Abortion - a vegan response.

It is not unvegan to support a woman's right to choose.

If you believe that your compassion for other people should extend to other animals then you might be able to forgive the action of a woman who finds the prospect of her pregnancy unbearable. Not least because you don't despise your own human fallability either. If you have replaced your compassion for human beings with your compassion for other life-forms then this woman is a killer first and foremost and the suffering which may have brought her into her situation, or may arise from it, will appear negligible or non-existent. The second position, as an expression of psychosis, should never be confused with the reality of veganism in my opinion.

Truly, the meaning of non-violence is simple. It's applying principles to the messy complexity of reality which is the challenge...a challenge that being 'anti-abortion' singularly fails to rise to...I'm anti- cold Monday mornings - so what? Any fundamentalism is attractively straightforward because it shuns reality and that's why it cannot be taken seriously.

I'd merely suggest a 'deep reverence for life' should also enable a flawed human being to kill part of herself in order to survive mentally of physically in a deeply flawed world. I wish many opponents of abortion would focus their considerable angst on mitigating the conditions which lead to unwanted pregnancies rather than betraying their infantile morality by victimising one of the victims (the mother). When we have re-created the garden of Eden maybe we can sit down and agree that abortion is plain wrong.

Whose rights matter?

If they're honest, I think a fair number of vegans are indifferent to, or even despise, humanity. Hardly surprising given the treatment handed out by most of the human race to fellow animals.

I think there are certain problems with this position, though. All animals, all of nature, is contingent upon human activity. Taking human beings out of the ethical equation is, therefore, futile. In other words, if we are serious about animal rights we'd better prioritise the enlightenment of our fellow human beings.This enlightenment is merely postponed by some of the clumsy statements about fellow human beings that appear in vegan dialogue.

Non-violence isn't a kind of moral pick 'n' mix. Animals are easy to love. I think the sentimentality attached to the aborted foetus over the plight of the mother is a similarly facile basis for an opinion.

If you can't forgive flawed human beings don't shout about it. One day your conditions may change and you may do stupid stuff too.

death of the middle classes

Why are the intelligent people - at least among the white middle class - so passive now? Why? Because the sensitive, intelligent people are in therapy! (James Hillman)

I'm sure psychotherapy is a cul de sac - the doctrinal police ensuring that nothing relating to the psyche could overlap with the similarly falsely-demarcated stuff of sociology or politics or...heaven forbid, that the psyche should possess an indivisible union with nature...

But the middle class in the UK does not go in for wholesale therapy and they are undoubtedly, when their material wealth is taken into account, the most dismal and useless caste in the history of humanity. At least their Victorian forbears could claim dynamism whilst raping mother nature, but the twenty-first century bourgeois merely hibernates in a smug pit of consumerist toxicity.

But the death of the middle class charade will shortly be announced: the paltry vestiges of their ill-gotten gains, their dreary value-system will be wrecked in the natural catastrophe they have orchestrated. I find it unbelievable that all but the very cynical of their number (politicians mainly) still really believe in consumer society and the politics of choice and university education a decent pension and all the rest of it, as a long term proposition. If ever failure to adapt to a change in environment was a harbinger of extinction this is it...the intrinsic nature of the middle class is directly, and utterly, undermined by ecological crisis. If you remove the foundations the whole house collapses, obviously.

If their crimes weren't so horrendous it would be tragic, or at least ironic. Knowledge that knows nothing, just accumulates in the absence of any moral core. Niceness constructed upon ruthless violence against the 'othered'.

There can be no excuse for ignorance or complacency when you are teetering at the end of it all.

Remembrance...

I don't buy a poppy.

Why? Well, forget the fact that Tony Blair wears one despite committing British troops to a futile war for even more spurious reasons than many of those whose victims we commemorate today. Forget the insulting nature of of a paltry two minutes in a year to 'honour' those who 'defended a freedom' which is even more hypothetical today than it was fifty years ago, or that we should supplement the state's blood money through an 'appeal'.

Ignore the abject nature of commemoration itself - a prop for the powers-that-be and thus a substitute for real change to a status quo which requires war to invigorate itself from time to time.

