Vegan Education: When Winning the Argument is not Enough For Change
Why a cow, but not your dog?
I had to drive a few hours to a friend’s holiday party this weekend, so I took the opportunity to download a few Animal Voices podcasts for the trip. It was an interesting experience to immerse myself in three hours of vegan thought, followed by an omnivore-dominated party.
One of these shows was “Animals and Ethics: Mapping the Debate with Angus Tayler“. In the interview, he described an interaction that jumped out at me:
I think that philosophy or intellectual discussion is only going to take us so far. Someone who doesn’t care about animals is not going to be moved by brilliant philosophical arguments.
I once had a student in class. We had been discussing Tom Regan’s Case for Animal Rights and this student said in a discussion in class, ‘I find Regan’s arguments to be absolutely valid, I am totally convinced by it intellectually, but it’s not going to have any effect on me. I’m not going to stop eating meat. I’m not going to change at all. It’s just not going to make any difference.’
At least he was prepared to think about the argument and to admit its strength, but he didn’t care when it came right down to it. And I don’t think you can reason people into caring. I think the caring, the empathy, has to come first.
It reminded me of an earlier post, “Emotion vs Logic“, and it grabbed my attention in particular because Mary shared a recent experience that was an almost exact mirror of his experience.
At an event over the weekend I met a man who said he went vegan because of Animal Person, but now he’s not vegan anymore because I basically stopped writing. Of course that’s nonsense. But here’s what else he said, “Your logic is flawless. The argument is perfect. I know I shouldn’t use animals. But that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna eat a steak if I want to or if I think my body needs it.”
We are surrounded by people who say they love animals (and who certainly do love their cats and dogs) but who participate in harming animals at every meal. A friend’s boyfriend is a perfect example of this. He refuses to watch football, any football at all, because he is so angry about Michael Vick. This same man spent time explaining to me why he doesn’t see any moral issue with eating meat.
He has never eaten a dog, and he has never had a cow as a pet. He cares about all dogs because he loves his dog. I wanted to tell him about Melanie Joy’s Carnism, but I’ll save that for a day when he has not been partying.
I gave my friend a Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary calendar, which has stories for each of the animals, and perhaps her boyfriend will see animals in a different light through these images and stories. I am also going to send him a link to “We are all Michael Vick (pdf)” and just hope that he isn’t so angry about Michael Vick that this backfires.
I am haunted by Angus Taylor’s and Mary’s experiences with people who agree with animal rights philosophy, but who still are not moved to make changes.
What is happening when you win the argument but the end result is no change? Is it as simple and as complicated as exposure? How do we trigger an empathy for all animals rather than a select few, and open them up to ethical choices?
Two other Animal Voices shows that seem especially relevant to this general topic are the interview with Sharon Núñez from Igualdad Animal, and an interview with Em Firesmith from CALM. Both interviews have great ideas and will leave you with much to think about.
Stephanie Ernst
Marji
Kelly G.
Deb
Mary Martin
This is an interesting one. I watched a conversation between Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins recently. Dawkins accepted the validity of Singer’s arguments completely, but said he would continue to eat meat because of ‘convention’ and because (cringe) ‘vegetarian food often isn’t very nice’.
The second reason is clearly a myth, and Dawkins hasn’t been bothered to see whether it’s true. I also think the ‘convention’ argument is a bit of a cop-out from someone who has been so unconventional in so many ways, but it’s indicative of the pull of social norms and myths – that even if someone as intelligent as Dawkins can bow down to them, it’s no wonder that others do so too.
I do find it quite chilling when people say ‘this is my moral ingroup (humans, dogs) and this is my moral outgroup (cows, pigs etc) and that’s that’. It’s completely arbitrary and no different from saying ‘my moral ingroup includes able-bodied people only’ for example, but it is an evolved trait to form these in/out groups – chimpanzees have been observed being tender and loving to members of their ingroup but terrifyingly cruel to members of an outgroup for no apparent reason.
I do wonder sometimes whether human beings’ apparent reluctance to extend their moral ingroup to certain animals is an evolved trait too. It’s possible that when we *did* depend on meat for survival, the ability to feel empathy for ‘food’ animals was diminished, as it would have meant starvation. Perhaps people’s refusal to care these days is a hangover from ancient times, as the message still has not sunk in that eating meat is no longer necessary for survival (for most people).
However I do believe that it’s largely a matter of social norms, and that most people do what they dictate. Psychological studies have shown that most (not all) people will harm other people when instructed to do so by an authority figure, shelving whatever empathy they have that would otherwise stop them. Social norms can be seen as an authority – communicating via the continued messages in our society about how eating meat is normal and natural. Caring, showing empathy, and changing our behaviour in accordance, uses our energy – if we can transfer the responsibility for not caring onto another person (or society) then we can be selfish without any guilt. It’s the classic ‘everyone else is doing it’ / ‘only following orders’ defence, combined with the power of inertia. Put simply, people don’t care because they don’t have to care.
