Working for laws against rape and torture while promoting animal exploitation?

A friend wrote: “”The other thing to think about is this: if my child were in a foreign prison where torture was standard of course I would work day and night to get her out. If others did not care if she ever got out but were working on laws to prevent her from being raped and tortured while in there I would not waste one precious moment of my time fighting against those working for better conditions while she was in there. How would she feel about me if she were being raped and tortured and found out I worked in opposition to those trying to pass laws against these things? To see it from the victims's eyes is key. Spend time working for freedom. Don't waste time working against others”

Here are my thoughts:
What if you knew that the efforts of those that claimed to work for better conditions, would reduce the chances of your child to ever get out? What if they made the public feel more comfortable of the situation, because that they in fact were sending the message that it is okay for your child to be exploited and confined in the prison, but that it should be done in “another way” that also will increase the profit of the industry.


What if those persons claimed to work for justice, but in fact were teaching the public that “happy exploitation” is all fine, and it is moral to partake of products that come from persons that are exploited and imprisoned? After all, as long as they “are treated well” - everything is all fine?


What if “working against others” is actually an effort in working against the promotion of Welfarism and speciesism?
What if “working against others” is working against the big Animal organizations cooperating with industry to legitimize and reform animal exploitaiton, so that the industry can make more profit; and non-vegans can become more comfortable in exploiting nonhumans?
What if the efforts of those supporting Welfarism is in fact a major block for freedom for the nonhuman animals?


More reading: http://bloganders.blogspot.no/2014/05/abolitionist-veganism-articles.html

Refuting 'Boycott veganism'-article

I wrote an article called 'Boycott veganism'.
Much of its reasoning applies to the "Animal welfare"-movement (PETA, "Mercy for Animals, et. al) and not to the Abolitionist movement, including grassroots organizations, such as http://www.facebook.com/abolitionistvegansociety

The author relies on a faulty definition of veganism.
And yes modern agriculture exploits animals (both non-ecological and ecological) and harms the environment, so vegans should work towards growing their food using vegan permaculture: http://bloganders.blogspot.no/2014/04/vision-for-nonviolent-vegan.html


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Reply by Jan Vilse. I don't agree with everything:

1) "AR only begins with your diet"
-this is the same position as to say that veganism is the moral baseline. So I agree

2) "vegan choices don't have that much effect on supply"
-the author is probably right for individual choices, but sounds way too cynical for the aggregate effect.
-and it doesn't matter anyway: there's no way in hell to stop animals from being bred and exploited, apart from people not buying their products. that's just a fact. so even if small shifts in consumption will be swallowed up in production, there is a threshold after which they will make a significant impact. And whether that threshold is at a 100 more vegans or 1000 more vegans or 1000 000 more vegans, the moral obligation of veganism and vegan advocacy remains the same
-most important point: the point of veganism should be less about consumer influence and more about **the social effect** (the author acknowledges this point and examines it later on)

3) "animals aren't really saved"
-agreed. nothing new about this. we are avoiding violence, not saving animals.

4) the author talks about how even a person whose life is full of suffering has dignity and that we deny this dignity by saying it's better that person doesn't come into existence
-disagree. I do not think we have ***any obligations whatsoever*** to bring purely potential beings into existence. even without subscribing to anti-natalism, it is clear that if there are significant problems involved -- like if we bring a being into existence for the sole purpose of exploiting him/her -- we ethically should not do so

5) "animals are killed for vegan products as well"
-agreed, but heard a million times. there will be no method the author will be able to present that will avoid our participation in violence. such participation is inherent to our society.

Solution. Vegan permaculture: http://bloganders.blogspot.no/2014/04/vision-for-nonviolent-vegan.html

6) "veganism is presented tacitly as about human choice, not non-human interests"
-this is not a bad point. however: the largest obstacle for animal issues is probably how far people distance their own choices from the reality of animal agriculture. so we **do** need to emphasize "human choice" because people have forgotten their moral responsibilities. However, I agree that "stop killing animals" might be a better message sometimes than "go vegan" -- but I think the former implies more lacto-ovo-vegetarianism, so it should be "don't exploit animals" or whatever

7) "veganism becomes its own thing, isolated from its original ethical reasons"
-true that. I have often maintained that questions like "are circuses vegan?" are misleading and should be framed in terms of animal rights, violence and exploitation
-however, I don't think telling people "go vegan" condemns them to isolate veganism from its larger philosophical context. It merely gives them a practical prescription for taking the first step that will allow them to explore that context.

