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Charles Eisenstein Responds to Reader Comments
By Charles Eisenstein / May 21, 2007
I am surprised by how many people did not understand the distinction I tried to make between the meat industry, which stands guilty of all the crimes many of you mention, and the eating of meat. I consider it a given that today's meat industry is an abomination.
My main point was two-fold: (1) That meat eating can be consistent with a sustainable world where everyone is fed; and (2) There can be another basis for ethics besides minimizing death. The arguments for the first point are impossible to lay out in detail within the requested format; suffice it to say that animals should generally not be fed grains or other crops, but pasture, and that they should be part of a sustainable farm ecology. And it is true that much pasture land is not suited for horticulture. Some visionary thinkers in agriculture think it is usually destructive to "break ground" at all, an insight which is one of the inspirations of the permaculture movement.
As for the second point, doesn't anyone else think it is silly to assess the ethical weight of an act by adding up the total pounds of death it causes? Of course I am aware that animals eat plants, so that by eating animals I am eating lots of dead plants. But my whole point is that minimizing death is not the only possible basis of ethics. I place a higher value on harmony, wholeness, and beauty. These are harder to quantify than death; hence my digression into "what feels right". I am not saying, "Forget about ethics, do what feels right." I am saying that this is what underlies any system of ethics. And if we seek to live by ethics, we must sometimes return to that feeling level to reconnect them with our hearts. The
purpose of ethics is to bring wisdom to situations when we are out of touch with feeling. It is not a replacement for feeling, but more of an aid or extension.
Most of the responses could be summed up as "Eisenstein just doesn't get it." Just doesn't understand the arguments for vegetarianism. Sorry, I've been there, done that. I've read John Robbins and I've read Frances Lappe. In my 20s I became fluent in those arguments and believed them fervently. Let's see, there was also "just doesn't get shamanism," thinks it is a single unified tradition. Just doesn't get Yoga, hasn't heard of ahimsa.
I would like you to consider that a thoughtful, compassionate, sensitive person could absorb all of this material and still eat meat. Have you read the counterarguments to Robbins and Lappe? I have read the best of both sides, and you know what? I gave up trying to decide based on reason who was right. I would have had to research their sources, gather my own statistics, maybe even do my own physiology experiments. That is why instead I went back to my own body, and my own feelings of what is beautiful, whole, and right. The result was that I returned to eating meat.
If you are a committed vegan, how can you explain this choice? Well, here are a few theories to help you:
1. Eisenstein has given in to self-indulgence, hedonism, and general moral turpitude. He has abandoned his principles to revel in his own selfish pleasure. Shame on him!
2. Eisenstein is just inherently deficient in goodness. He is of a lower moral or spiritual quality. He simply does not care.
3. Eisenstein is a person of crude sensibilities, and completely out of touch with his body. Maybe he doesn't understand about whole grains or complete proteins or other basic principles of diet. He thinks he is healthy now, but he isn't.
Generalizing these explanations, you can create a whole class of moral untermenschen to hate. I think people on this site, at least, should be aware of the dangers of that.
I have nothing against vegetarianism or vegetarians. However, if you suspect that a meatless diet is not supporting your health, I urge you to investigate the moral and ethical complexities of this issue. There are many thoughtful, compassionate, even spiritual people who eat meat. Moreover, I have met many, many people whose health radically improved after they began eating meat again. I do not attempt to generalize that to everybody. I am perfectly willing to accept that vegans can be healthy too (though I've met many who are not).
Finally, I want to thank everybody who offered comments, even the vitriolic and vulgar ones. I see behind them motivations we all share: a desire to find truth and a passion to create a more beautiful world.
Charles Eisenstein
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I agree with everything Charles wrote about this issue. I am a meat eater for one simple reason: my body needs it. Of course the meat industry is appallingly cruel and we must change it, but we can only change these barbarities by changing our whole dualistic metaphysics.
The problem with certain fanatical vegans is that they sound like a certain kind of religious zealot, like doctrinaire Marxists or fundamentalist Christians. They have The Truth on their side, they’ve discovered it, and anyone who doesn’t share their view is brainwashed or self-indulgent. One doesn’t have to be a defender in any way of the status quo to reject Marxist-Leninist solutions to the corruptions and depradations of capitalist society. Likewise, one can be appalled by the inhumane treatment of livestock and still reject veganism as The Answer to Everything. Veganism, for me, is simply unworkable. It is unworkable on a PHYSIOLOGICAL, BIOCHEMICAL, METABOLIC level. It’s simply impossible for me to maintain a healthy body on a vegan diet.
A passage from Nietzsche is pertinent here, because it encapsulates my own objections to vegan ethics:
“The error of confusing cause and effect. There is no more insidious error than mistaking the effect for the cause: I call it the real corruption of reason. Yet this error is one of the most unchanging habits of mankind: we even worship it under the name of “religion” or “morality.” Every single principle from religion or morality contains it; priests and moral legislators are the originators of this corruption of reason.
