World Disillusion Day

Tomorrow is World Vegan Day.
Last year on the occasion of this day, we referred to Peter Singer’s disappointment (expressed in his renewed version of Animal Liberation that was published last year) that his “call for a boycott of meat has been a dismal failure”.

For this year’s World Vegan Day we refer to the disappointing veganism statistics as shown by the latest Gallup’s Consumption Habits poll. It appears that only 4% of Americans are stating that they are vegetarian and only 1% state they are vegan. Considering that these figures are based on people who self-identify themselves as vegetarians or vegans, these figures are actually even lower. That is as according to other similar polls, around 60% of people who self-identify as vegetarians report consuming animal flesh when asked to list everything they consumed during two non-consecutive 24-hour periods. One survey reported that when considering people who consumed fishes in the last 30 days as non-vegetarians, the vegetarianism rate is actually below 1.5%. And less than 0.4% of adults reported consuming no animal products on two non-consecutive 24-hour periods, so the actual vegan figure is less than half of one percent.

Another terribly disappointing aspect of these polls is that these figures are similar to what has been measured in previous ones, from a few years ago and from more than a decade ago. Meaning, in spite decades of efforts made by animal rights activists, and others who promote veganism, the figures remain disappointingly low and veganism remain deeply unpopular, and there is still a clear global increase in per-capita meat consumption.

We are not arguing that the Animal Liberation movement didn’t positively affect the scale of suffering in the world. Of course it did, as obviously had not for all the efforts put by many activists, the figures would have been even worse. But undoubtedly the world today, in spite of decades of campaigning to end animal exploitation, is one in which there are many more suffering sentient beings who suffer even more.
Every year, additional tens of millions of sentient beings are born into a life of suffering. Every day is worse than the one before. Our website is full of facts and figures about suffering in the world, but the worst ones are the mentioned acute per capita increase, and that every second 5 more human babies are born. This world is so horrible that one of the greatest suffering factors is the human birth rate.

According to other surveys there are more than five times as many former vegetarians/vegans than there are current vegetarians/vegans. That goes against the common notion among many animal rights activists that it is not that people don’t care, it’s that people don’t know what’s going on. Had that been true not only that there would have been many more vegans to begin with, much less would have abandoned veganism considering their acknowledgment of what’s going on.

While it’s true that still most people aren’t exposed to what animals go through in factory farms, they are aware of the basic facts. Humans don’t have to know every detail about the cruelest exploitation system ever in history, it is enough to generally know that factory farms exist to be morally accountable.

And it is even more basic than that, humans know that meat is animals’ flesh. Even the least informed humans are at least aware that meat is made of animals who were murdered specifically to make the meat they eat. They are aware of at least that, and still freely choose to participate. They know that animals are born to be killed for their flesh. Meat is never made of animals who died of diseases, accidents, by other nonhuman animals, or of old age, but only of animals that other humans murdered. So humans are not only fully aware of animals being murdered for their meat, murder is an obligatory condition for a corpse to be considered as meat. Humans know meat is murder. Knowing that they participate in hurting nonhumans is sufficient for them to stop. Humans consume animal products because they want to, not because they don’t know better.

The only thing that at least some humans can honestly say is that they didn’t know the extent of how horrible animals’ lives actually are. But the basic fact that meat is a piece of carcass, should definitely be sufficient to at least ignite basic curiosity and motivation to look for more information, if humans cared. However, humans don’t try to figure out what happens to nonhumans before they become their meat. Extensive information is available for everyone nowadays, and activists are more than willing to explain to everyone what is going on and what they can do about it. So even saying that they didn’t know how horrible animals are treated, is less a case of lack of knowledge, and more a case of lack of caring.

Humans know enough to at least start asking questions. But they don’t want to know more, or know but don’t want to think about it. And when someone knows but doesn’t want to know more or doesn’t want to think about it, s/he doesn’t care. The problem is not ignorance, but apathy.

