live long and healthy lives, and that if we can just discover the right combination of foods and exercises, we'll unlock our boundless potential.

But that's not how evolution works. It doesn't give a shit about your quality of life. It only wants you to make as many babies as possible, and make sure they reach reproductive age. This means that an out-of-shape, SAD-eating, chain-smoking, alcoholic, meth-addicted slob who lives half as long but has twice as many babies as a vibrantly-healthy vegan or paleo dieter is more fit than either of them, in evolutionary terms.

Natural selection imposes constraints on our development as a species, which can certainly have health consequences, but it has not and will not do us any favors. There's no design for "optimality" or perfection hidden in our genes. Nature wants us to screw and die. That's it.

Some people thrive on a vegan diet and some people do not. Do you think this is all psychological, or could genetics play a part? Could some humans have a biological requirement for animal products to thrive, while others do not?

I don't want to paint myself into a corner and say that veganism will work for every single person on the planet; after all, nature confounds our categories, and variation abounds. Having said that, though, humans are not snowflakes. We are still primates and are still subject to many of the dietary constraints that nature imposes on all other primates.

It's conceivable to me that there are, at the present time, some humans who cannot thrive on healthily-structured vegan diets. But that's unlikely, in my opinion, to be because of a dietary requirement for animal products per se. Certainly, we have a biological requirement for specific nutrients, but I’m skeptical that anyone has a requirement for specific nutrient sources. There's nothing magical about meat and dairy. One day, science will figure out the mechanisms imposing those constraints, and then figure out ways around them. And then, those types of people currently "stuck" with animal products will be able to thrive as vegans, too.

Nonetheless, I do suspect these kinds of people are in the minority. I think a lot of ex-vegans should be skeptical of themselves and inquire whether they engaged in the tendency of diet subcultures to self-diagnose, and thus misinterpreted the data about themselves. They may have attributed a pre-vegan condition or deficiency to veganism itself. As one example, B-12 deficiency is common in the general population, not just among vegans. If the Framingham study is a good indication, about 16 percent of the public may be experiencing undiagnosed B-12 deficiency, and about 39 percent are in the “low-normal” range, which constitutes a deficiency for some people. Many people who go vegan and experience B-12 deficiency symptoms may have been deficient before they went vegan, even if they only experienced symptoms after. But they will self-diagnose and blame veganism for a pre-existing problem they didn’t know they had.

I think we should also consider the possibility that a lot of ex-vegans didn’t just go vegan, but also signed on to one of the fringier elements of the vegan community, like raw veganism, or low-fat veganism, or fruitarianism (or all three!), which take a lot more effort and have a lot less long-term health viability. Or conversely, they may have been a junk-food vegan and adopted the mindset that since they’re vegan now, all their health troubles are over.

Obviously, medicine and nutrition are not my specialty, but I have a hard time swallowing the idea that there’s some ineffable quality about animal products that prevents a majority of people from getting those nutrients through supplements or high-quality plant sources. I’m inclined to think that if the majority of these ex-vegans had found Jack Norris or Ginny Messina before deciding veganism wasn’t working, they’d have turned out just fine. And those populations for whom veganism isn't currently viable will one day have the option, too. Science marches on!

If not being specialized plant or meat eaters theoretically makes it possible for humans to choose an all-vegan diet without significant health consequences, would the same hold true for choosing an all-carnivorous diet?

First, I'm not convinced it's possible to choose any diet "without significant health consequences." I contend there's no such thing as an "optimal" or "perfect" diet. Nature doesn't work that way. I think no matter what you do, you will always have diet-related health issues to deal with.

Second, while it's true that humans are flexible, we are not infinitely flexible. Natural selection is conservative, and still imposes constraints on us. We may be better at digesting animal products than other primates, but that doesn't mean we've stopped being primates. It's pretty clear that humans in general do best, health-wise, when they eat a diet high in plants and moderate in animal sources. We are by no means "natural" vegans, but we're closer to that on the spectrum than we are to being "natural" carnivores. In short, I think an all-meat diet would have more health issues to get around than an all-vegan diet, though neither of them is "optimal."

What do the paleo diet people have wrong?

I think the historical narrative underlying the paleo diet is a just-so story bolstered by the naturalistic fallacy and embellished with noble savage fantasies of a golden age. This is not to say that it’s a bad idea to eat less processed food, or that we don’t face health problems unique to our era. But the notion running through so much of the paleo diet movement that there was a long-lost health utopia in which flint-knapping personal trainers wandered the Pleistocene with an ethic of enlightened stewardship, is rubbish. As is the idea that we can recover or recreate that lost age in the modern world.

