breadandbutta

Will Tuttle proposes that all the violence, exploitation, and dysfunction we experience in our society has its origin in what he calls the "herding culture", our millennia-long practice of using animals for food. It's a compelling idea, and I read the entire book to see where he was going with this. As a long-time vegan, I'm well aware of the horrendous cruelty we inflict in raising, confining, and torturing animals in factory farms; Tuttle's chapters describing this are vivid and convincing. That our collective health suffers greatly from eating animal products is also well-established. He points out the depth of invisibility and unquestioned support that characterizes meat-eating and animal exploitation. I liked his chapters on the role of religion and science in this, and his description of his own personal journey. By emphasizing the spiritual aspect, he inspires as well as informs. However, I still have doubts about whether some aspects of social dysfunction and even violence would be eliminated if everyone became vegan. For example, Tuttle writes that our high incidence of family breakdown is caused by our breaking up families of farm animals, that we are stressed because we stress animals, that overconsumption of unnecessary goods would disappear among vegans. I see family breakdown as a result of young people moving far away from elders, the perceived or actual necessity of two incomes, and no social glue to help couples stay together. Stress comes from our strong individualism that resists compromise, from commuting and job dissatisfaction or job loss, from relationship fragility, from needing surplus money to enable status-related consumption, and from debt, among other factors. As for that overconsumption, a brief look at vegetarian magazines shows numerous ads for luxury goods and the encouragement of planet-threatening long distance air travel merely for pleasure. Regarding violence in an all-vegan society, even if we determined never to undertake an offensive war, might we retaliate if attacked by a brutal (non-vegan) regime? Might there still be crimes of passion? Because even vegans disagree on some of these points, this turned out to be an excellent choice for our Well-Read Veg book club.

2020-09-15 01:44