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Should we march with vegetarians?
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Diana
Rookie Animal Activist

Joined: 05 Nov 2005
Posts: 172
Location: Switzerland

David Olivier wrote:

An expression I much like, introduced by Antoine Comiti, is that of a person being a "végétarien du foie gras" — a "foie gras vegetarian". That is someone who, for ethical reasons, refuses to eat foie gras, while perhaps still eating other forms of animal flesh. Of course that person will then not be "végétarien tout court". But eir motivation not to eat foie gras is, by and large, the same as the motivation of vegetarians generally not to eat any animal flesh. That justifies saying that ey is a vegetarian regarding foie gras.

I tried to formulate a sentence in response to this expression of Comiti's. I read and reread the quoted sentence, hopoing that it is just some grotesque joke, but I think that Comiti and you are actually serious.

And the only thing I can come up with which expresses my thoughts and feelings correctly is: WTF????????????????

_________________
"In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka."

Posted: Yesterday, at 9:23 pm

Mark this post and the followings unread

David Olivier
Animal Guardian

Joined: 23 Jan 2008
Posts: 51

Diana wrote:

I would appreciate if you made a second attempt to articulate what (if I understand correctly) shocks you in the passage you quoted.

David

_________________
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http://david.olivier.name/

Posted: Yesterday, at 9:32 pm

jubjub
Rookie Animal Activist

Joined: 02 Jan 2008
Posts: 115

terri wrote:

Of course fair trade products will get faster popular than veganism as you do not really need to change any of your habbits, exept than paying a little bit more for more or less the same product. If you descide to go vegan you DO need to make some big changes in your live, what explains why it doesn't have a higher growth.

But you're comparing apples and oranges. If you were to commit yourself to buying fair-trade coffee (for example) 100% of the time, you would also need to make some big changes in your life. Not every cafe or shop sells fair-trade coffee, so you would have to learn which ones do sell it - you would not be able to go just anywhere when you wanted to have a cup of coffee. When you go out for coffee with friends, you have to make sure that they are OK with going to one of the cafes that sells fair-trade coffee. When you visit a friend's house, you have to make sure that they have fair-trade coffee on hand, or else you have to bring along your own coffee. And so on.

Conversely, making vegan choices on a case-by-case basis, as most people do with fair trade, requires no big changes at all.

Posted: Yesterday, at 9:35 pm

Trevor
Animal Guardian

Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 69

Diana wrote:

David Olivier wrote:

I tried to formulate a sentence in response to this expression of Comiti's. I read and reread the quoted sentence, hoping that it is just some grotesque joke, but I think that Comiti and you are actually serious.

And the only thing I can come up with which expresses my thoughts and feelings correctly is: WTF????????????????

Bernard Shaw may have saved you the trouble:

"I'm only a beer teetotaller, not a champagne teetotaller." (Proserpine in Candida)

One might also say that a man who lynches Negroes and not Indians is "only a black racist, not a red racist", and argue that the motivation that leads him not to lynch Indians is, by and large, the same as the motivation that leads people generally not to lynch anyone. It isn't.

Posted: Yesterday, at 9:41 pm

terri
Animal Guardian

Joined: 20 Apr 2004
Posts: 59

I am starting to understand why some members call jubjub and David Olivier anti animal rights and anti vegan.
It is clear that your only here to undermine veganism.
I do not believe that you really think that by calling someone who doesn't eat foie gras a "foie gras vegetarian" you are helping animals in anyway. Viva the vegetarians who eat fish and chicken and if we can make it better for lambs that should also not be a problem....

Btw I have always been "human vegan" and almost all people are. Or what other ideas do you have to make the word vegan unmeaningful?

Posted: Yesterday, at 9:45 pm

Andrea Argenton
Animal Guardian

Joined: 05 Jan 2007
Posts: 55
Location: Italy

terri wrote:

Or what other ideas do you have to make the word vegan unmeaningful?

Ah, this could be limited only by imagination; if we consider the time factor, for instance, I suppose we could safely say that nearly all people follow a vegan diet at least 22 hours a day - when they are not eating, that is.

Disclaimer: I am joking... :-)

Posted: Yesterday, at 9:52 pm

David Olivier
Animal Guardian

Joined: 23 Jan 2008
Posts: 51

terri wrote:

I think that if you know that your non-fair-trade coffee comes from slavery or other malpractice and you still buy it that you are a bad person!

That is a good example of vacuous rhetoric. By that standard, you are yourself a “bad person”.

