back to Inspired by Animals

Does a Conscience Get Growing Pains?
by Aaron Openwound and Demian Walker

I was out walking my neighbor's dog when I saw my friend Demian up the block. I'd known him for five years and used to party at his pad a lot more frequently than I had over the past year. As I began to think about the many times we'd gotten inebriated together, I realized that in many deep and ineffable ways, I'd grown up with him. We left our nests and began our adulthood in the city together (he had migrated from the South the year before I migrated from the Midwest), and his voracious mind, keen sense of irony, reverence for Nature, and experience with the outdoors opened up the vistas I had only palely experienced in my imagination. Before I met him, I had never snow-shoed, climbed upon a glacier, or been jaw-dropping awed by a canyon carved in the mountainside by the fluid hand of God--Time and water--a million spring runoffs as incomprehensible as eternity.

I had never spoken so openly of hope, morality, the future, and I always had faith in evolution when I stared into his bottomless brown eyes, chiseled between sun-bleached blonde hair and a clean, angular chin. Before meeting Demian, I had never listened to Uncle Tupelo, and I had never considered becoming a vegetarian. And I believe that's why I didn't see him very much for a long period of time. Of course there was graduate school and my failed (but time-consuming) pursuits of love and art, but there was also his "presence." I guess it might be easy to infer from that comment that he stood upon a soap-box, but that's far from the real story. No, the truth was that I admired him too much and envied his discipline and commitment to a path of life that was exceedingly low-impact. Theoretically, I agreed with him in everything; it was in practice that we differed.

So the real split began a few years ago after Demian became Vegan in tribute to his passionate love for animals and simple desire to free himself from the norm of unconsciously inflicting needless suffering upon the environment. I once accused him of being an optimist (which I believed showed signs of naivety), and indeed, Demian held tightly to a worldview predicated upon the faith that humanity could evolve into a creature that doesn't ceaselessly grow beyond its limits while rapidly burning everything that supports it. He sees in humanity the latent potential to be the Keepers of the Kingdom, the Great Gardeners of Eden, and I envied that too (even though I frequently mocked it), especially on my darkest days when I prayed for the Apocalypse.

If I had gone a couple months without his conversation, I would long to see him, frequently remembering a metaphor he once said: "Man is fire. Fire, by its very nature, consumes and exhausts everything that allows it to breathe and burn. Our civilization is just like that. It's going to burn brighter and hotter until there's nothing left but ash." It was one of the most moving metaphors I'd heard anybody employ, but also the most depressing because it made me feel my powerlessness more poignantly than ever before. For weeks afterwards, I was filled with nothing but hate. Demian, on the other hand, somehow manages to forestall the defeatism such a revelation demands. "The Great Experiment has not yet run its course, and the outcome is not inevitable," he said in a rallying cry one evening at the conclusion of one of our symposiums where I had unsuccessfully tried to undermine his hope.

Demian knows in his heart that global capitalism (and all its attendant exploitation) is not the only alternative, but he is not an idealist because he accepts what is and argues that as long as competition rather than cooperation rules as the dominant ideology, the only practical course is to actively create consumer conscience by providing people with organically sound, delicious cuisine. The most effective strategy for social change is to become a competitive capitalist; to play the game well and provide a product people are willing to spend their money on. And while they happily enjoy their bloodless food, he takes the opportunity to be a first-rate propagandist, which might imply he's a proselytizing-in-your-face type of guy.

But you see, Demian doesn't impose his beliefs on you; he expresses his ideas in such a way that if you feel guilty, it is your own conscience (and not his) that assaults you, and that is why I envy him the most. It is also this very fact that forced me to keep my distance. I don't know where my existential guilt comes from (my Catholic childhood or my longing to make the world a better place), but I am often attacked by the prescient awareness that I am not doing all I can to halt our race towards extinction. Even in my own mind, I lack a certain moral legitimacy because I have given up on my species. Unlike me, however, Demian is constantly climbing up towards a moral high-ground. He's a formidable opponent in debate and can infuriate those who disagree with him, but he aims to make friends of those opposed to him with a genuine kindness born from the internal conviction that the least successful way to reach "his enemy" is by using hateful words. While it's true that he finds it easier to love Nature than Humanity, the important point is that he still manages to love humanity.

