Wow Charles,

I am surprised to see someone so liberated from things like right and wrong suddenly beholden to space constraints. I mean, like, what is space anyway? It’s just like this human construction, you know?

Anyway, yeah, I guess this debate is over. All I can hope is that someday you will extend some of your feelings towards our animal brothers and sisters, they need it more than the rocks do. Sometimes your heart and your ethics can work together.

Love, Isa (doesn’t read Adbusters, quit anarchism)

NEXT: Charles Eisenstein responds to reader comments 

more »

Hi again Charles,

My mission in life is to make yummy vegan food, because taste is usually the main complaint of people who see the ethical reasoning for veganism but can’t give up their old foods. I don’t usually debate these things because people get defensive. Even the mere thought of veganism seems to provoke some people.

I am vegan because it is an easy way to make a difference. I hate oppression. I hate racism and sexism and homophobia, and I want to see an end to the war in Iraq. All struggle is interconnected. I realized this at a fairly young age, mostly from participating in feminist and anti-racist activism. It made me look at my own life, and the changes I could make to create the world I want to live in. And no one has ever given me a good reason to believe that non-human animals should be exempt from this. People know it would be wrong to kill a dog, yet don't extend their empathy to a cow.

I don’t subscribe to the same spirituality as you, so your reasoning has no sway on me. I guess we are trying to persuade the audience and not each other. Maybe some people will become ethical omnivores and others will become vegans. More likely, people will just decide that we are both wingnuts. And of course someone will post something like “IF goD dint want Us to eat animalz Y did he Make them oUt of Meet??! ROFL!!!11111”
Arguing the Extreme: It'd feel great to listen to Neil Diamond 24/7, but would it be right?
Your main point seems to be: “I feel in my heart that it is right to kill animals and so it is right to kill animals.” But ethical systems don’t work that way. If they did, one could say, “We should all be listening to Neil Diamond, shooting heroin, and playing Dungeons & Dragons all day because my heart tells me it is right.” And even more to the point, how come my heart tells me not to eat animals and yours tells you that you should?

You ask if your personal eating habits are relevant to the discussion. Of course they are! Isn’t that the point of this debate? I think the only ethical issues worth tackling are ones that we can actually apply to our lives. I am curious what happens to the male calves where you get your dairy or the male chicks where you get your eggs. Also, how many eggs do the hens lay a year? Is the cow forcibly impregnated? Are her babies taken from her? Many times people hear the word “free range” and what they think they are getting is far removed from reality.

People claiming to be ethical meat eaters do not always eat the way they would ethically prefer, because the ideas that govern ethical meat eating are arbitrary. Why not eat “unethical” meat when you see no inherent flaw with eating meat?

Factory farming is cheaper because the full cost is not reflected in the price of the final product. As Michael Pollan points out in Omnivore’s Dilemma, factory farming is directly and indirectly subsidized, and externalities like aquifer depletion and animal welfare just don’t get priced at all. As long as this remains true, the cost of your idyllic farming techniques will also be unknown, since it’s a niche market that exists in the shadow of—and must compete with—industrial agriculture. If it becomes common farming practice, we will need to find cheaper protein sources to feed the people who can’t afford steak, and cheaper vegetable crops again become attractive.

But the fundamental vegetarian concern is still not being addressed here: Why kill the animal that we do not need to kill? Why not allow the chicken a pleasant and long life, instead of a pleasant and short one?

If we see all creatures on the farm as equivalent contributors to the ecosystem, would we shrink from killing the farmer who is too old to farm any longer, or the child born with a deformity that would prevent her from contributing to the ecosystem? If not, then how are you not creating a hierarchy of needs with humans at the top? Why not run the farm for the benefit of the chickens, who would live long and happy lives, regardless of whether they contribute, while everyone else lives or dies in order to accommodate their needs? Unless you embrace the idea of a chicken-centered farm, it seems like you fail to avoid the human-centric morality that you disdain.

In response to your claim about the ten-calories-per-each-meat-calorie argument, that’s nice but I wasn’t addressing the pasture land in terms of environmental impact. I was addressing your notion that plants have feelings. So regardless of what is grown on this land, if plants do indeed have feelings on par with our own (again, your thoughts on the subject, not mine) then you would be killing x amount more plants to produce your meat, and creating however many times more pain and suffering. But while on the subject, the less land we use for our meals, the more land that reverts back to wilderness, which would be more efficient and sustainable.

