Hindsight and Nostalgia: Animals on the Screen

Both of my parents had been raised on small family farms and my mother's official stance was that other animals belong in the forest or in a barn -- not in a house. The idea of bringing any non-human in to share our home was unacceptable to her. Of course, she didn't count on the fact that she'd end up with the sort of kid -- not terribly unlike most kids -- who would end up fascinated with every single insect she encountered and drawn to every single cat or dog whose path she crossed. Growing up in a small town, those cats and dogs were everywhere and generally allowed to wander. "The Solomon's dog's in the yard again!" "There's that Comeau's cat in the flowers." I'd hear these things and rush outside, wanting to say hello.

Whenever I happened to come across an animal who was a stranger to the neighbourhood and who seemed hungry or frightened, I'd more often than not find a way to entice him home, sneaking him under the back patio and stealthily raiding the fridge for food to share. I remember one day when a childhood friend and I heard the nervous collie who lived on the corner barking furiously, and then the screeches that followed. We ran as fast as we could to go see what was happening. The collie's people were at work and she had attacked a cat who'd strayed into the yard. Knowing that I couldn't take her home, I scooped her up, bleeding and weak, and my friend and I proceeded to knock on the door of a surgeon who lived a few houses down, begging him to help. He refused and offered no assistance to these two blood-stained and crying girls lugging a cat in obvious distress. We knocked on more doors until the mother of another neighbourhood friend took her off our hands and promised she'd do whatever she could. She nursed the cat back to health and kept her for years and to this day I'm grateful and remember her basic decent kindness when so many other adults had sent us -- and the injured cat -- on our way. To me, there'd been no other option but to scoop up that cat and to find help.

Growing up in that small town, I was also fascinated with what trickled in of the outside world through the numerous televisions in our home. Members of my family were, more often than not, glued to one telly or another and it was not out of the ordinary to find 3-4 of us home, each watching something completely different. What almost always drew me in most (no surprise) were the television programs involving animals. Whether it was Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom or Grizzly Adams, I was tuned in and enrapt. Along with whichever nature documentary happened to come across PBS (usually watched alongside my father, a lumberjack who was just as fascinated with other animals), my favourite shows included old Flipper reruns and The Littlest Hobo. I was the first kid in line to see the two first Benji movies at our small local theater and remember the insistence with which I had persuaded my parents to take me to see Disney's The Cat From Outer Space at the local drive-in. Oblivious to whether or not these animals were behaving the way they'd usually behave and even more oblivious to the circumstances -- from possible capture to training and torture -- facilitating their ending up on these shows for my entertainment, I soaked it all in happily. It was a huge part of this animal-loving kid's life and I was "animal obsessed" -- but at what cost?

I remember years ago in some online vegan discussion forum or other, asking whether others who'd grown up exposed to television programs and films in which animals were used felt about it in hindsight. I had asked how they managed to mitigate the nostalgia they may have felt with the knowledge they now had later in life of the exploitation involved. Over the years in one sad tale after another, the awful truth has surfaced of what was really behind some of what seemed to be the most innocuous nature programs. The worst of the brutality inherent in Hollywood animal films revealed itself over and over. Even without the information concerning the most outrageous cases, the truth is that the entertainment industry revolves around profit. It's a business like any other. When other animals are used to entertain humans, they're not valued as beings with interests of their own; they're used as props to push the buttons of the sort of sentimental folks who, as I did, grew up watching other animals before them being used as props. It's exploitation regardless of how those animals are treated. Seven-year-old me certainly didn't get that, but I get it now. It makes me incredibly sad to think about it now.

Part of getting it now means that when friends and I dip into the nostalgic sort of reminiscing we'll often do about childhood pop culture, the warm fuzzies I'd get years ago humming the theme song to The Littlest Hobo just don't happen anymore. Worse is when I'll occasionally forget myself and slip into a sentimental pocket and then end up sort of yanking myself back out of it, feeling guilty and wondering how I let myself slip if even for a second. When I watch friends, family and acquaintances around me attempting to nurture their kids' love of animals by taking them to the latest talking dog film (or to the local petting zoo), I'm reminded of my own childhood. The thing is, though, that this childhood love of animals I had was never what led to my connecting the dots -- certainly not to go vegan, and not even when I decided years ago to become vegetarian. I first became a vegetarian in college for environmental reasons. See, all of these sappy shows I'd watched had left me with this notion that even the animals we raise for food were somehow beloved and well-cared for. After all, we never saw Charles Ingalls chop the head off a chicken or castrate a calf on Little House on the Prairie! For years as an adult, I'd been quite convinced that having watched all of these shows as a child had somehow left me more open to eventually weighing the morality of animal use. I realize now that even more insidiously, all of this exposure to "cute" or "happy" animals on television or in films merely served to further entrench in me the speciesism we're each taught from the ground up. Watching those shows, I was taught to believe that animals were perfectly happy to be used for human entertainment. I was convinced that they had the best possible lives available to them and (nature documentaries aside) I learned to accept this idea that their value increased relatively to the amount of good they could bring to the humans around them (think "animal heroes" and stories revolving around them).

Of course, I know now that all of this was terribly wrongheaded. It's sad and weird to look back at it, though, and to see it for what it was. Sentimental creature that I am, it throws a wrench into my own sense of self-awareness and leaves me all the more aware of all we're exposed to our entire lives that ultimately leaves us truly confused about our relationships with other animals. This understanding also leaves me more patient when faced with others who balk upon hearing why I'm vegan. There are so many knots to undo when confronting speciesism; as with most knots, patience and perseverance are more effective than force and frustration. As advocates, we need to keep this in mind when talking to others. We really do.

