For the sake of saving everyone time I'll keep this post fairly short. It nothing formal or serious like some of the other posts, it's just a question I've been asking myself for a while and I'm wondering how others feel about it.
After the discussions on animal liberation and seeing the brief clip from the film "Earthlings" I got to thinking about something that has been on my mind for a significant length of time. Being vegetarian for somewhere around seven years I think about the videos of animals being butchered, or tortured, or vivisected and I think to myself, "are showing these sorts of videos to people a productive way of changing their minds about eating meat, or being cruel?" For the past four years the answer I consistently find myself coming to is a resounding no.
Before I go into a brief explaination of my position on this, I want to point out that education about what is really going on in the meat/clothing/factoryfarm industries etc. is very important and needs to be exposed. I just feel that it can be done in a more productive way that appeals to meat eating individuals instead of making them feel alienated or criminal.
These sort of videos remind me of shock and awe tactics. Shocking people with horrible videos of suffering (and we have all seen how terrible they are) and demanding immediate change in their attitude and diet is not the way to go about affecting positive change in people. Perpetuating a reverance for life and the benefits of a veg lifestyle in my opinon, is the more important issue in affecting change in people. It has also, in my experience, been more productive in conversations with meat eaters that I've had. They all thank me for being so understanding and sensitive to where they stnad on the issue. I think respect and understanding are key to actually influencing change in people. We can't force people to change, only they can make the conscious decision to do so.
Using the videos to generate guilt in people doesn't strike me as an effective means of getting a positive message across either. Not only that, alot of people can't deal with watching those sort of videos. Personally, when I see these videos and such, I get depressed for days on end due to their graphic nature. I usually am unable to finish watching them. It's just bad news for me.
Like I said, I wanted to keep this breif, so I'll end this here. I just wanted to get my thoughts out there in non-formal format. The blog seems ideal for that. I'm not knocking people who think drastic immediate change is neccessary. When I first went vegetarian I was a huge advocate for this kind of thinking. But as I got older I came to the conclusion that trying to show people positive images of vegi/vegan lifestyles and explaining that having a reverance and respect for all life would more likely generate productive dialogue between meat/non-meat eaters and educated/uneducated people.
How does everyone else feel about this sort of thing? I'd be very interested in hearing how others feel.
p.s. It's important for me to express that I'm not trying to cause heated arguments about this, I'm just expressing some lingering questions I have had about this topic.
p.p.s. This is completely unrelated. But everyone should go out and listen to the bands: Kid Dynamite and, Lifetime. Just because they rule.
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I just want to put this out there so that there is no confusion in my intentions during my presentation on speciesism. We decided to show the first 10 minutes of the video "Earthlings" because it pertained to speciesism. They actually use the same definition as Peter Singer used in his book ANIMAL LIBERATION. We stopped the movie after the introduction. What was covered was the state of relationships that exist and the analogies that can be made connecting them to racism, homophobia, and women's rights.
You stated "Using the videos to generate guilt in people doesn't strike me as an effective means of getting a positive message across either."
I just want to say that my intentions were completely NOT to induce guilt into people. I don't see any point in that at all. It's not in my interests to "convert" anyone to veganism. That's a decision people can make on their own.
No no no, that wasn't an attack on the presentation. Nor a critigue of the dialogue that went on. I'm really sorry it came off like that.
I was just looking at the video, and videos like that in a context totally separate from the discussion.
I was just going on personal feelings and experience. It had nothing to do with the discussion specifically.
I agree with Russel to an extent that showing graphic animal cruelty may be somewhat negative, but I also think that it is very important for people to see just how bad the industry is. Earthlings, as a whole, is an extremely intense movie, and most people can't get through it. I think that extending positive knowledge about being veg is much more important--showing the impacts of such a diet is good info for people to have. But, again, like i said, the industry has just become so terrible, and most people don't know just how bad it is. I think that getting that info out into the world is important too, it definitely made an impact on me when i watched it.
p.s Lifetime is sick! My house mates just got back from Japan touring with them (Their band is called First To Leave). They said that Lifetime are the tightest guys ever. Good times! :)
AUDEY IS RIGHT! AUDEY AUDEY AUDEY! AUDEY.
