Why I Should Go Vegan But Haven't

Yet again, my mind and heart don't match- I intellectually "get" veganism but don't need to become vegan to sleep at night.

Now she can help me sleep at night...by bringing a vegetable midnight snack!

I haven't written anything on here in a while. The usual self-criticism and analysis-paralysis can always get in the way of just writing, but with my blog, simply logging in forces me to confront the hard reality - instead of just worrying that I'm shallow and pedantic, there's actual written evidence that I'm shallow and pedantic.

As usual, I'm getting my butt in gear because of a girl. A colleague, compatriot, and companion requested that I lay out my conflicted attitudes towards veganism, and speciesism - so I know at least one person will read this, so here goes.

Vegan is a relatively recently coined term for those who, in addition to being vegetarian, forgo the use of all animal products. So, in contrast to pescetarians who still eat fish, or vegetarians who still eat milk and eggs, vegans forgo all of that. No products resulting from animal suffering. Their reasons are many, and really hard to argue against - both pragmatically and ethically.

This adorable moment is just before the calf was pulled away from its mother to be used for veal.

The pragmatic objection: we get animal products through means ranging from the unsustainable to the downright nefarious. The methane from cow farts, burps, and manure is contributing to global warming more than vehicle emissions. Most of food mega-industry puts profits before provision and is unconcerned with how food processing depletes food's nutritional value.

The ethical objection: it should be a dealbreaker that we get animal products through animal suffering. Chickens are crammed into cages where they cannot move. Cows are abused and mothers and offspring are separated so the industry machine can roll on. (Google it if you want to feel terrible.) Even a humanely killed cow or chicken is still being killed so that we can eat it- when it doesn't need to die at all.

I put this cuddly calf here to emotionally manipulate you into not enjoying your next hamburger.

That is the crux of a more involved problem with "speciesism". Speciesism is a label for the belief that the rights, well-being, and non-suffering of human beings is more important than that of non-human beings. Animal liberationists call into question whether "speciesism" is really a fair justification for what we do to animals. We seek to prevent suffering for humans, but why not non-humans? Who decided that animals matter less?

If animals are capable of feeling pain in the same way that we are - does this suffering mean less just because they're a different species?

To get theological, does Baby Jesus cry more tears over a suffering human than a suffering cow, or doesn't every part of God's creation matter to God? (Well, plenty of believers talk about humans having "dominion" over the earth and God giving us animals to eat - but I'd fire back that in the Garden of Eden, people were vegetarians, and the Old Testament God only permitted people to eat meat later as a concession. Christian vegetarians would agree.) Or, taking God out of it, if all consciousness is way for the cosmos to know itself, why are humans better than chickens?

Crucial to the argument is the fact that people don't "need" to kill animals for food anymore. Early in human evolution, around the time we were bashing each other's skulls in to survive, we also had to bash in other animals' skulls to survive. But, just as we developed society to avoid bashing each other's skulls in, so have we developed agriculture and food infrastructure that means we no longer have to do things that way. We've also developed ways to make food that is delicious without using animal products.

Or we have food that's "accidentally" vegan because the artificial flavors include no dairy or eggs.

So there, intellectually, is an argument for veganism and no longer using animal products. I watched the documentary Speciesism and had lengthy conversations with my vegan companion, and I see the point to all of it.

So why am I not vegan?

Reason 1: Burger Madness at Arthur's.

It's more than just not wanting to give up hamburgers. It's more than just the force of habit, and being so accustomed to being a carnivore in a society where the majority of food is meat-based.

Deep down in my gut, giving up animal products is not the change I need to make to sleep at night. (How do I sleep at night, anyway? I'd like to think giving it my all with the stuff I'm passionate about, treating people how I'd want to be treating, seeking a meaningful life...but it ain't working.)

I think part of my reticence to embrace speciesism was driven home by some Facebook conversations today. Sometimes vegans draw comparisons between the suffering of animals being ignored under our noses, and the suffering of people in concentration camps being ignored under German society's noses. (Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies aside...)

Hitler Cat. Puns about the "Fuhrer" as Purr-rer or Fur-rer are a given.

I observed two polar opposite reactions to that statement, basically:

a) How can you compare what happens to chickens and cows to the awful hell that millions of humans went through in the concentration camps?

b) Well, why not compare them? Who decided that human beings were more important than animals? If suffering is bad, why wouldn't we want to prevent suffering on the scale of hundreds of millions of animals?