Reckoning

"It's time. You need to come home," my brother-in-law said to me on the phone. My brother-in-law had never called me before. We ironed out that I'd hop on the bus immediately and that he'd pick me up and rush me to the hospital once I arrived. I called a few close friends who'd made themselves so kindly and wonderfully available to me to ensure that the cats would be looked after, I packed a bag, and then I walked to the nearby bus depot, breathing in/breathing out.

I had just been there. I had been there so often over the previous months and more so during recent weeks. Dad had been drifting in and out of consciousness for several days, lost somewhere between the hallucinations brought on by the hypercalcemia caused by his multiple myeloma, as well as those caused by the generous dosage of morphine he'd been given to ease the time he'd had left. I was returning. It was time for 'round the clock vigils, to make sure that Dad had family with him, that he wouldn't die alone. My shame? That I didn't want to be there for it. I feared it. I did not want to witness my father's ceasing to be.

My sister sat in a chair beside his bed, where he lay breathing quite raspily, nearly immobile, his arms bent and pulled up close to his chest, with his hands cupped and almost leaving him looking as if he could wake up and dive into a dog paddle. I paced, tired from my day at work and with muscles tight from the hours on the bus. My sister told me that he'd had brief moments of consciousness over the previous days, but that the doctors anticipated that between the wear of the drugs on his system and of the cancer itself, all we could hope for at this point was for him to "pass" easily and painlessly. Nobody loves a death rattle, so they'd even given him drugs to quiet his rasp a little. "It's customary," the nurse had assured me.

Dad sat up in bed abruptly, his eyes wide and alert and with arms suddenly outstretched. He was driving. After a beat I tentatively asked him where he was going. My sister rolled her eyes at me, continuing to work on her crossword puzzle. He grinned at me in the sly way I remembered from when I was younger and he'd tease us. He motioned as if pulling up to a stop and proceeded to indulge in some sort of mysterious interaction which I recognised as some sort of shopping errand. In French, he proceeded to hold up his end of a conversation with what I quickly realized was a jeweler, making it obvious that he was shopping for a new watch. Politely, he'd ask to try one after the other, comparing the time on his bare (to me) wrist with the time on the clock on the wall of his hospital room, declining one after another. "Bonjour. Ah non, merci." I tried to insert myself into the exchange -- to help. I asked him what he was doing, and he told me (again in French) that he was "buying time". My sister protested to me that he was tiring himself out and that I wasn't "helping". Soon, though, he and I found a watch he deemed satisfactory and he seemed relieved, finally relaxing against his pillows. He told me that he was thirsty, so I walked over to the bathroom off his room to get him some water in a paper cup.

"Mylène?"

I stepped back out of the washroom surprised to have heard him speak my name for the first time in several weeks. I looked at him, my sweet father sitting up again and staring intently at me, seeming so lucid and so concerned.

"Oui?"

"Es-tu bonne pour continuer?"

Dad asked, in effect, if I was "good to go on". I assured him that yes, I really was. My sister insisted again with annoyance that I was tiring him out, ignoring him completely and oblivious to the entire exchange. He sat back in his bed and I brought him his water and he drank a little and fell back asleep. My uncle came to relieve us a half hour later and my sister and I went to my parents' house just a few minutes from the hospital, on call.

A few hours later, that call came. His temperature was up, his breathing irregular -- we needed to return. My mother, for some reason or other, had blood tests scheduled for the next morning and had been asked to fast. She was in the washroom, sick to her (empty) stomach when my father sat up one last time, looking straight at the clock on the wall in front of him and reaching out with one arm in front of him as if to grab hold of something. He wheezed and sighed deeply, then curled up against me and I held him. My father died in my arms four years ago as I write this. I remember the heat leaving his body as I held him. I remember clinging to that heat and ignoring the nurses who came in to do as gently as they could what nurses do to confirm that someone you love is gone.

I miss you, good and gentle lumberjack. I miss our shared geekiness. I miss watching Nova with you on PBS and miss sharing your OMNIs with you. I miss you telling me all about stars and pointing them out in constellations with the telescope you bought for me, kidding me that I was going to be your "little astronaut". I miss getting up so very early on Saturday morning when you'd make us both toast and cocoa and then read your science fiction books as I watched cartoons, everyone else in the house still fast asleep and with the morning all ours. I miss you teaching me to be kind to others, human and non-human. And later, I miss how you'd assure Mom that the books I brought home as a teenager were fine, whether Sartre or Satanic Bible, and that I was able to suss them out myself. I miss how excited you got over my going off to university, and how years after I had faltered and returned again to finally finish my degree, you were still excited and wanted me to share with you whatever I was learning -- to explain each and every thing to you. I miss that so much, every single day. So today, of all days, how could I not think of you?

Some Musings on Hosting

This past September, I had a house-guest for longer than I've ever had a house-guest. I think that he stayed just a bit shy of a month. I whipped out my cookbooks weeks in advance, I sifted through my favourite vegan food blogs and made notes of some old favourite dishes that I've lapsed in making for some reason or another over the years. Having cooked for said guest before, I had few worries that I'd have any difficulty accommodating his taste preferences; having stayed with me before, he was willing to appreciate that the meals I'd be making would be free of animal products.

Coming from a meat and potatoes upbringing in an area he referred to as "dairy country", my guest admitted to me that starches and animal products had made up most of his diet for years, with the starches including such things as white rolls, noodles and pretzels (i.e. as opposed to things like the sprouted whole grain wraps, brown rice and rye crackers I ordinarily keep in my own kitchen). Soy was something dark that came in a bottle that you sprinkled on Chinese food in his home. Raw produce was generally limited to things to put on sandwiches with cheese and deli meat. Sound familiar?

So? What did this whole foods loving vegan decide to do? On top of trying to prove to him (what I'd already, unbeknownst to me, proven to him before) that vegan food can be absolutely delicious, I decided that I would try to prove to him that changing his diet over and above that would leave him feeling more fit and lively. I would fill him up with whole grains and legumes; I would expose him to a multitude of fruits and vegetables. I would change his life! (Okay, not really, but you get the picture...)

