Vegan Practically

I have mentioned before that meat-eating is an ideology. Here “meat-eating” is really a stand-in for the use and consumption of animal products more generally. As for “ideology,” if you just consult the dictionary you’ll come away thinking of ideology neutrally, as a system of ideas, usually associated with political positions. But I like the Marxist tweak, which adds a negative valence to it by introducing the idea of a system of beliefs that distorts or is itself a distorted representation of reality. For Marx of course the ideology in question was capitalism and the main distortion was the normalization of the class system. That there was/is a ruling class and a labouring class was/is taken as the natural order of things (Marx scholars, forgive my very simple rendering of a complex theory!).

Back in the mid-90s I read an excellent philosophy paper by Catherine Wilson, called “On Some Alleged Limitations to Moral Endeavour” (Wilson, 1993, J of Philosophy, 90(6):275-289). It has really stuck with me. She cites Karl Manneheim’s account of ideology, according to which “an ideology is produced when a ‘ruling group becomes so interest-bound that they cannot see facts which would undermine their sense of domination; they obscure the real condition of society to themselves and others, and thereby stabilize it’.” (278).

When you think about the casual acceptance of speciesist arguments in support of our use of animals, it is clear that the sense of human domination over animals is an interest-bound ideology. Here are some examples that help support this characterization of it:

• It is almost unfathomable, for most people, to consider that morality might require them to give up eating animal products even when they are aware of the vast suffering that goes into their production.
• It is unthinkable, for most people, that an animal life could ever have more (or equivalent) importance as a human life. Hence the justification of the use of animals in medical research.
• People joke about how un-fun it is to boil lobsters alive so they may eat them, but they do it anyway and comment on their own squeamishness (p.s. being boiled alive is a horrific way to die and lobsters do suffer. If you’d like to think more on lobster, start with my post and then go on to read David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster”)
• Few people have qualms about citing their personal taste (“I love bacon!” or “Cheese is so good I can’t live without it”) as a full argument for why it’s okay to torture animals to produce those things.
• Vegans are dismissed as extremists and radicals for caring about animals and speaking the truth about conditions on factory farms.
• Even people who say they are opposed to factory farming shrug when confronted with the fact that 99% of all animal products globally consumed come from this type of farming.
• Sometimes we rename food to cover up the reality of its source: pig becomes pork; cow flesh becomes beef.
• Restaurant menus revolve around animal products, where sometimes it is impossible even to find one item that does not have them. This is taken as normal.
• “Foodie culture” is completely dominated by animal products.
• Leather is still considered an essential, even luxury, material for things ranging from jackets and shoes to car upholstery and furniture.
• Meat and the consumption of animal products is so embedded in many cultural, national, and family traditions that calling it into doubt and suggesting that there may be a moral or environmental reason to seek alternatives is taken as a rejection of culture, nation, or family.

When I talk about meat-eating as an ideology of privilege, the privilege to which I am referring here is structural: our society is structured such that humans have privilege over non-human animals. These structures are so firmly in place that non-human animals hardly stand a chance. As the ruling group, human domination over animals is so interest-bound that (many) humans “cannot see the facts which would undermine their sense of domination.”

Challenging and attempting to shake loose ideologies that have achieved such a high level of stabilization as human dominion over animals is a task that has a Sisyphean quality to it.

I’m working on a paper right now that goes more deeply into the idea of meat-eating (and more generally the sense of entitlement to exploit non-human animals and inflict pain and suffering on them as a matter of course) as an ideology. I take that further by introducing the idea of “meat-eaters’ fragility” (riffing off of Robin Diangelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism). It’s the perfect way of describing what lies behind the various response strategies of people who routinely consume animal products if ever anyone hints that there might be reasons to reconsider their approach to food. When you’ve got the full support of a deeply entrenched ideology behind you, it’s easy to take offence and double-down against any challenge.

I think this idea of ideology and the further phenomenon of “fragility” helps to explain what makes these conversations so incredibly difficult. The paper I’m writing identifies these phenomena, offering them as explanations for some of the challenges vegans face in trying to do the kind of advocacy and activism we do.

Meanwhile, I do realize that this idea of ideology and fragility might seem obvious. But in making them explicit, perhaps it will be easier to develop appropriate and more successful strategies and to formulate more effective ways of entering into these discussions. As I work on the paper, I’ll be “workshopping” some of the main points here.