No one who actually studies the fossil or archaeological record with any rigor could swallow that narrative; we’ve seen the diseased hominid teeth and bones for ourselves; we’ve uncovered the kill-sites where whole herds were driven over cliffs just to claim the meat and skins from a few individuals. We know that humans are like all other animals: they over-breed and consume resources with abandon, unless checked by survival pressures. This has always been true.

The paleo diet movement began with a basically reasonable idea – that maybe we should try to mimic the diet of our ancestors, since we inherited traits from them that will influence our own health – but seems since then to have contorted itself into a grain-phobic meat cult based on a vision of human evolution that has no resemblance to what the fossil record tells us about ourselves. No paleontologist or anthropologist doubts that hominins ate meat – and, during the Ice Age outside of Africa, probably quite a lot of it – or that doing so shaped our evolution, but we’re not obligate carnivores who evolved in high latitudes. We come from the African tropics, and the ancestors from whom we inherited the plan for our digestive and masticatory traits are generally considered to have been largely frugivorous. Some australopithecine fossils even show evidence of grass consumption.

But you know what? Even saying that isn’t precise enough, which is another major gripe I have with the paleo diet (and with many vegans, too). Paleo dieters are always pointing to our “evolutionary heritage” for hints about the “optimal” diet, but no one ever seems to be more specific than that. Which hominin species are you counting as ancestral to us? Which traits on your laundry list of “proof” are primitive and which are derived? Do you even understand what that question is asking and why it’s important? If someone making evolutionary claims can’t answer these questions, I for one see no reason to take their opinion seriously.

It’s a bit like listening to New Age gurus invoking quantum mechanics, or young Earth creationists appropriating the lexicon of geology: to the average person, a string of smart-sounding words from such types can sound impressive; but to someone with even a bit of training in the relevant field, it sounds like nonsense.

Finally, I’m a bit territorial about the nick-name “paleos”; paleontologists gave themselves that nick-name a long time ago, and now these dieters are trying to muscle in on our turf. I won’t have it!

In a recent entry you wrote that an adaptation for fruit eating accidentally made humans better at digesting meat. How are fruit eating and meat eating related?

Fruigvory is our base gut adaptation, but it’s flexible enough to allow primates to digest meat, especially cooked meat. When our lineage adopted a greater degree of carnivory as a survival strategy, nature selected for those variations of the base “frugivorous” gut that were slightly better at meat-digestion. But just because we got better at eating meat, that doesn’t mean we got worse at eating fruits, seeds and foliage. We didn’t specialize to become obligate carnivores.

To give your readers some context, I’ve been having an ongoing debate with the Permavegan, Jonathan Maxson, over his hypothesis that meat was a fallback food of last resort for prehistoric humans. At that particular stage in our debate, I perceived him as trying to draw a distinction between “frugivores” and “omnivores,” the implication being that if humans were the former, they couldn’t be the latter. I’m not now so certain that’s what he was doing at all (I’ll have to wait and see), but in any case, I cited Hladik, et. al.’s critique of the expensive-tissue hypothesis as a counter to this perceived claim. Their point was that human gut morphology, being unspecialized, was best described as “frugivore,” a flexible trait which allowed humans to feed extensively on animal matter. I summarized their point as follows:

 In other words, modern human guts are adapted to a diet of soft, energy-dense foods, a  condition they inherited from "frugivorous" ancestors but that accidentally also allows them to be better at digesting meat than other primates. To put it succinctly, H. sapiens are functionally omnivorous because of their frugivory, not in spite of it (a point that threatens to undo the whole debate before it even starts)!

What I’m pointing to here is the concept of exaptation, wherein a trait developed in response to one survival pressure gets passed on to distant descendants no longer facing that pressure, who co-opt it for another use. The use to which they co-opt it, however, isn’t the use for which it was “meant”; it just happens to be flexible enough to be useful for several things.

In that debate, I’m arguing to a fellow vegan that a human “fruigvorous” adaptation doesn’t preclude an ability to be good at eating meat. If I were debating a carnist on the same point, I’d say that just because humans can digest meat, that doesn’t mean we “evolved to” do so; it just means we found a new use for a flexible trait common to “frugivorous” primates.

Has studying paleontology caused you to re-think any aspects of your views on veganism?