I used whole wheat flour and flax seed in the peanut butter cookies I baked. I made three-bean chili and argued the merits of whole grain rolls and crackers during our grocery store trips. I made soups with chickpeas and whole grain noodles, blending vegetables together to thicken the broth. I snuck raw greens into fruit smoothies. And to appeal to his omni side, I stocked my freezer with Gardein "chicken" breasts, soy burgers and Tofutti Cuties and I froze and thawed blocks of tofu to marinate for stir fry.

And my guest? He got a stomach ache and a spectacular range of gastro-intestinal issues to boot.

I'd thought I was doing this wonderful thing, Instead, I ended up turning someone's dietary habits completely inside out and going down a path I generally avoid myself by using meat subs to give some of my dishes a sense of familiarity that I'd hoped he'd find appealing. He told me at one point that he ended up eating more fruits and vegetables in a single day spent with me that he'd ordinarily consume in over a month. He was like an an alien who'd landed on a planet with completely foreign foodstuff, even though all he'd done was cross the Canada/US border. In my haste to do too much at once, I'd inadvertently done more harm than good. I'd pushed too hard, too fast and ended up with a house-guest who, halfway through his visit, didn't feel all that great.

My good intentions hadn't been well thought out, mostly because I don't eat a low-fiber diet that revolves around simple carbohydrates, meat and dairy. As he pointed out to me himself, I'd spent years adapting to eating a high percentage of fruits and vegetables in my diet. I'd spent years integrating various high fiber grains and legumes into it, as well. And he was right. As for soy? Soy is actually something that I've generally phased out of my diet, myself, over the past couple of years because I try to avoid processed foods and because it sometimes irritates my own stomach if I have too much of it. So I exposed someone who was unused to eating it at all (except in the bits that show up in processed foods, or in soya sauce) by preparing it in every other meal? Oy.

It got me wondering if some of the new vegans who make a sudden switch and sometimes complain of digestive issues end up trying too hard to substitute animal products with processed soy products, or maybe go health food store crazy by suddenly discovering that there is edible plant life other than iceberg lettuce. It got me wondering if maybe some of them end up making some of the mistakes I ended up making with my guest.

So we started having basmati rice with the curries I made. Stir-fry became a vegetable-only dish over regular noodles. We bought his and hers rolls for sandwiches. He tried (and liked) almond milk in his morning coffee. We munched on nuts -- almonds, pistachios and so on. And we ate out a bit more, mostly to take some of the edge off my feeling I'd failed as a cook and hostess. There's a huge difference between fixing the odd meal once in a while for friends and asking someone to suddenly change everything he or she eats for a sustained period. By this I am not referring to the omission of animal products, but instead I'm referring to adding all at once an overwhelming number of foods someone is not accustomed to eating in the first place (particularly when those foods contain a lot more, uh, fiber than the person is used to eating).

But the next time I'll know better. I've learned my lesson and sent heartfelt apologies to my house-guest; I should have introduced him to fewer things and done so more gradually. It wasn't switching out the animal products that was an issue, but it was feeding him too many things all at once to which his system wasn't accustomed. Fingers crossed that he decides to incorporate more fruits and vegetables and whole foods into his diet moving forward and for his own well-being. Fingers crossed, as well, that I did enough repair work and pleased his palate enough to not have permanently scared him off this vegan's kitchen --it's definitely not a mistake I'll repeat. Writers are often told to know their readers and it seems that cooks need to keep this in mind, too!

Crossing Fingers and Staying Hopeful

A little over four years ago, my life changed pretty drastically in one of those ways where you find yourself suddenly unable to breathe. A lot. I had left a steady tech-writing job at the beginning of the year to go back to school full-time to finally finish off the BA in philosophy I'd left dangling for so long, when life did that thing it does and I found myself suddenly living alone, unemployed and living off dwindling savings. With one elective left and with winter coming, I walked away from school to find work -- any work -- to be able to catch up on bills, fill my heating oil tank and find my feet. I had no money left and everything I could scrounge up went into food and meds for my feline family.

The job that I finally nabbed ended up being the first job from which I've ever been fired, mostly because I really (really, really) hated the job in the worst way. But at the time, I did what I felt I had to do to look after myself and to look after the five cats left in my care after their other human skipped out on them. Sometimes you have to suck it up and do something that you don't want to do and resign yourself to it being a temporary place while you're sussing things out and planning for a better place. There's no shame in it.

And you know what? Almost every single day of the fall and early winter I worked there, I got to stand outside and look at this at the end of my shifts. And even today, I can't help but feel that that it made things a whole lot more bearable at a time when I could have really used "more bearable".You can tap into happiness wherever you are if you look for it. It can be found in the most unlikely and simplest of things. Here I am four years later, not remembering the crap job I had and hated, but remembering lingering outside my office to watch the sun set every day -- and looking forward to it every single day. Not bad for "bearable".

Us and Them

I read an article in the food section of AlterNet this morning that I felt needed to be addressed. Heather Wood Rúdolph wrote about her recent "slimming detox diet" ("6 Things I Learned When I Went Vegan for a Month") . Self-described as having been raised vegan, the writer went on to follow "some version of a vegetarian diet for most of [her] life" (albeit a "happy fish-and-poultry eater for a few years"). She was seeking something to make her feel clean--to make her feel less "full" after "each meal". So? She cut animal products out of her diet for a month, but upon finding herself craving things like tuna, she decided that "eating this way all the time wasn’t for [her]--at least not right now".

