Brass Tacks: Reducetarian Pragmatism vs. Vegan Optimism.

Peter singers book Animal Liberation
came out in the 1970s PETA came around in 1980 so groups and advocates have been at this for decades and yet the percentage of people in the United States who are vegetarian has basically not changed at all so it really is time for us to reconsider our message reconsider our advocacy and do something that has a chance of being different that has a chance of breaking through to the general public because we know just by looking at the graphs just by looking at the numbers that we have been failures at this so far in veganism in 2017 I would say that the more political you are the more explicitly and overtly political you are in your approach to veganism the more optimistic you are and this is brought to my mind by recent challenges to vegans I've seen by reduced Aryans and recent responses of veganism against the newly organized voice of reduced arianism seem reduced at arianism I think the name the word almost began as a joke but this year we've seen formal conferences of reduce at Aryans and we've seen people including X vegans or people who are vegan but we were X vegan activists saying that they're switching to a reduced Tyrian approach there's one guy who got 800,000 views on a video on YouTube I can provide a link below he has a website and some kind of organization called one step for animals everyone has met a vegan who has been rude to them or who has been you know outrageous or just angry or yelling at them we are driving people away we are driving people back to eating meat I think he is vegan personally but he gave up on vegan activism because he thinks it's ineffective he thinks it's a failed paradigm and he's instead now advocating a form of reduce at Arianism what some friends and I decided is we should take a different approach rather than just pushing veganism we should take the opportunity that people have to take one step that will have a profound impact on the number of animals suffering now this is an interesting challenge for vegans to respond to and I think it's very instructive to see how someone like your friends struggles to respond to the the competitive answer offered by reduced arianism the competitive solution to the same set of problems reduced Syrians will frequently offer arguments along these lines they will claim that it is better to have 10,000 people who are 50% vegan or vegan who are reducing their meat consumption by 50% or being a favorite of them that that will have more of an impact than having just one thousand people who are a hundred percent vegan who are perfectly disciplined who are highly in their own lifestyle habits consumption what-have-you and of course if you're just measuring the impact in aggregate on the number of animals being slaughtered the amount of water being used or other resources being used of course there's a simple mathematical sense in which that's true and I do think that other vegan leaders like Gary France don't have trouble addressing that and I do think that some vegans are going to be seduced so to speak to come over to the reduce Italian side whether or not they themselves go back to eating meat that what they advocate what they preach and how they how they conduct outreach how they reach out to meat eaters they may start to frame their engagement in their discourse in terms of reduced Arianism rather than asking for people to get engaged with you know the core ethical concept of veganism to adjust their own lifestyles to reflect that so-called moral baseline gary france aione it's a favorite term so some of the questions are about effectiveness some of the questions are about the past failures of veganism some of the questions get framed in terms of the the psychological perception of vegans themselves vegans being perceived as a threat by meat-eaters you know this video that had over 800,000 views it certainly states the problem as being that veganism itself is somehow too challenging or too offensive they show video clips of a specific vegan activist group called DXE direct action everywhere in contrast to how supposedly nice and friendly reduce adherence and as an agenda Haley this is misleading a number of ways including the fact that ultimately reduced Aryans are still telling people that eating meat is bad and evil and wrong they're just proposing a different solution or a different way to mitigate the damage and evils of the industry they're just not proposing veganism their proposed proposing that you eat less meat rather than than zero but actually the type of confrontations involved will be be similar it's interesting to note that these two groups so one is called one step for animals in the other equal direct action everywhere have a playlist for them quite a few videos commenting to our attention everywhere one step for animals fundamentally is based in a sense of frustration of pessimism that veganism is a movement is failed by or is failing that it has been a failure that decades and decades of animal rights activism has sort of come to nothing that only 2% of people are vegan which is a very generous estimate by the way I think in reality the fewer than 2% of people vegan but in what a tiny tiny minority of people are vegan and that the movement is going nowhere whereas there's this supposedly untapped potential of reduce at arianism to really change the world to really impact to really mitigate how much meat people are eating around 2% of people are true vegetarians there have been a number of studies the most recent by for analytics that shows over 80% of people who go vegetarian go back to eating animals and almost half of the people surveyed on this say that they go back because they can't stand the pressure to maintain a pure diet and so when we're pushing people to eat the way we eat we