The reason is simple: as a father I understand the magnitude of the loss of a child. Any child. The sanctity of life informs everything I do. I usually fail, but my effort to be non-violent is a constant one. That's why remembrance, then back to business as usual, disgusts me.

the unicorn #2

The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch is like Wuthering Heights by the sea. In a terrain as ancient and wild as the human brain, two houses also represent different aspects of the psyche. 'Riders' is the intellect, reason and the superego governed by a guru of classical philosophy. 'Gaze' is a compound for the elemental, violent and sexual under the control of a homosexual enforcer. Gaze is nearest the violent ocean and is continually subject to the activity of the unconscious. The other characters (and the reader) travel, physically and emotionally, between these three psychic edifices and, in doing so, demonstrate the moral basis of the novel.

Upon reflection, the heroes of the book are Alice and Dennis who are, ultimately, the only characters to follow a path of existential bravery and to know themselves. The others, embroiled in their narrow fixations, end up dead, speechless or worst of all: like Effingham - unable to free themselves from the moorings of recived wisdom.

A fascinating and instructive book which trancends the format of the novel.

The Unicorn #1

I got a chance to read a few more pages of The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch on the train this morning and I've change my view of the book's purpose somewhat. One of the (so far) minor characters says in a letter: ' Art and psychoanalysis give shape and meaning to life and that is why we adore them, but life as it is lived has no shape or meaning...'.

It occurred to me that IM might be manipulating the readers preconceived expectation of a novel's structure quite as much as she organises her characters actions and narrative. By this I mean that we (the characters and the readers) all bring preconceptions to our experience of the novel: a kind of mental map which gives shape to, and somehow, encloses in formality what we are experiencing, based on our 'knowledge' of religion, psychoanalysis or whatever. I'm sure IM disorientates us deliberately so that we question and understand better our own received wisdom. Notably the Unicorn herself has no identifiable moral or analytical core, she just is, and this is extremely attractive to the other characters. An annoying intellectual puzzle with no possible answer.

I was thinking about all this while walking on Farnhill Moor this morning. Unlike everywhere else round here it's a bit of hillside which is unenclosed and in a fairly natural state. There were so many things to see: birds, insects, trees, bracken, toadstools etc. etc. all just busy being, with or without us to see them and categorise our experience of them. From the top you can look and see all the hills around which have been walled off and the land enclosed. All very orderly, attractive and almost completely sterile. Perhaps we're just apes who have to organise things?

Think holistically

Ourselves, other people, other animals, our mental and physical health, the environment - all comprise one 'substance' ethically-speaking. (Nature is the word I'd use.) I think if you try to see nature holistically like this many moral 'issues' resolve themselves. The notion of self-interest collapses if you act in accordance with nature, because to act against nature is detrimental to yourself.

In this context, living non-violently is the project - of which veganism is, or should be, an important expression.

Capitalism

I believe any economic system - capitalism, socialism, whatever- which distances human beings from their subsistence in nature is going to be prone to exploitation of nature, including other humans and other animals. It's a fundamental separation of cause from effect which allows factory farms, wage slavery, toxic waste etc to happen. If every person was (re)connected to nature such things could not happen - in the same way as most people would struggle to saw off their own leg...

I think every act of consumption in the context of our economic system is inevitably corrupt: someone, some animal, some part of nature has been destroyed to manufacture the thing you are buying.

Capitalism can never be reformed - if you try and moderate the process it just does it less well. Capitalism is a magnificent machine into which we pour the earth's resources and get product at the other end: just like a snake eating it's own tail.

What's the purpose of life?

...to realise there is no purpose and to be content?

I just think 'purpose' is a bit human-centred, maybe egocentric, to ring true...isn't transcending the needs of the self a normal spiritual aspiration? For me purpose suggests design which suggests a creator. If there is no creator there can be no design and no purpose.

It seems to me human experience is not dissimilar to running around erratically in a dark forest. If it is comforting to categorise the bunch of trees as 'a forest' then that's fine. But it negates your affinity with the trees and certainly won't help you find your way out...

Pet subject

From the evidence, it is likely that the domestic dog retains his or her ancient memory of being a wolf. She still has the wolf's instincts and genetic material. Sensitivity to this point is what, I suggest, makes the tragedy of domestication of animals inimical to veganism. Hopefully one day we will be able to appreciate nature without wanting to own a bit of it. In this instance wolves and wild dogs will suffice in themselves rather than being stolen from nature to hunt, herd or get fat in a suburban prison.

