FLESH AND TONGUE: Eating and Talking About Animals

Bioethicist philosopher Peter Singer has suggested:

" . . . habits not only of diet but also of thought and language must be challenged and altered."

Nowhere is this truer than in the expressions we use to talk about animals.

A friend once tried to defend his usage of "beating a dead horse." He insisted I was being ridiculous. "C'mon," he said, "give me a break! It's just an expression!"

I shook my head. "Then murdered animals are just food?"

Clearly exasperated, my friend sighed, "Well, if you want to know the truth, I guess I never really gave it much thought."

The transition from a destructive diet to vegetarianism (and the more healthful vegan lifestyle) is a weaning process. So is the switch to a new language free of allusions to violence and cruelty.

The idea is to gradually eliminate the more egregious offenders:

"There's more than one way to skin a cat."

"Kill two birds with one stone."

"The straw that broke the camel's back."

"Cold turkey."

"Let the cat out of the bag."

"In the doghouse."

"A bat out of hell."

"You're a dead duck."

"Your goose is cooked."

"Hog-tied."

"Like a lamb to slaughter."

"A chicken in every pot."

"Hold your horses!"

"Milk it for all it's worth."

"Shooting fish in a barrel."

All of us have used these malignant expressions without considering the underlying meaning in our diet of "harmless" colloquialisms. As with our diet of "harmless" animal flesh, it is, as expressed in Thoreau's Higher Laws, a step by step quest for:

" . . . gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals."

Cow, calf and pig are first to go on the menu, soon followed by water-dwelling and sky-borne animals. Likewise, liberated language is realized by cutting out debasing slurs, stereotypes and similes:

"Sly as a fox."

"Dumb as an ox."

"Fat and smelly as a hog."

"Madder than a junkyard dog."

"Sillier than a goose."

"Uglier than a moose."

Dairy products might be next on the verboten food list, so too by the wayside go insults and innuendo in our animalspeak.

Marjorie Spiegel, author of The Dreaded Comparison, asks:

" . . . how is it that we find ourselves in a time when comparison to a non-human animal has ceased to be a compliment and is instead hurled as an insult?"

"You disgusting pig!"

"You old nag!"

"You lecherous goat!"

"You little weasel!"

"You stinking skunk!"

"You silly ass!"

"You dirty rat!"

"You slimy snake!"

"Worse than an animal!”

Truly, how did our friends of the Earth end up deserving such opprobrium? The powerful forces of market capitalism have conquered the hearts and minds of trusting consumers who believe that "meat is necessary" and "milk does a body good."

Language is deep-fried in denial and larded in obfuscation to promote a deadly agenda of unhealthy products that sell for billions of dollars. John Robbins says:

" . . . propaganda, doublespeak, half-truths and outright lies keep us prisoner by a point of view beneath the threshold of our awareness."

It’s called “Keeping Numb by Playing Dumb” - it's always easier to swallow a sugarcoated pill than face up to the ugly truths disguised by corporate advertisers' practice of euphemistic naming.

The unpleasant awareness that you are devouring a mutilated animal must be repressed or seen as something more pleasant than it really is. Otherwise, the gourmand status bestowed on charred corpses might not sound so appealing.

Take away what Carol Adams terms the "absent referent" - the animal that used to exist - all that's left is "veal," "steak," "bacon," "sausage," "pork" and "ham."

Hey, where's the beef?

In this way, twisting words around:

Drugs become "compounds and health products."

Pain becomes "short-term discomfort."

Hormones become "growth promotants."

To castrate becomes "neuter."

Factory farming becomes "family farming."

Slaughter becomes "process/harvest/go to market."

Along with euphemisms, oxymorons masquerade and parade through the language of corporate speciesists whose livelihoods depend on animal suffering. The "whole chicken" at the market is a macabre example: a bird minus her head, feet, feathers, and internal organs is not exactly whole!

Oxymorons are effective at rendering consumers ethically neutral to the daily atrocities perpetrated by the meat and dairy industries.

Other howlers include:

"Humane slaughter."

 "Wildlife management."

"Fresh meat."

"Live boiled lobster."

"Tender cut."

"Grain-consuming units."

"Lean fat."

"Dolphin-free tuna."

 "Farm fresh eggs."

Bad taste in both food and expression are human cultural traits. Challenging the supremacy of diet and language is one thing; altering our cherished cultivation of flesh and tongue is quite another.

