The Pretzel logic of Veg*nism

[dreamer]

Howdy...thought some of you might want to write this op-ed writer who has argued that eating animals is no better/worse than eating plants from an ethical standpoint. (I just emailed him to argue my side, but some of you are better at making points than I am--I will post my email after this story.)

His email is chet@rall.com ...he might print your email, so don't give him info you don't want everyone to see!

His op-ed:

THE PRETZEL LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM By Ted Rall
Wed Feb 28, 6:23 PM ET


What Must Die So We Can Live?

NEW YORK--Ruben Bolling, who does the comic strip "Tom the Dancing Bug," once drew a chart describing various life-forms next to the question "Can you eat it?" Eating humans--cannibalism--is taboo. Chimpanzees and other great apes with genetic similarities to humans? Not in the West. Fellow mammals? It depends. Bugs? You probably wouldn't want to, but no one cares if you pop a couple of chapulines while waiting out an Oaxaca traffic jam. Plants? Even vegans, most of whom limit their diets because they're horrified by the truism that for one thing to live another must die, make an exception for a juicy beefsteak tomato.

In other words, the less a creature resembles us, the more morally acceptable it is to kill and consume it. It follows, therefore, that people who seek to minimize their impact on other living beings--and, we are frequently reminded, the environment--opt to become vegetarians or full-fledged vegans.

Rabbi Marc Gellman sums up the moral case for vegetarianism. "There is simply no spiritual defense in either the Western or Eastern religious traditions for eating meat," he wrote in Newsweek last year. "The problem is that animals, though obviously not people, are also obviously not things. Animals are sentient beings and their deaths, particularly in the grotesquery of what is euphemistically called food processing causes them great pain and suffering. That is the nub of the spiritual problem. Animals are God's creations that, unlike plants, suffer when they die just to become food for us."

Secular vegetarians make the same argument, minus the God stuff. Plants don't have emotions, so it's OK to kill them. On the other hand, the discovery that the brains of humpback whale (and some other whale species) contain spindle neurons, which process speech and emotional response, is being used to increase pressure on Japan to ban commercial whaling. You have to have feelings in order to suffer; you must suffer to merit pity.

Do plants have feelings? Since the mid-19th century, some scientists have claimed, for example, that plants respond to music and speech. "The Secret Life of Plants" was a bestseller in the 1970s. The truth is, no one knows.

Ancient Greeks classified love into categories. Some major ones include agape (Platonic, or "pure love"), eros (passionate love), patria (love of country) philia (friendship), storge (affectionate, like that of a parent for a child), and xenia (the love of strangers). Possibly because they lived in a tribal society where the hospitality granted to travelers made civilization possible, they believed this last form, xenia, to be the purest, noblest and most necessary kind of love.

There's a simple reason that Google coughs up 40 times more references to "xenophobia" than "xenophilia". (Microsoft Word doesn't even recognize the latter as a word.) It's easy to cherish your close relatives and countrymen--people who look like you. Finding value in and respect for the alien and (to us) incomprehensible is hard--but certainly more admirable.

Just as it's incumbent upon us to treat an object that we borrow from a friend with greater care than something we own, it's incumbent upon us to strive to protect living things with which we don't seem to have much in common. An ethical being is wary of those who use difference--of race, citizenship status, etc.--as justification for mistreatment or abuse. She should be similarly suspicious of the facile might-makes-right logic of human superiority.

Who's to say, for example, that sentience--reasoning, feeling, emotion--is a fair barometer of whether or not a life-form deserves to be eaten? If the vegetable kingdom ruled the world, its members might question whether creatures incapable of photosynthesis were worth a damn. One phylum's obvious is another's arbitrary.

What if we were to honestly embrace the concept of xenia, the love of that which is foreign? Should we slaughter and eat our parents and children while bending over backwards to let viruses and slime molds prosper? Perhaps, in theory. But you can count me out. Like you, I'm a xenophobe. I care about Americans more than Albanians, cats more than catfish, Ralls more than Bushes.

The point, of course, is that people contrive convoluted rationales to justify what they want to do in the first place. The argument that killing plants matters less--much less!--than killing animals defies logic but validates the eating habits of human omnivores. As for me, I've been thinking of going vegetarian, though for a purely selfish reason: it's healthier.

[dreamer]

I regularly read your op-eds and comics,generally enjoying and often agreeing with your sentiments and logic. I am also glad that you are considering vegetarianism and agree that it is healthier than being omnivorous. (I am personally a vegan and would strongly suggest that you look into that option as it is even more healthy than vegetarianism.)

