Primitivism vs Veganism vs Realism
by ecoethicalvegan
The clock will never dial back to primitivism (one where we have a hunter or two in every family or compound of families with several hunters) it’ll lead right back to where we are now (history already bears this out)
It’s not as though everyone on the planet is going to have a paradigm shift in thinking ‘en masse’ and say we’re destroying the planet environmentally so let’s all be farmers and hunters and destructure our cities. Sustainability and ecological survival has to go hand in hand with technological and scientific advancement in addition to curtailing the growth of the human population and we have to bring water to regions where there is none.
In addition to the above, veganism needs a broader baseline in order to ‘attract’ more followers/adherents/people, for example making it less restrictive when it comes to using commodities like bone char filtered sugar or isinglass/egg white fined guinness etc or the recognition of different levels of veg*n not being viable to the vegan police
The vegan police have to recognise that the whole of mankind will never all be vegan (Realism) and learn to live with and not alienate non-vegans by making veganism unattainable. (this particular point is paramount if vegans want numerical growth)
If sustainability and the preservation of our environment is the endgame then veganism has got to be more inclusive not exclusive. What I’m proposing is something akin to vegetarianism. e.g. ‘pescevegan’ ‘ovovegan’ ‘ecovegan’ ‘dietaryvegan’ etc.
So instead of berating someone for where they draw the line, we should be welcoming them into the ‘vegan’ club, why? because there is political strength in numbers.
Yes No Maybe?
ecoethicalvegan 
In my mind, veganism and vegetarianism have always been terms people take liberties with in defining and identifying with. I’ve never given up honey and regularly snag packages of white sugar from the 7-11, but still consider myself a vegan. In terms of getting people interested in veganism, my bigger worry is it is relegated to the demographic ghetto of white, middle-class progressives. More than the vegan police, the inability for mostly White vegans and vegetarians to provide culturally welcoming environments for Black and Brown people will keep our numbers small.
Thanx for your thoughts on expanding veganism across cultural white vegan/people of colour/socioeconomic lines. It’s not something I have ever given any thought to in the past.
Having said that, something I have experienced ‘online’ personally and seen with others is the visceral like reaction to calling oneself vegan when saying you eat white sugar. It seems to me to be counter productive within even the middle-class progressives that you mention, to the extent that it stifles growth amongst them too.
The purpose of my blog is to make veganism attainable to a greater/broader scope of demographic. In order to accomplish this I feel I ‘have’ to reinvent veganism. What I mean by that is that keeping within it’s basic framework of not abusing food animals and seeing them as sovereigns of their own bodies, I’d like to be ‘real’ about it and except that the vast majority of people will never feel the way I do.
What can I do about this? My answer is to expand the baseline and make it accessible to people much like yourself, someone that hasn’t cut out honey (‘you’ include yourself as ‘vegan’ yet the term for vegan doesn’t include you, you are an omni according to ‘The Vegan Society)
Thanx for your comments here, I feel that ‘progressive conversation’ is the door that will lead to better choices for our health, that of the ‘other people, food animals and culturally diverse demographics’ and that of our environment.
While I’d like to see the vegan world expand greatly, I don’t believe blurring the definition of the word “vegan” so we can get more folks under our umbrella is the answer. For me, veganism is “the” moral base line that has to be drawn in the sand before I can even attempt to stand my ground against the onslaught of what we’re up against.
There’s simply no reason to eat animal products in our current social order. If it all comes tumbling down and we find ourselves once again thrown into the natural order of things, then I’d definitely reevaluate my position, until then I believe we need to hold the line.
There are at least a couple of ways to answer this.
First of all there is no way we/vegans can control what happens with the word vegan, look what happened with vegetarianism e.g. semi vegetarian, lacto ovo vegetarian, ovo vegetarian, pesce vegetarian, vegetarians that eat chicken (polloveg) vegetarians that only eliminate red meat (sometimes) and the list and nuances go on and on.
Whether we/me/you/vegans like it or not veganism has already gone the way of vegetarianism. There are beegans (self explanatory) semi vegans, dietary vegans, ethical vegans, I know pesce vegans, and that list goes on and on too. No matter how much we/vegans try to rein in the definition, pop culture will define it the way they define it.
Where does this leave us? you see me as blurring the definition of vegan, I see something else. I see the opportunity to use the term vegan in a context that it hasn’t as yet been used (and I will explain further down in this response).
We both have very similar aspirations in that we both want an end to the suffering and commoditisation of nonhumans. Your way ‘traditional veganism’ as defined by ‘The Vegan Society’ is how I’ve conducted myself since becoming vegan 3-1/2 years ago and I mean to the letter of the vegan law/definition. However after much and I mean much deliberation and a volumes worth of discussions across the internet and with ‘real people’ face to face I have decided to ‘break’ from traditional veganism.