This seems a bleak picture of humanity, but there is such a thing as minority influence – otherwise we’d still live in a society where slavery was legal, child labour was commonplace and women didn’t have the vote. Over history we’ve seen that on some issues, the uncaring majority slowly starts to care, until the moral value in question becomes part of the society’s norms, and it’s then seen as morally wrong to still believe in how things were. In other words, the moral in-group widens.
As for what we can do to make people care about all animals… I think it is largely a matter of exposure, yes. I’m not sure how you make a person feel empathy, but meeting animals and learning more about animal behaviour would have to be part of it. I often wonder whether if an animal could literally say ‘stop doing this to me’ , it would make people care (of course they do say ‘stop doing this to me’, just not in human language!).
One of the most important messages I think is ‘it’s okay not to eat meat’, ‘there is another way’ etc, and one of the most important actions for us as vegans is to keep agitating for more vegan food to be available in shops and restaurants etc. Because when people *do* feel the empathy, and this is particularly true for children who haven’t yet learned the in/out group rules, quite often there is little immediate help available for them to change their lifestyle in accordance with that.
I hope some of this makes sense!
I saw that Dawkins/Singer interview and remember being surprised by Dawkins’ blithe indifference and how such a critical thinker who is not with the mainstream on such an important issue could so easily allow himself to *not* think critically and follow the mainstream. It seemed so cowardly.
Unfortunately, I know plenty of people for whom the reasoning behind veganism makes perfect sense. Intelligence clearly isn’t a factor in the decision to go vegan. I think we’re getting closer when we talk about empathy, and if I EVER finish The Empathic Civilization (adopting a baby puts the kibosh on pretty much anything you want to do) I might have something interesting to add to the conversation. This gives me some incentive.
Yes, I was disappointed in Dawkins too – even the most intelligent people, it seems, have their blind spots! He seems so keen on evidence under usual circumstances, I wonder what evidence he’s basing his judgements about vegetarian food on!
An interesting question to ask people who accept the arguments but who don’t act, could be ‘Why do you refrain from doing other things you accept to be wrong?’ Such as stealing, assaulting another human being, adultery, etc? I’d be interested to know the answer to that question.
I suspect that for some people, the answer would be that those things have potential bad consequences such as losing their partner, going to jail, etc. Eating meat, by contrast, has no such consequences.
Some people may answer that they don’t want to hurt another person, but if they don’t mind hurting another animal, I’d be very interested to know what the difference is. Maybe another animal’s pain simply doesn’t feel ‘real’ to them, even if they accept all the evidence that it’s the same kind of pain that humans feel.
With these people, I’d be interested to know whether they are able to watch films such as ‘Earthlings’, which show the pain and suffering, and whether they have an emotional response to that. It would be chilling indeed if someone could watch such a film and be unmoved by it.
Amy, excellent points! It reminds me that when we get at the root of animal exploitation, we are seeing the roots of all oppression. The othering, the random decisions as to who is in your moral ingroup, and the justification for almost any kind of treatment/use of those who are not….
You’ve given me a lot to think about!
Thanks Deb! :o) I agree that all oppression has the same psychological basis. It’s a very interesting subject that deserves more research I think!
Habits are hard to change. It’s that simple.
Ask anyone who has tried to quit smoking, drinking alcohol, using drugs… anyone who has tried to cut back on eating fatty and sugary foods, drinking coffee, spending money… anyone who has tried to start going to the gym, saving for retirement, donating more to charity, buying fair trade and organic, whatever. Habits are hard to change. People can easily agree with the logic behind making changes to their lifestyles. They can even have plenty of empathy. But the habit is still hard to change.
That’s why I think the focus should be more on the how and less on the why. Everyone with a brain and heart knows intuitively that veganism is morally preferable to nonveganism. Sure, we can help remind them with logical essays or speeches. We can help them put words to their feelings. We can give them facts and statistics to help strengthen their intuition. But the truth is, most people already know what they need to know in order to go vegan: it’s wrong to cause unnecessary pain and death.
What they don’t know is how. They don’t know where to shop, what to buy, what to eat, how to cook, how to deal with critical omnis, how to ask servers for vegan food, how to curb cravings and change habits, how to stop using excuses like ‘I’m going to eat steak “if I think my body needs it.”’
I think that vegan advocates should invest a bit more time and energy in giving nonvegans the tools to succeed at being vegan: community, support, vegan convenience foods, recipes, etc.
I definitely agree that the support for those interested in becoming vegan is crucial, and can make the difference between someone who thinks about it and someone who does it. But it’s not as simple as habit, at least not for everyone. Not everyone with a brain and a heart agree that veganism is morally preferable. Or when they do agree, they don’t necessarily feel compelled to make any change at all.