Most coffee sold in the US and other affluent countries comes the work of people who are exploited beyond measure and often live in misery. Google for coffee "unfair trade" and you'll have an idea. For instance:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/focus/story/0,,956649,00.html

Quote:

In Uganda, roughly a quarter of the population is dependent on income from coffee. Just a few years ago, despite corruption and an alarming rise in military spending, the country was being hailed as a beacon of hope in a dark continent. It was one of the few African countries which, thanks to an enlightened programme of public health education, seemed to be getting to grips with its Aids crisis. It had restructured its economy, opened its capital markets, and was rewarded with being made the first country to qualify for debt relief. The value of that debt relief, paid for by western taxpayers and intended as a helping hand out of poverty, has now been wiped out by the collapse of its revenue from coffee.

In 1994/5 when the price of coffee was high, Uganda earned $433m from the crop. In 2000/2001, its revenues from coffee slumped to $110m even though it sold more coffee.

You very well know that a lot of what you consume comes from that kind of “malpractice”. Or else perhaps you never drink coffee that is not “fair trade” ("fair trade" being probably only slightly better), you never use a computer that is made by underpaid and powerless populations, and so on. Or else perhaps you do, but you choose to make believe you don't know about it?

Apart from that, you completely miss the point of the passages you were quoting. Instead of trying to read and understand another point of view, you remain fixated on value judgements about individual people — which is precisely what we were criticizing.

David

_________________
--
http://david.olivier.name/

Posted: Yesterday, at 9:56 pm

terri
Animal Guardian

Joined: 20 Apr 2004
Posts: 59

I am sorry to dissapoint you but I do not drink coffee

Posted: Yesterday, at 9:59 pm

jubjub
Rookie Animal Activist

Joined: 02 Jan 2008
Posts: 115

terri wrote:

I am starting to understand why some members call jubjub and David Olivier anti animal rights and anti vegan.
It is clear that your only here to undermine veganism.

I am here because I want to help animals. "Veganism" is an abstract entity, not a sentient being, so I don't care very much what happens to it, one way or the other.

terri wrote:

I do not believe that you really think that by calling someone who doesn't eat foie gras a "foie gras vegetarian" you are helping animals in anyway. Viva the vegetarians who eat fish and chicken and if we can make it better for lambs that should also not be a problem....

Btw I have always been "human vegan" and almost all people are. Or what other ideas do you have to make the word vegan unmeaningful?

Please note that, while we do apparently think similarly about some things, David Olivier and I are in fact separate people. I haven't said anything about the "foie gras vegetarian" issue, because I don't know how I feel about it. It is bad enough to try to refute an argument I've made by changing the subject to something I've said on an unrelated topic - it is even worse to change the subject to something someone else said, and imply that that has anything to do with me.

Posted: Yesterday, at 10:01 pm

Diana
Rookie Animal Activist

Joined: 05 Nov 2005
Posts: 172
Location: Switzerland

terri wrote:

Btw I have always been "human vegan" and almost all people are. Or what other ideas do you have to make the word vegan unmeaningful?

Terri, that is exactly what my son (a vegan and AR activist) said when I asked him what he thought of this newly coined expression. He said "Yay!!!! I'm a human vegetarian!!!! "

Trevor: Thank you the George Bernard Shaw quote. I still have "wtf" floating around in my mind. I feel like someone dropped a brick on my head. In times of trouble, I go and smoke a cigarette... so I'll BRB.

_________________
"In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka."

Posted: Yesterday, at 10:02 pm

David Olivier
Animal Guardian

Joined: 23 Jan 2008
Posts: 51

Trevor wrote:

David Olivier wrote:

And since following Gary the fundamental harm done to an animal is to kill em

I don't think that's correct. If I have understood the theory, the fundamental harm done to an animal is to use it as a means to an end (whether one kills it, drinks its milk or wears its skin).

Perhaps you're partly right concerning Gary; I have googled a bit and read some of his stuff and not found that he says that depriving of life is the fundamental harm. Though I would bet that he does say that occasionally. And I'm sure I've read Tom Regan saying it, and I've found this comment: “Regan argues that intentionally killing a moral patient is wrong - an untimely death is the ultimate harm for 'subjects of a life' as loss of life is the ultimate deprivation”.

Anyway, if instead of killing as the ultimate harm you take “using it as a means to an end”, it becomes completely impossible to make any quantitative evaluations. Despite that, we have been told that “vegetarians definitely have a LOT more blood on their hands than vegans”. How do you make sense of that? Diana admitted that vegans too have blood on their hands. Of what relevance is having “more” blood on your hands, if the “fundamental harm” done to animals is some abstract thing like “using them as a means to an end”?