What things did she learn from refraining from eating animal products for a month? To become a better cook, that increasing plant-based sources of fibre in one's diet clears out your (uh) system, that when you force yourself into eating something you don't want to be eating (e.g. "when faced with another soy-based dinner or carb-loaded breakfast") you'll crave something else, you can find tons of fresh produce at the farmer's market, that "wine is vegan" (uh, it's actually not all vegan) and, that "[i]t's OK to eat dairy and meat--if you do it responsibly". She elaborates:

Realizing I don’t want to be totally vegan all the time makes the meat/dairy choices I do make seem that much more valuable.

Knowing that you want to keep using animals makes your choices to use animals more "valuable"? What does she mean by this? Perhaps she's been reading Michael Pollan (or Jonathan Safran Foer, since I think it's meant to sound sort of profound). What does she mean by "responsibly"? Basically, that since dairy leaves her bloated, she should eat less of it. Oh, and that she should ask grocers or farmers "how the food they’re selling was raised, processed and shipped", since letting oneself get talked into believing that an animal hop-skipped her way to one's plate joyfully absolves one of any moral accountability to consider whether or not one should be consuming them at all for one's own pleasure. What did she not learn? Sadly, for someone who claims to have been raised vegan, she didn't seem to learn what veganism is really about.

I write articles about pieces like hers on my blog because it confounds me how people conflate things when it comes to discussing (or referencing) veganism. It confounds me that so many are eager to co-opt the term "vegan" and apply it to any variation of actually eating and otherwise using nonhuman animals. A friend of mine who sometimes reads my blog tells me that I'm mostly just nitpicking and judging when I write about this sort of thing. I'll admit that after hearing someone self-identify as a part-time vegan by virtue of having an occasional animal-free meal, that the sound my eyes make when they roll probably finds some way to nestle itself between the lines of text that I write. I'm not perfect and am as prone to frustration as the next critter. The thing is, though, that when I write these articles, it's because when others write about veganism and confuse it with variations of the deliberate use and exploitation of animals, however much (or little) of it, it makes it really hard for me to talk to people about veganism.

"But, this-or-that famous celebrity wears leather pants and she's vegan!"

"But, Mark Bittman says you can be 'vegan before six!'"

"You're just being an absolutist by telling me that I can't be like them and call myself a vegan!"

The thing is that if I talk to you about veganism, I'm not trying to interfere with your ability to choose. I'm not trying to tell you what to do. I'm merely trying to give you the information to make the best possible choices that will take into account the interests nonhuman animals have in not being enslaved for our use. If I tell you that veganism means eschewing the deliberate use or exploitation of all animals at all times as much as is it is possible for you--in good faith--to do so, I'm just explaining the meaning of a term to you. Part of that involves pointing out when and where people are completely mangling the definition or meaning of veganism and setting things straight. When I tell you that not eating meat on Mondays doesn't make you a part-time vegan, I'm not trying to make you feel bad for not eating meat on Mondays, but am just trying to explain to you that part-time animal consumption is not vegan. As a vegan (particularly, as an abolitionist vegan who strives to educate people so that they make the decision to stop using nonhuman animals), it makes no sense for me to condone the use of animals; in condoning the part-time use of animals, I would condone the use of animals. "But every little bit helps," you say?

If I convince a housemate to give up eating eggs for a month, there may be one less chicken (out of the millions of laying hens used in North America each year) thrust into the hellish existence of being kept to produce eggs for human consumption that month. But what about the next month? And the following year? If that housemate kept a cat she'd raised from a kitten in a shoebox all year-round and agreed to let the cat out for one single month, what about the rest of the year? "Of course one month is not enough," most would respond. "It's 'cruel' to keep a cat in a shoebox and the housemate should be made to stop it altogether." But for some reason (let's call it what it is: speciesism), most don't get the same warm fuzzies when considering chickens than they do when considering the animals we usually like to cuddle on our laps. To say that one egg-free month was one of those "every little bit helps" actions, or acknowledging the housemate's effort as having had any moral significance in terms of the rest of that chicken's life (or the lives of the millions of other chickens who continue to be used) makes as much sense as it would to praise the housemate for having let the cat out of the shoebox--much less so, even, considering what chickens go through. We're outraged that a cat would be treated as such, but not so outraged at the treatment of chickens enslaved to provide us with "food".

The problem is that when we get hung up on discussing treatment, we filter it through this preset notion we have of nonhuman animals existing for our use--as our property. While one type of animal (e.g. a cat) is understood to exist as our "pet", another (e.g. a cow) is understood to exist as our "food". We love our pets and eat our food, and to reconcile ourselves to doing either, we deem one worthy of different treatment than the other. But the truth is that chickens and cats (like humans) are sentient; both chickens and cats (like humans) will react to and avoid pain if permitted to do so. When it comes to sentience, the only thing that differentiates a chicken from a cat is what we humans impose on them when we follow through with our need to classify our "things" into convenient categories to make sense of how we use them. It's artificially imposed by us. This is why the root of the problem, when it comes to addressing the moral confusion we humans have when considering what we do--or more often "hire" others to do on our behalf--to nonhuman animals, is that we think of them as our property. We need to focus on their sentience and acknowledge that a chicken is no more a "thing" than a cat and that a cat is no more a "thing" than is a human.

We humans go through most of our lives justifying our moral actions in a ruthless game of "us-and-them", by which we're perpetually imposing a "them" on others with whom we interact. This has been made obvious through justifications given to repress women for centuries, to enslave fellow-humans, to discriminate against gays and lesbians, and so on. It's at the root of racism, sexism, heterosexism and speciesism. Where nonhuman animals are concerned, they become the "other"--different from us, and therefore fair game to be used by "us".