My mother often says she feels sad & sorry for what we do to animals in the food industry, but that she won’t stop eating meat because she enjoys it. She will, often when we’re out to eat, order a vegetarian dish because she enjoys whatever is being offered. I don’t fault my mother for her choices, I am thankful, at least that she will listen to what I have to say about the animal industry. One of our last conversations ended, though, with me asking her what she thought about the fur trade & cats & dogs being skinned alive. She was very quiet, because I know at that point she was truly contemplating her reaction to cats & dogs vs. cows & pigs.
It’s an important step to take, replacing [dog] for [cow] or [cat] for [pig] when talking about the ethics of using animals. I’d often say in discussions over horse slaughter that why should we send our horses to slaughter to be because people can eat them in Europe but not our old housecats to China because people can wear them? What’s the difference??
Lisa, have you seen the video trailer for “carnism”? It is at the bottom of kelly’s review from a few months back, whick I linked in. I watched it for the first time last night and I wonder if it is something that could get your mom thinking further along those lines. (It is a dramatization of swapping dog for cow.)
I think that’s a good point to make about getting people to swap cat/dog for cow/pig, and it ties in with what Amy was saying in the first comment.
Reinforced social norms, smokers’ logic, and little experience with vegan foods/products seem to converge in the perfect storm. People who agree with animal rights/liberation philosophy but make no change in their habits don’t sense a personal stake as we do. We couldn’t live with eating animals or using products made from animals. A person must reach this point on his or her own. It’s a path as different as each of our individual lives are different.
We wish everyone could see animals through our eyes or imagine life through the eyes of the animals themselves. If only it were up to us to make the journey; it’s up to each individual. An added complication in American culture is the nonstop message of consumption: you should be dissatisfied, and unless you are a perpetual consumer, you have no social standing or personal worth. So how can most people care about animals when they’re taught to dislike themselves? None of us can be completely immune to the numbing effects of media.
Vegan food and kindness are usually only abstractions to people. To consistently provide the reality of these things in our communities along with educational outreach, we continue to offer the presence of desirable alternatives. The combined effect of these efforts across the country shouldn’t be underestimated. Deb, the vegan feast you wrote about earlier is a great example of how it’s possible to change the traditional concept of Thanksgiving. When the necessary cultural shift occurs, that celebration and respect for life will become an everyday norm.
The staff writers on AR&AO continue to be among those participants in our society who challenge the mainstream dogma. At times for all of us who live vegan, it feels like we’re trying to cross the ocean in a rowboat. But I have no doubt that as long as there are always a few of us willing to take our turn at the oars, we will one day reach the distant shore.
I never thought to put it into words like that, but having a personal stake is exactly right. And it is comforting to think about it as crossing the ocean in a rowboat, but being able to take turns at the oars.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. Many great points to think about to give us perspective in our advocacy.
And you (and the other commenters) have convinced me that I should donate some vegan food to the work potluck after all, even though I know they won’t have a damn thing for me to eat. I’m probably the only way most of these people have to experience vegan food, and I need to get past my resentment that it’s a one-way street. Food activism, period.
I’ll make some fudge…I just won’t donate the whole batch!
Someone recently conceded that the argument for animal rights is cogent but he is “morally lazy.” But all liberation movements confront the important distinction between theory and practice. It seems to me that you can’t have your eyes open to something *and not act*. However, we have inherited a pre-reflective, out-grouping mechanism from our evolutionary ancestors, which rubs up against our pre-reflective, empathetic response to suffering. We see the same thing in nonhuman primates, and other social mammals.
I think the answer — how to bridge this gap — is a combination of force and exposure.
What do you mean by force?
I mean legitimate violence (i.e., the law).
Let me elaborate. Singer, for example, (and Francione) proceed from the assumption that people are reasonable. I mostly reject that. We are too good at rationalizing the status quo, especially when doing so lends itself to further calcifying privilege.
Anti-sexism campaigns don’t succeed because of the argument against sexism but because of a combination of need, exposure, and force. We need to find ways to take the choice *out of the hands* of individual people, in other words, because they are (mostly) unreasonable.
Unfortunately, a necessary condition is some kind of mass that militates in that direction, which is *why* liberation campaigns are so difficult to win because we necessarily have to rely on exposure (that is, the (quixotic) assumption that we can “just educate”), but once that condition is satisfied, it is no longer a choice to be unreasonable.
Thanks for clarifying. I couldn’t think of what you meant in the context of your comment. Tying people to a chair and making them watch Earthlings was my first thought!
You have a really good point about the way anti-sexism (etc) campaigns need to have the law behind them to make progress after a certain point. And even with laws in place, the mindset of many (the people who need such laws) remain entrenched in old thinking.
Of course laws follow the will of the people, and in fact generally trail quite a ways behind the moral norm of society – as you said, it needs some kind of mass movement in that direction first – so when it comes to animal liberation, we have a really really long way to go before the law will come close to backing up our moral stance.