Jim posted a thoughtful response in the comments of my previous entry (“Who Are You?”) that naturally caused me to write a damn novel in response, so I’m posting it as a separate entry. And yes, I disagree with Jim on this. But I think he makes reasonable points that I want to address, at great and tiresome length, but also, I hope, convincingly.

Jim wrote:

I’m not sure there’s a most basic, elemental aspect of existence. But if there is, I’m not sure it’s food. I certainly agree that corporations aren’t looking out for us. They do produce a lot beyond food, however, and I’m not really sure that turning away from products like bottled water, movies, or alcohol results in any less or more liberation from corporation-influenced culture than turning away from factory-farmed meat. I can see why the idea that eating good food is the best thing you can do for yourself is appealing, but I don’t think it’s the foundation to happiness any more than any other healthy habit is. I’ve known people that are happy, at peace, and with a strong sense of self that have unhealthy diets that could be criticized from 50 different directions. Eating good food is good for you. But I think it’s up to you to make yourself happy with the health benefits you get from it. I have yet to see any indication it’ll do anything for your sense of satisfaction automatically.

Is Food Basic to Our Existence? Pants Says Yes

While I’d absolutely agree that food choices aren’t the only (or, for many people, the dominant) factor in one’s happiness or well-being, I maintain that food is the most basic universal element of human existence.

Yes, there are things like air and water that are more immediately necessary for life. And of course there are things like sex and money that are absolutely pervasive in our culture, social interactions, etc. (And it’s worth pointing out that all of those things can as easily fit into my point about “living your values” as food.)

But I can’t think of anything that is more fundamentally woven into more aspects of our lives — survival, culture, upbringing, well-being, entertainment, and social connections, among other things — than food. You can be asexual, apolitical, or care nothing for material possessions, but even if you only eat to live, you’ve still got to eat. And while I’ve encountered people who have no strong opinions about politics or religion, I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t harbor some strong opinion regarding food.

Just about every social gathering or celebration or holiday revolves around food. Every culture has food traditions that, in many cases, run deeper than all of its other traditions (as I’ve seen in myself and everywhere I’ve lived, descendants of immigrants who may no longer know the language or customs of their ancestors’ home country still recognize and cherish their food heritage).

One reason why I struggle with talking openly about vegan issues is that food, in proportion to its essentially benign nature, is an incredibly provocative, contentious topic, which I think points to how fundamental a role it plays in our lives. People fight over things like whether Chicago-style pizza is “real” pizza. It’s hard to even state an opinion about food without making someone defensive. Look at the most primal food issue: breastfeeding. I think it’s actually a federal law that any online mention of breastfeeding or mother’s milk vs. formula must immediately devolve into a vicious flame war.

And when you get into the “rightness” or “wrongness” of people’s food choices, that’s when things get really ugly. There are entire weblogs devoted to attacking particularly controversial diet plans. I’m not even going to get into the feuds that go on within vegan and animal rights communities.

Psychological issues with food are pandemic in our culture. Very few of us grow up without some kind of weird food-related emotional complex. Look in any bookstore, and see how many books there are about food-related issues compared to other topics: weight loss, eating disorders, disease-related diet plans, cookbooks, books on alternative diets, etc.

If there’s a subject that is more central to our daily lives, our thoughts, and our relationships with our families and loved ones than food, I simply have yet to see it.

Food and Happiness

There’s a 2003 Gallup poll that animal rights advocates point to often in discussions of Americans’ relationship with animals. Among other things, the poll finds that 96% of Americans believe “animals deserve at least some protection from harm and exploitation.” (25% say animals deserve “the exact same rights as people to be free from harm and exploitation.”) Sixty-two percent of Americans, in this poll, favor passing strict laws concerning the treatment of farm animals.

At the same time, 99% of animals raised for slaughter in the United States comes from factory farms. So it stands to reason that most of those people who are concerned about animal welfare, and who eat meat, are eating meat produced under conditions they oppose.

The notion that food issues underlie a vast American cultural malaise is sort of a pet theory that I’m still developing. It first occurred to me while I was watching the documentary Food, Inc. (Which, for those who haven’t seen it, is not a vegan film or specifically about meat, but a pretty damning look at our industrial food production system that is a must-see for anyone with any interest in what they’re eating.)

