Reflections on a Peter Singer interview

Every now and then I like to check the Point of Inquiry website to see if there are any shows that are relevant to my interests. Typically I search the episodes for anything to do with vegetarianism or anything else I feel departs from the typical hammering at the usual and all-too-familiar real life straw men/bogeymen who are the vindictively religious citizens of the world. (I prefer Pat Condell's commentary if I'm in the mood for that kind of thing. He's a vegan! Did you know that?) I found a recent Peter Singer interview:

http://www.pointofinquiry.org/peter_singer_vegetarianism_and_the_scientific_outlook/

After going over the obligatory Peter Singer interview basics (human fetus rights vs. animal rights, and stuff like that) the interview moves towards a topic which I am pretty sure all vegans are interested in, that being: Why aren't more people vegan? In particular, why aren't more "intelligent" people vegan? In other words, why aren't the people who are like "me" or "us" in every other way which makes "us" so great who happen to not be vegan, vegan? In the case of this interview, the "us" I am referring to is the atheist intellectual crowd, who tend to align themselves with the Darwinian point of view. Singer hones in on the Darwinian view of the world to make an argument for human-animal equality in this interview. In particular, the point of view that all life emerged from the same evolutionary processes, and humans are evolutionarily no more special than cows, seems to set everybody on this planet on a pretty level playing field morally. As creatures with (arguably) highly developed moral faculties, we should not recognize for ourselves a right, given this situation, to treat other creatures in just any way. We definitely should not be treating them the way we are today.

If the world were full of atheist intellectuals with Darwinian leanings, would this evolutionarily level moral playing field convince people to change their dietary habits, as Peter Singer seems to hope it would? I don't think so. I think that at one point in time it could have been a convincing argument, but moral arguments in hotly debated topics can be outdated as quickly as technology these days, in part thanks to technology. In the world of atheist message boards, where Singer's argument from evolution would be seemingly most accepted, it actually falls pretty flat due to the presumed scientifically valid idea that we are all hunter-gatherers who evolved eating meat. Several of the statements which I have seen on atheist message boards concerning the vegan debate fit this general mold: "If eating meat is better for me, me being an obligate omnivore, then I will continue to eat meat even if that means animals have to die." I understand why this argument is so convincing. After all, wouldn't it be immoral to deny our species the evolutionarily best possible diet, even if that diet contains meat?

I think that it would be immoral to tout an idealistic yet unhealthy diet in the same way I think it is immoral to tout some idealistic yet maddening hoity-toity way of living. The latter might produce the mental equivalent of a Patrick Bateman, while the former might produce the physical equivalent of a diseased person. However, I think the former does not reflect vegan diets. I've seen plenty of unhealthy vegans, and even more healthy ones. The difference between healthy and unhealthy vegans seems to be the amount of investigation and personal research they put into their diet. Vegan athletes like Brendan Brazier have put tremendous effort into finding just the right diet to maximize their athletic performance. Other healthy vegans have turned to the advice of vegan doctors like Dr. Neal Barnard, Dr. John McDougall, and Dr. Michael Greger, to find a diet that will allow them to live healthfully.

The assumption that a diet is unhealthy because it doesn't reflect exactly what we ate as hunter-gatherers is also flawed, though it is a well-intentioned, and even a decently reasoned assumption. The diet of our hunter-gatherer ancestors does differ from the vegan diet, but it also differs from the diets of our early civilization ancestors, which consisted mostly of grains, and the diets of our ape ancestors, which consist mostly of vegetation with insects and the occasional unlucky monkey. There have been many dietary changes for us evolved apes along the way, and our earliest ancestors were probably mostly vegetarian like the great apes. The hunter-gatherers' heavy reliance on meat was an adaptation which was fueled by the catalyst of weapon crafting, and it allowed them to survive in greater numbers. The early civilizations' heavy reliance on grain was an adaptation fueled by the catalyst of farming, and it allowed cities to grow and prosper. We're extremely adaptable creatures, and we can usually find something to subsist and thrive on in any environment.

Our adaptability aside, the question remains: Will a vegan diet be one on which all people alive today can thrive? Is it ethical to tout a vegan diet? At this point in my personal research into the diet I don't see why it would not be ethical to do so. The problems surrounding the diet today are lack of knowledge, lack of education, the presence of too much misinformation in the vegan info-sphere, and the insensitivity of vegans to those who are really concerned about their health on the diet in an education and knowledge-poor environment. In the online vegan info-sphere today, there are so many success stories, and so few honest accounts of people really struggling to make the diet work for them, outside of the accounts of those who have given up. That is the main reason why I was moved to create this blog; to present a different but but entirely workable version of the vegan diet for anyone who has struggled to stick with it.

This is the side of the story that I feel Peter Singer and a lot of other vegans have left out of their arguments, perhaps not choosing to acknowledge it because it is easier to focus on just the unethical points of eating meat, eggs, and dairy. It is easier to sweep the struggle under the rug and focus on the easy points. But, as in so many other aspects of human life, the mess under the rug is actually the real situation, sometimes in its entirety. Our focus elsewhere only causes us to live in a meek periphery, that is until the mess under the rug can no longer be ignored, and we have to deal with it.

In a nutshell, this blog is part of my effort to deal with that mess that I feel too many vegans ignore.