J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

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How Meat-Eaters Should Relate to Vegans

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On June 7

In Culture Rants/Shares, Health/Body-hacking

Some reasonably happy looking cows.

Some reasonably happy looking cows.

As regular readers know I’m a fan of Steve Pavlina’s blog. I disagree with him on many points, but he’s an ethical, purpose-driven human being with a clear writing style, and I find many of his posts to be thought-provoking.

His most recent series of posts was inspired by the nationwide discussion of misogyny triggered by the Isla Vista shootings and the shooter’s insane manifesto. Steve wrote about how this triggered feelings for him in regards to what he calls “meat culture” (not just eating meat, but the cruelty to animals involved in factory farming processes). To Steve, misogynistic attitudes towards women are little different than the attitudes that enable us to mistreat animals. To Steve, it’s all objectification. He loves and respects women, but he also loves and respects animals, and he can’t reconcile how some people can so fiercely advocate for women’s rights yet ignore animal rights. His tweets sums it up:

https://twitter.com/stevepavlina/status/471639041067479040

My first reaction was to disagree. Because of our bigger brains and highly developed neocortex, human beings have a different degree of conscious awareness than animals; we have a wider emotional spectrum and a greater capacity for suffering. Killing (or raping or enslaving) a person is not the same as killing a sardine.

But then I immediately thought of exceptions to my own argument. Having worked with Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins, I don’t believe humans are significantly more conscious-aware than cetaceans. Yes, we have a greater capacity for abstract reasoning, but I doubt we have a wider emotional range or greater emotional sensitivity (perhaps less; dolphins are highly empathetic and altruistic). I don’t think dolphins or whales should be eaten, hunted, or kept in captivity for the purpose of entertaining us. Cetaceans are “people with fins” and should have legal rights within human societies.

Human brain on the left, dolphin brain on the right.

Human brain on the left, dolphin brain on the right.

Cows and pigs are also sensitive mammals who are capable of suffering, and should be not be mistreated. Fish — I’m not really sure how much they think or feel — but the fact remains that we should treat all ocean life and marine habitats with respect if we want to survive as a species.

With this is mind, I decided to reexamine my own ethical stance toward meat-eating. It’s something I’ve considered before, but maybe it was time to revisit the topic. I watched the video in Steve’s “meat culture” post (linked above) and found the images disturbing (even though it’s not the first time I’ve seen videos like that). Maybe it was time for my own thinking and behavior to evolve?

Like most thoughtful meat-eaters, I justify/rationalize meat-eating in the following ways:

  1. Meat-eating is traditional; there are no completely vegan traditional cultural cuisines.
  2. We are evolutionarily adapted to be omnivorous.
  3. Raising animals for food is not necessarily more environmentally destructive than mass-produced crops like corn, soy, and wheat (especially in cases where integrated polyculture is used).

These reasons still make sense to me. At the same time, reducing cruelty towards animals also makes sense. I don’t want to be part of the cruelty inflicted on animals by factory farming. I also don’t want to be part of the cruelty inflicted by animals by mass farming (millions of animals lose their natural habitats because of corn, soy, and wheat farming).

On the other hand, I’m a human being who needs to eat. I take up space in this world. Even if I eat only fruit and nuts, some animal is going to die (orchards destroy natural habitats too). There is no way to be ethically pure. Everything is on a spectrum.

So how should I relate to vegans? Especially to vegans who are critical of meat-eaters for ethical reasons?

From a place of shared compassion.

Vegans are right to be concerned with animal welfare. We should all be concerned with treating our fellow creatures humanely. If human progress exists at all, it takes the form of expanding the circle of empathy.

Even if you think vegans are misguided (in terms of their ethical stance and/or the supposed health benefits of veganism), you should still support and embrace their impulse to be kind and respectful towards other animals, and do the same yourself. Why wouldn’t you want to do this?

Meat-eaters can look to traditional cultures for an alternative to the callous disconnection that factory farming encourages. Tread lightly. Respect the animal. Eat the entire animal and don’t waste anything. Don’t eat more than you need to to thrive. Respect and protect the animal’s natural habitat and ecosystem.

At the moment, I buy cage-free eggs, pastured/grass-fed meats, and organic dairy products. Some of these foods come from small farms, others no doubt come from large factory farms. You can’t always trust the label on the package either; some terms mean nothing (like “natural”) and in other cases there is outright false labeling and fraud. Unless you visit the farm or raise the animal in your own backyard, you can’t be sure how it was treated.

Ideally I’d like to raise my own chickens (it’s legal to raise chickens in Oakland, and many of my friends and neighbors do so). I even briefly considered acquiring a goat, milking it, and trying to make cheese. Then I read an article along the lines of “The 49 Things You Need To Do To Keep Your Goats Healthy” and thought better of it. There’s something to be said for division of labor and efficiency — I’ll be buying my goat cheese at the store and leaving the goat care to the goat care experts.