In the dog/human relationship the human usurps the role of canine pack leader to ensure the dog adapts to human values of behaviour and hygiene. This distortion, inherent in domestication of an animal, is unavoidable. Domestication is dominion. Unlike a slave, or any other human subordinate, the domestic animal has no prospect of liberation not least because we have dismantled or distorted her natural coping mechanism.

By contrast, whatever we do to our own species there is the chance of freedom...a slave has the prospect, however remote, of exercising free will and being free. A domestic dog has none. Those who defend pet ownership per se run the risk of sounding like a slave master justifying the status quo of slavery as being in the slave's best interests...I cannot understand how, when confronted with the reality of domestication, a vegan's response should be a moral silence, or an attempt to dress up the reality of domestication as acceptable. By the same token, I would not wish the lineage of pigs, bred to be so fat that their legs can barely support them, to continue. In a vegan society, I would hope that we could look after those that remain but let this other emblem of human interference in nature fade into history.

Context is everything. As a (Western) society, we are engaged in a war against nature. Clearly it is right for vegans to help out sentient victims of this war, in this instance to provide homes for dogs 'who would otherwise be dead'. However this should not distract us from the greater personal requirement to end the war and make peace with nature. In this context, there is a world of difference between the act of saving a dog (right) and celebrating or even excusing the domesticaton of another species (wrong). I reckon vegans need to be very careful to avoid the latter simply because it perpetuates the oppression of another animal (domestic dogs). I think there is a tragic, intractable situation out there. I detect a fundamental sadness in the spirit of 99% of dogs I meet, and most of the other 1% are engaged in unvegan pursuits such as herding sheep...This hunch is only backed up by what I've read about the natural experience of wolves.

In essence, we humans have created an ethical problem i.e.the 'domestication' of a fellow species and, as vegans, we should seriously consider how we should address it. Our interference in the life of a companion animals is intrinsic, and, by definition, unavoidable: companionship is - for the animal - a contingent state. The imposition of our will has already taken place. If you can accept this interpretation of reality, how should vegans respond compassionately to the plight of the 'companion animal'?

I passionately believe that our freedom is available to us and is reliant upon liberation of other species specifically and living peacefully as part of nature generally. By contrast, I find it unbearable that the needs of most dogs in a modern, urban context are perforce secondary to those of its 'owner' or other humans...A dog's happiness is so rare and transient for many, many dogs I'm sure...I read somewhere that most domestic dogs sleep nearly twice as much as their wild counterparts, presumably just to fill the time...I could weep...

If we contemplate a vegan society this goal should inform our present ethical stance. I think such a society would inevitably cause a number of animal breeds which have been ruined by man to gradually die out. I've already cited the tragic example of 'factory' cattle. I just wonder if our reluctance to consider whether this would also be kindest for domestic dogs is more about our needs than it is about theirs...

Making judgements

Surely to be judgemental is to be, inevitably, condescending to some degree. It suggests an attainment of a higher level of moral certainty not enjoyed by the person you are judging. And isn't moral relativism the inevitable and necessary consequence of losing the ultimate arbiter (God)?

From a pragmatic point of view, judgement in any form doesn't facilitate useful dialogue. I can't help feeling what matters is what you do i.e. how you convert your moral judgement into action. It is only how we live, not what we pronounce upon, which might actually affect others. Being judgemental isn't wrong (that would be judgemental of me) it's just ineffective. When did anybody ever respond favourably to being exposed as unreasoning, unethical or whatever? Perhaps it's only when we stop actively trying to influence others that we might start doing so...?

Being judgemental is just one component of the adversarialism which dominates our culture e.g. in our courtrooms, parliaments. It’s just a ritualised violence in which participants automatically rush to the polar opposites of fixed opinion (judgements) and thus become opponents rather than fellow travellers. I guess this system appeals to our fetish for dualism but, in reality, our society just ends up incapacitated and unable to make any real progress e.g. regarding ‘the environment’.

I’m not suggesting that dialogue is unimportant or that a mealy-mouthed correctness is any better - that just causes frustration. I just think the best thing vegans do is simply be vegan. I think any attempt at moral crusading is counter-productive and reveals stuff about those involved which is probably better left unstated.

Ultimately, I guess if you judged yourself sufficiently you would never judge others.

Can we justify having more children?