What's become alarming is how some non-vegans--particularly vegetarians--have come to filter abolitionist vegans through this whole "us-and-them" manner of thinking. For instance, you may think as a vegetarian that I'm lumping you into a convenient "them" to set you apart and vilify you when I assert that I won't condone any sort of animal consumption or exploitation, when in fact, I'm trying to include you in my "us" by showing you that nonhuman animals are also "us". By talking to you about veganism, I'm trying to give you the information you need to understand this--not vilify or condemn you for not seeing it, but waving you over to talk to you and to give you the facts so that you can give up your own "us-and-them" mentality. By trying to talk to you about veganism, not mincing words or couching facts, and not trying to acknowledge anything less than not using other sentient animals as being the right thing to do, I'm telling you that I truly believe that you're like me--that you want to do the right thing. I'm trying to convey to you that I believe that you're courageous enough to look at the facts and admit that what we put nonhumans through when we treat them as ours to use is simply awful and that it needs to stop.

When I refuse to listen to other vegans who insist that a vegan message is too hard for you to handle, and who insist that that calling for veganism as the absolute least we can do for nonhuman animals, I'm trying to tell you that I think that you can handle it. I'm not making you a "them" to my abolitionist vegan "us". I'm trying to tell you that if you can move beyond speciesism that you're capable of coming to the same conclusions and that I'm ready and willing to do whatever I can to help you get to those conclusions and to help you act upon them once you do. That's what vegan education is about to me; that's what it means to get rid of the "us-and-them" mentality and to tackle speciesism. And at the very least, to be able to get to that point, we need to have a clear understanding of what is or isn't meant by "veganism".

Learn more at Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach.

Mumblings and Musings About Earnestness in the Animal Movement

I like communication. No, really. I like to bounce ideas off of people and also appreciate it when someone else takes the time to contextualize his or her opinions or conclusions for me, whether by filling in blanks with information previously unknown to me, or by walking me through the process of how he or she came to connect certain dots. I listen as well as I can, and being human, I'm as guilty as the next body of being preoccupied with personal matters or of wielding my grains of salt unapologetically. Whether or not I have a pretty good hunch that I'll disagree with what's presented, I have--at the very least--a genuine interest in listening and in trying to understand where the other person is coming from and how he or she got to that point. Every once in a while, I get to note where he or she may have missed a dot; sometimes not. At the very least, I walk away from the experience with something to consider, whether or not my own opinions regarding the subject at hand have budged a hair's breadth.

I rarely plug my ears unless it becomes clear to me that someone is just arguing for the sake of arguing and that his or her opinion or view isn't grounded in anything other than a need to just be plain old contrary. Going out of your way to give people the benefit of the doubt leaves you running into a lot of people like this, but it also leaves you better able at assessing when to walk away from a discussion that's really just someone's indulging in an opportunity to snipe or browbeat. I also walk away when it becomes apparent that someone is merely engaging in so much rote recitation--the passing on of a convenient "this is how it is and I don't have to justify a thing to you" sort of statement that might as well be a "no comment" as far as its usefulness and sincerity are concerned. I see less of that with individuals and more of it with enormous and well-funded welfarist orgs that actually keep people on the payroll to come up with variations on empty and dismissive statements (or to bombard people with simplistic propaganda). For instance, I sometimes wonder how many spay/neuter surgeries could be performed with the money HSUS spends on Twitter PR alone any given month, but I digress...

Call me naive, but I guess that on some level, I'd like to think that at least some people are also willing to listen, and by this I don't mean just staying mum while contemplating the next thing they'll say, themselves, while you're yammering: I mean an earnest sort of open-minded listening that--at the very least--leaves them with a better idea of how I came to connect my own dots. Only when two participants in a discussion are willing to listen will anything fruitful come of the discussion for both those participants. I see people in the animal movement who could save a lot of time and energy in learning to listen.

By this, I don't necessarily mean learning to let themselves be talked out of their convictions and am certainly not saying that everyone should hold hands and pretend to share the same convictions. What I think would help tremendously, however, would be to spend time discussing how we came to our conclusions rather than just repeating those conclusions over and over again to each other--and to all around us--just to try to drown each other out. We don't have to agree; we also don't have to walk away from disagreement. I'd like to think that most who are seriously committed to helping nonhuman animals are willing engage in critical thinking and possess a certain amount of intellectual honesty. Maybe that's just my still being very much immersed in learning theory and learning the history and politics of the movement, myself. Maybe I merely belie my nasty naive streak in expressing hope for dialogue so that we can--at the very least, and even as we disagree and debate--maintain some sense of civility and stay focused on the issue at hand rather than get lost in the politics and posturing.

Connecting the Dots

Last week, a smallish dairy farmer wrote a letter to the editor of my local paper, going on about how "God's law frees people to love unconditionally" and then gushing about how up to 1000 people from the area, as well as from all over Canada, had come together a few months ago to help him in a time of need. Early this spring, there had been a story in my local paper about an event that apparently triggered warm fuzzies. This same dairy farmer's barn had collapsed in the middle of a cold January night. He and his family had managed to get around 20 cows out and then over the course of the next day or two, local firefighters and neighbours came to assist them to free the remaining 70 or so from the fallen structure. The local paper had featured a front page photo of him, smiling broadly and with his face smooshed up to that of one of the cows. People were not, of course, patting themselves on the back for having saved the cows for the cows' own sake; the kumbaya moment had to do with having helped save the farmer's "livelihood". Unconditional love, indeed.

I remember the story well, not just all I could think of at the time was of how these cows were just things with a cash value to the farmer (as well as to the community that pitched in to help him). I also remembered the story because a friend (who knew that I was vegan) had ended up emailing me about it, inviting me to a hamburger and hotdog barbecue that was being held to raise money to help build a new barn. She added in her note that she had figured that even if I chose not to eat anything, I'd be interested in helping the farmer build a new "home" for the cows, and that at the very least, I'd have compassion for the poor man who'd lost the uninsured structure in which the cows had previously resided. I declined the invitation.