Here are the concrete, non-labor intensive things that meat-eaters can do to reduce cruelty towards animals, conserve natural habitats, and ultimately protect the human food supply:

So that’s where I stand at the moment. I intend to continue to strive towards a diet and lifestyle that is both enjoyable but also has a low ecological impact and a minimum amount of cruelty towards animals. My own ideal is not veganism, but rather decentralized, distributed food production, reduced use of fossil fuels and artificial fertilizer, more intelligent and efficient land use (all forms of polyculture), and a worldview that values all forms of life.

As I’ve written before, the “diet wars” are largely a battle of straw men. For example, paleo diet advocates and vegans, both being concerned about what they eat and where their food comes from, have more in common with each other than they do with mainstream culture that embraces packaged Frankenfoods and deplorable, wasteful, cruel farming practices.

I’ll leave you with this video from Steven Pinker re: the expanding circle of empathy. What are you own thoughts? Please share below, but remember to be respectful of people who don’t share your exact beliefs. Your own beliefs might change over time!

A Revolution Is When Fringe Thinking Becomes Common Sense

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On December 21

In Alternative Economics, Utopian Speculations

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In this article from The Baffler, anthropologist/author/anarchist David Graeber makes the point that a “successful revolution” has less to do with protestors taking over the government, and more to do with previously fringe/radical ideas becoming common sense, within a short period of time. The article’s powerful closing line:

And the moment any significant number of people simultaneously shake off the shackles that have been placed on that collective imagination, even our most deeply inculcated assumptions about what is and is not politically possible have been known to crumble overnight.

This got me thinking, what was considered fringe thinking ten or twenty years ago, but is currently entering mainstream thought? The following probably seem like common sense/conventional wisdom to a person in their twenties, but anyone holding these ideals in the “greed is good” 80’s was definitely outside of the zeitgeist.

  • gay people should have equal rights
  • intelligent animals (dolphins, whales, elephants, apes) should not be used as slaves or slaughtered for body parts/meat
  • environmental/ecological collapse is possible if our natural environments are treated as economic externalities
  • the national security apparatus has more to do with control of citizens than it does with the protection of citizens
  • food, shelter, healthcare, and education should be basic human rights, and not conditional privileges to be granted based on hard work, morality, cleverness, inborn traits like ethnicity, etc.
  • the value of work should be based on how much it benefits other people and humanity, not on profitability
  • extreme income inequality erodes social trust and pits the poor against the (shrinking) middle class
  • mass incarceration creates more criminals and does not increase public safety in the long run

Attitudes vary by country. The U.S. is fairly enlightened when it comes to gay rights, but is behind on healthcare as a basic right (Obamacare is a small step in the right direction, but saddles middle-class families with unaffordable premiums). In terms of mass incarceration the United States is in a league of its own (not in a good way). Japan is behind on cetacean rights; Thailand is behind on elephant right; China is behind on environmental regulation, and so on. But none of the ideas are “fringe” — Americans who visit England and happen to break a leg are pleasantly surprised when they get no bill for services, and wonder “Why not in the U.S.”?

So what ideas are currently fringe/radical, but might enter the mainstream in ten or twenty or one hundred years? I would suggest the following are plausible:

  • animals with any sort of conscious awareness (insects and some fish probably excepted) should not be used as slaves or slaughtered for body parts/meat
  • depopulation is more of a risk to civilization than overpopulation
  • extra-terrestrial communities (moon base, Mars base, orbiting artificial worlds) should be established as quickly as possible to improve humanity’s survival chances
  • machines that are probably conscious-aware should have legal rights
  • state benefits should not be means-based, but universal (allowing societies to share wealth without violating Murray’s law)

We can see Steven Pinker’s expanding circle of empathy taking humanity to places that seem strange now, but may make perfect sense later.

Of course, even if the long-term trend is towards more cooperation and compassion, short-term collapse and cultural regression is just as likely. Consider the millions of starvation deaths that resulted from the Chinese Cultural Revolution, or the political and economic events (and xenophobic attitudes), that led up to the Holocaust.

Still, there are hopeful ripples in the way human beings are thinking about alternatives to consumer capitalism, which is Graeber’s main topic. Not every detail of the “sharing economy” vision is worked out, but green shoots are visible. Wage slavery and the ruthless exploitation of human labor no longer make sense to most of us. The tide is turning.

End of the World(View), and a New Conservatism

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On December 21

In Culture Rants/Shares, Politics

Conservatism has seen better days.

Conservatism has seen better days.

As far as I can tell, the world isn’t ending today. The Mayan calendar rolls over to a new stone, or a longer ring cycle.

So what is ending? Certain worldviews are on the decline, and I say good riddance.

On their way out:

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Rehabilitating "Progress" and Envisioning "Messy Utopias"

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On October 20

In Alternative Economics, Culture Rants/Shares, Politics, Utopian Speculations

The original “classic” utopia.

I took away three main points from Steven Pinker’s recent Long Now lecture discussing the ideas behind his book The Better Angels of Our Nature.