Be that as it may, I found myself disagreeing with your argument that vegetarianism is irrational if done for ethical reasons. As you so clearly point out, there is ample proof that animals do suffer and there is, at best, conflicting evidence about plants. Consequently, by avoiding eating or buying animal products, the person is clearly trying to do the least harm possible since animal suffering is usually quite obvious. Since human beings have to eat, it is obvious to me that eating plants, fungi, legumes, etc. is less harmful than eating animals--including humans;) [I do suppose if you wanted to do the very least harm, you could eat ripe fruits that have dropped from the plant (which the plant intends to be eaten and its seeds spread) only, but that probably wouldn't be healthy.] Of course even plant agriculture is not done in an ethical way in today's modern agricultural community, so that is why some veg*ns will also only eat produce from small
organic operations. [BTW, I personally love plants, especially trees, and try to also do the least harm to them!] Regardless, if there is clear harm done--animals screaming in pain (i.e., cows) or gasping for breath (i.e., fish)--it is not circular reasoning to suggest that eating plants is less harmful by pointing out that we do not know enough about plant physiology or (if it exists) psychology to reduce harm to them. So in a nutshell: clear harm to animals (proof of pain sensitivity, fear, etc) or possible harm to plants (do they have pain sensitivity? Do they feel fear?), which do you choose? I find nothing circular or irrational in following the CLEAR proof as opposed to the hypothesized possibility. Anyway, as you admitted in your op-ed, eating plant-based foods is healthier as well, making it quite apparent than veganism is the healthiest and most ethical (though not entirely w/o harm to life).

[Gliondrach]

Very well put. I don't think I could add anything. If you get any stick over it, though, I will wade in to help.

[Fauxmage]

Ok, let me see if I can rip this guy a new............ cakehole. :D ;)


THE PRETZEL LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM By Ted Rall
Wed Feb 28, 6:23 PM ET


What Must Die So We Can Live?

NEW YORK--Ruben Bolling, who does the comic strip "Tom the Dancing Bug," once drew a chart describing various life-forms next to the question "Can you eat it?" Eating humans--cannibalism--is taboo. Chimpanzees and other great apes with genetic similarities to humans? Not in the West. Fellow mammals? It depends. Bugs? You probably wouldn't want to, but no one cares if you pop a couple of chapulines while waiting out an Oaxaca traffic jam. Plants? Even vegans, most of whom limit their diets because they're horrified by the truism that for one thing to live another must die, make an exception for a juicy beefsteak tomato.

In other words, the less a creature resembles us, the more morally acceptable it is to kill and consume it. It follows, therefore, that people who seek to minimize their impact on other living beings--and, we are frequently reminded, the environment--opt to become vegetarians or full-fledged vegans.

Rabbi Marc Gellman sums up the moral case for vegetarianism. "There is simply no spiritual defense in either the Western or Eastern religious traditions for eating meat," he wrote in Newsweek last year. "The problem is that animals, though obviously not people, are also obviously not things. Animals are sentient beings and their deaths, particularly in the grotesquery of what is euphemistically called food processing causes them great pain and suffering. That is the nub of the spiritual problem. Animals are God's creations that, unlike plants, suffer when they die just to become food for us."

Secular vegetarians make the same argument, minus the God stuff. Plants don't have emotions, so it's OK to kill them. On the other hand, the discovery that the brains of humpback whale (and some other whale species) contain spindle neurons, which process speech and emotional response, is being used to increase pressure on Japan to ban commercial whaling. You have to have feelings in order to suffer; you must suffer to merit pity.

Do plants have feelings? Since the mid-19th century, some scientists have claimed, for example, that plants respond to music and speech. "The Secret Life of Plants" was a bestseller in the 1970s. The truth is, no one knows.

Ancient Greeks classified love into categories. Some major ones include agape (Platonic, or "pure love"), eros (passionate love), patria (love of country) philia (friendship), storge (affectionate, like that of a parent for a child), and xenia (the love of strangers). Possibly because they lived in a tribal society where the hospitality granted to travelers made civilization possible, they believed this last form, xenia, to be the purest, noblest and most necessary kind of love.

There's a simple reason that Google coughs up 40 times more references to "xenophobia" than "xenophilia". (Microsoft Word doesn't even recognize the latter as a word.) It's easy to cherish your close relatives and countrymen--people who look like you. Finding value in and respect for the alien and (to us) incomprehensible is hard--but certainly more admirable.