A Great, Wise Spirit, or Just a Kick-Ass Tree?: Redwoods are super tall I have stood in awe of the redwoods. But I didn’t find myself in the presence of a great and wise spirit. I found myself in awe of a fucking amazing tree. I would say that for me it is up there among the most wonderful experiences of my life, and I’ve met Huey Lewis, so that is saying a lot. I would never say it’s “just wood," so I am not really sure who you are arguing with here.

I can’t help but notice that you avoided the choice I presented you with, between the redwood and the child, and instead inserted your preference for the redwood over your own life. I mentioned the child because she is more directly analogous than you or me: I am asking you if you would take your ethical foundation to its logical conclusion and kill the redwood, the seat of ancient and wise life, or the child. I assume you avoided answering this because the answer you would have provided was sociopathic.

“Shall we dismiss millennia of shamanic experience that says that plants have the ‘necessary hardware’ for sentience?” My immediate and emphatic response is yes. If to do otherwise would lead us to destroy the planet, then how is it that I, with absolutely no ties to shamanic beliefs, am doing my best not to destroy the planet? There are many ways to be an environmentalist, and they're not all spiritual. This is a fallacious appeal to tradition. Stating that something has been done for thousands of years doesn’t justify doing it.

Even if plants do indeed have some level of consciousness (or if rocks or air do, for that matter), with animals there is not the slightest doubt. Animals’ suffering is profound and intense. We don’t need shamans to detect it, it is easily recognizable. Animals’ joy is palpable and infectious. Most six-year-olds can see and feel these things.

It is not my desire to live in a natural world. That was a stated desire of yours, and so I was asking you how you reconcile your want for a natural world of beauty with doing things that are unnatural and unbeautiful, like taking calves away from their mothers and drinking the milk that was intended for them. Instead of answering my question you turned the argument around into something else.
The Animal That Follows The Noble Eightfold Path: Man is the only species that can liberate itself from samsara
Animals generally do not choose to become Buddhists and are not capable of detaching themselves from suffering in the way you describe. If I have endured discomfort for something important, then it has been by choice. No animal is willing to endure discomfort or pain so that they can become our dinner. You focus on your feelings, but never consider the will of the cow, the chicken, the pig, and so on.

Death and pain may very well be part of life, but that doesn’t make causing death and pain acceptable. With that line of logic, you could justify everything from bullying a child in grade school to the torture or prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Of course animals are going to die whether or not we kill them. I am going to die, you are going to die. We’re all going to die. That is another reason why I usually don’t participate in these conversations. I would rather be bird-watching or dancing or baking or writing letters to my senator. If you pay attention to what I'm saying, you'll see that my protest is not against death. It's against killing.

Love, Isa

NEXT: Stop, for the love of the Earth!

more »

Dear Isa,

I’m going to start at the end, addressing your skepticism about “ethical omnivores.” So yes, I eat most of my food from farmers I know personally. In the winter, I do eat a lot of non-local produce, and I eat rice from Arkansas, and olive oil from Italy, but even then most of my animal food is local.

The farms that supply me are pretty idyllic. There are many people like me who really care. We are seriously committed to eating in an ethical way.

Can “idyllic” agriculture support six billion people? Well, it uses far less fossil fuel and groundwater than factory farming. Factory farming is only more efficient in dollar and labor terms, not in productivity per acre of land. In a truly sustainable agricultural system, we will spend much more time per capita to grow the same amount of food. I think this is a good thing.

By the way, much of the land used for grazing animals would be unsuitable for horticulture. This is the flaw in the argument that it takes ten calories of grain to produce one calorie of meat. However, I do think that in a truly sustainable system meat production would be lower than it is today. We overeat and waste enormous amounts. As much as half of all food is wasted today.

I hear your exasperation, but when I question your moral differentiation between plant and animal life, it’s not because I’ve failed to understand your points. Have you ever stood before a 300-foot-tall redwood or a thousand-year-old oak, and felt yourself in the presence of a great and wise spirit? I would sooner kill a cow than chop down such a tree. Perhaps I would sooner die. To say it is “just wood” would be to show the same prejudice toward plants that you decry toward animals.

Logic says, hey, it’s just a bunch of wood, just a collection of cells that are themselves composed of inanimate carbon, nitrogen, and so on. But this is precisely the same logic that Descartes’ followers used to justify their grisly experiments on animals, explaining cries of pain as nothing more than the wheezing of bellows and the creaking of wheels. At bottom, it’s all just force and mass, right? In our despoliation of the planet, we routinely use such logic to trump our innate biophilia, the love of all life that resides in our hearts.