One of the segments in Food, Inc. is about a Latino working-class (or more accurately, “working poor”) family of four, and their struggle to eat healthy food on a limited budget. We see them shopping for groceries, and having to choose between what’s healthy and what’s cheap. (At one point, the daughter puts back a couple of pears and gets ground beef instead, because the beef is cheaper per pound than the pears.) The mother talks about how they end up eating fast food most of the time, because it’s cheaper and more convenient than trying to cook healthy meals at home.

We find out that the father is diabetic, and that they have to spend $400-500 per month on his medications. One of the children, we learn, is pre-diabetic. So they’re faced with a dilemma where they can’t afford healthy food because they have to pay for medications…for a disease that may well be caused by, or at the very least is worsened by, eating crappy food. They’re trapped in a vicious circle, and it’s heartbreaking to watch this family talk about how they are essentially at the mercy of a corporate-controlled food system that artificially makes unhealthy food cheaper (via subsidies) while causing healthier foods to be more expensive (via manipulation of food law).

The cherry on top of this shit sundae is that, as a result of all this corporate junk food consumption, we come down with diseases that we then treat with expensive medications generously offered to us by Big Pharma. We pay companies for the food, then we pay companies for the consequences of eating that food. Our exploitation at the hands of corporate America couldn’t be more complete!

This ties into what I hear all the time from people who are trying to eat healthy and ethically: they’d make better choices if they could, but it’s almost impossible given the situation we’re faced with. We’re essentially at the mercy of the factory food system. If farm animals that were truly humanely raised and killed with a minimum of suffering were widely available at affordable prices, I’d imagine every meat eater would choose that meat. But in our current system, this is a practical impossibility for the average person. Which forces people — even people who might limit or eliminate their meat consumption if it were affordable to do so — to participate in a system that is corrosive to their morality.

So, why is food, more than any other corporate-produced product that we consume, such a dominant factor in our (un)happiness, according to me? The number one reason is, see above: we have to feed ourselves. Name a non-food consumer product category that is actually required in order to live. (Breatharians may disagree with my premise.)

Other corporate-produced products — home electronics, movies, cars, etc. — we can avoid. You can buy some basic clothes from a thrift store and be presentable. We’re not as tied to those things as we are to that thing we actually need to sustain life. The effort it takes to remove yourself from the factory food system is vastly greater than for anything else. The extent to which our culture flows in this direction makes it incredibly difficult for anyone trying to swim in any other direction.

But that’s what makes the sense of liberation greater, when you actually do opt out of the system.

I want to make one thing completely clear: I didn’t become a vegan in order to achieve this liberation. It was a completely unintended consequence. It’s something I didn’t even perceive as a possibility until after I had made the decision, and then began to realize the true depth of the moral implications. But it’s really hard to communicate this to someone who hasn’t made the same choice, because you kind of have to experience it in order to understand it.

And another thing I’d like to clarify is that this is not a health issue, per se. There is a valid debate that can be had about whether or not meat can be part of a healthy diet. That’s not what I’m primarily concerned with in these two blog entries. What I’m talking about is not deriving happiness from improved health, but rather the morality of our food, and the values we apply to our food choices.

We can live perfectly happy, peaceful lives while making incredibly unhealthy choices. But I also believe that our level of happiness is directly related to how consistently we live according to our values. If you’re living in a way that drastically violates your morality or ethics, there’s no way you can honestly call yourself happy or at peace with yourself, unless you’ve compartmentalized your emotions so severely that you only exist in that small space that remains uncompromised.

Are there people who eat factory farmed meat and animal products who are perfectly happy? Of course. But of those people, I would ask: (1) how aware are they of the facts of how their food is produced? (2) being aware of those facts, is the welfare of the animals they consume an issue that is important to them? and (3) if it is an important issue, do they believe their overall well-being, even if it is currently good, could be improved even further by making choices more aligned with their moral priorities?

I really hope this doesn’t sound like I’m trying to judge anybody, because I’m not. This is not about applying my values to other people, but observing how other people apply their own values to their own lives. Some people don’t place a high moral value on animal welfare. Many people don’t invest very much meaning in their food at all, so animal welfare as it pertains to food doesn’t even become an issue for them. While I personally disagree, I can accept that people have a right to their own system of values. My discussion is really more about those people who do care about food in this way than those who don’t.