In becoming less speciesist and callous toward animals, we come to appreciate how similar, not different, we are. Many animals engage in the same purposeful behavior attributed to humans. But naturally, we have apotheosized the self-referential "human being" at the expense of ignoring "cetacean being," "ape being," and "avian being".

Are we not all cut from the same cloth, only into different patterns to make the quilt of life?

Will our children ever know what it means to treat animals with the love and respect they deserve and once merited from our species?

A cynical answer would be that they won't if they continue to be raised on rotten diets and filthy mouths.

Only by changing our present way of living, of thinking and talking about and relating to animals as equals on this Earth, can we hope to pass on to future generations a healthier, more all-encompassing compassionate world.

When that day comes, it will herald a return to reverence and harmony with the sacred. Recurring cycles of evolutionary consciousness will be completed. Humans, so long estranged from their roots in the Earth, will once again:

 Become a part of, not apart from, all Gaia-inspired life.

LET US EAT PLANTS

Let Us Eat Plants

Vegetarians must inevitably defend against an onslaught of detractors, pessimists, naysayers, and staunch advocates of the dietary status quo. George Bernard Shaw once referred to the unrepentant legions as "the outside anti-vegetarian world." When questioned about his standard fare of fruits, grains, nuts, seeds, and plants, Shaw fired back, "Why do you call me to account for eating decently?"

For the most part the debate rages in the spirit of enlightenment and information sharing. The questions, if naïve, are reasonable: How do you get enough protein? What else do you eat besides tofu? Don’t you miss turkey at Thanksgiving? Why are you a vegetarian, after all?

On hearing ethical considerations, entrenched flesh-eaters tend to scoff and trivialize the issue, forcing vegetarians to fend off variations of a seriously posed question: If one is so opposed to killing animals, how can one justify "killing" plants? Flesh-eaters, it seems, are trying to turn the moral tables on vegetarians with their guilt-tripping "plants have feelings, too" line.

How can vegetarians tread moral high ground when their diet, too, kills and destroys living things? And not just plants, heaven forbid, but microbes and bugs slaughtered by the billions during organic agricultural processes. Up against such sophistry, how many vegetarians have felt taken to the philosophical cleaners?

The objection that "plants feel pain, too, and if all things feel pain, what difference does it make?" initially seems like a rational line of thinking, but consider: is harvesting garden vegetables or picking ripe cherries tantamount to enslaving, torturing and slaughtering, say, a chicken that shares 65% of it DNA with humans?

No scientific evidence exists to document that plants can feel physical pain. Plants do not have central nervous systems, the only physiological mechanism known which would enable them to suffer the emotional pain inherent in a discomforting, joyless existence, or experience the physical pain of agonizing sensations being electrocuted, stabbed, dismembered or suffocated to death.

Many point to The Secret Life of Plants as proof positive that plants are sentient. No argument from this corner that plants are amazing biological entities able to take cues from their environment to stimulate growth, communicate with one another in mysterious ways, and ensure the survival of their species through strategies of natural selection.

But as to plants’ capacity to experience pain? Even if plants could feel pain in a way that animals most definitely can, only a callous person could equate the experiences as similar in magnitude.

Animal cruelty is a harsh, sad reality. The notion of “plant cruelty” - that one can abuse, enslave, and torture plants is ludicrous. One cannot inflict cruelty on a plant, nor deprive it of a fulfilling life. The only duty we have towards plants in using them as a food resource is to water them regularly and let them grow healthily without toxifying them with chemicals and pesticides. (On this count, we fail morally.)

Unlike animals, plants are naturally immobile and immutably rooted to one small space in the earth for their entire cycle of existence - "to draw nutrition, propagate and rot," as Alexander Pope observed. Non-roaming plants are not forced to conform to cages or be jam-packed in holding pens, but confining and immobilizing animals is in opposition to their natural free-roaming natures.

Furthermore, animals are social beings. They raise and nurture offspring, mate and bond for life in some cases, perform collective activities, travel and move about in groups, flocks, herds - even schools. They have personalities, we give them names, we commune with them. Unless you happen to be rare individual with psychically attuned frequencies to plants’ modalities, you don’t pet or cuddle up with, smooch or otherwise engage in intimate, oxytocin-producing moments with plants.

Finally, unlike animals forced into unnatural aggregations, plants do not pollute and defile the earth in great numbers; rather, they sustain and revitalize the earth in great numbers. Plants, it must be concluded, do not enjoy the sort of communicative interaction that animals do. It’s therefore absurd to compare the unethical exploitation of animals with the harvesting and eating of plants.