If I had to "pick" a) or b), I'd have to admit I still have a hard time equating the suffering of non-human beings to the suffering of human beings. "Guilty of speciesism!" I can't really argue with that accusation.

But I can't really "argue" emotionally with either perspective - I can just unpack the premises as if I'm describing an electrical wiring schematic. Am I going to argue with the person who is offended that the suffering of cows is compared to the murder of six million Jews? No, because I understand their premises. Am I going to argue with the person who says, well, why don't we look at all suffering equally, and why is our species so special? No, because I understand their premises.

Long ago, trying to "pick a side" would have thrown me into some kind of obsessive compulsive tailspin, but I've become a lot less emotionally attached to most arguments. Even topics where I have an unshakeable opinion: i.e. the judicial system being unfair to black Americans or the need for marriage equality and LGBTQ rights - I can usually listen to any perspective without getting too hot-headed. Especially because my opinion - apart from the ballot box or maybe, slim chance, a conversation or debate - isn't really going to change much.

John Lennon was a wife-beater, but that doesn't stop me from posting his song "How Do You Sleep".

Part of me sleeping at night is finding some kind of recognition that there's a limit to what I can do. There's a lot of awfulness in the world, but there is comparatively little we can do about it. All we can do is try to find what we need to do to sleep at night. Call that growing up?

Nick

Tragedy makes no sense

One way we make sense of senseless tragedies is to frame them into political debates.

My Facebook feed seems to be split between two perspectives on the Santa Barbara shooter's misogyny. One is that his violence was fed into by sexist online cultures and attitudes that turn women into commodities. Another perspective is that the guy was, plain and simple, severely mentally ill, and misogyny has nothing to do with it.

It's easy for me to turn the conversation about the Santa Barbara shooter into a conversation about masculinity and misogyny, because those are topics that I want to talk about, anyway. I'll check my privilege and admit that I have no idea what it's like to be a woman who has to deal with our society's conflicting expectations. But when I studied feminism, I was captivated because we went even further beyond gender into unpacking all of the inequalities and false assumptions that underly society – including capitalism and militarism. My role models for “manly men who recognize how screwed up gender roles are” include people like George Carlin and Louis CK, who also take that leap into recognizing how screwed up everything is.

Do we need to talk about misogyny and online cultures that turn women into objects? Absolutely. Would this guy have found something else to drive his rampage even if he hadn't bought into those sexist attitudes? Probably.

When something terrible happens, we struggle to make sense of it. Can we really make sense? I was just reading Roger Ebert's review of Elephant, a movie about a school shooting, and he praises the movie because it doesn't give us any easy answers. It just presents, without comment, the lives of the people affected by the tragedy.

One way we make sense of the ambiguity is to make political points about it, putting the unexplainable and horrible into a less unsettling box, with ideas we already know how to talk about.

Look no further than the gun control debate. I don't even need to ask to know that there are two different perspectives emerging from this tragedy. On the gun control side, people are lamenting that he had access to guns, and calling for stricter regulation – then this wouldn't have happened. On the pro-gun side, people are imagining what would've happened if one of the victims had a concealed carry and was a good shot – then this wouldn't have happened.

We want to make sense, and we have things we already want to talk about. But when faced with something so horrible, no matter how we slice it, we are trying to make sense of something terrible that defies sense.

