Marketing Trivial Human Desires

By Eccentric Vegan on June 20th, 2008

Here’s an example of some omnivorous backwards logic:

“While I honestly don’t believe all activists are tree-hugging Greenpeace lunatics, nothing changed for me because Melissa and the other activists featured showed how extreme many of the views still are, especially when your right to decide for yourself is superceded by the rights of animals. (If I choose to stop eating meat, it can’t be because you assaulted me with images of dead or tortured animals. When you do that, you take away my ability to decide for myself.)” (source)

Let’s be compassionate and give the writer the benefit of the doubt. In order to reasonably interpret his argument, we should to eliminate the slurs. Let’s pretend he didn’t call activists “lunatics” or “extreme.” We don’t have to ignore that completely, just set it aside for the moment in order to have an honest and reasonable discussion.

For example, pretend someone told me, “I don’t think all women are dumb, but I don’t like feminism because no one should tell me what to think.” In order for me to accurately identify the contentious idea and debate logically, I should respond to the point about feminism and set aside for the moment the comment about women’s intelligence, though clearly, the two concepts are intertwined.

So, let’s be charitable here and get to his base idea. He says “If I choose to stop eating meat, it can’t be because you assaulted me with images of dead or tortured animals. When you do that, you take away my ability to decide for myself.” The crux of his statement is that he believes eating meat should be a) a free choice, and b) not influenced by the nonviolent, honest actions of animal advocates.

Let’s take each claim individually.

a) First, the claim that eating meat should be a free choice: He believes his desire to eat animals is more important than animals’ desire to not be eaten.

He’s framed it in a way that sounds like he cares about freedom of choice, personal freedom, or human rights. But really, it’s about his personal desire to eat what he wants to eat. He might argue that he has a right to eat a twinky or a right to drink a beer. If he’s at all logical, he might argue that he has a right to swallow glass or eat diet pills. That’s the kind of “right” he’s talking about here.

He’s not talking about a right to personal autonomy like freedom from imprisonment, freedom from torture, freedom from force. He’s talking about freedom to eat things he calls food.

Vegans do not consider animals food. Talk about eating animals sounds to me very similar to talk about eating rocks or eating lead paint. Sure, the physical process of eating a salad is nearly the same as the physical process of eating lead paint, but lead paint is not really food. In fact, in high doses, it’s poison. Meat is poison, too. It gives you heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

Animal rights vegans go a step farther than human nutrition and proper diets. Not only are animal products bad for your health, animal products are the direct result of unjustified immoral harm. Animals are sentient beings who have feelings and families. They are no more food than human infants are food.

If we really think carefully about it the guy doesn’t so much care about freedoms and rights. In fact, he doesn’t much care about the relationship between animals and humans. This isn’t about a belief that humans are superior to animals; It’s a belief that humans’ whims are more important than animals’ lives.

One need not believe animals are equal to humans in order to believe in veganism and some forms of animal rights. One need only believe that animals’ lives are more important than trivial human desires.

b) The second claim asserts that the choice to eat meat should be not influenced nonviolent animal advocates. He used the term “assault,” but he’s not talking about violence, he’s talking about “images of dead or tortured animals,” that is, he’s talking about accurate depictions of the truth. He is saying he should be able to choose to eat animals without having true knowledge of all the facts. What kind of strange logic can justify this position? The answer is, there is none. It’s not logic, it’s marketing. See, he continues:

“Stop making people feel guilty for their food choices—give them better ones instead. Sell. Me. On. Great. Tasting. Alternatives.”

Spoken like a true marketer. Only a sales person, firmly entrenched in American capitalism, would reduce a moral argument about rights to consumer choice.

That said, he’s got a point. Our goal of a vegan world is best achieved through multiple means, consumer marketing of veganism is one of those means. So yes, we should “sell” veganism through great tasting food. And, well, we do. Here are just a few of the wide array of excellent sources of great tasting vegan food:

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4 Responses to Marketing Trivial Human Desires

  1. Alex commented on Jun 21st, 2008 at 9:33 am

    What amuses me, and I’m simply assuming what responses you may receive (as Jen did with her post about how killing a sentient being for food isn’t a “choice” like any other), is how some people will completely ignore your perfectly reasonable argument and make their baseless claims again: “I have the right to eat whatever I want…Why do you care about my choice.”

    Perhaps I’m wrong, but we’ve all heard that seriously juvenile response before.

    ~ Recent blog post: "They exist for our use" and so forth…. at http://www.not-quiteright.net/tvg ~

  2. Eccentric Vegan commented on Jun 21st, 2008 at 12:30 pm

    Yes, we’ve all heard it before.

    It still irks me, though. It shows an utter lack of understanding and a serious disrespect of what animal rights is all about. They discount the entire notion that animals don’t deserve to suffer or die for us.

    Yet, if it weren’t animal rights, they probably wouldn’t care nearly as much. If I wore a t-shirt that said,

    “Stop eating Twinkies. They’re bad for your health”

    people would just laugh. I doubt anyone would be seriously offended or that anyone would say I was acting “morally superior.” But when I wear pro-animal t-shirts, like

    “Eat like you give a damn.”

    some people get indignant and act like I just slapped them in the face, which is kind of funny, because no one forced them to look at my chest (or read this website).

    However, the majority of people react positively when I wear pro-animal clothes. People often say, “Hey! I’m vegan, too!” or they say, “I like your shirt.” So, the tide is changing. I get much better responses these days than I did twenty years ago.

  3. Alex commented on Jun 23rd, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    Sometimes I wear a t-shirt that says “Guilt-Free Vegan.” I wonder what people think when they read that :)
    ~ Recent blog post: "They exist for our use" and so forth…. at http://www.not-quiteright.net/tvg ~

  4. bazu commented on Jun 25th, 2008 at 9:12 am

    I agree with your point. As a teacher, I’m constantly frustrated by the “choice” argument- as if one’s “free choice” to do as s/he desires trumps every other argument. It’s an American affliction- we’re always bombarded by the message that we should do what we think is right, and for many, that’s the end of the decision-making process.

    ~ Recent blog post: 2 quick (and slightly crazy) tips at http://wherestherevolution.blogspot.com ~

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