Furthermore, in a passage that I have found in an article of his published in French in the last issue of the Cahiers antispécistes, he explicitely says that he does not oppose at all using a sentient being as a means to an end! What he opposes is using a sentient being “exclusively as a means to an end” (the emphasis is his). How you are to quantify how much vegetarians on one hand and how much vegans on the other “exclusively use sentient beings as means to an end” really baffles me.

And lastly: it also baffles me how you can call using a being exclusively as a means to an end a “harm” at all. Whether or not the being is viewed as a mere means is something that has to do with our mental attitudes, while harm instead means something that has to do with the being's experience. A being cannot be harmed by the mere fact that someone somewhere doesn't recognize that ey is not just a means to an end. Of course, the being may easily be harmed by the consequences of such an attitude; but the attitude itself, by itself, is not harm at all.

It appears typical to me of the “moral rights” approach that you focus on the intentions and other attitudes of the moral agent, and not at all on the experience of the moral patient. At times, it seems that how much the animal suffers, and indeed even dies, is of no concern to you. The sentience of the animal appears only as something that defines the category we are to put em in, the category of beings we are not to use exclusively as a means to an end (whatever that may mean in practical terms). Why sentience counts for defining that category, rather than for instance the number of legs or the shape of the sacrum, I really don't know.

I personally don't care one bit about whether animals are treated with the proper mental attitudes. I don't care how much they are “treated exclusively as means to an end”. I care about how much they suffer and how much they enjoy their lives. Yes, that does mean in practice much of the same things (not necessarily all, nor only) that Gary, Diana, etc. advocate; such as not eating meat, dairy, and so on; and, yes, among other things, abolishing their status as property will certainly be an important step. But perhaps it is true, when it comes to ultimate goals, that many of you have nothing to do with many of us.

(Actually, I don't really think so. Despite all your abstract and high-sounding words, which are mostly defensive, you do care about what animals really experience. It's just that you don't want to recognize it, lest you be seen as utilitarians and/or welfarists! Very Happy

)

David

_________________
--
http://david.olivier.name/

Posted: Yesterday, at 11:15 pm

David Olivier
Animal Guardian

Joined: 23 Jan 2008
Posts: 51

terri wrote:

Or what other ideas do you have to make the word vegan unmeaningful?

Yes, I do believe that the word “vegan” is made much too much of, and should be put into perspective.

The words I care about are slaughter, suffering, desolation, and also, happiness, pleasure, satisfaction and so on. Veganism is but a means. Whether it's the best means or not can be debated, and should be debated in a civil manner.

Your reactions confirm that there is much fetishism concerning those words, which you seem to see as untouchable.

David

_________________
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http://david.olivier.name/

Posted: Yesterday, at 11:22 pm

Gary L. Francione
Animal Guardian

Joined: 16 Nov 2007
Posts: 88

The Confusion of the "Abolition of Meat" Campaign

David Olivier states to Diana:

Quote:

You have invented the fact that dairy products and eggs and leather are excluded from the meat abolition movement.

Really? On your own blog, Antoine Comiti stated, in response to a comment from Karin about "abolition" meaning the abolition of all animal use:

Quote:

"abolition of meat" actually only means, well..., "abolition of meat"...

It looks like Comiti, and not Diana, gets credit for the invention.

But maybe Comiti's view about the "abolition of meat" campaign is colored the fact that he is apparently not a vegan. In response to my question about his veganism, he stated:

Quote:

No, I'm not: I do not, in all circumstances, boycott all animal products (neither do I refuse to sit in a taxi that has seat with leather, nor refuse to pay taxes although that helps subsidize animal agriculture, etc.).

Now here's an example of clear thinking. According to Comiti, we cannot be perfect and avoid all moral hazards so we have no obligation to do anything. To apply this principle in the present context: since we must pay taxes or go to jail, we have no obligation to be vegans; since taxis have leather seats, we have no obligation to be vegan.

This sort of thinking typifies the "abolition of meat" crowd. We cannot live "perfect" lives so we cannot identify any moral obligations whatsoever except, of course, those that the "abolition of meat" crowd identify.

And speaking of Antoine Comiti, Olivier says:

Quote:

David, can you please point us to where Comiti says this? I mean, based on the internet offerings from him that I have read, I don't have a particularly high regard for his views but this is surely a mind-boggling notion even for him to articulate (I should say, however, that I like your use of the gender-free Spivak pronouns). Frankly, there's not a great deal to say to someone who thinks that it is not anything but an idiotic use of language to claim that someone who does not eat foie gras is a "vegetarian regarding foie gras." I understand that some Nazi guards would not exterminate very young Jewish children. They must have been "non-anti-Semites regarding very young Jewish children."