Peter Singer, author of the seminal Animal Liberation, long ago pointed out the ridiculous logic of those who accuse vegetarians of ethical breaches by killing and eating plants. He makes the point that we must eat something, so if there is even a shred of reason to this argument, then we must perforce choose the lesser of two evils - eating plants. A meat-based diet is responsible for the deaths of ten times as many plants as a vegetarian-based diet. Plant-eaters 1, meat-eaters 0!

Undeniably, plants are living entities. They play a vital role in maintaining the delicate balance of Gaia’s ecosystem. But do they feel pain and emotional trauma? Has anyone ever seriously considered giving up “plants” because of a moral, environmental or health-based reason? Doubtful.

As Gabriel Cousens, MD, author of Conscious Eating, points out, "Our very existence causes some sort of pain on the planet, but there is a relativity to it." It’s not quite a “get out of jail free” card, but it does free us from a putative burden of guilt when we take a plant’s life as opposed to a presumed (unacknowledged) guilt involved in stripping a mother animal of her liberty or brutally disposing of a cow or turkey.

Recognizing the dilemma and acknowledging the contradictions of this life allows us to venture forth into an imperfect world with compassion. We can begin to make choices that bring us back into a state of harmony and grace with the earth, ourselves, and all living beings - "the-spirit-that-moves-through-all-things.”

Once we begin to base our food choices on the principle of least harm and minimal destruction, then we will know, as Tolstoy realized, that humanity is on the right path, that the vegetarian ethic is the genuine and sincere pursuit of moral perfection on the part of our species.

VIOLENCE - IS IT EVER JUSTIFIED?

Is Violence Ever Justified?

Can a violent act ever be justified? What if the violence committed prevents a greater crime from occurring? What if the violence perpetrated brings about a paradigm shift for the good of society or humanity? It would be easy to argue a slam-dunk case, that yes, in the above cases, a violent means to a favorable outcome is justified.

But what is violence, really, in all its ugly manifestations? Is it limited to a physical act of abuse toward a fellow human or animal? Does it emanate from voice tones, our usage of unpalatable metaphors rooted in violent speech? It would be easy to point to the natural world’s inherent violent tendencies and proclaim it as a role model of behavior, a template for our actions, since we are also part of the natural world.

Human beings will rationalize anything, including violence, if it satisfies some base need or fits a particular narrative. In the pursuit of hedonistic selfishness, people drive carbon-spewing, gas-guzzling vehicles (violence toward earth), and sate their palates eating a planet-unfriendly meat diet (violence toward earth and animals). In both case, the rationalization being a page out of Mother Nature’s playbook; in the first, the idea that we must utilize fossil fuels provided by geological processes; and the second that animals kill violently for their sustenance.

Similarly so with violent acts committed for the ultimate “good” of humanity – bloody insurgencies, gruesome wars to reshape some geographic boundary, fire-bombing earth-unfriendly property – the idea being, hey, if the violence is committed in the spirit of something you strongly believe in or can conveniently rationalize away, then it is somehow less wrong or more morally acceptable. Everything else is just collateral damage.

 

But violence is ultimately a ruinous act, a shattering of hope, a killing of possibility that feeds negatively upon itself until death or destruction – a poor karmic foundation for humans to build upon.

The great thing about being modern humans is that we can make choices that defy our evolutionary caveman heritage. We are not chimpanzees engaged in crude territorial disputes; we are not ferocious beats in conflict for alpha male rights; and we are not vicious warmongering army ants – we are human beings who can choose to act with compassion, mercy, kindness and love, in every act and in every moment. Forget “situational ethics” and “contextual politics” – think with your heart!

Following a vegan lifestyle and ahimsa ethics simply does not allow for supporting or advocating violence in any way, shape or form. The principle of “least harm” must be the guiding light, otherwise “an eye for an eye makes the world go blind.” And besides, why put violent energy into the world? It can only come back to bite you in the ass. “Live by the sword and die by the sword” is pretty much true.

Yet as Franz Fanon famously asserted, violence is a cleansing and liberating force for good, a way to burn an iniquitous system to ashes and rebuild a more equitable society. Josef Stalin might have come to similar conclusions when he said, “One death is a tragedy, but a million deaths are a statistic.”

As for humans, will we always contain a seed of violence within? Or will spiritual evolution someday excise the primitive tendency from our DNA? As for society and government, will there ever be such a thing as revolution without violence? That is doubtful, but what is certain is that violence without revolution is senseless.