Just as it's incumbent upon us to treat an object that we borrow from a friend with greater care than something we own, it's incumbent upon us to strive to protect living things with which we don't seem to have much in common. An ethical being is wary of those who use difference--of race, citizenship status, etc.--as justification for mistreatment or abuse. She should be similarly suspicious of the facile might-makes-right logic of human superiority.

Who's to say, for example, that sentience--reasoning, feeling, emotion--is a fair barometer of whether or not a life-form deserves to be eaten? If the vegetable kingdom ruled the world, its members might question whether creatures incapable of photosynthesis were worth a damn. One phylum's obvious is another's arbitrary.

What if we were to honestly embrace the concept of xenia, the love of that which is foreign? Should we slaughter and eat our parents and children while bending over backwards to let viruses and slime molds prosper? Perhaps, in theory. But you can count me out. Like you, I'm a xenophobe. I care about Americans more than Albanians, cats more than catfish, Ralls more than Bushes.

The point, of course, is that people contrive convoluted rationales to justify what they want to do in the first place. The argument that killing plants matters less--much less!--than killing animals defies logic but validates the eating habits of human omnivores. As for me, I've been thinking of going vegetarian, though for a purely selfish reason: it's healthier.
Dear Mr Rall,

You open your article with a discussion of the idea of what is considered edible by human beings. Why not replace the question "Can you eat it?" with "Do you NEED to eat it?"
It has been shown that cattle can be fed the slaughterhouse by-products of most "livestock" animals, including other cattle. The only aim is to keep them alive long enough to reach the slaughterhouse themselves, at the lowest cost to the owners. Though the emergence of bovine spongiform encephalitits has made it unwise to feed dead cattle to live cattle, it has been demonstrated that even herbivores can live on substances that are not of plant origin. In essence, cattle can eat flesh. Do they need to eat flesh in order to survive? No. Will they achieve the highest levels of health and vitality by eating flesh? No, obviously not.

Similarly, humans can eat flesh. Do they need to eat flesh? No. Will they achieve the highest levels of health and vitality by eating flesh? A quick perusal of the leading causes of death in industrialized countries where some form of animal or animal-derived substance is consumed at every meal will show that the answer is no. Should they consider everything that moves as a potential source of food? No. Do you disagree? Then develop a sound, logical argument proving that human beings should be morally entitled to eat anything that can't get away from them, regardless of how much unnecessary suffering and loss of life it will cause.

Consuming nutrients is a biological imperative for all organisms that can be considered alive. A discussion of the "morality" of having to eat in order to maintain life is pointless, because there is no morality in Nature. You clearly don't know any vegans very well, for if you did, you would know that vegans do not "limit their diets because they're horrified by the truism that for one thing to live another must die". I am a vegan, and I neither share your view of vegans as "horrified" by how the world is supposed to work ("the truism that for one thing to live another must die" doesn't quite cover what goes on in feedlots, battery cages, and slaughterhouses, now does it), nor your view of my diet as a "limitation". I don't "limit" my diet to plant foods only, any more than you "limit" yours to exclude the consumption of urine and feces (both of which are considered food by many organisms, though not, I trust, by you). I do rely exclusively on plants to meet as many of my needs as possible because to me the most important goal is to reduce unnecessary harm. I don't need anything that comes from an animal, for any reason, and there is no morality involved in this truth. It is a simple admission stemming from my interest in not taking more from the Earth than I need.

I actually fail to see how "It follows, therefore, that people who seek to minimize their impact on other living beings--and, we are frequently reminded, the environment--opt to become vegetarians or full-fledged vegans." from "the less a creature resembles us, the more morally acceptable it is to kill and consume it.", since, although I and most of the vegans I know do refuse to harm animals for any reason, there is no more moral motivation behind our dependence upon plants to meet our needs than there is in the plants themselves for relying upon the rays of the sun to meet theirs. I didn't wake up one day and decide that it would be the best moral option to eat that which has the least resemblance to myself. I eat what I know I am supposed to eat, and you are no more entitled to expect vegans to justify our diets to you than you are entitled to question why a lion eats gazelles, or a barnacle eats plankton.