Therefore, one could only accuse him of believing that, if all people had his information, they would inevitably come to the same conclusions he has. I admit there's a certain amount of self-righteousness in that, but I wonder, "Who isn't like that to some degree?" Einstein once said that nothing would help the human condition more than the switch to a vegetarian diet. And S. I. Hayakawa once summed up the Utopian dilemma by writing, "Each of us has his own private conviction of rightness and almost by definition, the Utopian condition of which we all dream is that in which all people finally see the error of their ways and agree with us." Taking these comments in tandem, then, one could accuse Demain of nothing--except for possessing some of the ego-feeding, self-protective mechanisms common to us all. In every respect, especially the hallmark virtues of intelligence and compassion, he's an excellent person. He can be a little fanatical for his cause, but that's simultaneously the reason why I love him and why I can't stand to see him.

As I said, he provokes my conscience, and I can't stand it! All my life I have longed to improve the lot of mankind, but this longing makes me bitter because mankind is, to a large extent, a bunch of greedy imbeciles, and generally when I think about our potential extinction, a wry smile appears upon my face. Earth would be better off without us, and I can live quite happily with this cynic's snide smile until I see him and behold the potential of what could be if only I and a billion others were comprised of the same will and awareness.

All this tumult of history and emotion was coursing through my mind as we shouted hellos from about fifty paces away. Then I suddenly remembered (with a certain amount of delightful viciousness) that the last time I saw him he mentioned that he'd recently put his cats on a vegan diet. I had been looking forward to our next encounter ever since because I envisioned cornering him and finally tearing down the pedestal I'd constructed once and for all. My idea of a moral diet had always been incommensurable to his, due to the fact that I'd been influenced by Native spirituality and my own idea of Nature, but it had never caused any interpersonal conflict between us. Now, I solely wanted to fight because I wanted to abolish the very concept of virtue and morality; I wished to eliminate the actualization of the evolutionary potential whose presence provoked me to take an active part in changing the world on a small scale while all about me the rapers and pillagers persisted with impunity.

As we embraced in a warm hug, I prepared my defense mechanisms and inflated my ego in all its righteousness. "Personally, I agree that Meat is Murder," I said to myself, "especially if it's unconscious, assembly-line slaughter. As the Beastie Boys put it, 'This drive thru life it just ain't right,' and I firmly hold that if everyone stopped eating Taco Bell, McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy's, we would take a huge step towards a sustainable economy that is both more healthy for our bodies and non-human life. I mean, yeah, I eat animals, but I've only had about three or four pieces of salmon in the past two years, and no steaks. Red meat makes me feel like shit, but I still have it a handful times a year at holidays, and every time it's a celebratory sacrament. Plus, I've donated hundreds of hours of my own sweat and labor to rehabilitate a salmon-bearing ecosystem, but that's practically nothing because I don't control the dams or the droughts. Still, eating salmon (pan seared with lemon and rosemary) is one of those experiential joys that makes Life beautiful. Salmon and Chicken are Gods to me, and while I still haven't entirely cured my Bacon Weakness, I use Morningstar Breakfast Strips and Breakfast Patties ninety-nine percent of the time; they're hella good, healthy, and nothing but plants have to die. But putting cats on a vegan diet!? How absurd! It imposes upon non-human life (which is absent of the evils that exist only in us) a human morality that does not account for the symbiotic bond between predator and prey. Nature is a never-ending smorgasbord, but at least there's a sovereign relationship where one aspect of the equation cannot thrive without the other: the more prey, the more predators. If the prey decreases in number, the predators decrease as well. It's a fucking biological law even! (If I could only remember the name, I'd throw it in his face!) Still," I continued thinking, patting his back heartily, "imposing a human code upon the rest of nature wouldn't be all that bad (because other people do it all the time, only to a greater and more detrimental extent), but it puts the cat's health at risk by causing congestive heart failure. Therefore, his choice to impose a vegan diet on his cats directly results in the same kind of malnutrition that occurs in animal factories. It's an inexcusable inconsistency!" I rejoiced. For some pretty petty reasons, I was excited to see him.

"Hey Demian, Happy New Year! Happy New Millennium, as a matter of fact!" We broke from our embrace.

"Same to you."

"What'd you do for the holidays?" I asked.

"I went to see my sister in Flagstaff at Christmas time, and on New Year's Eve I went down to The Concert Hall."

"Awesome! What'd you go see?"

"All the people wearing furs; we went down there to protest." I nodded my surprise, and he continued to explain, "we had signs saying, 'Fur is Dead,' and 'If you wouldn't wear Cat or Dog fur, why condone killing foxes, minks, or rabbits?' It really surprised me how much fur we saw down there. There was one woman with a full-length fur made from a half dozen foxes she claimed with pride to have trapped herself. What made this coat stand out was that the heads, feet, and tails of the dead foxes were still intact. Even people who weren't animal rights activists would've called it hideous. Anyway, it was interesting to see the fervor in which these people defend their 'personal' choices. But we were equally hyped up to show them how their 'personal' choices affect more than just their person."