are driving people away we are driving people back to eating meat but this guy took on this direction where he's just asking people to quit eating chicken not beef not fish oddly where he's just tackling the ethics of how chicken is produced and asked people to stop eating chicken and he's taking a reduced terian approach rather than a Pro vegan approach out of frustration and on the other hand we can say that the group he's contrasting himself to at least in this one video where he's saying that vegans have this negative and combative and rude and insulting impact on people he's contrasting himself to direct action everywhere direct action everywhere and their unique method of protest and social engagement they call disruption disruptive activism but they use the term disruption that also was entirely founded and defined in terms of frustration with the mode of vegan activism they have been engaged in before that they thought wasn't worrying specifically the founder Wayans young he had been handing out cookies and pamphlets and inviting people to come to documentary film nights especially in university campuses and after some number of years of doing this he sat down and did the math and he said this is a huge amount of effort with very little outcome and his frustration with that led him in another direction so they're both examples of how frustration with what you recognize is not working in vegan activism can lead you to ask new questions find new answers take on new directions and new and new methods it is what it is in this case I think both responses are wrong and the challenge posed by reducing arianism itself I think leads us to take on you know new directions ask new questions etc I think I'm fundamentally more optimistic than any of these people and I'm fundamentally more optimistic than carry frenzy on a want to see him wrestling with Rotarians because I really believe in the agency of the people involved I believe in the political agency of small groups of people getting organized if you want a great example of that kind of somewhat terrifying example you can look at the history of how the United States of America a small number of housewives managed to make alcohol illegal this is the era that's called prohibition if you look at a full copy of the United States Constitution read the Constitution from beginning to end this is not just a law this is a constitutional amendment to make alcohol illegal in the United States and it's still in there it's still in the Constitution and there's a later amendment that revises it almost gets rid of it there's still a few counties in America well goes legal a small number of opinionated highly organized people with a highly unpopular opinion and the vast majority of Americans did not want alcohol to become illegal in the United States but this minority of people made it happen not just as a law and not just as a government policy but as constitutional amendment now in some ways that's a positive example in some ways that's a negative example but it is remarkable it means very well document for sure these were this is a time when women are considered relatively oppressed and voiceless but this is it these were actually predominantly women's groups that adjectives for God organized and pressed for this legal amendment that wasn't by a larger disaster but they changed the law and they they imposed their views and their opinions on the majority that's supposed to be a rare and unknown thing and you know Western capitalist democracies but it happens why just because they thought it was the right thing to do just cuz they thought that a moral argument for temperance as they called it not not drinking not drinking much alcohol reduce it Arianism or drinking alcohol at all now there are other more moderate examples of more durable impacts but I like to draw people's attention the fact that a very very small percentage of Americans ever cared about seatbelts about making seatbelts mandatory in cars there's a specific political figure called Ralph Nader who's also remembered for his environmental advocacy and running for president it states the Ralph Nader originally became famous the United States he made his name by going around and lobbying on this issue that every car should have seatbelts at the time they didn't what percentage of Americans do you think really cared about passing laws to force car companies to FC votes do you think it was 1% do you think it was 2% you think was 5% now passively maybe 50% of Americans could recognize that yeah using seatbelts would be a good thing to do no harm' leakes does some good etc right well there's a further element here of coercion having laws that force people to use seatbelts as individuals not just the automotive companies of people to wear seatbelts and that threatened you with a fine with a fine or a day in jail or something if you're riding around without Seefeld on so there are elements of personal inconvenience their elements of coercion and what-have-you not just inconvenience for the the automotive company and the United States of America like many Western democracies went through a kind of strange process of courting public opinion and of small lobby groups courting government of public influence and private private interests being balanced and in the end most Western democracies have made seatbelts a universal requirement of cars and have made the mandatory for drivers if not drivers and passengers to be wearing seatbelts at all times now again my fundamental point is not that 99% of people were opposed to seatbelts and only 1% of people wanted them and cared it's not the case at all probably less than 1% of people really cared about that issue passionately either which way the vast majority people were indifferent to it and that's the situation veganism is in it's not the case