David Olivier, who does not have the slightest idea about the meaning of the abolitionist position, states:

Quote:

Veganism, as it is repeatedly defined by the self-proclaimed "abolitionists", is a distinction between persons. But from the point of view of creating a movement, classifying persons is only marginally interesting. What is interesting is encouraging ideas and practices, not classifying persons.

Veganism, as understood by abolitionists, is not a matter of distinction between persons any more or less than is the "abolition of meat" campaign. The vegan/abolitionist position is about ideas and practices in the same way that the "abolition of meat" campaign is about ideas and practices. The abolitionist seeks to promote the idea that all animal use is morally unjustifiable and we should not pursue the "humane" regulation of animal exploitation. The "abolition of meat" people claim that there is a "symbolic" difference between flesh and other animal products, and that the distinction between abolition and welfarism is an "absurd divide" (Olivier) although they claim to be in favor of the "abolition" of meat. (I know, I know. I am expecting coherent thought and that's all just "amoeba talk.")

jubjub states to Olivier:

Quote:

David, I really like the way you think.

And Olivier responds:

Quote:

Thanks, jubjub! Smile

We have here a warm, kumbaya moment.

But who is jubjub? He is a welfarist named Hoss Firooznia. He big issue is the promotion of "cage-free" eggs. You should read about him on the "Vegan" Outreach thread, where he refused to discuss this troubling welfarist campaign. On this thread, he states:

Quote:

"Veganism" is an abstract entity, not a sentient being, so I don't care very much what happens to it, one way or the other.

Really? And what about "racism," or "sexism," "anti-Semitism," or "heterosexism"? They're abstract entities, too. Let's just forget about them as well. These are just ideas. Ideas don't matter. They're just "amoeba words." Good thinking, Hoss. I see why you and Olivier are having a love fest.

Frankly, the general ARCO "Animal Rights Talk" list is going down the road toward becoming Envirolink. I think that those of us interested in abolition, animal rights, and veganism should take our discussions to the ARCO Abolitionist Forums. I like a good laugh as much as the next person, and "végétarien du foie gras" is certainly a howler, but let's get serious here.

GLF

Posted: Today, at 12:43 am
Last edited by Gary L. Francione on Today, at 2:26 am; edited 1 time in total

Trevor
Animal Guardian

Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 69

David Olivier wrote:

Trevor wrote:

David Olivier wrote:

And since following Gary the fundamental harm done to an animal is to kill em

I don't think that's correct. If I have understood the theory, the fundamental harm done to an animal is to use it as a means to an end (whether one kills it, drinks its milk or wears its skin).

Given the high regard for "intellectual honesty" exhibited in these parts, I would counsel against mere speculation as to what a person may or may not have said, and what a person may or may not believe - even if you are prepared to wager large quantities of your own money at long odds.

David Olivier wrote:

And lastly: it also baffles me how you can call using a being exclusively as a means to an end a “harm” at all. Whether or not the being is viewed as a mere means is something that has to do with our mental attitudes, while harm instead means something that has to do with the being's experience. A being cannot be harmed by the mere fact that someone somewhere doesn't recognize that ey is not just a means to an end. Of course, the being may easily be harmed by the consequences of such an attitude; but the attitude itself, by itself, is not harm at all.

My apologies for ellipsis. Of course, one cannot harm a pig merely by remarking loudly in its hearing that one regards it only as several decades' worth of breakfast. But as I understand the abolitionist thesis, the fons et origo of all actual harm done to actual animals is that we regard them as property, instead of as bearers of rights.

David Olivier wrote:

It appears typical to me of the “moral rights” approach that you focus on the intentions and other attitudes of the moral agent, and not at all on the experience of the moral patient.

Oh, the thesis is not mine, nor do I particularly agree with it. But in order to agree or disagree with a thesis, it seems to me helpful to understand as best one can what it is.

Posted: Today, at 1:08 am

David Olivier
Animal Guardian

Joined: 23 Jan 2008
Posts: 51

The Confusion of the "Abolition of Meat" Campaign

Gary L. Francione wrote:

David Olivier states to Diana:

Quote:

You have invented the fact that dairy products and eggs and leather are excluded from the meat abolition movement.

Really? On your own blog, Antoine Comiti stated, in response to a comment from Karin about "abolition" meaning the abolition of all animal use:

Quote:

"abolition of meat" actually only means, well..., "abolition of meat"...

Quote:

David, I really like the way you think.

And Olivier responds:

Quote:

Thanks, jubjub! Smile

Quote:

"Veganism" is an abstract entity, not a sentient being, so I don't care very much what happens to it, one way or the other.

Please calm down, Gary. I think you are really not showing the best of your personality.

David

_________________
--
http://david.olivier.name/

Posted: Today, at 1:17 am

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