Saturday, August 15, 2009

A Vegetarian's Manifesto, Part 1

Our small and abused little Chihuahua, ironically named Lassie, is in heat.  Although I’ve never really taken her for a looker, wherever she’s gone lately, a group of three or four dogs has followed her, sniffing her here, licking her there, lipstick extended, attempting to spend a few minutes (is that how long dogs take?) in doggie-heaven.

Perhaps it’s because she’s only two and just not ready for motherhood; maybe it’s that the dogs haven’t shown that they’re father material; it could be that the shear size of two of her suitors, a Great Bernard at least six times bigger and a sweet, black mutt, only 4 times bigger, makes her shudder at how such a union might work.   For whatever the reason, Lassie wants nothing to do with anyone in her eclectic group of suitors: she barks for hours on end in fear, runs as fast as her little legs will carry her, attempting to hide from then, and, perhaps saddest of all, appeals to her human owners for protection. 

She should know better.  It is no surprise that the same people who hit her and kick her (in their defense, not too hard, but hard enough), have ignored our little dog’s search for safety.  Instead, titling the somewhat comic escapades as Lassie’s Search for a Husband, they have imported a skinny Chihuahua from another farm to get the deed done, and, whenever they can, lock the two “amantes,” or “lovers,” in a small shed to facilitate the completion of the dirty deed.  After about twenty minutes, Lassie’s scratching of the wooden door and her high-pitched barking subside, and we are only left to speculate.

“Why are you doing this to Lassie?” I ask my colleagues.  “It’s seems pretty obvious that she’s not interested.  Why not just let her be?”

“Do you know how much Chihuahua pups sell for?” They ask me excitedly and without pause.  “Almost 4,000 pesos,” or a little over $100.  “The rich people love these dogs.”

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Whether it’s for money or entertainment, to release aggression or just because we can, we, as a society, have condoned the maltreatment of animals.  Examples range from forcing sex on defenseless dogs to cock fights, to the gruesome, inhumane way that animals are raised, slaughtered, and processed.   The subject for today’s post is not a description of these practices (which, if interested, can be found in many, many books such as Fast Food Nation, feature length films, such as Food Inc., or in undercover reports on the PETA website), but rather an investigation of how we justify the abandonment of some of the principles that we hold most dear in the treatment of other species.

The most common arguments I’ve heard in defense of our treatment of animals are remarkably simple.  First, they’re not human.  Many of the people who contend this, not religious, claim that we, as humans, have a celestial quality that separates us from the other members of the animal kingdom.  There’s something about us—created on the 6th day, maybe, not the 3rd, 4th, or 5th—that sets us apart.  The difference cannot be scientific: the more we study animals’ DNA, we learn that is strikingly similar to our own; the more we learn about animals, the more we understand that many have eerily advanced communication systems and that much more is happening in their brains than we can detect.  The second argument I’ve heard, also surprisingly simple, is that, as part of the animal kingdom, we are at the top of the food chain.  This is the natural order of the world, they contend, and we’re just doing our part.  This second argument is made by many who have just bought their shrink-wrapped hamburger patties and hotdogs at Shop and Fresh.  It ignores the fact that, naturally, mano a mano with many of God’s creatures, we don’t stand a chance.   

The real justification, the assumption underlying all of the other arguments, is that we treat animals like they were unfeeling, unthinking, inanimate objects because we can.  Because they are smaller, weaker, less expressive, or less powerful than us.  Because there’s no one whom they can complain to, the consequences few and far between for their abuse.

This same reasoning—that we can treat other beings that might not be as smart, as evolved, as expressive—when applied to people holds no water.  It is cruel, unusual, inhumane, and completely unjustifiable.  Such ratiocination helped justify the infamous abuses at Abu Ghirab (to the abusers), where American servicemen and women treated suspected terrorists as if the language and cultural barrier converted the prisoners into lesser beings.  In the DR, much less blatant but all the more pervasive, husbands, who go out dancing and drinking whenever they please, play baseball and dominoes at all hours of the day, apply the same principle to their wives, whom stay at home doing laundry and take care of the children, because men, the reasoning goes, are more fit for most things than women; sexual abuse is supposedly rampant here, as one generation feasts on the next in actions which they know lack reprisal; fathers take switches to their children for minor infractions; kids regularly mock Christian, the handsome, strong, and smart deaf-mute who lives here, who can’t hear when people call him names and couldn’t respond even if he did.  What all of these examples have in common is that people feel like they can take advantage of others because the victims have no recourse.  No matter the context, no matter the victim, no one should remain silent.  On the contrary, we have a responsibility to say something and to act against those who can’t speak up for themselves.

The way I see it, then, being a vegetarian is about many things.  In addition to environmental and health reasons, which I will cover later in the week, it’s about standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves.  Some may try to paint such a position as extreme, that we should abuse animals, only less.  Maybe I’m missing something, but whether it’s 9 times a week or 4, I just can’t remain silent.  But maybe you can.

*An update: There’s no question about what went down in the shed: Lassie and spouse had a good time.  I’ll update you on her condition as the year progresses.  Is anybody interested in buying a pure-bread Chihuahua?  Know anyone who is? I can get you a good deal!

3 comments:

Hawley said...

Poor lassie! And you wrote that blog on my birthday, too. Ohhh the plight of being a female ;)

Way to go sticking up for her, Eli! You da man.

Lee Gross said...

Giving clout to marginalized voices. Look forward to those future parts Eli. Keep on Keeping on...

Molly said...

Hey Eli, I love this blog! Please keep writing.
But this post has some underlying assumptions that aren't so fair to non-vegetarians, I would think. Not all vegetable growing is ethical and not all animals-for-meat-raising is unethical. If all living beings are equal, why is killing vegetables for food anymore ethical than killing animals for food? Or would you argue that while people are on the same level as pigs and cows, we animals (pigs, cows, people) are all above plants?
I mean, I agree that it's easier to see celery die than, say, a chicken because the chicken makes noise and blinks. But the fact is that when we harvest celery for food, we're killing something that was alive just the same way we do when we kill a chicken for food.
I imagine a rebuttal to this would be, "well if you live purely off of vegetables, you kill a lot fewer plants than if you eat animals because the animals eat vegetables first and then you kill them so it's like you're eating all those vegetables anyway." Well, sure, if we're playing a zero-sum game. What about if the animal we're eating lead a peaceful happy life? Isn't that worth something?
And what about the megafarms that raze natural habitats of wildlife to enrich the ground with just enough vitamins and minerals to grow acres upon acres of genetically-modified, pesticide-coated, ill-tasting produce? How many animals die for that?
Cruelty to animals is unacceptable, that's definitely common ground we have. But vegetarianism doesn't seem as good of a solution to me as rewarding farmers who operate ethically with our buying power.

Well, I didn't mean to write that long of a response but there it is! Anyway, best wishes for the new year and please update me on how you're doing.

Pink Potatoes,
MK