Vegan Manifesto
An Axiom (mine, e.w.)
Our civilization has evolved to render us blind.
This evolution enables us as a species to do the most despicable things imaginable on unimaginable scales without having to think about it at all.
Beneath the thin tablecloth of civilization lies an ocean of agony.
On top of our tablecloths, in almost every home, lay victims; burnt, bleeding, and shredded, proudly on display. Evidence of an atrocity is right there in front of our eyes, yet we cannot see it at all. This is surreal magic. How is this achieved?
We Homo sapiens produce the least self-sufficient offspring on the planet. Our offspring are dependent on their parents for a very long time. For parents to remain devoted for these long durations requires a large amount of empathy. For humans to act in the wholesale murderous ways we do, void of feeling, requires very powerful counteracting structures to be in place.
Architecture of the Blind
The components
(Note: what I will describe in abbreviated form was never designed by anyone. Processes evolved to aid a cultural direction (meat eating in this case) just as they evolve in the natural world. Things necessarily adapt in the direction strong forces are moving. Countervailing tendencies eventually are eroded or are extinguished.)
1. Fear and terror at the beginning
An initial threat beginning at birth sets the stage for denial and dissociation.
In modern times birth has become an unnatural uphill battle against gravity and into the hands of the (usually) male stranger – “the deliverer”. Held upside down by the ankles by this strange man the message received by the infant is: “we may drop and kill you at any moment.”
This threat is underscored by slapping the infant, performing circumcision (without anesthetic), premature umbilical cutting, suctioning, weighing, measuring, testing, blood typing, bright lights, and often separating the newborn from the mother and then left alone, or alternatively placed in a roomful of other screaming babies.
The adult world is hostile and dangerous, that is the frightening first perception of the newborn. This may seem far-fetched but imagine any other mammal on the planet allowing their newborns to be treated in these ways by strangers (male strangers at that). We have been conditioned to believe all this is done for the good of our babies. Most of it is not. The newborn comes into our world with a core feeling of mortal endangerment.
2. Forced identification with the “animal”
After birth we are surrounded by “animals”, we are given soft, lovely stuffed animals to sleep next to us in our cribs, animals hang over our heads in mobiles, they decorate our wallpaper, sheets, blankets, and pajamas. Our earliest stories are of lovable animals who speak and think like us. We are made to identify with these animals – we share their fears, their dangers, their joys. And why not? Animals are also non-verbal, less cerebral, more feeling/body based, often smaller than adult humans, and at least, as depicted, very lovable.
As we grow a bit older the stories take a more sinister turn. These sweet animals find themselves threatened. The Three Little Pigs are in danger of being devoured by the wolf and must make their houses more and more secure. Three Blind Mice are threatened by the farmer’s wife who tries to “cut off their tails with a carving knife”.
Then come the stories of children being threatened by thinly disguised parent substitutes. The motherly woman who offers Hansel and Gretel cookies then throws them into cages to fatten them before cooking them in her oven. Red Riding Hood’s grandma turns out to be a wolf (in disguise) that wants to eat her. Jack and The Beanstalk’s “giant” (isn’t an adult a giant from a child’s perspective?) who chases Jack and wants to eat him. Billy Goat Gruff and his siblings are confronted by the Troll who wants to eat them and on and on. The terror of being eaten by adults runs through these stories like a virulent river.
Unsubtle hints at endangerment to the young child come in many forms even in the lullabies we unthinkingly use to put our children to bed.
“Rock a bye baby, in the treetop, when the wind blows the cradle will rock, When the bough breaks, the baby will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.”
Sweet dreams.
3.) The Compulsion to de-identify
About the time the child’s stories start to turn dark, the child has developed cognitively. What happens when this young child begins to recognize that what is to be eaten is the very thing he has learned to fully identify with? And who is serving this dish of death but the very parents who hold his/her whole life in their hands? This is the essence of a horror movie, where those you most love and trust turn out to be monsters.
What child can allow this into awareness? Almost all will immediately go into denial and repress this cataclysmic terror. To not do so would be to live in continuous emotionally catastrophic stress, or worse; remind these all-powerful murderous adults that you are kin to these victims and thereby possibly join their fate.
There is a powerful need to de-identify with both the animal and the state of infancy where this kinship was enshrined. About this time children frequently exhibit a compulsive savagery against small creatures. Me and my friends spent hours avidly cutting up caterpillars and torturing ants as young children.
We also taunted other children with “Crybaby, crybaby” and “Baby, baby, stick your head in gravy” (“gravy” can be seen as a possible pointer to the baby as meat.)
The repudiation of our “infantile” selves and any “animal” identification becomes pronounced. We renounce our panda pajamas, our rubber duckies, and once loved stuffed toys – now they embarrass (and threaten) us. We no longer want to in any way be considered “babies” let alone be equated with “animals”.
4. Language and new stories.
As we age our stories become centered on humans. “Animals” in these stories, when they exist at all, are clearly subservient, they are pets, or horses we own. We are given words to define them and told that we are “their masters”. As we grow our language provides easier and better ways to distinguish ourselves from these “others”. “They” devolve further and further; they become: “livestock”, “cattle” “heads of beef”, poultry, “cold cuts”, “steak”, “reflex and instinctive organisms,” “live agricultural harvests”, etc.
The word “Animal” is the greatest gift of language to human convenience and unconsciousness. This single word compresses all the individuals of each of the 9 million species of living beings of the planet into a single entity. All are subsumed into one trite idea (“they are not us”). The individual non-human being can now be more easily conceived with little, if any, thought, consideration, or feeling. The word “animal” is so large it is entirely empty. If I ask you to think of an “animal” what comes to mind? Perhaps a tiger, perhaps a turtle, maybe an elephant, maybe a cow. In fact any of 9 million different species can come to mind. Consequently the word can never be the equivalent of anything. It is a label covering something so vast and nebulous that the object becomes invisible. It has no real meaning. But is derogatory.