For me, the most profound realization I’ve had since making the decision to go vegan is that my food choices are inseparable from both physical health and moral/spiritual well-being. A year or so ago, when H and I “went raw,” that was a vegan diet, but my own reasons for doing it had nothing to do with animal welfare. I did it strictly for physical and mental health.

And it didn’t last, because I was constantly plagued, from the beginning, with temptation and feelings of deprivation, specifically centering around meat. So when I was presented with meat-based temptations, I freely gave in, because there was nothing stopping me from doing so but health considerations — and I do plenty of unhealthy things in life, so what the hell?

Since I’ve gone vegan this time around, I actually haven’t felt much temptation at all. And when I do, it’s extremely easy to deal with. Why? Because this time there is a moral and ethical component to my decision not to consume animals or animal products. Because of my constant awareness that I am much happier when I am living consistently with my values . None of the animal-based foods I used to enjoy give me pleasure that compensates for how I feel when I am morally compromised. And the spiritual and moral fulfillment I feel living this lifestyle more than satisfies whatever sense of deprivation I might otherwise feel.

It goes without saying, or ought to, that I’m far, far from perfect, and that I don’t ever live 100% consistently with my beliefs. But going vegan has brought me closer to that ideal than almost any other decision I’ve made in my life.

I’m up way past my bedtime, but I didn’t want to let the day pass without saying something about Howard Zinn, the legendary historian and progressive activist, who died today of a heart attack at 87.

For those who may not be familiar with Zinn’s work, he’s probably best known for his book A People’s History of the United States, a kind of alternative take on American history from a perspective that’s rarely (if ever) taught in schools. If history is written by the winners, Zinn’s book is a history written on behalf of the “losers” — from the native Americans exploited and murdered by Christopher Columbus’s crew to the workers crushed beneath the boots of the Robber Barons of the 19th century, through the labor and anti-war activists of the 20th century.

It’s a brutal, but completely factual and matter-of-factly delivered overview of American history, that exposes the grimy reality behind the burnished romantic glow of the rah-rah “official” history we’ve all been fed. I first encountered the book in my 20s, and it absolutely blew my mind. I have no idea what they teach in elementary and high schools today, but back in my day, the American history we received was very much of the patriotic, “greatest nation on Earth” perspective, with the less-savory bits sort of gingerly and briefly dealt with as unfortunate aberrations in an otherwise heroic and noble saga.

It was Zinn who opened my eyes to the ways in which the history of America is a history of wealthy, powerful forces consolidating and cultivating their power and undermining the forces of social justice. As an immigrant to this country who will forever be grateful to have grown up with all the resources and benefits of living in the United States, it was hard to face the unpleasant truth about the horrible things this country has done in the name of its citizens. But I feel I’m a wiser and more enlightened citizen for that knowledge. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

I pay tribute to Howard Zinn on this weblog because, although I have no idea whether or not Zinn was a vegetarian or what his views on animal rights were, I do know that Zinn and those who support animal rights share a common value — speaking truth on behalf of the powerless and voiceless. Zinn was an iconoclast who championed positions on civil rights and pacifism that were, at the time, deeply unconventional and unpopular. Most of all, though, he was a person of compassion and generosity, who inspired legions of admirers.

To me, Howard Zinn represents everything I aspire to be, as a vegan and as a human being. Anyone else who, like Zinn, spent a lifetime immersed in the most depressing, inhumane aspects of human history, speaking out against towering forces of injustice in front of a mostly apathetic, unaware populace, would likely end up a discouraged cynic. But Zinn was never cynical or hopeless. As disappointed as he could be with the failures of our political leaders, he held steadfast to his belief in the ability of ordinary people to make a difference in the face of overwhelming power:

The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth. Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson — that everything we do matters — is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back.

Howard Zinn also left us this, some of the most moving and inspirational words I’ve ever read:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

I can’t think of a better summation of the moral impulse that underlies veganism. We live in a society dominated by industrial animal agriculture, an institution that is easily as vile and inhuman as anything this country has produced in its history. When I think about the fact that factory farming continues to expand, that global meat production is expected to double in the next ten years, I feel depressed.

But Howard Zinn reminds me that we can choose how we live our lives in the face of cruelty and the worst of human nature. Zinn embodied that truth, as an example of the good people can do when they choose to live the way they think human beings should live.