“Abolition” is insulting: Part Deux

This is getting fun. Michael Couchman’s reply to my email. I haven’t read all of it yet, let me know what you think.

“Dear Peter,

Thank you for your prompt reply to my concise and coherent email. In turn, I would like to address several issues, point by point, from your asinine and insipid argument before answering the primary question you posed to me on the subject of equivalent “moral status” between humans and animals. I then have a brief list of questions about the contradictory and questionable ethics of your dietary preference that you can ponder, if you are so inclined.

Firstly, while the polite thing to have done before posting my message on your blog would have been to notify me, you are welcome to use and distribute it for whatever purposes you have in mind, including the communal discussion and learning elements you mentioned. However, I am not altogether certain what benefit you may gain from it in these respects, considering you seemed to utterly dismiss my argument as being “vacuous”, and me for being “ignorant” and using “wretched behaviour” to justify my views. Your opening comment appeared more like a toothless threat to silence dissent than a genuine desire to expose yourself and your colleagues to a variety of opinions on your beliefs.

I never once called you or your group racist anti-Semites and I don’t appreciate you putting those words in my mouth. As for your closing comment concerning Alan Dershowitz, I have no wish to engage a radical left-winger such as yourself in heated debate on the Israeli/Palestinian political issue, but will simply point out that the use of terms like “Zionist agenda” displays in you a clear bias and a hint of deep paranoia.

You seem to believe that you are noble in linking yourselves to Lincoln and other true abolitionists, yet in fact what you are doing is comparing the forcibly immigrated Africans of the slave-owning southern U.S. to mere animals. If you took your own advice and actually researched the definition of the word “abolition” you would find that yes, technically it refers to a state of abolishment, similar to annulment or abrogation, but more commonly it is a term especially applied when referring to the historical fight against slavery in America. This is a reason why, for instance, I didn’t use the term to describe my own efforts to dissuade you from polluting the mental environment any more than you already have. As involved as I am in the issue, I decided out of an innate sense of taste and decency not to compare my objections to your organization with the righteous struggle for emancipation. Were you to use the other terms that you outlined such as “eliminationists, terminationists, destructionists” or any other synonyms for abolition with an “”ist” on to the end” I would still disagree with your group, but would have no problem with the way you express your deeply flawed beliefs.

As for my references to PETA, I was not in any way implying that your two groups were aligned, but simply bringing to attention other instances where animal rights groups such as yours have abused horrific aspects of human history in order to further their anti-humanist agendas. By simply using the term “abolitionist”, you demoted yourselves to the status of a sensationalistic, and moreover opportunistic, group of confused vegans without the slightest conscience towards using sensitive material and human suffering to advance your cause. This, in effect, was what I meant by your approach being “melodramatic”. As for my above statement about your “anti-humanist” perspectives (which you indeed have, regardless of any personal denial), your poster, reply email, face book groups, and base position are rife with them. While in your correspondence you claimed that “the moral values which ground our obligations to humans are the same ones which ground our obligations to animals”, you clearly show on your online forum, and this is only one example, that by no means do you have anything resembling an equal regard for human beings as you have for animals. To quote you on the subject of possible contexts in which you might abandon your principles and kill something: “I am sure, though, that a hypothetical could be crafted where it would be OK to kill an animal, just like there are situations where it is OK to kill a human.” (emphasis mine). While I’m sure no doubt there are numerous exceptions to whatever rules of pacifism you abide by, this statement sounded to me as if you were giving the unspecified hypothetical creature far more consideration than you were the hypothetical person. Using the words could and are when respectively describing these two situations where you would have to resort to lethal force sounds like chillingly loaded wording. If human beings and animals share and are connected by the same “moral status”, wouldn’t you use the same vital executive decision in both cases? The impression I derived from your musings is that while you have no ill sentiments about murdering someone in your own imaginary scenario, you hesitate to make the same choice about killing an animal. This irrefutably shows your inherent double-standard behind the lofty peaceful ideals you present to the majority of the public. I say the “majority” since Facebook is, after all, largely an open forum for ideas. Still, how you managed to recruit so many like-minded people on your group webpage is somewhat frightening. You are in fact a radical ideologue, not for thinking that animals are the moral equivalent to people, as I’ve shown you actually don’t, but for demonstrating that human life is less important to you than the life of an animal.

The reason I used the term “self-righteous” is because you are. You are not self-righteous because of the beliefs you hold about animals, but because you believe that having these beliefs makes you the moral and ethical equal to such great human beings as Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela. Veganism is purely a dietary choice and is only made a moral crusade by fanatics such as yourself.

I should duly note as well that while you speak repeatedly of this shared moral status between humans and animals, you make no mention of what defends your claim. You merely assume I’m too ignorant to have researched into the issue, leaving yourself free to blatantly state again and again that there is without a shred of doubt a moral connection between our species and the plethora of others, without having to justify in any way what your personal beliefs are on this foundational issue. May I ask you how exactly you define “sentience”? I believe this is the popular term among vegans for grouping humans and such things as the platypus in the same biological category. However you refer to it, what specifically is the common ground between us that makes it wrong to kill animals? I take the position that humans have the ability to exercise free will, as opposed to primal instinct, and have a host of other faculties that give us the gift of higher intelligence. Ever since we walked upright three hundred thousand years ago homo sapiens have been surviving on a system of hunting and gathering, the former being far more important in terms of achieving ample protein intake, which in turn fostered to a great extent our early brain development. While not wanting to make a clichéd appeal to tradition, I would like to make obvious how our eating habits up until present day have been closely modelled on the natural world. Frankly we aren’t the only ones out there killing things in order to survive. It was only about ten thousand years ago we gained the technological knowledge to begin what is known as agriculture, which now by and large provides for our nutritional needs. However, occasionally it is necessary (at least for those of us who have managed to resist the urge to live by taking vitamin B-12 supplements and injections) to supplement our diet with meat (aka. flesh, chow, sustenance, violent cuisine, what have you). You may call this speciesism, but do you chastise the fox for eating the chicken?

