Animal Writings

[I've been pretty much out of the blogosphere for the last several days. I hope visitors and fellow bloggers are in good spirits and doing well, in addition to doing good.]

This is a continuation of the post from Sept. 3rd. Here are some observations and evolving conclusions and generalities I've made from the free-rangers with whom I've come into contact over the last few years; they're in no particular order:

I find that similar considerations motivate a person to go from no-range to free range (or cage to cage-free), and to try vegetarian alternatives. Ethically, the most common driving force is an awareness that existentially and morally (as opposed to legally), animals are not mere property, like a piece of furniture; that animals have non-trivial interests and therefore we have an obligation to try to let them pursue their interests.

Granted, buying cage-free eggs may be largely a rather convenient feel-better measure in many cases, but it is the need to feel better, and the feeling bad that would result if the individual didn't take some pro-animal action that we can capitalize on, and that gives me hope. In other words, the "feeling better" results from doing something good for the animals, or at least being under the impression that one is doing so.

"Feeling better" is not inherently a bad thing. One could say that I "feel better" because I'm vegan or that I became vegan to feel better. But to have any grasp of my ethical veganism would require understanding why I feel better since becoming vegan, and why feeling better is only a byproduct of doing what one feels is right and just and compassionate.

Buying free-range of course is only a small step, yet it may be significant if it is the first step in changing one's diet for the sake of animals, because step 1 may represent breaking out of a stasis that may have gone on for decades. Momentum is important.

At the risk of repeating myself, if people make small yet deliberate sacrifices on behalf of animals because they feel it is wrong not to make those sacrifices, that is a sign that they care at least somewhat, that they have some interspecies sympathy, that they have started to see animals as subjects not objects; it indicates that they grasp that we should take action to avoid being cruel to animals. Once they have begun to develop that moral principle, there is a chance that they will feel compelled to make changes in their lives in order to heed that moral principle. So if we point out, for example, that going cage-free does nothing to alleviate the brutal slaughter of newborn male chicks at hen hatcheries, their already (if embryonic) established sense of obligation to opt out of avoidable animal cruelty may spur them to take further action — like exploring egg alternatives and reducing egg consumption — to avoid violating the profound interests of animals. Where there is a will there is a way, and going from "whatever" to buying cage-free may represent a nascent will that we can cultivate and that can grow in strength and breadth.

I find most often that when free-rangers say "it's okay, I'm buying free-range," they are not really all that confident, and they are not expressing a complacent, "that's all I need to do" mindset, but rather engaging in a bargain with their conscience and an effort to convince themselves that everything's all right with their behavior. Time and again, I discover that just under the superficial declaration that "free-range makes eating meat okay," there is persistent, mounting, unnerving skepticism and doubt, and an admission of denial. It is usually not hard to get the free-ranger to express these conflicting, conscience-against-habit-and-ethical-laziness-and-fear-of-self-incrimination-and-fear-of-more-required-change worries and misgivings. They may have only opened up one eye a tiny crack, but they're no longer fully asleep at the wheel. They've seen a glimpse, they know just a little too much; if they are at all analytical, curious, ethical, or self-critical, they have some implicit, maybe subconscious knowledge that the cruelties to farmed animals are more than the confinement methods, even though they may not yet be questioning the fundamental morality of eating animals, or creating animals to destroy them — for human pleasure.

And we should strive to get them to ask those sorts of questions, because doing so opens all sorts of doors that may eventually lead to veganism and a vastly revamped—and kinder—lifestyle. I will talk about that in the next post or two.

Labels: advocacy, cage-free, free range, free-range, incrementalism, reform