I got an email a few days ago from a former coworker who, years and years ago, would take great joy in mocking me for being what she called "a big wuss" for not eating animals (because obviously, bucking the status quo and removing oneself from participating in animal slaughter is a cowardly act). She'd recently obtained my email address from a mutual acquaintance. She mentioned to me that over the years she's "become an animal lover" and has been volunteering at one of the local companion animal shelters, fostering kittens for them. She joked that she hadn't become an "animal rights nut like [me] yet" and added that she fosters the kittens on her small hobby farm--where she also raises chickens and a few goats to fill her family's freezer each fall. She was emailing me, she said, to invite me to a fundraiser for the shelter, adding that she figured that if anyone would be eager to get the word out, it would be me. The fundraiser? Yet another barbecue.

In both of these situations, I took advantage of the opportunity to try to connect some dots by explaining why I would not support the activities in question. In neither of the two cases did the individuals in question get it, because in their minds, certain animals exist to end up on our plates. In their minds, that's just the way it is.

We have a lot of work to do.

Where Community and Cruelty Collide

Someone I met earlier this year who'd been asking me about my veganism and my reasons to support an abolitionist approach to animal rights left me a little perplexed a short while ago upon my own questioning him about the reasons he chooses to keep consuming animals. This person was an intelligent omnivore who'd had great love for the companion animals with whom he'd once shared his life. He struck me as being incredibly perceptive and empathetic towards people and far from being callous. He'd communicated to me that he could never bring himself to watch videos about factory farming because they'd make him hate people, but insisted that he'd already seen plenty of imagery of the harms inflicted on animals and was indeed aware of what went on in factory farming and understood, theoretically, why a logical step for vegans would be to want to see the abolition of all use, regardless of the degree of harm inflicted upon the animals.

He told me that the only difference between us in how we treat others around us is how far we each choose to extend our "circle of community". For instance, he pointed out that his community extends to most people (excluding those deemed threats to himself or his circle of community) and to non-human animals in his care, or in the care of those in his circle of community. Those non-human animals, he explained, would obviously include friends' companion animals. When I presented him with the theoretical scenario of my having a small sanctuary with rescued chickens, pigs, cows, et al. (i.e. animals he would usually designate as "food"), he asserted that by being in my care, they'd also be part of his community.

I pointed out to him that there were two ways of looking at his incorporation of non-human animals into his community. On one hand, it seemed that he acknowledged non-human animals as the property of the human members of his community (i.e. animals "in their care"). The other way of looking at this would be to say that he is willing to extend his community to those others the members of his circle of community include in their own respective circles. Since he asserted that my own circle of community extends to all non-human animals, though, this would have meant that by virtue of his including me in his own circle, he'd need to treat all non-human animals as members of his community, thereby ceasing to use them as means to an end. When he denied feeling the need to extend his own circle thus, it became clear that the former of my interpretations of his inclusion of non-human animals in his community was the valid interpretation.

The whole conversation drilled home to me yet again how wrong-headed it is for activists to focus on lessening harms to animals people use, while allowing the consideration of animals as property to continue to be the status quo. Until we get people thinking differently about non-humans, the degree of suffering to which they're subjected will be completely irrelevant to many, even if it's the stuff of token gestures for others.

Of Life and Lacks (Some Ramblings on the Eve of a Dreaded Visit to the Vet's)

This thought popped into my head today, like some trite and simplistic revelation: I can finally understand one aspect of why people get so excited about welcoming grandchildren into their lives. The older we get, the more death we're dealt, so how could new life not be met with such joy? These additions spill over into the expanding lacks that were brought about by persons we love disappearing from our worlds -- persons who cease to "be".

And although years ago I would have thought that viewing death in terms of one's self is selfish, I now realize after been battered with it over the past two years that viewing it in terms of one's self and how it affects those around you who share that death with you -- who share that tremendous loss -- is pretty much it. My friend John used to say over and over to me: Death isn't about the dead; it's about the living. He was right. It's the living who are left to accumulate losses until their own turns come. Those who are dead... well, they're just dead.

I think of my life with companion animals and can't help but feel, for all of the goodness that's been reciprocated through sharing my years with them, that having those bonds has in one way ended up leaving me with more death than I'm ready to deal with at this point in my life. I have no regrets, though. I'm damn grateful to have been able to provide care and shelter for these magnificent others with whom I've shared my life. Some people scoff at the expressions of sadness and emptiness that are uttered by those who lose their beloved non-humans, but what greater lack can develop than one that stems from losing someone -- human or non-human -- who was a part of your daily life (as you were a part of his or hers), who accepted you unconditionally, who relied on you for all of his or her needs and who, in turn, sought you out to comfort you when he or she sensed that you were unhappy? I suspect that some will shrug and say that this just leads to the anthropomorphizing of non-humans. At the other end of it, some may shake their heads and assert that thinking about non-humans in terms of what they bring to your own life (i.e. as if they exist for your pleasure) is contrary to abolitionist principles. There's no shame in feeling emotional bonds, though, whether they be with humans or non-humans, and the species of the other with whom you share that bond should in no way qualify its weight, nor should it taint it.

The truth is that there's no need for anybody to justify the extent or profoundness of his or her sense of loss when a loved one ceases to be. And it's not about whether the loved one had two legs or four, or whether that loved one could discuss Heidegger's most dense points with you or share your enthusiasm for a good Coltrane record. It's not even about whether the beloved was good to you or to anybody, really. You're the only one who can assess your own sense of loss -- who can measure the width of that big gaping hole left in your life after a loved one ceases to be. And thinking about loss in terms of it being "yours" is normal, regardless of the species of your loved one.

On Being Sussed Out

“When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own; and this is especially the case with those persons whose knowledge of the world is of such sort that it results in extreme distrust of men.”