Definitely! I used to be one of those vegans who argued that humans are natural herbivores, and was quite happy with myself for having memorized the laundry list of traits that supposedly “proved” it. Once I really began to understand evolution, though, I became far more circumspect about that tactic. Just because we possess a trait does not mean that trait evolved to suit us in particular, for the way we use it in particular. It certainly imposes no dietary obligations on us. I think vegans and paleo dieters alike should take that to heart.

Ironically, my coming to understand that evolution, by itself, isn’t a great basis for making the case for veganism led me to a deeper appreciation for the moral and ethical arguments for veganism. I didn’t read Peter Singer or Tom Regan until after I’d read Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins.

What should paleontology inspire meat eaters to re-think?

The ecological sustainability of a widespread human diet centered on eating animals… and that includes hunting. I know it’s all the rage to vilify Neolithic agriculture and monocrops and such – and there are certainly legitimate and profoundly important issues there – but really, the record of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers isn’t too admirable, either. Look at Paul Martin’s work on the Ice Age mammal extinctions; I think he’s right – and I’m far from alone – that the most parsimonious explanation for the disappearance of big mammals (especially outside of Africa) at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition is human over-hunting. During the Paleolithic, the world lost 85 percent of mammal species larger than 44 kg, including several keystone predators whom we either killed off or out-competed.

This had enormous ecological impacts: it sparked several secondary, localized extinctions and altered seed-dispersal patterns worldwide. We were able to weather that because our population was so small and scattered, but it’s in our nature – like most other animals – to overbreed and overeat, and with the current human population and rate of species extinction, we can afford neither to keep doing things as we do them now, nor to go back to the supposed good-ole-days of the hunter-gatherers. Both legacies are recipes for catastrophe. We have to figure out something new.

Do you have any ideas for what the something new should be?

Well, veganism, of course. A lot of veganism's critics like to proclaim, "there's never been a vegan culture," and as far as I can tell, they are right. But that's not an argument against creating one now.

I'm not yet learned enough to give specifics, but in general outline, I think we should endeavor to create a civilization that uses other animals as minimally as possible while "re-wilding" a number of lost habitats. I doubt that will mean universal veganism in the sense that no one anywhere ever uses any kind of animal product or labor ever again, but to my mind it's indisputable that many of our most pressing ecological concerns are rooted in our exploitation of animals. Unless we come to terms with that and own up to it and start thinking creatively about it, I think we're screwed.

You wrote about a new theory that humans adapted an empathy toward animals in order to be better able to procure meat. By knowing more about animals, as well as domesticating animals to be used in part as hunting tools, humans increased their hunting prowess. As you pointed out, this seems to lead to a paradox: meat eating and empathy with animals were dependent on each other, but the empathy that made it easier for us to eat meat now sometimes makes us feel like it is wrong to do so. Domesticating animals that we bond with in order to hunt wild animals also relates to a paradox that a lot of vegans decry: "Why love one and eat the other?"

What significance do you see in this theory, if correct? Could "moral schizophrenia" -- loving one and eating the other -- be in our genes? If so, could that mean the idea of "humane meat" and eating animals while loving other animals is not as ridiculous as some vegans say?

I think you’re not doing Pat Shipman’s theory enough justice! She’s claiming that empathy for other animals wasn’t just a useful trait, but that it actually drove our evolution. I think that’s a profound claim, and I ordered her book so I can get a better handle on all the nuances.

The significance of her hypothesis is its elegant simplicity; it’s always been clear that the invention of stone tools, the emergence of symbolic expression (ultimately becoming language), and the domestication of nonhuman animals were important events in human evolution, but no one could ever decide which one was most important to our development. Now Shipman comes along with a simpler proposal: that all three are consequences of a unique human ability to empathize with other animals, and in squabbling over them, we’ve been missing the forest for the trees. Her initial review article was published with mostly positive feedback from other researchers, and I’m looking forward to the more fleshed-out version in her book.

I have no problem with the idea that it’s possible for meat-eaters to genuinely love animals, even animals they have raised and slaughtered themselves. Such “moral schizophrenia,” as you put it, likely is an expression of ancient and deep-seated traits. But, as with all other traits, one shouldn’t read too much into this. It doesn’t mean that the “humane meat” position is more, or less, valid than the animal-rights vegan position. The “humane meat” position and the animal liberation position would both be expressions of the same primal trait, and thus, equally ridiculous!

Evolution will not give us easy answers to animal rights questions. That comes down to ethics, in the end.