The argument that ‘the problem is that people don’t know what is going on’ is quite popular among activists since the counter assumption is deeply depressing. It is very discouraging to internalize that humans know but don’t care enough to stop, or that humans choose to eat meat fully aware of the fact that it is made of animals (and maybe even because it is made of animals). Clearly it is more empowering for activists to believe that humans are basically and naturally compassionate, and they are doing horrible things as a result of deceit and manipulations, as it is the hardest thing to make others care about something they don’t really care about. Raising awareness and informing humans is the relatively easy task, making others care about something to the point of changing their beloved habits, is a whole different story. So of course believing that humans are not doing the bad things they do because they want to, but because they don’t know better, is a much more comforting position than that they know what’s going on and do it anyway.

Humans know meat is a corpse of an animal that was raised and murdered for them. They see animals in all kinds of situations during their lives, in farms when driving outside the city, inside crowded trucks when driving on highways, dead but in a relatively whole and unprocessed state in markets, alive in the case of fishes and crustaceans in markets and even restaurants, and of course in the last couple of decades in the movement’s publications, on TV, and online. People know what’s going on. They just don’t care enough to do something about it.

Nowadays, more and more humans, in more and more places are exposed to more and more of the violence from factory farms by activists who face them with the truth. But the reaction of most is not a moral repugnance, but mainly avoidance from any ethical consideration. Most don’t want to watch violence towards animals, but to keep enjoying the “products” of it.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, almost everyone would look away from the violent sight and keep eating animals flesh.

It’s time to open our eyes and admit that human society is irrevocably speciesist. So far there is every reason to believe that even within the human race, selfishness and discrimination will never be overcome. Anthropologists have never discovered a human society free of violence, and social psychology findings indicate that elements such as group patriotism, selfishness, obedience, conformism, tendency to discriminate, as well as biases, irrational and irrelevant factors when it comes to moral thinking, are all innate to a great extent.

Conventional advocacy, or, asking the torturers if they are willing to stop torturing, is basically and principally speciesist in itself.
Despite that theoretically activists absolutely oppose humans’ dominance, they practically accept it by asking humans to change their violent ways. They all know what happens every time they fail to convince them.

Among themselves, activists point out that the animal holocaust is much worse than any human holocaust in history, however, the partisan fighters in the second world war didn’t organize leafleting events to stop the massacre.

And even if many consider going vegan, and even if all go vegan, the absolutely delusional option of a vegan world can be reversed at some point in the future. And even if it won’t, this world would still be a very violent one. The chances that the animal liberation movement would stop all the suffering are zero, not only because of the current consumption trends and the extremely depressing forecasts of the future, but because there are so many suffering factors that the movement doesn’t address, and so many suffering factors that the movement probably can’t even theoretically address.

The solution the AR movement is offering – veganism, the one that even in the more progressive parts of the world many activists believe it’s strategically unwise to ask for, is actually a systematic global oppression operation, abusing countless numbers of animals.
The main reason activists hardly ever address this massive black hole is because everything pales in comparison with factory farming, and also because most automatically go on the defensive when meat eaters cynically make this point.
But we are not meat eaters, we are vegans too. We are vegans because it is the least horrible option. But more than we are vegans, we are activists, and as such we are looking for a truly moral solution. Veganism isn’t.

If you are aware of the problems with veganism, feel free to directly go to our suggested option specified in our manifesto.
If you are not aware of the harms and issues involving veganism, please start with our answer to the question why not work hard to make a vegan world and then please read the post Vegan Violence and the article Vegan Suffering.
Please read it open-mindedly. We are aware that despite everything detailed in it, veganism is still the best option possible. That’s why we are vegans ourselves. However, acknowledging that veganism – with all its major flaws and inherent cruelties – is the best option, is why we are not vegan advocators. The realization that the best option is so horrible is one of the major reasons why we are calling you to stop focusing on making a vegan world and start trying to make a sufferingless world.