I hope this provides you with a brief summary of my reasons for being omnivorous, though this particular argument is by no means exhaustive. To reiterate my earlier observation, if you were in any way interested in actually preventing me from continuing on my conquest of what you think is an attempt to undermine and censor current justice movements, rather than merely try to slander me with your inane ramblings, you would have included your side of this moral status angle in your email so as to possibly sway my opinion. As it stands, you have given no such input and therefore I have nothing on which to reflect.

Speaking of which, I have some issues you would perhaps like to contemplate:

Plants must be fertilized in order to feed the world’s population. Being a self-proclaimed animal “abolitionist”, would you prefer the usage of harmful synthetic fertilizers derived from fossil fuels rather than animal waste? Where does it all end!?! Can we kill plague/disease carrying animals who may be potentially harmful to a far greater number of living beings?

Frederick Banting used animal testing (dogs, specifically) to discover the properties of insulin. Due to the degenerating chemical nature of the pancreas outside its host, he could only take extractions and experiment effectively on live subjects. Since insulin was originally procured in such a way as I would assume you would find objectionable, should diabetics, and more importantly diabetic vegans, go without their medication and perish? Albeit insulin is now cultivated through engineered cultures, but are you not still supporting a research industry that primarily uses animal testing in its initial stages?

How far does “sentience” extend? Are insects sentient? Should we therefore not kill mosquitoes that spread blood borne disease (think again of your previous statement that human and animal rights and affairs are both taken with equal seriousness in your ideology. Would you tell the people of Zambia, a country still suffering the consequences of the completely preventable disease of Malaria, that it is wrong for them to drain areas with standing water, thereby eliminating the mosquitoes natural habitat, or spraying ponds with chemical agents that kill off the insects before they hatch from their eggs)?

Would you, in the presence of a notary public, sign a document forbidding the medical establishment from treating you with medication that was tested on animals? If not, does that not make you a hypocrite? And if yes, why haven’t you done so?

Veganism, to be totality practical and healthy for the individual, requires the intake of rather expensive supplements and an abundant variety of foods. How do people without the adequate financial means survive in your imagined herbivorous world?

Consider for a moment the hundreds of millions of people in the world that depend on meat production for a living.

Does moral equality between humans and animals ever end? Should a burning dog kennel be as important as a burning kindergarten?

I am curious to know, from your introspective Facebook comments, under what circumstances exactly would it be permissible to kill an animal, in your view? If a snake is attacking a child, is it right to kill it?

I would suggest to you that your energies would be better spent contributing to organizations more pertinent to the cause of eliminating slavery, forced labour, and violent oppression worldwide. A few such groups include, Anti-Slavery International ( www.antislavery.org), the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (www.gaattw.net), and the International Rescue Committee ( www.theirc.org). All of the aforementioned deal mainly with the issue of the international sex trade, a stain on the rights of approximately two and a half million women and children who are illegally shipped to more developed nations for the sake of profiting the criminal underworld. While this is a major problem immediately effecting the species you belong to, it is but one of many humanitarian predicaments more deserving of your attention than your present cause. I chose it merely to illustrate to you the everyday heroics of progressive people who are truly justified in having the title “abolitionists”, as opposed to your current band of absurdly left-wing, diet obsessive individuals who would rightly bury their heads in the sand out of shame if they weren’t so ludicrously indoctrinated into their insular, dogmatic belief system. I leave the final moral choice up to you, though take into consideration that a twelve year old Cambodian girl prostituting herself for the financial benefit of her family (and subsequently exposing herself to the risks of potentially lethal sexually transmitted diseases and despicably abusive conditions) would probably not approve of having her situation placed equally alongside that of feedlot cattle on your moral scale. I am sad to comment that unfortunately many people worldwide, regardless of dietary preference, share the same sentiment. On the topic of your promotional posters, I should inform you that I’m now more than willing to make a compromise concerning the terminology you decided to use. Perhaps you could alter V.A.R.I.’s slogan to: “Michael Couchman hates animals!”, as it’s appropriately just as outlandish and insulting a claim as calling yourselves “abolitionists” (though in the former case the offence would be relegated solely to me, and not several generations of slave workers.).

It would be far too ambitious of me to speculate that I could even remotely change your incorrectly cemented views, though I ask you to at least contemplate my position as a valid, reasoned debate, and not immediately dismiss my argument out of hand due to the fact that it conflicts with your largely unquestioned values. In my limited time here on campus I have encountered countless numbers of people who feel that a reactionary political stance and a feigned sense of intellectualism constitutes a well conceived philosophy. One could safely deem your views as bordering on unwavering fundamentalist creed. In that sense, I would more accurately liken your efforts not to Abraham Lincoln’s war against slavery, or John F. Kennedy’s policies towards segregation, but to George W. Bush’s thoughts on the earth being six thousand years old. It is due to this ridiculous, staunch conjecture of yours that I no longer wish to continue this debate with you or your organization. I only wanted to firstly clarify any objections you had with my former email, restate my case on your usage of the term “abolitionist”, and finally to pose to you some genuine questions about the paradoxical nature of your cause. I have done all of the above more than adequately, and feel no desire to further prove my case to your ruinously misinformed group.”

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