[letthemeatmeat]

Interview With an Animal Activist: Camille Marino

Camille Marino is the founder and Senior Editor of Negotiation is Over and is on the Advisors and Speakers Panel of the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. NIO strives to be an instrument of defiance, disruption, disobedience, subversion, creative and aggressive grassroots action, and a catalyst for revolutionary change. NIO's belief is that "Total liberation — human animals, nonhuman animals, and the earth — will not happen by politely asking abusers to be decent."

Camille and many of her above-ground activist allies recently made a decisive break from vegans who are content to alleviate their own guilt through personal veganism and baking vegan goodies. Several activists in NIO Florida (her local grassroots group) -- as well as many national and international associates -- are now targeting biomed students who are on their way to becoming animal experimenters, on the assumption that there is still hope to change them before they become entrenched in careers involving animal exploitation and prolonged animal suffering.

NIO has also gained notoriety by advocating violence against those who are so entrenched, though Camille has remained non-violent in her approach.

Does simply eating a vegan diet and not buying animal products do anything for animals?

In order to be an ethical and decent human being, one must be vegan. There is no gray area here. You are either vegan or you are complicit in the war on animals.

But, no, being an ethical vegan does absolutely nothing to relieve animal suffering. In the real world “free market,” when demand for meat/eggs/dairy declines, the government subsidizes a given exploitation industry and buys any excess supply of animal products, thus ensuring that the suppliers' profits as well as the economy remain intact. The government buys the surplus and generally diverts it into schools and welfare programs or the surplus is exported to other countries to satisfy federal debt.

I believe that we are wasting enormous amounts of the vegan community’s time and energy by advocating vegan outreach. The animals are dying in exponentially greater numbers.

Why does Negotiation is Over focus on vivisection more than factory farming and the meat, diary and egg industries?

There are many activists associated with NIO who are doing everything from targeting hunters/trappers to launching creative and aggressive campaigns against slaughterhouses.

Personally, I focus on vivisection because in my community the University of Florida is a beacon of institutional animal torture. More importantly, it is where I believe I will realize my greatest impact. It’s a mistake to choose campaigns simply because they’re available. We need to direct our energies where we can realize quantifiable gains and seize victories and we need to be willing to adapt and evolve our tactics and approach. It is clear to me that animal liberation demands that we subvert and undermine the foundation upon which animal abuse rests in universities. That means biomed students need to be dealt with now before they become fully-entrenched professional sadists.

Were you immediately interested in direct action, or did you start off as a standard consumerist vegan?

I was a necrovore until the age of 43. I was looking for information on adopting a vegetarian diet to lose weight when I found an undercover video of a dairy farm. I immediately went vegan. That was January 2008. I never made a conscious decision one way or another to analyze or theorize about direct action. Those things are irrelevant to me. I saw atrocities that demand a response. I am still learning how to respond effectively and, when we’re talking about a literal and bloody war, the schools of thought that reject direct action are ludicrous.

Could you explain the term "necrovore" for people who haven't heard it?

A necrovore is one who eats dead things.

Why have you distanced yourself from vegans who are content to avoid animal products but do not support direct action?

I think it's fair to say that those who are pushing aggressive action are highly disturbed by our peers who are content to do nothing but bake vegan cupcakes. And I think it's also fair to say that the vegan potluckers have little else to do except exchange recipes and discuss how aggressive actions are destroying the movement. It's kind of like oil and water. There's no conscious distancing; we just don't mix. I've made earnest efforts to associate and work with vegan potluckers and encourage activism in the street. With a few exceptions that I can count on one hand, consumerist vegans find the idea of activism offensive.

You are currently seeking information on biomed students in an attempt to turn them against animal abuse. How successful has this campaign been so far?

I know of five vivisection students who abandoned their career aspirations when this tactic was announced a couple of months ago. Those five small victories are the foundation upon which this campaign is built.

What have you done to get the vivisectors to change and turn against animal abuse? How do you see these tactics getting more sophisticated in the future?

Vivisectors have no incentive to change their minds because they feel safe and secure. Entrenched within their institutions of torture, they are generously compensated for their crimes against animals. I don’t know how to reach into that dynamic effectively and stop them. That’s why we see anonymous activists turning to firebombs, home invasions, or any other form of retribution demanded by these war crimes.

I am under no illusions about being unable to penetrate their fortresses as an above-ground activist. What I can do, however, is shatter their sense of privacy, safety and complacency outside of their labs, by exposing them where they live, where they worship, where their kids go to school and where they gather for festive occasions. Abusers should get used to having their atrocities exposed and I will do everything in my power to shatter their peace of mind.