that the vast majority of meat eaters eat and revile veganism or hate our ecological arguments hate our health based arguments or hate the animal rights arguments the vast majority of people are not anti vegan they are just absolutely fundamentally indifferent in the same way that they would be indifferent to seatbelts and probably they shrug their shoulders and say oh you're gonna do something good for the environment ok oh you're gonna do something good for human health ok oh you're gonna do something good for animal rights or for animals and in some sense this is really the contest and the situation we're in and why I regard reduced arianism so differently the reduced staring argument again 10,000 people who are 50% vegan are gonna have more of an impact in the reduced Aryans claim than just 100 people who are 100% vegan my view is the exact opposite because what we don't need are a thousand people who are wishy-washy or indifferent what we need are small groups of people a hundred people here a hundred people there who are highly organized highly able to lobby government highly able to influence public policy decisions 100 people who are all 100% vegan if they show up at the school board any school board a hundred people have a big impact in the school work school boards in Canada will respond to a few dozen people who are members of a small ethnic minority a small religious minority you have a group like the Sikhs a group of the Yazidi you have you know various small religious groups in some suburb of Toronto and they'll show up and they will Lobby the school board and say look these are our concerns but what is or isn't in the curriculum how they are aren't represented or something or about the problems their own students are having due to religious observances or religious holidays whatever it is you would be surprised a few dozen people can influence a local school board if you have 100 who are really consistently and in a way that's logical and moral and respectable and so on showing up the school board and saying look what you're teaching about milk this is scientifically false what you're teaching about eggs about eating chicken eggs this is scientifically false and this is based on propaganda produced by these industries and if you're gonna adopt this then you know why shouldn't we wash it and we teach the cigarettes are healthy you know you think 100 people 100 percent vegan can't have an impact on a school board on a local mayor level government we had an example of that Berkeley California of Berkeley making fir illegal to buy and sell fur but not leather interestingly so you know a local city government taking up that ordinance for ethical grounds because of the number of vegans who now live in Berkeley California which includes direct action everywhere by the way I think Wayne Siong himself is now living in Berkeley California now again some vegans are against that kind of Singler should cause lobbying and so on but with all those digression aside fundamentally I'm reminded of my own optimism about veganism as a movement my optimism for the future by these conflicts between vegans and reduced Aryans these questions about effective activism that go on within the movement to some extent are stealing people away from the movement to take on new and different texts and approaches because I believe that small groups of people can make a big difference can make a big impact but those small groups of people can't be 50% vegan or 50% reduce at arian they kind of sort of care some of the time what you need are groups of people who are highly committed highly disciplined in terms of the time they're willing to put in whether that's at City Hall or at the school board or maybe it's a conservation based group that involves a particular River or a particular forest you know etc all those things take a lot of time and energy and I can't imagine those being built on people who have a wishy-washy commitment to veganism where they know it's wrong and they know it's bad but they're still willing to buy a leather couch or they're still willing to eat meat a couple of times a year that future and that kind of organization absolutely has to be based on a type of commitment above and beyond merely maintaining a 100% vegan diet uh so that's what I have to say I think the more overtly political you are in veganism in 2017 the more optimistic you're gonna be because you won't feel that were a powerless minority of 1% adrift in the world or a powerless minority of 2 percent whatever a statistic you want to use you won't view the struggle of veganism as a hopeless struggle to try to get from 1 percent to 100 percent that's not my struggle and I don't see the struggle of veganism in terms of struggle to get you know billions of animals being killed down to half as many billions of animals being Till killed I don't see it in that way I see it as a much more immediately attainable goal of organizing those groups of 10 people here and a hundred people there that can have a big impact on specific issues whether it's a specific school board a specific River a specific slaughterhouse a specific racetrack whatever that issue to tackle might be that small numbers of people with high levels of commitment high levels of self-discipline hopefully high levels of education can really have an impact in this world especially when they have a cause that appeals to people's ethical sense of right and wrong we've got a lot more going for us then the then the seat belt movement ever did really we do this is a lot more weight is a lot more meaning in people's lives we have a lot more going for us than the temperance movement never did that ended up with a disastrous example of the United States making alcohol illegal but throughout history small minorities highly organized can make a big impact and we can too