What appeal can be made to people whose first instinct, on seeing a beautiful animal, full of joyousness and vitality, is to hunt or eat it?
-Henry Salt, Seventy Years Among Savages (1921)
Asceticism! Such is the strange idea with which, in many minds, our principles are associated. It would be impossible to take a more erroneous view of modern vegetarianism; and it is only through constitutional or deliberate blindness to the meaning of the movement that such a misconception can arise. How can we convey to our flesh-eating friends, in polite yet sufficiently forcible language, that their diet is an abomination to us, and that our “abstinence,” far from being ascetic, is much more nearly allied to the joy that never palls? Is the farmer an ascetic because, looking over into his evil-smelling pigsty, he has no inclination to swill himself from the same trough as the swine? And why, then, should it be counted asceticism on our part to refuse, on precisely the same grounds, to eat the swine themselves? No; our opponents must clearly recognise, if they wish to form any correct notion of vegetarianism, that it is based, not an asceticism, but aestheticism; not on the mortification, but the gratification of the higher pleasures.
-Henry Salt, The Logic of Vegetarianism (1906)
I appreciate the wise and beautiful thoughts of Henry Salt. Thank you for posting them.
Thank you, Ellie! It’s amazing how words from 100 years ago can touch us so deeply and still hold perfectly true. I’d like to post some more from Henry Salt, I really find him wonderful. Did you know that reading Salt is what inspired Gandhi to return to vegetarianism?
Yes, please do post more from Henry Salt! I had no idea he inspired Ghandi, but I’m not surprised.
Compassion through the ages. Unfortunate that although the definition of compassion has remained fairly consistent over time, there are now many additional ways to define those things which cause our compassion to be engaged. Imagine for a moment if all the technologies of the last century had been applied not to killing and building profit, but to sustaining life and building peace. What would our world look like now? And what shall we do with the technologies in our hands today?
Thank you for that comment. That’s an extraordinary thought. It’s inspired a little rant…
Science isn’t neutral – technologies are developed based on demand (and $$). They say, “We can’t stop global warming, sorry, the world runs on petrol”, yet they are planning to land a manned mission on Mars. I believe I heard it would take YEARS traveling through space to get there. Does that make anyone else do a double-take? And there’s asshole scientists out there right now saying we may as well abandon ship – that we should investigate LIVING on Mars because this planet will be too fucked up (BY us). So what if we put down the goddamn rocket science for a minute and try to deal with ecological science and limits to growth while we still can?
Tiny cell phones connected to satellite and more powerful than many computers are available to buy for only hundreds of dollars. That’s because someone had the vision, and saw the potential demand and profit from it, and invested in developing the technology to its most sophisticated form. Yet we seriously can’t do better than continue to pump, drill, and dissolve oil from sand in the most wasteful, destructive, energy-intensive ways possible just to power our refrigerators and fuel our cars? Right now simply trying to buy a solar panel to retrofit to one’s house is expensive, uncharted territory – and that technology has been around for decades. It’s ridiculous.
So, as you’ve said – what IF there were the demand and the will and the money put behind peace and sustainability, NOW? I mean, my god, we can power our world with solar power and algae for all I know – we just need some imagination, some vision, some motivation.
A lot of people have voiced similar concerns. We’re not alone in this by any means.
Building domed gardens on other planets and their moons is the same as putting healthy people on life support. Artificial atmospheres cannot be self-supporting indefinitely, so do not represent a safety net for humanity.
Absolutely right that we can’t stop climate change; that has never, ever been an option. Climate change is a constant; the degree of climate change is the issue. Politicians and corporations conveniently overlook this. Our job has been 1) to stop ourselves from speeding the climate change process, and 2) to adapt to climate change, rather than ignore it or make ridiculous attempts to control it. Unfortunately, most people are not doing their job. Changing their comfortable lifestyles is inconvenient, and stopping the environmental abuses may mean stopping profits.
As I see it, much of the problem with scientific research is that it is profit-driven. Computers, phones, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, agriculture, any technology you can think of is driven and funded by companies in order to sell things. The work done by many university scientists is funded by corporate grants. The work done in government labs is often performed by scientists recruited from the corporate sector, the work is administered by managers recruited from the corporate sector, and the work responds to needs defined by public policy – which has been heavily influenced by the corporate sector.
To read this you may think I am anti-profit or anti-business, but that is not the case at all. I do believe though that our economies based on cycles of endless growth have lead us not just to economic catastrophe, but to catastrophes on environmental, human rights, and many other levels too. It is possible to sustain ourselves comfortably without constantly chasing accumulation. This will seem like a bitter pill to many in our consumerist societies, but it is a pill we must swallow. Right now we are all playing a game of “last man standing,” in which the winner will be the most wretched loser in humanity’s short history.
Yes, you know what I meant, “we can’t stop RUNAWAY climate change provoked by human industries”.
So the question is, how do we put money behind the innovations that are necessary to pull us through this. Or will money-driven solutions ever solve the problems that money-driven economies are creating?
Putting money behind innovations is the concept behind a “green economy,” which on the surface sounds like a great idea, but like our current economy is written in terms of infinite resources and infinite growth, both of which are impossible. This being the case, the best thing we can put our money behind may be a rock… and change our economy entirely. Rather than trading fiat currency, we could trade skills and products (consider how the time bank movement is taking off). Another idea has been to replace national currencies with regional ones, which typically are accepted only at participating local businesses (example: Totnes Pound). Using this regional currency means that 100% of the prosperity created is retained locally. There is no single best answer; each community has unique needs so should address those needs individually in the most appropriate manner. The hard pill for everyone to swallow will be the realization of how extravagant and wasteful our lifestyles are, and that it’s far more than just governments that need to change – the bulk of the future will be decided by whether we as individuals are willing to change our own lives, to ratchet down the luxury we have come to accept as “normal” and begin doing many more things for ourselves.
Thanks for the ideas. I really think that local trading systems and local currencies are interesting and useful.
Voluntary simplicity and home-made solutions are very difficult for people to accept, as you said. It means giving up privilege – the privilege of buying convenience. We can’t forget that for most of history we never had such luxuries. most people at most times in the course of human history have had to grow their own food, cook their own meals, build their own homes with locally available materials, and so on.
I do love the saying “Live simply – so others may simply live”, and it’s true for our relationship to animals, to ecological systems, and to the rest of the world population who are necessarily oppressed and deprived of resources when other nations rise to power and wealth.