I have found that different things work for different people. I've never really attempted to convert anyone to veganism. I've never been comfortable enough to confront anyone about it, and as I don't really like to talk about myself, I don't really share my veganism with many people. Sometimes I still just say that I don't eat meat and don't further clarify that I'm a vegan because I worry that then everyone will take my opinions as "the opinion of the vegan." But then I sometimes feel like a pushover for not being vocal about something that I believe.
ANYWAY, I've known some veg*ns (slang for either vegan or vegetarian) that were shocked into that decision through these videos. They had no idea how bad it was, and when they learned, they changed. So it is a way that can be effective... though it's worth noting that I don't know of anyone who was guilted into it--the videos worked on an educational level only.
Personally, I became vegetarian on a whim. I told myself that I'd try it for at least one month, and if I thought it didn't make sense then I would stop... but it never stopped making sense, and then through further reasoning and education of the egg, dairy and even honey industries I came to the idea that I touched upon in class, which is that I think that the mentality that made slavery wrong exists in animal exploitation. The most devastating trait shared among animal exploitation, slavery, and the Holocaust is that these are all things that perfectly decent people participated or still participate in. They were and still are effectively justified in the same way--namely, that animals are for us to do with what we will. So if you think that black people are dumb beasts or that Jewish people are rats, and you would have a dumb beast work on the field for nothing and you would exterminate rats... well, then, slavery and the Holocaust would make rational sense to you. I could go on about the correlations forever.
The two things that I try to establish about veganism, though I don't vocally project it often enough, is: 1. That it's very reasonable (i.e. it's NOT extreme at all; meat-eating is extreme) and logical; and 2. It's healthy, easy, and a wonderful lifestyle. At best, I've been able to convince people that veganism is healthy because I've been consistently healthy for years (and I've been vegan for the past 14 months with no hints of illness or weakness or deficiencies). So some people have come to respect that part of it.
The problem is that almost no one I've encountered is open to entertaining the idea becoming vegan or vegetarian. They won't begin to even hear you out. In these cases (i.e. most cases), nothing seems to help--not pamphlets, not "Earthlings," not anything one could say. Sometimes they try to defend meat-eating, and out of all the defenses I've heard there is only one that makes any sense: "I like eating meat." It's the only honest answer I've heard, and the only honest answer that I can conceive of. Other answers I've heard range from self-denial, faulty reasoning, or just plain inanity. Some believe (and I guess this could count as an honest answer, too) that eating meat is what God wants us to do, and to not do it would be offensive to God.
I don't know how to deal with people who resolutely don't want to stop eating meat. It seems that the best thing to do is to forget about them for now, and focus on helping those who are curious understand our reasons. If the curious are willing to listen, and if they agree with our reasons (which can range from terrible conditions for the animals to the mentality thing that I go for) then they might give it a chance. As more and more people stop eating meat, it will hopefully be seen as less ridiculous in general. At this point, maybe those who were so resolute about not eating meat before might find more opportunities to open their own minds about it.
As I said in class last week, people don't question "well, duh." So, if "Well, duh everybody eats meat" is no longer a "well, duh," then more people will hopefully begin to question it. Right now about 3 percent of Americans and about 7 to 8 percent of British people are vegetarian, with more and more young people becoming vegetarians all the time. So what happens when it's 5% in the U.S. and 15% in the U.K.? How about 8% and 25%? How about 15% and 40%? I think that that's achievable, and I think it would seriously change the general attitude and mentality of many people all around the world, and then from there it doesn't seem crazy to imagine a majority of people in the U.K. as vegetarian, or then a majority of people in the U.S., and then in many other parts of the world. Everyone who isn't a vegetarian will know several, and it will be a lot more difficult for people not to be educated about the conditions.
We've already seen some effects of this in the organic meat/egg/dairy industry. The target consumers are people who are educated about the conditions of large farms, and these smaller farms sell themselves as more humane (I wouldn't call them that, but this is how they are marketed). The organic industry wouldn't exist if people weren't becoming increasingly aware of the conditions of farms, and often those crazy PeTA videos are helping to educate people who otherwise would not have known, or they get the info from their vegetarian friends.
Anyway, great topic, Russell. It's definitely a complicated issue, and I think it makes for a great conversation subject.
AUDEY.
- Matt
P.S. I found that Alice Walker is a vegan, which I think makes the most sense if her reasons were the same as my reasons like I thought they might be.
So true, scare tactics don't work. direct action is silly .
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