what is a vegan?
Make it stand out
If we’re going to be friends, let’s get a couple things straight.
Veganism is the principle of the emancipation of animals from the exploitation of man.
I don’t want to go into the history of veganism too much, but that is the 1949 definition upon the founding of the Vegan Society, and I think it’s useful. I’m answering the question right off the bat, and we’re going to go quickly, so please stick it out to the end, to see why this definition still works today.
Americans are accused of being superficial, sometimes unfairly, but as a collective, we are kind of obsessed with diet and nutrition. The American life is one of contradiction. We consume fast food in unspeakable quantities, but we all want to look good in swimsuits and never get tired at work.
So, it’s no wonder we tend to focus on the vegan diet, which “denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”
After all, philosophy is hard. And yelling at each other about which Oreo cookie is more vegan is much more entertaining, albeit far less fulfilling.
Speaking of entertainment, stealing animals from the wild so that we can use them in movies isn’t vegan.
A lot of people will call veganism a lifestyle, but that’s only slightly truer than saying it’s a diet.
It’s a personal philosophy based on logical, ethical, and emotional appeals and conclusions.
Let’s make a philosophy of kindness sexy again!
The diet gets the most press because it’s the most obvious thing all vegans have in common. If we’re against the enslavement and exploitation of animals, we shouldn’t be torturing and killing them regardless of how engrained the practice might be in our cultures and traditions. And when you take on culture and tradition, you generally reap a whirlwind of controversy and vitriol.
This all begs a few questions:
Can you be a vegan who eats animals?
I guess you can be a person who is against animal exploitation who still exploits animals, but then you’re like a child-molester who is against child-molestation. Something doesn’t compute there. You might be a pragmatic monster against monstrous things like the CEO of Chevron giving his personal money to environmental causes whilst making business decisions to melt the planet, but then you’ve got other issues you and therapist need to explore, and I feel sorry for you. Consider someone like Thomas Jefferson who is remembered not for being against slavery, which he was, but for being a hypocrite who raped his slaves and continued to own slaves until his death. And in his will, he only freed seven of them.
I’m vegan for health reasons?
Nope. At best, you’re a person who follows a vegan diet for your own personal benefit. You might be a speciesist. You might be a person who never bothered to think about the plight of billions of voiceless sentient beings. Maybe now that your oncologist told you to “go vegan,” you’re learning about slaughterhouse horrors, and you’re finding out about the ethics behind veganism. That’s cool. You usually get a pass from most vegans because at least you’re not hurting animals anymore. But don’t let anyone catch you wearing leather lest you be called out in front of everyone you know.
What about the environment?!?!
You see this one a lot lately. Since the environment is something we all need to be talking about, we are finding out that the most wasteful and harmful thing humans do is eat animals. This one thing will destroy the planet, and if we all stopped eating animals, we could stop talking about 99% of planetary destruction. We could go back to thinking about being attacked by space aliens. You can care about the planet and then find out that animal exploitation is actually a huge cause of it and decide you’re against animal exploitation. That makes sense. You got here a bit circuitously, but oh well, welcome to the party. Sorry you got stuck in traffic.
In fact, welcome to the party, anyone who isn’t eating animals; thanks for taking the first step to being a decent human being.
But I would say a vegan diet is something you’d have to follow if you want to call yourself an environmentalist. That doesn’t mean you’re vegan. You can hang. But really, the argument is “if you’re an environmentalist, you follow a vegan diet”—NOT: “If you’re a vegan you’re an environmentalist.” But I’m a vegan and an environmentalist concurrently, not because one led to the other but because environmental carelessness and apathy toward animal suffering promotes tremendous oppression.
And here’s why:
My personal philosophy is one that I’ve worked on for a long time; early on I knew that I was against violence but most of all I was against oppression. Most folks claim to be all about freedom having never experienced the opposite. And since most people don’t read important books, they don’t even think about what oppression really means. I grew up in a way that was less than optimal, and I travelled the world and studied and read and explored religion and science and philosophy looking for answers to questions I didn’t know how to articulate.
But the answer materialized: I am a person who is defined not by the culture into which I was born but by the decisions I make as a rational agent, and if I am a person who is against slavery, oppression, violence, and cruelty, I need to rebel against those things and cease cooperating with them wherever feasible. And so, when people ask me if I’m vegan, I say “of course” because when I look at myself, there’s literally nothing else I could be without also being a liar and a hypocrite.
So Vegans are infallible human beings superior to everyone else?
No. Vegans are flawed humans who contradict themselves whilst navigating a world full of contradictions. There’s no such thing as a perfect vegan. And we argue constantly about what’s vegan and what isn’t vegan and what’s sorta vegan. But a vegan is someone who holds the principle of emancipation of animals from the exploitation of man.
No matter how you arrive at that principle, I personally appreciate you and commend you. The whole world is at stake and immeasurable suffering will be mitigated if you align your actions to this one principle.
So, thanks. Go vegan.