I question your assumption that a plant doesn’t have the “necessary hardware” for sentience. Shall we dismiss millennia of shamanic experience that says otherwise? Or is sentience purely a function of a central nervous system—most highly developed in humans. (Here again is the implicit hierarchy of being, with us at the top.)I'm Not as Dumb As I Look: Biochemical interactions inside a plant are as complex as a nervous system

As a matter of fact, the intricate non-linear feedback loops of a central nervous system are rivaled if not exceeded in complexity by plant interactions mediated by root networks, mycelial networks, volatile aromatics, and other vectors. Stephen Buhner describes this beautifully in The Lost Language of Plants. I also recommend Elliot Cowan’s Plant Spirit Medicine for its compelling accounts of plant-human communication. I find a certain hubris in dismissing shamanistic beliefs as mere superstition, as you did when you claimed that “they came up with animal spirits.” I think it is the reduction of the natural world to a collocation of forces and masses that enables us to destroy the planet with expected impunity.

Most of our plant and animal food species are in a sense no longer "natural." A modern chicken wouldn’t live very long in the wild, and modern corn cannot even reproduce without human assistance. Like other species, we live in symbiotic dependency with our food sources.

I do not share your feeling that something has “gone wrong” in the gazelle’s moment of terror in the lion’s jaws, just as I see nothing wrong in another gazelle’s last agonizing, desperate struggle to rise to its feet as extreme old age overtakes it. Death and pain are part of life. Suffering is distinct from pain. I have experienced enormous pain without suffering. Suffering comes from resistance and attachment, and in a sense no one can make another person suffer. I am not excusing or justifying anything here, just questioning whether the prolonging of life and minimizing of pain are indeed the highest ethical guidelines. One way to investigate is to apply it to yourself. Have you, in your life, taken risks and endured discomfort in the pursuit of things more important to you than security and comfort?

What alternative ethical principles could there be, then? Any coherent, satisfying ethical system must address the obvious and profound wrongness that emanates from our present agricultural system, and especially factory meat production. But I think that vegetarians, perhaps being more sensitive to this wrongness than most, have misidentified its source. The animals are going to die anyway, whether or not we kill them, and in death there is usually terror or pain. The source of the wrongness is not killing. It is life out of balance. It is life distorted, contorted, perverted into a grotesque and hellish mockery of life.

You might ask, how can we know what the life purpose of another being is? Without that knowledge, isn’t it wrong to cut that life short? My answer is that we have an innate ability to recognize what is balanced, beautiful, harmonious, and right. The heart knows that a complex rainforest ecosystem is more beautiful than a parking lot.

Unfortunately, our culture has so alienated us from our natural wisdom that we no longer choose what is right. We have been intimidated by powerful economic and ideological forces that have marooned us in a realm of narrow self-interest and rationality.Morality as Algebra: Philosopher Jeremy Bentham attempted to calculate "utility"

Reason has its place, but it is the heart that knows. No Benthamite quantification of happiness and suffering will help us choose ethically. We can try to create a calculus of suffering, counting the pounds of biomass killed, the number of earthworms destroyed, the units of sentience in an insect vs. a cow vs. a human, and solve this vast equation to make a decision. But we would be rationalizing what we already know, and deceiving ourselves if we pretended to decide right from wrong on the basis of the equation. Such elaborations usually obscure rather than clarify.

In the end, I choose local organic food because it feels right. Soon in our dialog I hope to share with you how the same feeling has guided me to eat meat—the story of my journey to vegetarianism and back again!

With gentleness,

Charles

NEXT: What if I feel that we should listen to Neil Diamond, shoot heroin, and play D&D?

more »

From: Isa Chandra Moskowitz
To: Charles Eisenstein
Subject: About "mindful" killing...

Hi Charles,

Let's say a woman is walking her dog in the park, and I come up and slit the dog's throat. Would itSo Happy You Could Kill Him?: A good life does not justify a quick death be of any comfort to her that the dog had a happy life? Would that make me any less of a monster? The issue at hand isn’t death. It’s killing.

Even a quick glance at the cats sitting on the sofa next to me, licking their paws and cuddling together, provides me with enough information to know that they would probably enjoy a couple more years of doing so. If an enjoyable life is what animals prefer, then isn’t a longer enjoyable life even more preferable?

Animal husbandry cannot satisfy animals' needs. A hen’s “natural” life would include roosting in a jungle and laying maybe 2 dozen eggs a year. Are you prepared to move to the jungle so that you can have your omelet? A cow naturally produces only enough milk for her babies. How is it “natural” for a human to take that milk from her? Even worse, how is it “natural” to take her baby from her? And at this point I will stop putting scare quotes around the word “natural” because I know it’s annoying. But you get my point.