"Did you get through to anybody?" I wondered.

"Yeah, I think we did. We got a lot of thumbs up and thank yous from people. One woman in a group of about six people took me by the hand after we had launched our 'shame tactics' on a fur coat wearing member of her party, and squeezed my hands tightly and said, 'Thank you, thank you, thank you so much!!' right in front of the rest of her group. That was the most powerful few seconds because I knew we were saying what she wanted to be saying, which was great. It's weird though, wearing fur is one of the few animal rights campaigns where shaming can be an effective tool."

"Why does shaming work in this case when most of these people don't give a fuck about the animals?"

"Shaming works because wearing fur is unnecessary and cruel. But you're right that most of the people wearing furs don't care about the animals. And they probably don't care any more after successful shame tactics. But shaming works, not because we change their opinions, but because they see just how unpopular it is. Fashion no longer qualifies as a noble justification for murder, and a lot of people who aren't 'animal rights activists' feel this way. The Endangered Species campaigns and all the nature shows like National Geographic have reached the new generation. The difference is that wearing fur (unlike wearing leather jackets) has become-in the eyes of a majority of society-wrong. It might be the only animal rights position where there's a critical mass of belief, and that's why shame tactics can be successful."

I was suddenly full of that mixed sense of admiration and disgust I described earlier. It ate at me, and I figured it was now or never. "Demian," I stammered, "since the last time we talked, I've been doing some research. Cats can't live on a vegan diet. They need. . . "
"Taurine," he interrupted.

"Yeah, yeah. . . ." I said, somewhat dumbfounded and utterly deflated.

"Our cats get plenty of Taurine."

"But how can that be?! I mean, Taurine is an amino acid that can only be acquired from animal muscle. I don't want to get in a fight about this, but you're going to cause your cats to have congestive heart failure." My harsh accusation came out gracelessly, and I realized with frustration that I was not being as eloquent as I desired. I sounded desperate.

Demian grinned and said, "You have been doing your homework, huh? Yeah, it's true that Taurine is only found naturally in animal tissue, but scientists have been producing it synthetically since the 1930's. Actually, it's already added to most dog and cat foods to meet nutritional requirements because a lot of Taurine is destroyed in the rendering process. The vegan cat food we use is nutritionally complete, including Taurine, and the cats really seem to like it." I thought fast for another attack, but Demian kept on speaking. "You're not the only one who's said this to me ya know? People are often taken aback when they hear that my cats are vegan. They say things like, 'it's not natural for a cat to be vegan, or it's not right to force your choices on your pet…' Well, what is 'natural' about a human feeding a cat at all, not counting a lion eating your arm off or something?" He winked and I chuckled. "What is 'natural' about giving a cat a rabies vaccination, or de-worming them, or locking them inside an apartment without access to the free world for eight hours a day while you enter data on a computer? I want you to understand, I am not against a cat following its natural instincts to hunt down a mouse and eat it; the problem is that they don't have access to them. Maybe if I lived in a lower rent district they would, but the fact is, they are not in their 'natural' habitat to begin with." We both broke into a good laugh, and my tension eased a bit.

After a short pause, Demian continued, "I can't deal with fact that some animals have to suffer so my cats can eat a 'natural' diet. I want you to show me a house cat that can kill a pig, a cow, or a tuna. Yet people feed them these animals all the time and call it natural. You don't ever see Creamy Rat Stew in the store, so let's admit that natural is a word that's tossed around so much that it's lost it's meaning. The only similarity between store bought cat food and mice is that it's meat-the cat food being the lowest grade meat available-and there is simply nothing natural about factory grown meat. Therefore, the only really natural thing about factory grown meat is that the animals involved will naturally suffer an immense amount."

Even though I was smiling and laughing, I felt as if I'd thrown a well-aimed punch to the head, missed, and was now on the mat in a full-nelson, seeing a reflection of myself in a pool of my own spit. "I never really thought of it like that," I said quietly, suddenly realizing that my desire to destroy Demian revealed my own prejudice against his choice. Veganism was simply a ridiculous extreme to me, and I realized I didn't know the root cause of his choice. So I asked without disguise, "Demian, why did you become Vegan?"

"It was just something I had to do." He stated plainly. I waited for more, but he didn't volunteer any further explanation. My frustration increased.

"But why did you make the choice? And when?! That's what I want to know. I have to know what triggered the conversion. I can understand the argument that one should eat less meat in order to open up more arable land in order to use the grains in order to feed the starving children instead of beef. I can understand the perspective that one avoids meat because it's healthier not to, or because they don't want to murder--that perspective, in particular, goes as far back as ancient China. The thing I can't understand is consuming no animals products whatsoever. I mean, ants farm aphids; there's nothing inherently immoral about buttered toast or eggs for breakfast! So why?

