vegaroo!

(Editor’s Note: Tim doesn’t write a lot for vegaroo but when he does he goes full-on kick-arse editorial style. I also recommend this post from his personal blog: If Trees Could Scream. Please note, though, that the opinions expressed here may not necessarily represent all vegaroo writers.)

There are so many things wrong with “Vegans and the Quest for Purity”, Harold Fromm’s misinformed screed against veganism—or, rather, against the fictional ideology he believes veganism to be—that it’s hard to know where to begin.

I’ll start with these two: Fromm completely misrepresents what veganism is about, and while attempting to tear down the straw-man he built, he defends a callous, selfish personal ethic apparently without realising that every one of his arguments could just as well justify brutality towards other people.

Attacks on vegans are nothing new, of course, but Fromm seems to believe he’s made an insight that has escaped not only every vegan on the planet, but all of our previous critics. “The unspoken concept behind the debate over vegans is ‘biocentrism.’” OK, sounds interesting. What is it? Let’s consult the interwebs:

Biocentrism states that nature does not exist simply to be used or consumed by humans, but that humans are simply one species amongst many^[3], and that because we are part of an ecosystem, any actions which negatively affect the living systems of which we are a part, adversely affect us as well^[3][4], whether or not we maintain a biocentric worldview^[3].

It sounds pretty reasonable to me, and it sounds like Mr Fromm wouldn’t disagree:

My own diet is very high in plants and low in meat, and my carbon footprint is very small indeed, but mainly out of concern for my own health and the planet that keeps us alive. Beyond that, I’m an admirer of J.M. Coetzee, Michael Pollan, and Singer, and I well approve of their revulsion at the brutal treatment of animals raised for our consumption. I think vegetarianism is admirable. I would recommend it.

Great! So what’s the problem? Apparently, Fromm believes that veganism is a step too far. Why? “Behind their beliefs is the hopeless longing for innocence.” Now, I always thought that my beliefs were based on a very hopeful desire to avoid contributing to unnecessary suffering, but it seems that Fromm thinks he understands my own beliefs better than I do. According to him, what I want is to become “enlisted in an open-ended but futile metaphysic of virtue and self-blamelessness that pretends to escape from the conditions of life itself”. How so? In Fromm’s mind, vegans are trying—futilely—to avoid consumption and death of any form of life. Thankfully, he illuminates us all to the practical impracticability of such an endeavour:

I squash millions of micro-organisms with each step and wash down the drain unnoticed multitudes with each shower. Brushing my teeth kills innumerable bacteria (it’s them or my gums!). With every swallow, I destroy some of the bacteria in my gut that keep me alive by helping to digest my food. But even larger creatures like cockroaches and rats, do they enter into the purview of animal-rights activists? And the HIV virus, the swine flu, tuberculosis? Do I want to eschew antibiotics and vaccines that help my life out of respect for theirs?

That’s right, vegans: a cow is a cat is a rat is a cockroach is a virus. If you can’t save them all, why bother giving consideration to any? Not that he stops there:

And since we are carnivores (“omnivores,” if that makes you feel better) from the moment of conception, we emerge from the womb already “guilty.” Even if our parents eschewed meat, to have been born at all we must have been eating our mother during gestation, and after birth we need her milk, which is just another dairy product from animals.

This is a very gross misunderstanding of veganism, and of biology in general. It’s not that complicated, Mr Fromm: we as vegans only want to stop unnecessary suffering, or stop justifying it on the basis of the species of the victim. While pregnancy and childbirth are no picnic, I’m sure, I think it’s pretty disingenuous to think of mothers as exploited victims of their foetus or breast-fed infant.

But wait—if we’re hopelessly guilty from the very moment of conception, then what is it about vegetarianism that is so admirable?

They are concerned about their health. Or they don’t want animals to be raised expressly to be tortured and killed—especially in factory farms and slaughterhouses—for their dinner plates. Or they don’t want to ingest the dead bodies of fairly complex creatures, which is apt to make them feel queasy. No doubt they would prefer all animals (whatever that might include) to be treated humanely, but they are not prepared to stop wearing leather shoes or eating Jell-O.

While I know a few vegetarians that would object to Fromm’s blanket assertions about what they are or are not prepared to do, let’s take his words at face value. What, exactly, does he think happens to the animals that are raised to produce eggs and dairy? Or the vast number of valueless male offspring they produce? Or, for fuck’s sake, where does he think leather comes from?

In Fromm’s ethical worldview, concern for the suffering and death of animals is laudable, but only as long as it falls within the narrow range from sustainably-raised meat to somewhere just short of jelly. Because, in Fromm’s ethical worldview, virtue is an illusion, and at the end of the day, all that matters is ourselves:

Nobody […] can even in theory turn out to be anything other than an anthropocentrist. We care about the planet because we are made from its materials. […] That deludes some people into thinking they can be disinterestedly “biocentric,” having the interests of the planet (and nonhuman animals) as much at heart as those of human beings. But because the so-called environment is the same substance as ourselves, our concern for it is just a disguised case of looking out for No. 1. Biocentrism is little more than a type of self-congratulating anthropocentrism. […]

Our survival came about through evolution, a process of drastic environmental changes in which periods of vast destruction eradicated most complex life forms. When life started again from the survivors in the new ecosystem, those most attuned (“adapted” is the word) to the new environment produced offspring that could survive. Those survivors could themselves be victimized by other predatory survivors in the struggle for resources in changing ecosystems. Refined as some of our moral sensibilities may now be, there’s nothing we can do to outwit this fact: To be alive is to be a murderer. Or to be murdered.

So we might as well face it, then: the world is a cruel place. Our own biology and evolutionary history is full of suffering and death, therefore we should feel no guilt about continuing to inflict it on others. If we’re inherently programmed to look after humans first—and I won’t argue with that—then why should we reject that great gift from nature that allows us to exploit other species without fear?

But, for someone who has carefully thought through the most extreme logical conclusions of his misunderstood notion of veganism, he doesn’t seem to have given his own ethical principles such a thorough examination. Surely, we also evolved to “look after our own kind” in other ways, too. We evolved into a species of warring nations. Shouldn’t civilisations that developed more destructive technology faster take relish in their ability to exploit people of other parts of the world? And, in the end, aren’t we all looking after ourselves as individuals first? Well, then, why shouldn’t we all inflict suffering and death on our neighbours, so long as we can get away with it?

It comes down to a question of values, and these can’t be defended with reason and argument, only their implications can. The actual centre of the debate about veganism is one of fundamentally different values. Vegans want to stop unnecessary harm, and have thought through what is required of them to do so. The position Fromm is defending is that only his own interests matter, and his consideration of harm to others will only go as far as required to avoid consequences that come back to bite him. He gives us a glimpse into his inter-personal disposition by talking about vegans “alienating potential friends who may find you more trouble than you’re worth”. What kind of person rejects a friendship because of this kind of mild inconvenience? It sounds like Mr Fromm, at the end of the day, is just kind of a dick-head.

So why should we even care about what this guy has to say? Fromm isn’t shy about making inflexible, demanding, black-and-white rants on topics he clearly knows little about. This is just a new one to add to his repertoire. It does show, though, how far veganism has penetrated into the public consciousness. While I’m sure this article has some people patting themselves on the back and continuing to chow down on their burgers, others will see this article for what it is—a sloppy, poorly thought-out set of incoherent arguments and misinformation—and decide to think a little bit more about what being vegan is really all about.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 19th, 2010 at 11:30 am and is filed under Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.