In calling myself an ecoethicalvegan I have redifined myself in a way that I didn’t realise at first that I was doing. I hope this link https://ecoethicalvegan.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/reinventing-vegan/ to another post of mine clears things up for you in a way that you can see where I am coming from, if not I’d be happy to elaborate further.
Thanx for ‘your’ thoughts on ‘my’ thoughts, it’s only by sharpening our swords ‘steel on steel’ that something as serious an issue as the life and death of the ‘other’ sentient beings on this rock can be given the due process it deserves.
[…] Could we please just all agree on what we are and what we aren’t? I understand the need to want to evangelize and broaden our appeal, but something as sacred as veganism deserves to be clearly defined. You either are or you aren’t. Seems pretty clear to me. As I stated earlier today on a readers blog, […]
[…] Could we please just all agree on what we are and what we aren’t? I understand the need to want to evangelize and broaden our appeal, but something as sacred as veganism deserves to be clearly defined. You either are or you aren’t. Seems pretty clear to me. As I stated earlier today on a reader’s blog, […]
Checked out your link- intelligent, well-reasoned points. Yet, at this stage in my vegan evolution, I feel the need to fight for clarity and purity in defining veganism and really despise where popular culture is taking things. I respect you as a creative realist and appreciate your position, but can’t join you just yet. In a world gone to hell, I need to believe there’s one place I can stand untainted for the moment.
It’s all good (at least ‘I’ think so) I don’t think it’s ‘my way or the highway’ I do think a multi faceted approach of ‘vegetarianism’ veganism’ ‘ecoethical veganism’ will help towards a ‘critical mass’ level where there will be enough ‘carers’ onboard to facillitate political influence, which I feel is necessary to make a difference.
I wish you the best on your conscientious journey & look forward to more of your posts!
No, we can’t all just agree on what we are and what we aren’t. I think there are too many people who choose to find shelter under the the roof of veganism to do that. I don’t want you or anyone else to tell me what I am. I know what I am. I don’t want to tell you what you are. If you want to cal yourself a vegan but last week ate a salad that had some cheese on it, who am I to tell you that that is somehow wrong, and makes you less of a vegan than I am. With all due respect, if you attempt to tell me what is and isn’t vegan, I will tell you to f.o.
I’m not sure uglicoyote if it was me you were responding to however in the event that you are, then my answer is as follows.
You can choose to call yourself vegan if you like, or not and I can do the same. However, ‘words’ do have meanings, if they didn’t then this would be the end of any useful discussion on any argument/point of view.
For the purposes of accuracy in debate ‘words’ have to have some kind of meaning. For example, in your example of a person eating a salad last week that had cheese on it I would say that there is already a term for that, that is, a ‘vegetarian’ to be more accurate, a ‘lacto vegetarian’
To take this even further, if you/someone were exactly ‘like’ the term as proposed by ‘The Vegan Society’ suggests except that you/someone purposely chose to eat cheese then I would more accurately describe you as a ‘lacto vegan’ or generally call you/someone ‘vegan’ with the caveat of ‘lacto’
I’m not sure if I was able to express myself on the importance of the integrity of the ‘meaning’ of words but I hope you see where I am coming from.
I’m not out to ‘police’ you, nor could I The purpose of my post is to broaden the baseline of ‘veganism’ to include exactly the example you suggested, hopefully I did that in my response to you, if not let me know and I’ll try harder.
Thanx for your thoughts on my thoughts 🙂
Actually, there already are a lot of People of Colour who are vegan and who are doing a lot of good advocacy on their own. (Though I agree with the commentor who pointed out the need for white vegans to make inclusive spaces in their activist communities!) To think that veganism is a bastion of rich whites is very much a fallacy, especially when the majority of world cultures have dominantly vegetarian cuisines. The problem is that the whites are the ones who get a lot of the attention in the media, and that calling veganism ‘elitist’ and only for the rich is a good way to discredit it as a genuine social movement and one that could be extremely valuable to People of Colour. Take for example Breeze Harper’s sharp critique of Black Soul Food and the way it’s destroying the people; Harper advocates veganism as a way of “decolonializing the diet”. Cheap, nutritionally-void calories are the product of White america and they’re becoming a global problem; land-grabs for cattle pasture lead to oppression of indigenous people worldwide. Just a few examples of how veganism and antiracism are allies, not opposites!