--Joseph Farrell

Knowledge: Liberating or Debilitating?

I'd rambled on about knowledge and freedom a while back. I went back and re-read it after an online friend paraphrased Paula Poundstone earlier today -- a quote about the potential effects of knowledge. I found the original in a Mother Jones article: "What moron said that knowledge is power? Knowledge is power only if it doesn't depress you so much that it leaves you in an immobile heap at the end of your bed."

She's right. Sort of. There's more to it, though. I've had conversations that have danced around this notion with my dear friend J. who (for the record) personifies the term 'piece of work' in more than one of its aspects, and for whom learning is like breathing, with knowledge his oxygen. J. introduced me to the issues surrounding Peak Oil, including its probable implications in terms of industrial food production. We've talked about the differences between denial and saturation points, about indifference and that 'deer-caught-in-headlights' sensation that can leave someone seeming avoidant or shell-shocked. The manner in which J. approaches knowledge is contagious and consistent, regardless of how dark and radical it may appear, or of the hot potato that bit of knowledge may actually be. J.'s response to the scenario presented by Paula Poundstone would be to tell the person left in an immobile heap at the end of the bed to "get off the cross" -- to get over it, because there's no time for wallowing.

In a sense, this takes the onus off of the knowing and puts it on the doing. You don't avoid knowledge because it's too depressing. If it's too depressing, then there's a reason for its being depressing. It's information about something which you feel or think isn't right. If you can do something about it, then do it; if you can't, then walk away from it. In avoiding the 'knowing' in the first place, though, you can never get to that point where you can -- and need -- to make this decision for yourself. Then you really need to ask yourself what's motivating you to avoid making that decision. Fear? Apathy? Laziness? Who wants to be motivated by that?

On Being Single

I woke up curled up around a couple of cats this morning and mulled over the week's events. After many good-natured conversations lasting into the wee hours with various friends this past week, I've come to the conclusion that:

• Friends in relationships view my being single as some sort of illness, and that I'm (of course) seeking to get "better" (i.e. find another long-term relationship).
• Friends who are single and not seeking (or finding) relationships think that if I'm actively seeking a relationship, I'm weak or needy and that I invariably need to spend some time "finding myself" and that if I do find someone, I'm "settling" and much better off staying single.
• Friends who are single and who are either seeking relationships and who are already involved in the dating process are too busy keeping their own heads above water to sit back and try to assess my goings-on in terms of their own respective relationship statuses.
• My cats, I'm sure, would view everything in terms of the potential of their obtaining a second lap versus the possibility of having to find a different place to sleep at night other than sprawled all over the bed around me. I'm equally sure, however, that if I keep them in organic catnip, they'll be supportive of any decision I make.

The garden

So far, I've got three heirloom Brandywines, three organic plums, one cherry and two ground cherry tomato plants in. I've also got a jalapeno pepper and a zucchini seedling (potted, for now). All of these are flowering. This Saturday, I plan to add a couple of bell seedlings, another couple of jalapeno, a cayenne (if I can find one), and at least another three plums.

I have the first sowing of organic leaf lettuce and organic dwarf carrots coming up, as well as my first sowing (15 square feet?) of yellow organic bush beans just breaking ground. Tonight, I planted a 4' row of beets and a 4' row of chard and my second sowing of organic bush beans (these, a drying type -- I'll have to dig out the envelope to post the names). The beets and chard are in between the bush bean rows. I added some thyme seed to my old winter-worn thyme plant (it's seven years old and I'll get another to grow alongside it before I pull this one out of the ground -- it was the first thing I ever planted in my garden). I also scattered some organic spicy mixed greens seed in with the lettuce and carrots coming up around my heirloom tomatoes.

I harvested some rhubarb yesterday. I should have separated some of it early in the spring. It's sort of scrunched together and scraggly. If I play my cards right, though, I should be able to get at least a couple dozen jars of chutney or jam out of it, and some frozen to boot. Right now, I need to figure out what to do with the 50 square feet or so of lemon balm that's spread across part of the garden over the past summers. Do I just pull it and compost it? I have some young burdock coming up, too, in a corner, and need to figure out when to pull it to get to try out the roots.

I'll definitely take some photos this weekend after I get some more seedlings in.

On the practice of not being jaded (with some Thich Nhat Hanh thrown in for good measure)

I was thinking about someone who passed through my life not too long ago and a conversation we'd once (or twice) had about unconditional love. He'd indicated that anyone who gave it any sort of consideration in terms of its feasibility was certainly trying to compensate for some sort of lack in childhood with which they hadn't managed to come to terms in their adult lives. He brought up single women who adopt babies as an example of people seeking an instant fix to their own similar childhood lacks by taking in a human who'd more or less be forced to love them, by virtue of his or her helplessness and complete reliance on the woman / adoptive mother in question. It struck me at the time that he seemed to have no understanding of the concept of the reciprocity of love, or of the possibility that people might actually seek to love in and of itself, and not necessarily merely desperately seek to set themselves up to be its recipients.

It's along the same lines as people who enjoy giving for the sake of giving versus those who restrict their giving to reward-like affirmations (verbal, physical, et al.) to modify others' behaviour. There are some who dole out "love" as if it's just another component of some sort of reward-based system -- a controlling sort of habit that's ultimately, especially when done consciously, just another variation of emotional blackmail. So I come back to wondering about unconditional love and its place, if any, in human relationships. In the end, does it really all just boil down to baggage and strings? So this got me thinking about Thich Nhat Hanh (1926- ), and a passage of his I'd read and remembered about a more general way to approach those milling about in the world:

When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable.