Technology outpaces values, but so does everything else

    Mary Shelley literally created a monster; Ray Bradbury warned of automation eroding our humanity. Today, instead of Frankenstein's monster or sentient robots, technology meets values in taxicabs and episodes of Girls.
    Ride-hiring smartphone apps like Lyft and Uber are taking off because riding through them is cheaper and often more convenient than taking a cab. But, of course, this new menace of sharing your car with strangers is something cities are rushing to regulate – cheered on by cab companies who don't want to lose business.
    The rationale may seem principled, but is really pure self-interest, with an icing of whatever principles happen to back it up. When a corporation doesn't want environmental regulations or taxes to cut their profits, they don't want big government meddling in the free market. But when a rival business model comes in, thanks to that sacred free market, they want the government to step in and protect their profits.
    As for cities regulating ride-sharing, trumped by ostensible “safety” is the concern over whether everyone is paying their taxes – whether the regulators are getting their piece of the pie. Values follow convenience.
    Technology has been outrunning both our values and regulations for some time. For instance, stalking and privacy laws don't account for victims of “revenge porn” – intimate photos uploaded by angry exes – because those laws were written back when those intimate photos would have been developed on 35mm film at Walgreens. In the case of Lyft and Uber, insurance regulations and chauffer laws were not written to account for someone's liability giving a ride to a stranger via smartphone. By the time the slow legislative process could pass a law, smartphones would be obsolete.
    Apart from phones enabling a drug-like hit of Facebook anywhere, the average person most notices technologial acceleration in how we consume music and TV. It may not be fair to download an mp3 without the artist being compensated – but this small bit of stealing has become acceptable. Record companies warned that “home taping is killing music” back when people would copy Devo cassettes for their friends – now, technology is such that people just refer their friends to a link on The Pirate Bay to illegally download it. Not just free, but way more convenient than copying a tape.
    Or, say you don't have cable, but you want to watch HBO. You can Google an illegal stream of Game of Thrones in less than a minute. You could watch it legally through HBOGo, but to get an HBOGo subscription, you need cable. Or you could get someone else's password. If people don't want to pay, would they be willing to watch advertisements before a program – the way Hulu and Crackle make money and pay the rightsholders – in exchange for a higher quality picture and not having to feel the lingering sense of criminality? This can't happen yet. The powers that be who make sure HBO gets their piece of the pie haven't yet figured out how to make money off the non-cable demographic, so there's no convenient way to be legal, therefore yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me.
    People will be legal when it's convenient. Services like Spotify have become ubiquitious – still with lingering doubts that artists are being paid fairly – and many people stream music off of Youtube, which has “content matching” and runs ads to ostensibly pay the artist by paying the rightsholders. The success of these organizations proves that people want to be legal, so the nice argument goes. But these things have not taken off because they're legal; they've taken off because they're convenient and luckily they happen to be legal.
    In everything from where we shop to who we vote for, principles should be our foundation for how we act. We should make our decisions on which companies we buy from or how we get music based on underlying values – the kind of person we want to be or the standard of fairness we want to uphold. But, just as our values run to catch up to technology, we buy or steal based on what is convenient, with the “principles” behind it catching up later.

Finitude and Freedom

Human beings are torn between limitlessness and limitation.

This I know, for a professor in a BIble class told me so. 

Every human being has innumerable things they can choose. This works on a micro level (what item in Kroger, what note on a guitar, who to talk to at the bar) and on a macro level (what city to live in, what career to pursue, how much to organize one's day versus being blown by the wind).

At the same time, we are not infinite. First and foremost, we're all going to die, and - despite my belief in the spirit carrying on - what's next is unknown, and what's known is that we are no longer here. Another limit is the number of hours in a day. Also, every person has thresholds in physical, mental, emotional areas. Ironically enough, too much of limitlessness can become a limitation. All the possibilities can overwhelm you into inaction. 

But what was overwhelming me today was thinking about the horrible situation of Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight, and Gina DeJesus.

Shortly after the Cleveland case hit the news, I made the mistake of re-reading the book Room by Emma Donoghue. Make no mistake, it's an outstandingly written book, but the details are horrifying. It is told from the perspective of a five year old, born to a mother imprisoned in a fully-furnished captivity shed, much like Berry's child fathered by the abductor. Spoiler alert: they escape, but the horror cannot be undone.

How can someone like Ariel Castro, in the name of their own pleasure, inflict horrible trauma on another human being?

There are ways to accidentally inflict harm on another person. You get into a bar fight, you get out of control and permanently injure someone. You drink and drive, or text and drive, and wreck someone else's life through your own negligence. These are the ones that quickly come to mind, making me wonder if I do much more with my life than drive, go to bars, and play with my phone.

But imprisoning multiple women, looking at them every day, ignoring their pleading to be let go, innumerable opportunities to free them (and redeem yourself, much like Charles Ramsey redeeming his own domestic violence)… How can someone sit with that? Really, dude, you couldn't save up for hookers? You couldn't just jerk off like everyone else? You had to take another human being away from their people, who think they're dead, imprison them, rape them just to get a few of your own jollies? You weren't moved with compassion by their pleas?