Every oppressed people struggles to find names for themselves to shed the ages of perceptions and connotations that are embedded in the words used to name them. “Indians” renamed themselves “Native Americans” and “First Nations” to remind us that they were the first people and individual Nations in North America. Definitions and branding are incredibly powerful because they are the very tools with which we perceive (or perhaps more aptly here – learn how not to perceive). The word “animal” is the most pernicious word ever created. It can also be considered the single most destructive invention of the human race.
5. Religion.
Religion serves as a strong pillar of the structure we are describing. Here we are given, as one of the very first events in the bible, our “Dominion” over every other creature. (This is the Old Testament, but each religion gives man his license to kill in its own way). In religion we may find that not only is it ok to kill these “others”, but to not do so (as in animal sacrifices) may be an affront to god.
Religion also gives us the notion of “a soul” that is only granted to the human (made in god’s image) not to “the beast”. It is this soul that makes the life of a human important and sacred and the creature, lacking a soul, becomes fair “game”.
6. Science
Despite many points of opposition in modern times, science carried forth the baton wielded by religion in a fairly smooth segue. Science brought religious attitudes re the non-human up to date. Descartes declared that reason and thinking (which presumably only humans possessed), was proof of the great divide – “I think therefore I am”. “Animals” were really just living “clockwork mechanisms” devoid of reason, souls, and therefore feelings. Any “screams” were just the “creaking of machinery”. Those who didn’t understand these “mature facts” were foolish, “sentimental”, “womanish” and in fact “childish”. As science progressed, its language and thought became more effective at masking non-human realities and its activities grew more compulsively horrific.
When I was a Pre-med student we were taught the greatest sin was “anthropomorphism” – the projection of “human” attributes such as feelings, or suffering onto our animal “subjects”. We learnt instead to describe such things as “stimulus response mechanisms” or better yet “SR mechanisms”. Screaming was reduced to “high decibel vocalization”. Putting acid on living frogs or subjecting them to electric shock were “procedures”. We were armed with new words and tools to help us stand above the average lay person. We could blind, deafen, shock, batter, and electrify animals with impunity because we were the newly anointed priests of science. We were given pure white robes and new language.
These attitudes would be bad enough if they just accrued to scientists but like religion before it, its values spread out into the general consciousness and gave these ancient dominion-based ideas even greater credibility.
Under the auspices of people like B.F. Skinner, and John Watson founders of Behaviorism, words such as feelings were even outlawed from the field of psychology. Only what could be measured was important. In fact until very recently, any scientist who proposed to study “animal consciousness” would be ridiculed and unlikely to find work in any accredited institution. Science has become the new residence of modern “beliefs” and as such helps carry the torch that used to solely belong to religion.
7. Male vs. Female – Anima vs. Animus – Masculine vs. Feminine
The division of the sexes is another potent foundational structure that serves our blindness. The female has been derogated since the onset of hunting. Tainted by association with the “animal/infant” the burden of “nurturing” and “caring” became her domain. This is much despised by the de-animalized and de-babied male hunter/warrior. Feeling and sympathy may suit a mother but the callous indifference of the hunter/warrior was more admired. And this “hunter/warrior” had both the physical equipment and the emotional aptitude to enforce their dominance by the ability, training and willingness to kill.
In Western religion of course it was woman: Eve, who had congress with the animal/serpent, corrupted Adam, and led to our being cast out of Eden. It was she who caused “original sin” which each baby is born with. The baby is actually born “evil” and in need of redemption.
9. Education
Here we find the fine-tuning of our structure. “Be still”, “be quiet”, “obey”. These are the first things taught at school. If we didn’t know it before, we certainly know it now – adults have the power and will not hesitate to use it. We must learn to control our feelings and bodies to an even greater degree than before. “You can’t behave like a wild animal here.” The war against feelings and self – the subordination to authority “If you need to go to the bathroom, raise your hand and ask permission”. Running, jumping, screaming, shouting, and even talking is frequently disallowed. “You must learn to control your feelings”. “If you want to jump or run around you wait till recess.”
In North America the day begins with either “Oh Canada” (“we stand on guard for thee”) or the Star Spangled Banner (“the bombs bursting in air gave proof in the in the night that our flag was still there”) Here we learn the primacy of an abstraction – “our country” and how we may be called upon to die for it and how honorable that would be.
The sacrifice of our lives for the adult world had many precedents God gave his only begotten son, Abraham became the father of the Jewish, Moslem and Christian people by his willingness to kill his own son, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter to the gods in order to help win the battle against Troy.
The Result
For a terrified animal-identified infant, the realization that animals are being killed and eaten is a huge shock. That these beloved animals are being killed and eaten by their own parents who hold their own lives in their hands is a cataclysm requiring violent and immediate suppression.
The best way to deal with severe trauma is to cast it far away with the greatest of force. Denial, amnesia, compartmentalization, screen memories, numbness, and dissociation are all reactions which allow traumatized people to cope with otherwise overwhelming feelings. Aided and abetted by religion, tradition, science and folklore, the grisly reality gets shrouded in layers of obscuring veils. Blanketed by trauma, language, family traditions, religious entitlements, scientific and philosophical rationales, we become literally blind to what is right in front of us.
Triggered by reminders of mortal fear we go numb, we go blind, we stand in front of atrocities and we feel nothing. Because of our understandable resistance to being the victim of a monstrosity we violently and automatically shift alliance to the other side.
We really have become deformed as a result of taking the meat-eating path. We have become deranged and this has lain unseen for too long.
The consequences for the human have been immense, the consequences for the non-human have been much worse.
The Vegan Manifesto 