Vegan Woes: When Non-Violence is Violent

An artist and farmer--Kathrine Dunn of Apifera Farm--that I deeply admire recently posted a call for help on Facebook. It seems that a blogger has decided to write a rather aggressive and mean-spirited post. The blogger takes the stance that it is impossible to care for animals--offering them sanctuary--and also eat animals.

I decided to write a response to the blog. I've also decided to include it here because it bothered me so very deeply. I've been a vegetarian for nearly two decades out of a matter of choice. I made a decision to try to walk in this world as gently as possible and in following through on this choice, I have decided to not take the life of living creatures so that I can eat. In walking non-violently in this world I have also made the decision--and work on it every day--to not behave with violence or aggression toward other people. It's a work in progress.

Here is my comment. If you are moved consider commenting too.

I’ve been a vegetarian for nearly two decades and try to walk as carefully and as gently on this Earth as possible. It deeply saddens me to read this post–not because Katherine has, for whatever her reasons are, chosen to live a lifestyle that involves living closely from the land and eating animal flesh, but because of how she is treated in this blog post by someone that doesn’t know her.

It deeply disturbs me when I see vegans, who by definition choose to live in this world in non-violent ways, transgress against those who do not live a vegan life in ways that are emotionally violent. Katherine deserves more than an aggressive and violent blog post opposing her choices to be a farmer who both deeply respects animals for what she sees as their place in the world.

To me, a vegan–or vegetarian–who holds aggression and violence in their heart toward people who make different choices needs to look more closely at their own motivations and actions. Otherwise what is the point of making a commitment to a life that does not bring harm?

This post brings harm to Katherine. It doesn’t bring love.

Sad, indeed.

Update:


Why do I call this an act of violence and aggression? I respond to questions on the bloggers site with this:

It is an act of violence and aggression to impose your system of morality on another person--and use that system to judge another--without stopping to consider that the values and morals of another are potentially equally as valid and important to the other. Try some perspective taking, and taking in the experience and views of another person, and you might find more peace, understanding, and progress.

It does no one any good for you to get off your soap box, pull it on your head, and pull it down over your eyes. It is an act of aggression--and awfully imperious--to take a stand that your own personal value system should be privileged over that of another.

Be sure to read the companion post, Vegan Vigilantes: When A Good Idea Strays.

The Seven Blunders of Man

I recently followed a link on Twitter to a blog called Lists of Note. This was a list worth repeating.

Shortly before his assassination, Mohandas Gandhi gave his grandson Arun Gandhi a piece of paper with a list of seven blunders that human society commits. Gandhi saw this list as the source of violence in the world.

What do you think? More importantly, how might things change if you made a commitment to working toward these things?

• Wealth without work
• Pleasure without conscience
• Knowledge without character
• Commerce without morality
• Science without humanity
• Worship without sacrifice
• Politics without principles

Middle School Lunch Room, Take Two: Build Relationships, Don't Destroy Them

Yesterday I wrote a blog piece talking about the general dismal state of political discourse. A day doesn't go by without at least one public mention of an "us versus them" statement that breaks relationships rather than builds relationships. I've been squirreled away at home most of this weekend reading various original narratives about nonviolence. This quote is yet another to serve as a good reminder of the importance of building relationships and unifying people. So much of our discourse (any side of the political spectrum, and topic) is locked in an us versus them mentality. Let this serve as a call to action

And so I plead with you this afternoon as we go ahead: remain committed to nonviolence. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man. 

--Martin Luther King, Jr.
--Our God is Marching on!
--March 25, 1965
Montgomery Alabama

The next time you find yourself in a polarized discussion and locked in a battle to determine who's right, think of this quote. How might you chart another way and build relationships rather than destroy them. When you hear our political leaders speaking relationship destroying words, think for a moment on how they  might do it another way.

Bygone Days: Whatever Happened to Nonviolence?

Have you ever wondered what ever happened to public dialogue that lifts rather than depresses? Were you aware of the moment in time when attempts for connection and mutuality denigrated into fights reminiscent of middle school lunch rooms?

I think about this a lot.

The conversation always goes something like this.

 "What you are thinking and feeling is wrong. It's going to be the downfall of society if you keep thinking and feeling that way. You need to think my way. It's better than your way."

"Oh yeah?" says the other person. "Well let me tell you all the ways in which your thinking and feelings are wrong. Mine are actually right, and if we keep on going down the path you are going on we are all going to be doomed."

"You are so wrong! I'm better than you. Don't you get it?"

"You just don't get it. I can't believe how frustrating you are. Why can't you just listen to me?"

It starts to all feel a little bit like this commercial, only not nearly as cute.



What does this accomplish? Both sides of any dichotomy are entrenched in any number of value based viewpoints of the world. Those values are important to the speaker and appealing to their intellect to see it another way isn't like to help. After all, they are trying to appeal to your intellect to see it another way. Are you listening or changing your mind?

What can one do? Our not so distant history is replete with examples of another way -- a nonviolent way. In his 1964 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, Martin Luther King Jr. said

Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. 

If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

So how exactly is a conservative Christian to set aside rejection and love someone who is a gay activist? How is a political liberal to set aside revenge against a political conservative (or vise-versa). Clearly conversations that sound something like a middle school lunch room conversation aren't going to help us rise up and transform ourselves from this mess.

Might the non-violent movement of the sixties and seventies offer us some answers? Might they offer a way for any individual to clearly show the travesties inflicted upon them without reducing themselves to inflicting travesties upon another?

I think so. Do you?

A few last thoughts from Martin Luther King's acceptance speech in Oslo.

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him orally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. 

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsom in the river of life unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. 

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is strong than evil triumphant.

What do you refuse to accept? Perhaps if just one of you walked the nonviolent path with a friend, they would be encouraged to do the same. They  might walk that same path with two of their friends, and so on, and so on, and so on...