The easy answer is, "He's a fucked up sociopath- part of his brain is missing," and most people can leave it at that, but sometimes it's not so easy to put that horror out of your mind when you stop to think about it.

In the Internet era (and the TV era, for I remember being able to detach myself much more from the news stories that made my mom cry), there's plenty of word going around about all the horrible parts of life. It's easy to put it out of mind- probably as a good psychological defense to avoid being paralyzed by awful things. But sometimes something shakes you to the core and is unshakeable. I can't stop thinking about the awfulness of this case.

But that's a limitation. And I, like all human beings, remain torn between limitation and limitlessness.

Shout out to another professor here, because I remember a discussion of moral "responsibility" that recognized that people marginalized by racism, sexism etc. don't have the same limitlessness to "freely choose". Being kidnapped obviously does even more to get in the way of limitlessness. So I need to check my privilege- which, besides the obvious of being not kidnapped, includes being male in a sexist society, being white in a racist society, and, more lightly, not being from Cleveland. 

And rather than trying to swing carelessly back to infinity ("Well, I'm not imprisoned or imprisoning anybody, so let's all go to the bar!"), I want to think about how I can not be complicit in things like the Berry case. Do I need to volunteer for an organization that works to help human trafficking victims? Do I need to write a check to them every month and put it out of mind?

Even thinking about the stuff makes my head hurt. Rape culture, for instance. There needs to be a discussion of how human beings are complicit in harming others, in our sexist, consumerist society that dehumanizes people. But no one wants to talk about it when they're in the middle of getting drunk and fucking, because people of all genders do that as one of the few ways to escape the noise of said sexist, consumerist society. I don't know where to begin.

A tension between order and disorder, between infinity and limitlessness, that sounds like fuzz to me. 

Fuzzy Monday is here. In my bohemian part-time life, I've strove to keep a couple days a week free for self-care and personal sanity, and, as my pharmacist housemate spitefully puts it, to re-read books when he hasn't even had a chance to finish them. Every Monday, I'm going to try to write something on here. The amount of social media sharing I do of each piece will depend on how proud I am of it, versus vaguely ashamed and awkwardly cagey. I don't intend to share this many places.

A writer turned seminarian eulogizes Virginia Carr

On April 10, 2012, accomplished biographer Virginia Carr died of natural causes. She was eighty-two. 

Virginia Carr may be best remembered for her biography of Carson McCullers. McCullers, a fellow Southern writer, was known for her novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, a book esteemed not only for its writing quality but for its honest portrayal of the outcast.

Southern Gothic writing includes despair, death, and dysfunction, not as inconvenient parts broken from the whole, but as the heart of reality. In Hunter, a small Georgian town's misfits are presented as real people deserving a fair, loving look.

The recently deceased Virginia Carr, in researching Hunter's author, sought to provide a similar fair look. McCullers, like the characters she created, was an outcast. Rheumatic fever left her paralyzed on one side by her early thirties, just on the cusp of authorial glory. She had been divorced and attempted suicide.

“Vanity of vanity, all is vanity”. This is from the book of Ecclesiastes. Its author lives long in both pleasure and virtue, all in the quest to make sense of life and death. And “all is vanity” is the best answer he comes up with.

This same book ironically provides words for one of life's most hopeful occasions: a wedding day. “Two are better than one – for if one falls, a friend can help them up, but pity the one who falls and has no one to help them.”

In writing about the life of Carson McCullers, the recently deceased Virginia Carr was seeking to help someone who had fallen and had no one to help them up. To someone held in low regard, Carr sought to give a fair, loving look. 

This noble work parallels what McCullers sought to accomplish for her characters, and the messy parts of life. It is the work of all good writers, and it is God's work.

Jesus, who Christians believe to be God in human form, sought out those who had no one to help them up. On one occasion, there was a man with a withered hand, excluded from community life. He was on the fringes, and Jesus called him to the center of the temple, where he was healed.

On another occasion, there was a tax collector who was disliked by his peers but who happened to catch Jesus' interest. Jesus decided to go to his home for dinner, giving him a fair, loving look.

We mourn that we no longer have Virginia Carr to remind us of the humanity and worth of people that we might overlook. But when we do choose to do so, we are following in not only her footsteps, but those of every great writer, and perhaps even those of the Author of the universe.