8) "veganism has been dispersed into different versions, some of which are mere dietary veganism"
-this is true, and a serious problem. American culture seems particularly bad in this usage ("Bill Clinton is vegan")
-but on the other hand, there is also the risk that if we tell people to just "oppose animal killing" or whatever, they will each have their personal interpretations about the degree of such opposition. By contrast, 'veganism' -- even when merely dietary -- still specifies what kind of products you are not to use.
-in short, the link between AR and what concrete choices you have to make is not obvious to people. rather than reject the label 'vegan', I think we should remember to connect the ethics with the practice: to talk about "ethical veganism" or "abolitionist veganism" or whatever

9) "veganism doesn't build community because it is a really large ceiling for a bunch of people with different motivations"
-true, but: see above -- we need to connect veganism with ethics better.

10) "people talk about compassion rather than justice"
-agreed that this is a problem

11) "vegans should show their ethical conviction in social interaction as well"
-I think this is the best point of the whole article, and a difficult question.
-refusing to attend family gatherings, refusing to go to a restaurant with colleagues, or constantly speaking up or protesting in those situations, seems like a double-edged sword. Vegans are such a small minority that those actions are likely to just ostracize us even more and confirm people's stereotype of vegans as confrontational weirdos.
-at the same time, as the author suggests, maybe vegans aren't taken seriously because their own actions do not do justice to the seriousness of the animal issue.
-to me it seems some kind of compromise is needed. perhaps we need to reach a larger base of animal people before we are able to wield the tool of strong social opposition effectively.
-while at the same time presenting the lifestyle of veganism itself as easy, and vegans as easy to approach, friendly etc., we could still use other means to make it clear that we take the issue seriously: how we talk about animals, how we talk about animal use, how we refer to our own foods ("mock duck"), etc. But I dunno -- (vegan) food for thought regardless.

12) "presenting an alternative is a bad tactic, similar to colonization as an alternative to slavery"
-ultimately, veganism does not offer a clear alternative, as it is defined **negatively**. To be vegan means to **not use animal products**. You could eat cardboard rather than plants, and you would still be vegan. In our society, however, given that we don't have synthetic foods like in Star Trek, we do need to eat something. And that something is going to be plants. While plant agriculture harms animals, I do not think this alternative is at all comparable to colonizing black people. People do need to eat something, whereas people do not have a need to colonize.
-in short: I'm pretty sure no social justice movement has succeeded by telling people not to eat anything, or to participate in society at all. So the "alternative" of veganism is actually a *necessity*.

13) "consumer influence is only a tertiary consideration in social justice movements"
-I don't think this is a good point, and I doubt the historical analogues work so well here. regardless: there is a difference between eating dairy on the one hand, and buying slave-produced cotton on the other: the former is directly connected to the animal, objectifying the animal. This adds a further ethical and cultural dimension to the consumer aspect: eating and wearing animals is objectifying them in a very immediate sense. So of course we need to make that aspect of consumer choice integral to the animal rights message

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All in all, I don't think "boycotting veganism" is the answer, but a) connecting veganism strongly with ethics b) expanding the AR ethic into how we speak, how we act, how we interact with other people etc.

To me, getting rid of the notion of veganism would just leave people with these vague notions of "opposing violence" which, I think, would quickly be reduced to vague welfarist notions where it is enough to say that you disagree with how animals are treated without actually doing anything about it in your own life.

In short, I think veganism provides the necessary link between thought and action.

Vegan reply: But wearing fur is worse compared to wearing leather

"Leather isn't merely a "by-product" of the beef industry. In fact, most leather doesn't even come from the same type of cow used for beef.
Even if this were the case, it's important, again, to think of what we do to animals not in terms of "inflicting suffering," but their property status. If an animal is killed to create two different products, what sense does it make to say one product is a by-product while the other is the real thing? Animals are killed because their dead bodies can be sold in the form of various products."
http://www.vegankit.com/wear

What would happen if the nonvegan population would start to abhor meat, but continue to like leather. They would still continue to exploit cows for leather.

Exploitation is exploitation.
Who are we to say that it is "worse" for a mink to be exploited for fur compared to a cow being exploited for leather and meat.  We are not the victims. We have no right to give that kind of judgment when it comes to the exploitation of other sentient beings.

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Jonathan Hughes Roy, if you think it's useful to apply 'worse' to why/how an animal died, you're looking at things from a different perspective completely. I see *that* they died as the problem, not *how* they died. In being killed for human use, all animals are equal and equally deserving of support from Vegans.

See also
Leather Is More Than “a By-Product of the Meat Industry”

But vegans use electricity, which destroy the environment and exploit people. Thus, I can eat animals.

Reply to: "But vegans use electricity, which destroy the environment and exploit people. Thus, I can eat animals."