What would you say to people who refer to your tactics as terrorism?

We need to define my tactics in order to put this question in perspective. I "threaten" abusers with truth and exposure. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. If I publish a baker's picture along with his name and address, and then proceed to go door-to-door and leaflet his neighbors about the variety of cupcakes he bakes, would you call me a terrorist? Then, when I take the exact same scenario and apply it to vivisectors, what is fundamentally different? Information is neutral. How people react to that information is subjective.

Those who call me a terrorist generally fall into one of two categories: (1) they are the oppressors who use the inflammatory and highly-charged term to discredit any activist that challenges the status quo or the capitalist infrastructure or (2) they are the mindless masses who mimic buzz words because it's easier than forming a coherent thought in between TV commercials.

If I am a terrorist, what do we call a person who imprisons, tortures, mutilates and murders countless innocent begins while forcing them to live their entire miserable lives in a state of terror?

In your FAQ, you wrote: "I unequivocally support violence if it will stop the violent. Most people agree that a human child is worthy of protection. If an innocent baby were being tortured, it is perfectly justified to stop the aggressor by employing any necessary degree of force. This is simple american jurisprudence. There is no debate and anyone who rescued the child would be deemed a hero, not a violent or unstable individual. Activists who are unwilling to admit that nonhuman animals are worthy of 'extensional self-defense' must recognize their own latent speciesism. I understand that there are an infinite number of ramifications including consequent mainstream reactions. It is all irrelevant and I am not being simplistic or naive. If a human is worthy of protection, then so is a nonhuman. Period." And an NIO entry once included the line, "Every time a vivisector’s car or home — and, eventually, the abuser him/herself — blows up, flames of liberation light up the sky." Does this mean you support the killing of animal abusers?

Yes, I do.

Just so people know if they are potential targets, what defines an animal abuser? Do you mean slaughterhouse workers and vivisectors — those directly doing the killing — or does financially supporting those industries make one an animal abuser too?

Abusers are those who actively torture, murder and exploit the innocent.

Why has there not been a John Brown-like figure killing vivisectors and factory farmers in the name of the animals? If animal lives are as worthy of defense as human lives, presumably it would be worth killing some guilty humans to save many more innocent animals. Are vegans speciesists who ultimately believe it is worse to kill a human than an animal?

Apathy is apathy — let’s not confuse it with speciesism.

There’s a very famous case back in New York where a woman named Kitty Genovese was raped and murdered on the streets of Queens while her neighbors watched from their windows. No one intervened, no one defended her, and, most tellingly, not a single call was placed to 9-1-1 as she lay dying… a NOT unique example of human nature at its finest! Vegans are no different.

When one becomes vegan, the components of his/her personality remain unchanged. If one was complacent, apathetic and timid as a necrovore, then s/he brings those same traits to the vegan community. The only difference is that, given that vegans must now respond to a raging holocaust, many want to absolve themselves of responsibility by adopting an ideology of pacifism (not passive resistance) that, in their theoretical moral bubble, justifies and excuses their abhorrent inaction. They’re wrong!

The question about John Brown raises some confounding and disturbing issues for me. I believe we will see a John Brown just like the anti-abortionist movement celebrates Scott Roeder.

Thus far, this is a discussion that I have only had with my closest allies in extremely private exchanges. But the fact of the matter is that if one witnesses an animal being tortured or murdered, there is only one appropriate response — one is morally obligated to intervene and neutralize the offender by any means necessary. I believe this with every fiber of my being. Yet, when I was still finding my footing as an activist, I visited a slaughterhouse and, using falsified credentials and a phony agenda, I was granted access to film an early-morning murder spree.

I arrived with a camera. I was so unprepared that my batteries died at about the moment the first victim succumbed. I watch a young, scared cow being guided with an electric prod through the obstacle course that led to her death. She was crying. She was terrified. She was in pain. Her eyes met mine. I stood there with a camera and filmed this beautiful, innocent animal’s unimaginable torment and inevitable bloody murder. I continued to film. On that day I became complicit in the holocaust, more so than I ever was as an unenlightened meateater. My actions were not brave or courageous. They were cowardly. And this divergence between thoughts and actions continues to disturb me greatly — it continues to disturb many of us. I think it’s time we discussed it openly.

I can tell you that some activists have expressed to me a desire to end their lives because they are so overwhelmed and frustrated. My only response is that if one is going to end their own suffering, it would be an admirable act if they took as many abusers as possible with them.

It’s only a matter of time.