As for your main question, I understand your frustration with ‘vegan police’ and those who push veganism further and further away from people’s comprehension by focusing more and more minutely on all the by-products and things we have to exclude. On the other hand, though consumer culture will water-down and muddy-up what it means to be vegan, it doesn’t mean that we should cave to that. The diluted reflection of veganism that we find in clebrity mags and pop culture gives us a chance in the conversation to clarify and explain what veganism is really about: refusing to exploit other beings. For that reason, most people who adhere to veganism will evolve on certain points, eventually giving up honey as they understand that bees are feeling beings with complex societies, whose confinement makes them prey to disease and early death, and that harvesting honey even by the most gentle methods disturbs and often crushes the insects, while leaving them without the food they have collected for themselves. It took me a long time, but I’m finally consistent in my diet and my clothing, and not because I fear the ‘vegan police’ but because it feels right to be completely consistent with my beliefs.
I don’t judge people who are doing their best to be vegan but have occasional lapses, or can’t figure out where to get non-leather shoes to beat the leather ones they’ve been wearing the last 5 years. There’s no reason that those people can’t call themselves vegan. As for others, it’s wonderful that people are so interested in veganism that they try to adopt the label ‘where they are’ (as pesco-vegans?), so let’s give them the support and inspiration to go the rest of the way in fully embracing this ethical commitment to non-harm.
I’m not sure that I’m going to succeed in effectively responding to you but I’m going to at least try.
I don’t see what I’m proposing as ‘caving’, I want to use the term ‘ecoethical vegan’ to mean something ‘other’ than ‘The Vegan Societies’ interpretation. I have a problem with what I’ll call ‘traditional veganism’
You said…. “I don’t judge people who are doing their best to be vegan but have occasional lapses, or can’t figure out where to get non-leather shoes to beat the leather ones they’ve been wearing the last 5 years. There’s no reason that those people can’t call themselves vegan”
My problem is not with your above interpretation or way of ‘seeing’ someone as vegan despite some lapses or non adherence to the traditional vegan ideal, my problem is with The Vegan Societies (TVS) and that of the ‘vegan police’ (VP) dogmatic interpretation of what it/they see as nonhuman animal exploitation, which in my view is unreasonably dogmatic and stifling to many possible future veg*ns. For example using recycled leather or wool products such as jackets, shoes, gloves etc, In the next paragraph I’ll give you an example.
If someone ‘a vegan’ decides to buy a pair of leather boots from a yard sale that may otherwise be trashed one day, or that same vegans grandmother wants to pass down a wool cap that she had for many years, then both TVS & VP would not welcome that person as a vegan anymore, they in fact ‘would no longer be vegan’. In actuality that vegan has done nothing exploitative in buying used leather boots, on the contrary, the vegan may feel that leather boots are more comfortable (this is a very subjective belief) to her and may feel that leather boots last longer too. So instead of buying leather boots from a regular store where that pair of boots would be replaced with another pair and thus start the whole cycle of supply and exploitation again, the vegan found a solution that provides her need for good footwear and hasn’t contributed to the exploitative supply cycle of kill/skin/make leather boots and sell them for a profit.
You could say that it’s also about perception, i.e. how does it look to a nonvegan when you say I’m vegan but I wear leather. If a nonvegan asks why the vegan wears leather boots, then it’s simple enough to say ‘I only wear recycled leather because I don’t want to contribute to the further exploitation of animals by buying new boots from a shoe store’. It also shows concern for the environment. You could also look at it this way; I have a pair of non leather boots (I’m talking about myself personally) that I defy anyone to be able to tell that they are not leather. Everyone that meets me sees the fake leather boots and at some level it underpins their belief that it’s ok to wear leather boots. Both scenarios show a concern for non exploitation to animals, but only one shows an alternative to someone wanting to buy leather boots, and after all that’s what veganism should mean, it (veganism) shouldn’t mean being dogmatic despite non exploitative options being available and thus not being able to call oneself ‘vegan’ and in addition adding another layer of difficulty in becoming vegan.
I could provide other examples of vegan dogma but I’ll put that on hold for another time. It’s precisely that mindset that made me dig deeper into why I chose to be vegan originally. I am proposing for those that are interested in being vegan that they still can be, but that they can choose to say I’m not ‘the traditional vegan’ but that “I’m an ecoethical vegan”, a vegan that not only doesn’t exploit or abuse sentient beings but one that also puts the environment at equal consideration, after all what are we (humans and nonhumans) without a stable ecosystem.
There are additional criteria about ‘ecoethicalveganism’ that I intend to elaborate on within this blog and in my conversations elsewhere with others that are interested in not exploiting nonhumans. I also think there’s a place for both of us, Traditional Vegans and Ecoethical Vegans and hopefully we can both thrive and help bring to an end the misery that is the life cycle of the nonhuman animal.
ok that’s my diatribe for now…..namaste!