You can adopt, in the here and now, vegan-organic fruit and vegetable production sufficient for a family of five vegans on an average sized allotment. To me, this is no less than the key to environmental salvation and veganism's most under-rated big idea. Within a vegan organic system you can compost most of your family's outputs. You can vastly reduce reliance on transport to get stuff from retailers. Due to your proximity to nature, it keeps you fit physically and mentally.

Only vegans can attain such a self-contained, environmentally respectful means of subsistence in which a proportionate number of children is a cause of celebration rather than uneasy guilt. We can finally unlink human activity and degradation of the earth. It hardly prejudices other species at all, indeed many vegan-organic methods cause them to flourish. I recognise that the widespread adoption of small scale vegan-organic production is a distant prospect, but may become more popular when the oil-based economy finally implodes.

I wouldn't want to replace God with nature. I think any analysis which does this mistakenly confers earth/nature with a vengeful, godlike quality. Nature just is, it doesn't decide anything. I think humans often put themselves in one place analytically and nature somewhere else: either above or below them. Surely the answer is we ARE nature. The boundary of our skin is arbitrary and cultural (and, anyway, permeable). So if we abuse nature, we degrade ourselves - a direct, non-mystical union.

If we carry on living how we live, burning resources like there's no tomorrow, we're sunk. Any utopian argument based upon everyone living their 'modern lifestyles' will inevitably reach the same conclusion.

The form of vegan living I'm promoting does not require an ever-increasing transport network and foreign travel. If a large family can mostly feed itself from a piece of land about the same size as a tennis court, and in doing so re-use most of its 'waste', the present problems of environmental degradation largely disappear. I accept that housing is an issue, although I suspect a lesser one if the existing housing stock was distributed fairly, and if ecologically friendly design becomes mandatory.

To those who say this is utopian, I simply ask how does conventional living stack up without cheap fossil fuels? Quite simply, it doesn't. Everything we now take as normal will be swept away, probably within our lifetimes. It's already happening. That is the reality we have to address and a reduction in the number of births is a distraction from the main issues. I still think vegans are among the best placed to confer an holistic outlook onto their children. To attempt to deny them the opportunity is tantamount to rolling over in front of the urban industrial machine. Vegan family values may seem puny in the face of conventional ideas of 'freedom', but truth is surely always worth cultivating.

Vegan lions: a response

I do believe that individual human beings can elect to behave non-violently. This can't be legislated for, it has to come from within. Veganism is a significant component of this for me.

However, I think when you start considering policies such as attempting to convert carniverous species to veganism you've adopted the role of their steward which I find arrogant and inevitably prone to disaster: either the animal would eat you or, if by some chance you were successful, the other species which benefit from their activity (e.g. carrion) would suffer.

All human notions of material progress - and many ones of moral progress - are self-defeating because they inevitably undermine the ecological foundations upon which we all stand. I think we know enough about ecosystems now to understand the proper limits of our interventions with other species. This should be limited to reversing some of the stupid stuff we've done previously. Any notions of progress or evolution, however well meant, are contrary to this understanding.

Forget politics - let's change the world

The facts regarding climate change in particular, and environmental degradation in general, will be over-familiar to many people by now. You cannot turn on the radio without hearing another feature about ‘the environment’. Paradoxically, and despite the best efforts of the Green Party and the usual pressure groups, ‘green issues’ had little or no presence within the recent general election campaign in the UK. The Green Party’s results were, to be charitable, patchy and showed little prospect of the requisite, urgent quantum leap in electoral performance. When confronted with the real prospect of irreversible and ecological (and therefore social and economic) calamity within the next thirty years, it is surely time to urgently review our approach.

All environmentalists are exasperated by the intransigence of government and corporations when faced with the demands of ecological crisis. Why can’t they act, even in their own interests? Perhaps we are failing to recognise that that such institutions, as products of industrial society, are intrinsically deleterious to Nature, hence their present paralysis. They cannot be sufficiently reformed without transforming them completely.

Understandably, this has encouraged a view that we must take control of the situation. Unlike socialists, we cannot attempt to coral the working class to do our dirty work for us (although I suspect quite a few die-hard socialists have mistaken our radical agenda for their own) so we have entered into the fray of national, adversarial politics. The problem is: environmentalism is, by it’s nature, neither adversarial, national and, I will suggest, political in any conventional sense. I feel the utopian ideological misapprehensions that suggest parliamentary democracy is capable of delivering change, or that other political parties might be amenable to our influence, has lead us into a political cul de sac and has allowed green thinking to become marginal rather than fundamental. Nature has become ‘the environment’ (something out there, remote) and her crisis mere ‘green issues’. Our present course runs the risk of merely confusing, exhausting and demoralising our core support. It may be unpalatable, but I have to suggest to you that green politics isn’t working.