  1. His outrageous and counter-intuitive proposition that death by violence among human beings has been unevenly but steadily declining throughout history (he provides a great deal of compelling evidence, some of which I discussed in my last post).
  2. His suggestion that intellectuals and academia (especially in the humanities) reconsider their general view that human progress does not exist and is a false ideal.
  3. His point that some of the most horrific genocidal actions in human history have been in pursuit of idealized utopian societies (such as Nazism, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and Stalin’s Communism).

The Messy Utopia

Let’s assume for a minute that the human race avoids destroying itself within the next 100 years. Somehow we’ve made it through global warming, peak oil, massive financial deleveraging, food shortages, our population peaking, droughts and floods, supervolcanoes, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, corporate malfeasance, extreme concentrations of wealth, ocean acidification and coral reef destruction and the collapse of natural fisheries. Some of these things turned out to be more serious than we thought, some less so, and a whole bunch of other stuff happened that we didn’t even consider or predict at all.

But we’re still here. Maybe 9 billion of us in 2112. Maybe significantly fewer if things have gotten really bad. But still quite a few human beings either way.

So what kind of world do we want to be living in, 100 years from now?

History has shown us pretty clearly that the single-minded relentless pursuit of a “perfect” idealized society is a terrible idea. When the “end” is conceived as infinitely good, that opens up the “means” to be pretty awful (forced relocations, prison camps, and outright genocide, for example).

But that doesn’t mean we have to throw out the idea of progress altogether, or stop trying to envision a better society. Is there room for the pursuit of “messy” utopias?

Here’s how I would contrast a “messy utopia” vs. a “classic utopia”:

Classic Utopia Messy Utopia
-homogenous population -diverse population
-rural/pastoral -capitalizes on efficiencies of cities
-clean slate/new land -builds/improves on what exists
-one right way -many good ways
-static/fixed -constantly evolving
-ignores empirical evidence -uses empirical evidence
-anti-elite/anti-intellectual -integrates/uses elites
-disregards less-abled -accommodates less-abled
-attempts to eliminate problems -develops systems for coping with problems
-demands moral standards -encourages moral behavior
-traditional social roles -wildly divergent social roles
-draconian state power -judicious use of state power

The “classic utopia” comes in many flavors. Some are secular, others are religious. Some are conservative and some are liberal. All of them are fantastical and not firmly grounded in a realistic view of the world. Here are some examples:

  • Ayn Rand’s “Galt’s Gulch” from Atlas Shrugged (a secluded enclave protected by energy beams, where residents never borrow things from each other, but instead pay rent for usage)
  • Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia … a racially segregated secessional nation in which people love arts and crafts, hate TV and professional sports, don’t gossip, smoke a lot of weed, have lots of non-monogamous sex, and plant hidden WMD’s in major non-ecotopian cities as a deterrent to revanchism.
  • Joel Salatin is the intensive-polyculture farmer featured in Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma). His libertarian Christian utopia would have no use for cities, and would demand extremely traditional gender roles.

One could go on with visions of libertarian floating city tax havens, anarchist freegan collectives, and so on. These movements, books, and views are not dangerous — what is dangerous is when a powerful insane individual or government tries to implement any kind of utopia with a top-down authoritative approach.

Realism and Optimism Can Co-Exist

I like the idea of envisioning a multitude of messy utopias. Here are my thoughts on rehabilitating the word “progress”:

  • progress isn’t inevitable, but it is possible
  • progress isn’t unidirectional, it’s multi-directional
  • progress can occur even if human nature doesn’t change
  • progress isn’t smooth, rather it is interrupted by sharp spikes of regress
  • not all cultures see progress the same way, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t universal values that most of us embrace
  • qualities that, when developed in individuals, might lead to progress on a social level might include empathy, reason, connectedness, and purpose
  • values that many people might agree represent progress on a social level could include more knowledge and understanding (education), less death by violence, public health and safety, more personal freedom, higher social trust, safety nets for families and communities, egalitarianism, rich arts and culture, scientific research and exploration, robust trade, and so forth

What do you think?

Steven Pinker — Violence Is Down (But What About Oakland?)

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On October 17

In Culture Rants/Shares, Oakland, Utopian Speculations

Steven Pinker and David M. Kennedy

Recently I attended Steven Pinker’s lecture discussing his latest book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature.” This nytimes review provides a great summary if you’re not familiar with it. The talk was part of the Long Now seminar series, hosted by Steward Brand.

Very short summary: death from violence has been declining throughout history, and we are currently experiencing an unprecedented “long peace.”

It’s a counterintuitive proposition. The world often seems on the brink of mass destruction.

But the evidence Pinker presents is compelling. Walking down Market in San Francisco at night (which I did to get to the lecture, past dice games, thuggish types lurking in the shadows, anarchists in hoodies, etc.) is much safer than the Mongol steppes under the reign of the Khans, or Europe during World War II.

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