I believe that the only way you can justify electronics given the environmental pollution and often exploitation involved to produce it,is using it in the following ways (not an all-covering list):


1/ Necessary in order for fighting exploitation towards humans and nonhumans.
2/ Necessary for your survival, e.g. you need it for your work.
3/ Staying in touch with people - necessary to accomplish 1/ and 2/.
4/ Studying and practising nonduality. I believe necessary in order for people to act from awareness instead of their separate self in all situations, and reaching a world without exploitation and harm: http://non-duality.rupertspira.com/home



Every electronical device has a limited life span. How many electronical devices have stopped working earlier than they needed to just because it was used for lots of entertainment and for other activities that we don't need; and how can we justify that people get exploited, just so that we can watch entertainment. We can't. Just like we can't justify attending circuses, zoos or paying for trafficking in order to get "entertained". I truly believe that this is something everyone need to consider in our culture which relies so much on entertainment, without considering what was required in order to produce the entertainment.

Exploitation involved in manufacturing a computer, many mobile phones, etc.: http://bloganders.blogspot.no/2014/03/slavery-involved-in-producing.html

The exploitation involved in electronics is still of course not justified, it would just be used since it is needed to stop all exploitation in the world. The worse alternative morally would be just to ignore the violence and to not use internet effectively to stop all exploitation. In a world with no exploitation we wouldn’t need any electricity.

I believe we should strive to be able to live in a self-sustained community where we plant using vegan permaculture, minimize electricity use and get electricity from solar panels and heating from burning wood we cut down ourselves: http://bloganders.blogspot.no/2014/04/vision-for-nonviolent-vegan.html

This is a sustainable way of living where we still can interact with the world and stop all exploitation involved in the world.

That being said: There is an enormous difference between using electricity in order to stop exploitation compared to using an animal in order to gain pleasure or convenience. If we choose to kill an animal for food despite that we are able to get our nutrition from plant foods, we are engaging in violence compared to the violence involved in dog fighting and bullfightig. While they may psychologically be different, there is no moral difference in gaining pleasure by watching a dog fight compared to gaining pleasure by eating a steak, drinking a glass of milk, eating an egg, buying leather or attending a circus show with animals.

Reply to more excuses: http://bloganders.blogspot.no/2013/08/arguments-for-veganism-and-counter.html

Moral truths and ethics about the consumption of animal foods and other animal exploitation

Start with this article: http://www.eatlikeyoucarebook.com/

My reply to a person
You have from the outset taken the position that you will believe that morality is subjective until the opposite can be scientifically be proven, which per definition of the limitations of the scientific paradigm is impossible.

Then you use your position “conveniently” to exploit and harm other animals for trivial ‘palate pleasure’, and to be indifferent of their unnecessary suffering and death. If you care the slightest of nonhuman animals, then the case for veganism is crystal clear, as explained earlier. And as long as you permit people exploiting animals for the “pleasure”/convenience of food, and participate in this yourself, you are a part of the animal abuse (and also guilty of the most horrendous parts of the abuse, which you enable by endorsing the property status of animals), instead of a part of the solution.

For some clarity I recommend: http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/clarifying-the-meaning-of-a-right/#.Ua0CHpxc18E

It is an objective fact that the property status and domestication of animals is causing them horrendous amounts of suffering, e.g. enabling the industrialized animal abuse depicted in this video: http://www.earthlings.com/

Without the domestication that started 10000 years ago, and that is perpetuated by each non-vegan choice, 58 billion land animals wouldn’t yearly be exploited, many of them living a life of constant torture.
Your position also harms other people, since the animal industry is causing lots of environmental damage, poverty, starvation, etc.: http://www.drmcdougall.com/video/expert_testimonies_oppenlander.htm

Furthermore, the enslavement of animals, the domestication, also has resulted in human slavery, oppression against women, and other forms of oppression that is rampant in our society. It is covered in this book that I want to read: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15188-7/animal-oppression-and-human-violence#.UZAIageHrdk.facebook

Regardless of what you believe about moral truths, all that it takes to become a vegan is love and compassion, caring more about the animals, their interests of not suffering and interest of continued existence, than frivolous ‘taste experience’/convenience/social peer pressure.

Naturally any vegan who cares about animal and human rights, and who is understanding that one is complicit in the exploitation if one is not educating people participating in animal exploitation, and who is understanding how efficient education is in order to change people's mindsets and actions, will try to educate you about their views. You will regard it as "imposing beliefs", and the vegan will regard it as their moral obligation. You should consider that your temporary frustration is nothing compared to the suffering of the victims (the animals) that we are trying to protect and defend.

I think this will be my last reply. Thanks for the discussion!