To revive it, I believe we must unravel our present philosophical and ideological contradictions. Not to be clever or purist but to ensure that our personal/natural resources are used with maximum efficiency. That means not using party politics as a substitute for real change. We must engage with people’s real selves not their political prejudices. As I’ve already indicated, conventional politics thrives upon finding someone to blame. Or identifying someone, anyone, to be the agency of social change. Except oneself. The real news is that the agency of change from our environmental perspective is, unavoidably, oneself!

Let’s set aside the fact that engaging in parliamentary democracy may not just be ineffective but profoundly retrograde environmentally. What case can be made for personal change as the agency of meaningful social change, or to paraphrase Gandhi, being the change you wish to see in society? I think we must start by recognising that there can be no meaningful distinction between the individual and nature. Conventional conceptual barriers like our skin, or the walls of our homes are fine if you want to, say, bury your waste ‘out there’ and forget about it, but are dissolved by ecological understanding. This explains why your mental and physical health are not contingent upon the environment, they are the environment.

These observations give some idea of how much traction exists between you and the environment. The way you conduct your life is, therefore, not only important, but hugely transformative. For example (and I realise these are contentious examples) if every Green Party member gave up their car(s), air travel and became vegan tomorrow I would suggest that the net environmental benefit would, overnight, outweigh everything achieved by the Green Party to date. Moreover, our arguments for real progress would be hugely more convincing if we were radically walking the walk as well as talking the talk. We could develop a transformative community which demonstrated the enormous personal and social benefits of living as part of nature: it is no coincidence that industrial society has gone to great lengths to disrupt the simple but potent synergy between human beings and nature. I suspect we all know what we need to do – this is the time to act. Politics should be the cart not the horse.

It has become apparent to me that the necessary changes to people’s lives in order to salvage our future on this planet could never be imposed from above without creating a monstrous, Stalinist regime. This would obviously be completely self-defeating. If we can reveal the future through our lives today, there is still the prospect of our own freedom and meaningful social transformation.

Vegans and companion animals

I'd suggest there are two popular attitudes to nature:

1. Nature and other species are a resource to be used as and when humans please. I guess all omnivores subscribe to this, knowingly or otherwise.

2. We are animals just like other species, they experience emotions just like we do. They are, therefore, entitled to the same rights as we are.

I think most vegans probably see things the second way. When it comes to pets/companion animals they are best treated as we would wish to be treated ourselves.

I'm in a minority of vegans who don't quite see things this way. I think each species is sufficient unto itself. I think it is narcissistic to look at other species and see ourselves: to project our own image, values and emotions onto them. A dog is (or should be) a dog, not a trainee human being. A cat interacts with us for its own benefit and then gets on with being a cat.

To see animals as like us or part of us is narcissistic - we are so enraptured by ourselves that we see our own image everywhere. We seek interaction with them on our terms e.g. by talking to them, or expecting them not to eat us, adopting them as quasi-children, instead of respecting them simply for what they are. By the same process we invest nature with the powers of a strong (wo)man God who will sort stuff out. Nature won't do a damn thing in accordance with what we want. It is the combined energy of millions and millions of interconnected organisms we are merely a big piece in an infinite jigsaw. Nature is disinterested - in the true sense of the word: 'she' doesn't have a vested interest in this, or any other, human affair.

There is a vestige of omni self-importance in vegan thought which is most obvious in the way we cling to our pets through compassion but deny them freedom in the long term. Much better the symbiosis of, say, our relationship with earthworms. They are busy being worms and happen to contribute massively to the soil fertility for our crops. Do I want to take one home to look after? I do not: I spread mulch on the soil, leave it to its own devices and respect it deeply.

In this, and all things I think we should attempt to minimise our impact, of any sort, on fellow sentient species. My veganism is merely an expression of this. The problem with domestic animals is that our interference is locked into their genes. They are stuck in a kind of Groundhog day of neither animal or human experience. I think it behoves all vegans to look after those pets we've got, then free future generations of this man-made suffering.

This is why I support the extinction of pets through mandatory sterilisation.