I guess in a sense, it's about love being more of an approach or mindset when engaging anybody in our lives than it is a tool to define and frame our contexts and relationships. In this sense, according to Thich Nhat Hanh, we need to learn to offer it unconditionally. It's "not contingent upon the other person being lovable". In a sense, love shouldn't be conditional upon someone's loving us back, or someone's being able to give us exactly whatever it is that we want. Maybe it's naive (or side-stepping into the murk) to think of it as such, or to strive to adopt that understanding of it into one's own life and one-on-one relationships, and particularly with romantic interests (at least not without a good therapist watching your back -- heheh). Maybe the term (in the English language, anyway) just covers too wide a range of emotions and interactions for it to make any sort of sense to try to examine it in one single blog post.

Peak Oil and being single -- some ramblings

I've been doing some Googling on Peak Oil and being single. Most articles about Peak Oil (particularly those envisioning a more extreme state of affairs once oil runs out, where society as we know it alters significantly and desperation and chaos set in as food and transportation costs skyrocket) focus on the paramount need for a return to small communities. We're already seeing the impact that $130+ a barrel oil is having on food and transportation costs now; even conservative experts seem hard-pressed to predict anything other than that these costs will continue to soar. Smaller communities producing their own food in a sustainable manner can knock out the increasingly more and more expensive middle step of needing this or that item shipped across (or from out of) the country, thus significantly lowering the cost of food. With individuals learning the sorts of skills that were necessary before cheap fossil fuels enabled us to opt to replace things rather than repair them, and then coming together to share these skills with each other (or to share the products of their respective skills), these communities can be brought closer to a sort of self-sufficiency.

In larger urban centers, many people are coming together to talk about skills acquisition and about transition towns, or relocalization in general. In more rural areas, some folks already have a head start, growing kitchen gardens or living a more basic life where consumerism isn't necessarily as rampant. Then you have these grey areas, these smaller urban centers or larger towns, where ''rural'' means an hour or two's drive into the country, and where finding like-minded people in your own backyard who won't look absolutely incredulous when you mention that oil is running out is like trying to find a dolphin in a goldfish pond. Establishing a Peak Oil group when living in a not-so-populated area starts to feel like a hopeless endeavour and hopping on a farm to learn about growing things can turn into a time-consuming and expensive ordeal unless you have your own motorized vehicle. Books can only take you so far when it comes to learning, so what to do? And what on earth to do if while in the middle of trying to work around these obstacles, you also happen to be unsatisfactorily single? If it's well-nigh impossible to establish a Peak Oil group in a large town, can you imagine finding a Peak Oil aware partner?

I've read about the difficulty that people have impressing the impact of the developing economic crisis on their spouses and family members to try to get them involved. I have a hard enough time when my SUV driving friends affectionately call me a nut for spending most of my time reading about nutrition, herbs, foraging , alternative energy and low-tech skills; however, I can just imagine the small talk over coffee on a first date.

''So where do you see yourself in the next few years?''
''Well, I'm thinking about ditching my things and resettling into an intentional community.''
''Oh...''
''Yep.''
''So, ah... Hmm. Why?''
''We're running out of oil and the economy is going belly up. We've left our food supply in the hands of agri-bullies who've already brought us some of the most toxic man-made substances ever created yet claim their new mostly under-tested frankenfoods are safe, and we need to reclaim our right to control what we consume. Plus, who doesn't want to live a more meaningful life?''
''Er... sure.... Waitress? Cheque please?''

It seems that it would be a lot easier to be in a relationship and to transition into a less fossil-fuel reliant existence than to attempt to do so while head-butting one's way into the dating game. Instead of jumping as a single entity into a community of many, or stumbling about feeling a little lost sometimes, you'd have a cohort to share the challenges. Technology is such that you can reach out to connect with other like-minded individuals over the internet, but these sorts of exchanges are tricky. Also, almost anyone who's ever taken a go at internet dating will gladly share with you their horror stories, or at the very least, will share their tales of heartache and unwanted surprises. And besides, I surely don't remember the last time I saw ''biointensive gardening'' show up on any man's list of interests on a dating site.

Things to think about...

Freedom

So, earlier this summer, I'd been having these gentle exchanges -- more like the gentle butting together of skulls -- with my mother concerning free will vs. predestination. We seemed to be at either extreme. Her take on it is that your entire life is mapped out for you before you're even born. We're just riding a strong current, where the best we can do is try to dog paddle our rafts along to try to minimize harm to ourselves and to others. Ultimately, however, any sort of control that isn't completely laughable is out of our hands. I told her this seemed to be a convenient way to absolve oneself of regret or accountability over having made bad decisions, and of the responsibility of making thoughtful choices.

My take on it: The things that happen to people don't ultimately define the course of their lives. Things can be triggers -- enormous triggers, sometimes -- but we can respond to them in any number of ways, even if some ways seem slight or more obvious than others. It's what you choose to do with things that fall in your path that has the greatest effect on your outcome. Sartre wrote that we're cursed with freedom. When you face it head-on, it can leave you with anything from butterflies in the pit of your belly to the sort of dread that makes you wish you hadn't gotten out from beneath the covers that morning. However, without freedom we'd be no better than things. We'd be the car waiting for the splat from the pigeon overhead.

I stumbled upon something today -- some author trying to sound profound. He put a bit of a spin on the whole Schoolhouse Rocks quip that ''knowledge is power'' by saying that knowledge isn't power -- it's freedom. Miles Davis, in fact, beat him to that particular punch a long time ago by saying that ''Knowledge is freedom; ignorance is slavery''. The thing is that although I really get what they're getting at, it seems that they're both missing the really important step in all of this. I mean, you can fill your head with anything, knowing information that only a handful of others know -- but it's all ultimately just so much useless junk unless you turn it into a tool. Mere knowledge feeds freedom, sure, but unless you use it to take action, it's just an accumulation of words and images sitting in your head. If you don't know what to do with it, you might as well not have it.

This afternoon's rambling session of Free Will 101 brought to you by the letter ''M''.