Every animal except the human one knows instinctively what it is supposed to eat, and morality does not come into play here, unless of course the animal in question is eating something it isn't supposed to eat, or is taking more than it needs. So far this is the exclusive realm of the human animal, and though I don't feel obliged to explain to anyone why I depend upon plants, I would be very interested to be presented with a rational, biological, non-anthropocentric justification for the human use of animals, especially in the context of modern-day abuses. If even one human person can demonstrate, by the way he lives his daily life, that no human needs to use animals to live and thrive, it becomes incumbent upon those who insist on taking more than they need, and cause more harm than less by doing so, to justify their choices. It follows then that I need no "convoluted rationale" to justify my dependence upon plants. I can no more deny my need to consume them than a fish can deny its need to live in water. I don't need to. Though as a thinking organism with an imagination I can dream about how great it would be if my skin were so full of symbiotic algae that I could get everything I needed by lying in the sun for an hour or two every day, the reality is that if I want to live, I have to eat something. By deciding to eat what I am supposed to eat, I am making a biological choice, not a moral one. If I were to decide to eat what I am not supposed to eat, not because I need it, but because I want it, then I have some explaining to do.

Plants may very well have feelings and emotions. I have actually never found a vegan who is as unwilling to admit this possibility as the many omnivores I know who continue to live in utter denial of the harm they cause by their unnecessary use of animals to satisfy their excessive desires for "gourmet" foods and other luxuries. I really would prefer not to have to eat anything at all, or be the cause of any loss of life. But the burden is not on me to prove that I am not harming plants by killing them and consuming them. The burden is on others to prove that they are not causing less harm by killing animals in addition to plants.

I think you should be careful about making sure that you do not confuse the ethical decision to cause as little harm to other living things as possible, with the recognition that everything that lives does so at the expense of another life, which is a facet of reality rather than a moral concept. My personal experience has been that vegans are actually more in tune with "the truism that for one thing to live another must die" rather than less. Its the omnivores who are in denial about their roles in the web of life.

[Fauxmage]

I haven't sent it. I have no problem with using morality to defend veganism. I just don't think its necessary, and I really don't think anyone could ever justify any argument against why it is not necessary to make any use of animals at all. It can be a moral choice, and in many cases it ought to be thought of in that way, but when it boils right down to it, if a cow shouldn't have to explain why she eats grass, and a snake shouldn't have to explain why he eats mice, and Ped Ant shouldn't have to explain why he eats maggots, we shouldn't have to explain why we eat fruits, veggies, grains, and beans.

I think its a real sign of ignorance as to what veganism is all about when necrotarians think we are all against all forms of killing. I mean, I don't like thinking about what happens to all the poor prey animals when they get caught and killed, but veganism is not about feeding soy to lions so they will stop killing gazelles. Lions are supposed to eat gazelles. People are not. People are supposed to be herbivores. Its the people who veer away from being herbivorous who are on the spot to explain why they eat animals when they don't need to. They are the ones doing something weird and disordered, not us.

[Charmagne]

WOW - if you send that Fauxmage and Dreamer sends hers this guy will definately feel like he has a new "cakehole"!:thumbsup:

[Fauxmage]

I was eating when I read your comment Charmagne, and I laughed so hard I almost spit my food out all over the computer screen. :D :blecch: :o

[Charmagne]

:rofl: :laugh: :rofl: :laugh:

[Oracl]

WOW - if you send that Fauxmage and Dreamer sends hers this guy will definately feel like he has a new "cakehole"! :thumbsup:
:agree: :D

[Gliondrach]

Excellent, Fauxmage. Well thought out and well presented. You should send it. I will put your name forward for the Nitram Nagev Foundation's Animal Rights Philosophy Gold Medal.

[dreamer]

I wish you'd send it too, Fauxmage...I think your points might make some impact (whether he would admit it or not).

[Fauxmage]

Ok, I sent it. :o

[thevegantwins]

Ok, I sent it. :o
Self-esteem needed, Faux. Repeat..I sent it :yea: :D

[dreamer]

I think its a real sign of ignorance as to what veganism is all about when necrotarians think we are all against all forms of killing. I mean, I don't like thinking about what happens to all the poor prey animals when they get caught and killed, but veganism is not about feeding soy to lions so they will stop killing gazelles. Lions are supposed to eat gazelles. People are not. People are supposed to be herbivores. Its the people who veer away from being herbivorous who are on the spot to explain why they eat animals when they don't need to. They are the ones doing something weird and disordered, not us.
I'm so glad you sent your discussion and I think this was a great point too. I know I don't like watching nature specials where I see prey animals eviscerated, but you're right that I wouldn't try to make carnivorous wild predators vegan either. I also think that omnivorous people are the ones that should have to explain their inexplicable irrational eating habits, but usually it's the minority--whether right or wrong--that is put on the spot to explain:no:

[Fauxmage]

I always wonder what it must have been like when most of the people in the world thought it was flat. Somehow that fundamental belief was changed, and at one point there must have been a very small number of fanatics who fought like mad to get the general populace to accept the fact that the world is round. I feel like we are in the same position. Most of the world is functioning on a mistaken and incorrect belief that they must exploit animals for most of their basic needs, and we few who know the truth are frustrated in our attempts to show that this is not true. People like to rely on the idea that if the majority think something is true, then it is. But the majority once thought the earth was flat, and they were quite wrong, as they seem to be about a lot of things.

Concerning folks like Mr Rall, sometimes its hard to tell whether they are truly ignorant of what veganism is really about, or they deliberately misconstrue in order to promote their own badly thought-out arguments. Either way, I guess it can't hurt to try to provide a little enlightenment.

[Fauxmage]

Self-esteem needed, Faux. Repeat..I sent it :yea: :D
:laugh:
I'll go write that on the chalkboard 100 times, in bold print. :agree:

[dreamer]

You know, I realized that neither of us used the term "anthropocentric" in our emails to him...I thought we could've used that "big" word from the article about dolphins on another thread;) Although you, Fauxmage, at least referenced it by mentioning that omnivorous people (who eat dairy, meat, eggs, etc) are less likely to really consider how they are taking a life to survive or what type of suffering that causes.

I also realized while re-reading the op-ed by Rall that he mentions a vegan eating a "beef-steak tomato" w/o guilt. That actually partially goes to my point about eating fruit (of course, I guess the tomato didn't natually fall off the vine)...that fruit is actually the plant's way of reproducing, so it is often meant to be eaten! It's not the same as eating, say, a carrot which is a root vegetable, but that point is apparently lost to Mr. Rall;) [I eat both, but I see the distinction...]

[Fauxmage]

I've thought about the distinction between fruits and the other parts of plants, and I am also aware that most of the vegetable plants we eat are annuals, which only have a life cycle lasting less than a year anyway, but I've decided that arguing the finer points of which plants its ok to eat, because the entire plant isn't killed (like artichokes, asparagus, and other perennial plants, besides fruit and nut trees) tends to weaken my position rather than strengthen it. I prefer the idea of humbly admitting that yes, I do kill plants and eat them, and yes, they might very well suffer from this, but animals still suffer more, and those who eat animals are responsible not only for the animnals' suffering, but the suffering of the plants the animals eat, and the suffering of the plants they eat.

Veganism is not about eliminating suffering and death, its about doing whatever we humans can to eliminate as much human-caused unnecessary suffering and death as we can. Yes, morally speaking, suffering IS wrong and causing it deliberately IS unethical, when it is caused by humans for humans. But there is no moral code or religion that expects that its followers will be able to practice its tenets 100%. The Catholics, for instance, consider sex outside the context of marriage is a sin. However, they know people won't be able to follow this, so they have confession. Some people don't think this system makes a lot of sense, but just because it is abused to a certain degree doesn't invalidate the idea that we are imperfect people, and though we may consider something to be wrong, we may not always be able to prevent ourselves from doing something we think is wrong. I think it is better to admit to the possibility that some of the things we vegans do may be wrong, according to our own ethics, (such as feeding dead animals to our companion cats), but its better to admit this than to continue on in denial of it. Denial is the way of hypocrites and necrotarians, not us. And I can't help but see the similarities between necrotarians who claim animals have no feelings, and vegans who claim plants have no feelings. I won't claim that they don't, since I don't feel like I'll ever know enough about how the world works, but for me to eat plants, which might have feelings I can't understand, is not quite the same thing morally as a person who eats animals, who obviously do.

[Oracl]

....for me to eat plants, which might have feelings I can't understand, is not quite the same thing morally as a person who eats animals, who obviously do.
I agree. :agree:

[dreamer]

I obviously also agree that plants might suffer and regret my part in it, but I definitely feel that animal suffering is greater--though I wouldn't say that to Mr. Rall;)

[Phoenix]

... I really would prefer not to have to eat anything at all, or be the cause of any loss of life. But the burden is not on me to prove that I am not harming plants by killing them and consuming them. The burden is on others to prove that they are not causing less harm by killing animals in addition to plants ...
:master: Bravo!