“Here is an example. Everybody knows Cornaro’s famous book in which he recommends a meager diet for a long and happy life — a virtuous life, too. Few books have been read so widely; even now thousands of copies are sold in England every year. I do not doubt that scarcely any book (except the Bible) has done as much harm, has shortened as many lives, as this well intentioned oddity. Why? Because Cornaro mistakes the effect for the cause. The worthy Italian thought his diet was the cause of his long life, whereas the precondition for a long life, the extraordinary slowness of his metabolism, was the cause of his slender diet. He was not free to eat little or much; his frugality was not a matter of “free will” — he made himself sick when he ate more. But whoever has a rapid metabolism not only does well to eat properly, but needs to. A scholar in our time, with his rapid consumption of nervous energy, would simply destroy himself on Cornaro’s diet. Crede experto — believe me, I’ve tried.”
Vegans are like the followers of Cornaro’s diet: they assume that what makes them healthy and happy will work equally well for everyone. They assume that “we are all omnivores, therefore we can choose.” In reality, as Nietzsche realized, no one diet is correct for all physiologies: what will make one person healthy not only can, but MUST make another person get sick.
It seems that you resumed meat eating for health reasons. And then you (maybe) felt guilty about that so you rationalized it into a “religion”. I think perhaps you gave up on vegetarianism prematurely, without experimenting with different ways to make your diet healthier. Perhaps you were deficient in something that meat contains, but that would have been easy to get if you had been able to identify it.
I’m a newish vegetarian (well, perhaps a re-newed vegetarian is more accurate). It’s a lot of trouble for me to maintain this diet because I have a lot of food allergies that makes it somewhat restrictive. But I’m going to try to keep healthy by doing my best to keep to a good diet. If I get meat cravings, then I’ll try to find out why and what I can do about it. I won’t be eating meat.
I do think the “do what feels right” basis of determining a way to live is a bit self-indulgent. I also think it’s too variable to be reliable. I’m not so young that I haven’t changed a lot in my “beliefs” over the years, and probably been self-indulgent all along the way. I hope I’m now old enough to have learned that just doing what feels right (at the time) doesn’t mean it always IS right.
I found this wandering through other blogs that talked about the Death by Veganism op ed piece. And have been impressed with what a fairly reasoned exchange both sides gave. But it’s also made me realize there probably is no compromise for both sides of the issue.
I have felt bad for Eisenstein during this exchange b/c well I’m an omnivore who also used to be a vegetarian. So a lot of his logic or lack thereof according to some of you is some of the same reasoning I went through. The book that made me a vegetarian was Theory of Religion by Bataille and once I found range free meat and found ways of using entire animals and thus give respect to their deaths I went back to eating meat. For me, being an omnivore makes me feel more connected to the earth than vegetarianism ever did or veganism ever would.
I’m sure this will only serve to produce ridicule, but I didn’t want Eisenstein to feel he had no sympathetic ears. Meanwhile I’ll just go back to wondering if the ecological footprint for veganaise or any other vegan packaged product is really that much smaller than my CSA that uses a Polyface model for farming most my meat and most of my veggies.
If you assume that meat production methods will remain unchanged while demand rises, you may have a point. How likely is this? Have production methods remained unchanged for the last 40 years? I think not. Recall the pretty much complete disappearance of the small family farm in favor of large agribusiness beginning in the late 70′s/early 80′s. Consider the rise of factory farming during the same time. We cannot know how the industry will develop over the coming decades. We can, however, be reasonably confidant that any predictions based upon simply projecting current trends into the future will be grossly inaccurate. Similar prophecies of doom have historically been common, and have universally failed. In part, because they can, if taken seriously, lead to active efforts to avert the consequences predicted. And in part, because they ignore economic dynamics. (Assuming production technologies do not change, increasing demand will tend to produce increasing prices, as production proves unable to meet demand. This, in turn, helps depress demand as other foods become economically more attractive.) Of course, a growing global population is the root of the matter, as more people means more demand for food of all kinds, which leads to more land being cleared for agriculture, etc. The meat production industry is only a small part of the overall problem.
As Bill Hicks said, “Do you think we could all stop rutting for a second while we sort out this food/air deal?”
“That is why instead I went back to my own body, and my own feelings of what is beautiful, whole, and right. The result was that I returned to eating meat.”
Has it ever occurred to you that your “own feelings of what is beautiful, whole, and right” constituted a return to what you were taught to do during your most formative years of childhood? Seems kinda hard to me to buy the whole “shamanistic” hand waving when we have a perfectly adequate explanation in your childhood programming.
Sometimes, as we grow and learn more about the world around us, we get the urge to refrain from doing everything that simply “feels right”, because we realize that our own personal feelings are not the end-all and be-all of creation. Sometimes our deepest desires can hurt those around us if we give them no guidance. Its a hard path to follow, striking out against the mold you were poured into as a child, and its very easy to relapse. So I can’t entirely blame the self-serving attempt to dismiss those who disagree with you:
“Eisenstein has given in to self-indulgence, hedonism, and general moral turpitude. He has abandoned his principles to revel in his own selfish pleasure. Shame on him!”
Why do you “feel” the need to transform a reasonable outlook into a ridiculous parody? Is it so hard to admit that you like the taste of meat enough that the minor ethical concerns you have about it just aren’t enough to stop you? Hey, fine, eat meat, in the grand scheme of things it won’t matter anyhow. The least you could do is be honest with yourself in the process, rather than disguising your motivations with a thin glaze of eastern religion.
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