The vegan challenge
25 05 2007Back in the 1980s and into the 90s, I attempted to be a vegan—for the uninitiated, the term refers to those who eschew animal products. I was more or less successful at removing meat and dairy products from my diet. Successful at home, but less so when visiting friends or family. It is difficult to be a jerk about one’s own preferences when someone who loves you forgets and puts an egg in your birthday cake, for example.
I eventually relaxed about my diet, principally due to medical advice. And I gave up trying to find non-leather work boots or belts that were worth a damn. But along the way it became clear to me that veganism is one part good intentions and five parts pretense. Endless quibbling by letter writers to periodicals across the U.S. has led me to frame “the vegan challenge.”
Here ’tis:
Okay, you’re a vegan.
Have you found substitutes for the following goods which contain meat or dairy products?
Cellophane tape, insulin, paint, photographic film, sheetrock, tires.
Have you vetted your home for the following goods which may contain such products?
Floor wax, crayons, shoe polish, pocket combs, textiles, antifreeze, wallpaper, linoleum.
Do you eat food grown by farmers with tractors? Farming with hoe and shovel kills a lot of earthworms, insects, arthropods and smaller soil creatures, but machine farming also kills birds, mammals and reptiles.
Do you use paper? Loggers are more destructive of biota than farmers.
Do you use electricity? Don’t look too closely at whatever fuels your generating station.
If you can’t satisfactorily answer those few questions, how can you possibly dare to publicly criticize people who differ from you on one tiny piece of your lifestyle? A modern American by definition cannot live a truly vegan life. But some uber-righteous people pitch a fit about what others put in their stomachs without thinking twice about the impact of their own lives on the rest of the living world.
Camus suggested that suicide was the only philosophical question worthy of consideration.
In regard to veganism, he is surely right.
The only true vegan is a dead one.
If we define veganism as not contributing to any killing or suffering, than surely no one is vegan. I think vegan is better defined as the attempt to minimize the exploitation of animals, to the extent that we can.
I agree completely with one caveat. What I take exception to is the barrage of judgmental letters and comments from people who are probably guilty of non-dietary carnivorism, that blast people for dietary choices. I lived in a sheetrock-free, electric power-free, wallpaper-free cabin for a couple of years, for instance. Anyone can do that, if they choose to go to that extent in rejecting consumer culture.
So my caveat would be, “to the extent that we can,” is noble as a goal, but ignoble as a platform for judging others.