This piece was originally written for a homiletics project in graduate school.

Such an Awful Game

Last weekend, Alabama Shakes played Saturday Night Live. Their Stax-esque 60's revival songs are belted by the unconventional and badass Brittany Howard.

I first became aware of the Shakes last year when my hipster-est friend identified "these kids from the South about to blow up!" I first became aware of them having played SNL by my mom's casual mention of how unimpressive they were.

But I thought one of the main disses of the Shakes was that "your parents would like them"! Did my mom not watch Brittany kick ass at the Grammy's, stealing the show on "The Weight"? (Link)

After the faith-in-humanity I lost this morning...I'm surprised I didn't hear more jerks letting jokes write themselves about Brittany singing "The Weight".

My friend Erin was driving her teenage daughter to school when she heard some Columbus radio DJ's mocking Alabama Shakes not for their art, but for their singer's looks.

Was just in the car with my almost 13 yr old daughter when we heard 2 jackass radio dj's making fun of Alabama Shakes singer on SNL. Not the performance, or the songs, but her "300 lb weight, her "50's style dorky glasses", and her "creepy" way of singing . My daughter got teared up and said "That reminds me of how the popular kids make me feel bad for being myself. At least she's up there trying, instead of just sitting where people can't see you and making fun of everybody." I love my kid.

Apparently the DJ's even said that "only hot girls should be named Brittany." So this is it. The year of Our Lord 2013 marks the formation of a crucial council. Henceforth, all women shall line up before two Ohio DJ's, one by one, to determine if their name matches how much they please the peckers of these two peckerheads.

My disappointment is multi-faceted. I'm disappointed that the radio station in question is a major sponsor of a major summer festival that I've played thrice. I'm disappointed that when playing with my band in question, who are quite sex-positive and body-positive, we played behind banners for these jerks.

And I'm disappointed at how the jerks turned me into a jerk.

Because my gut reaction to this story was to sling venom at these two paunchy, ugly assholes behind a DJ desk, with their "weight" probably being being that of multiple divorces, alcoholism, and turning tricks for Clear Channel. (I've spun Harry Chapin's "WOLD" too many times; here.) My reaction to bullying was to bully the bullies.

And deep down I know that's not the answer. Both bullies and the bullied have people who love them and are equally human and don't deserve to be degraded; that's why bullying sucks.

Common humanity is why I can't let go of Jesus, even though I generally am put off by His fan base. I love the idea of a leader whose love and authenticity were so powerful, so earth-shattering, that both tax collectors and anti-government terrorists wanted to follow him (and had to learn to get along). And Christians believe that this Dude abiding was God incarnate, and thus a reflection of the force of love that created the universe. Holy shit.

Some people get "hugs" from Jesus when they're feeling down. (I first learned of this concept from a seminary colleague, incidentally named Brittany, who incidentally would certainly meet the DJs' standards.) But while I've felt God in nature, in friends, and even in the occasional existential meltdown, that wasn't what I went for. I turned up the stereo.

I put on Cloud Nothings' "Fall In", a gloriously snotty, catchy anthem, thrashing drums, angry solo. The music video portrays synchronized-swim-like moves, cheerleaders, and high school gossip. As it played, I thought of my friend Erin's daughter- going off to endure seven hours of school cliquey put-downs, after witnessing those clique-y put-downs continuing in the adult world and even broadcast over the airwaves. "It's such an awful game / they want to play with me."

But there is an alternative. As I listened to Cloud Nothings thrash through their song - a bunch of creative and awkward kids from Ohio, now getting their album on critics' lists alongside the Shakes - my own creative and awkward self felt a kind of release. There's an alternative to the bullshit. It's just as much a part of the universe, just as human, just as God-made. And you can turn it up just as loud, whether it's Ohio lo-fi or even the "underwhelming" Alabama Shakes.

I sometimes question whether I need to be doing more of "God's work" by actually working with teenagers in a church or nonprofit, helping them navigate the bullshit that sadly doesn't end after high school. But maybe playing some rock and roll, and offering others the catharsis that I was offered, is something, too. Tonight I teach my first guitar lesson to a kid wanting to learn Christian rock.

And this is why I sign off with: God Listens Through the Fuzz.

One for the Weird: This article says more than I can

http://www.vice.com/read/shooter-boys-and-at-risk-girls