I feel silly even addressing the difference between plant life and animal life. It’s simply sentience. Yes, perhaps we do set up a hierarchy by valuing animal life over plant life. But you are wrong to assume the hierarchy must have humans on top.

An ethical vegan extends moral community to the rest of the animal kingdom. This is the fundamental difference between vegans and everyone else. We know animals value their own lives, and it disturbs us that people dismiss animals' concerns. This is what you do, Charles, by thinking only in terms of animals' value to us. But in principle, it is possible for a vegan to value all animals equally, without placing humans on top of the hierarchy.

It’s very strange to talk about a plant as possessing a "spirit." We have no reason to think that a plant has any experience of the world. It simply doesn’t have the necessary hardware. If a blade of grass has a purpose, it is an ecological purpose. But we don’t understand our purpose as human beings in ecological terms, so why should we think of plants this way?

If you are hell-bent on thinking that plants have feelings, consider this: it takes many pounds of plants (anywhere from 5 to 25, depending on who you ask) to create one pound of meat. So if you wish to minimize suffering—and it sounds like you do—then a plant-based diet is still more ethical, because, all things equal, if suffering were measured in pounds, we should choose the least amount possible.

When I first went vegetarian 18 years ago I painted the back of my jacket with a quote from the ’80sJewcy radical Peter Singer: He made preference utilitarianism sexy again British anarcho-punk band Flux Of Pink Indians—“Strive to survive causing least suffering possible.” I’ve since recognized that a) Painting slogans on your denim jacket is a little dumb and b) it’s a hackneyed version of utilitarian philosophy. But nonetheless, I think it’s a good ethical guideline and, for me, what ethical veganism is about. It is about minimizing suffering, and for the purpose of argument I include a life cut short as suffering.

Even the “softest-hearted” vegan does not obsess about worms being eaten by robins. But sometimes nature is horrific. When animals tear each other apart (including, sometimes, human animals), we don’t regard this as a good outcome. Look at the terror in a gazelle’s eyes as a lion cuts it down: This is not a beautiful sight, and might fill you with a sense that something has gone wrong. That’s not to say that we need to hold the lion accountable—she can't choose to do otherwise.

Humans, on the other hand, are fortunate in that we can choose to abstain from this kind of violence. We have an omnivore’s digestive system, and brains capable of making ethical assessments and modifying our behavior accordingly. Nature is often sociopathic in its drive for survival, and doesn’t make a good foundation for human ethics. If, for some bizarre reason, you were forced to choose between killing a child and killing a tree, would you reflect on which was more beautiful, or consider the child’s capacity to suffer?

Your image of the idyllic farm is compelling but I’m not sure where it comes from. Is this how you eat, or is it how you would like to eat? Forgive me for being skeptical, but I find that people who claim to be "ethical meat-eaters" don't usually follow through when it comes down to it. They’ll eat mom’s factory farmed turkey and meatloaf or even a fast-food burger in a pinch.

And even in your ideal farm, there are still ethical problems. For instance, why is it necessary to kill the chicken that eats the insects that plague the cows? How would you feel about a society in which we all lived short, beautiful lives but were expected to accept death once we grew too old to contribute to society? According to Logan's Run, we’d all be dead at 30.

And while the idyllic farm might address some of the arguments against vegetarianism, how realistic is it in a world with six billion people? We can eat animal products from these farms today because the prices are kept down by competition from factory farms. But if the world’s agriculture were turned over to this kind of pastoral model, we’d see the true cost of its resource- and labor-intensive practices. Would a cut of steak from this farm be attractive at $50 a pound? We’d see many more vegetarians for economic reasons if this kind of farming became widespread.
But They Said the Brucha!: Mindful killing is still killing
Mindful killing is still killing. Saying a prayer or giving thanks for what you've killed may assuage your own guilt, but it won’t do much for the cow, who has a lot more riding on your choice. You say killing is only wrong if the killer is callous about it. So is it okay for me to kill you, so long as I understand the consequences and feel compassion for you? Of course, I am not threatening to kill you, though your logic frustrates me.

To wrap things up: Animistic societies came up with the idea of animal spirits, because they recognized that something meaningful was destroyed when they took the life of an animal. But today, we no longer need to take those lives. So what do you call a necessary evil that is no longer necessary?

Love, Isa

NEXT: I'd rather kill a cow than chop down a redwood

more »