"Alright, dude, alright, I'll tell you why. Just calm down. I know that nothing upsets people more or goes to their core values faster than talking about diet. While I'm kind of used to people getting this upset at me about this, I didn't really expect it from you." Demian looked slightly hurt.

"Sorry," I mumbled, "it's just. . . "

"You don't need to be sorry. It's obviously triggered something in you, and that could be good. It's important to me, and I really want to explain it to you. If anyone can hear me, I think you can." He gathered his thoughts for a couple of seconds and then began, "Late one night, I was lying in bed reading some assorted tales of Tom Brown Jr. or something when I remembered the pamphlet I had picked up on the street the day before. I reached inside my backpack to find the purple piece of propaganda asking the seemingly subtle question, 'Why Vegan?' I had been a vegetarian for about 4 years, but really hadn't given much thought to Veganism. Now when I read things, I take my time and read the words as if I were speaking them, and if there are emotions to be felt, I breathe life into them so I can feel the story and better understand the situations. Nothing could have prepared me for the emotions I felt reading this pamphlet. As I read about the debeaked chickens frozen to their cages in transport, the tail-docked pigs that live all their lives on a concrete floor, and the torture that male calves suffer through while chained to the ground in a wooden box, I sobbed uncontrollably. And when I read that veal calves crave roughage so much that they start to chew their steel stalls, all I could think and say was 'WHY?!! Why do we do this?' My sorrow was then compounded by rage, a rage I'd never known before. I was overwhelmed, and with wet cheeks and clenched fists, I sat up firmly in my bed and mentally tore the room apart. I started with the computer monitor - I jerked it off the desk, lifted it over my head, and threw it out the window. I picked up pictures and smashed them against the wall, turned over bookshelves and screamed like a savage beast in the heat of a fight. I watched myself pick up the chair in the corner of the room and swing it from side to side destroying everything in it's path. It was the closest thing to an out of body experience I have ever had. When I finally settled down, I knew that I did not want to-and ethically could not-contribute anymore to this senseless suffering; that I had to do something to help those exploited animals. And the most immediate thing I could do was change my life. I felt ashamed of the suffering my ignorance had caused throughout the course of my life, but, at the same time, I knew I would be able to call upon this experience whenever I needed strength in fighting the atrocities that man commits in search of profit. He's willing to destroy the environment, let people starve and execute billions of animals a year just for the pleasure of his palette. When I realized what REALLY goes in to meat, eggs, and dairy, I felt like a character from a novel I once read-that I had finally found my destiny; a purpose that I had to live out wholly and resolutely within myself. Everything else was an attempt at conformity, and an evasion of my one true self. It was the fruit of this experience, and it totally changed my vision."

"Pardon me for saying so, but you're beginning to sound like a mystic rather than someone making a logical argument." My snide remark made it clear that my confrontational posture had not entirely passed.

"Aaron, man, you accuse me of being illogical, but everything I have learned and studied says that veganism is the way to go. I see it as my moral discipline, and it's not all sacrifice. Shit, it's not all lentils and rice, ya know? I eat well. I feel healthy and as you know, I'm very active. Most people eat way more meat than is healthy because they've been hooked on the protein myth sold by the meat industry. But let's say I am in contradiction to some degree. I mean there are animal products in my bike tires and the concrete we walk on. So, If the use of any animal product makes me a hypocrite, I'm a hypocrite. No one can be absolutely pure, so therefore you're right: I transgress my logic sometimes. And maybe I live the way I live because I had a feeling, but who's to say that feelings are inferior to logic? Who's to say that feelings and episodes like I had the night I decided to become a Vegan are not the gods' logic? What is conscience anyway? Where does it come from? Do you control it?" I shrugged my shoulders as a reply to this barrage of difficult questions. "I know you don't have all the answers," he continued, "and neither do I. But I knew with my entire being at that moment that I wanted to be free from all this shit, that I didn't want to contribute in any way to all of this senseless suffering. I knew more certainly than I had ever known anything that I needed to become a Vegan. But that's a choice I had to make. I would like it to be universal, but I don't demand it, and I don't think people are necessarily bad people if they eat meat. You eat meat, and you're one of my best friends. All I want is for people, including myself, to be conscious of the full ramifications our choices have on the world around us and to try the best we can to live our lifestyles accordingly. Eating no meat or any animal product is a choice I had to make FOR MYSELF, and as for other people, all I ask is that they start examining their attitudes about non-human life and their connected relationship with the earth from which we are evolving. Most of all, I want people to research the conditions in which these animals live. We no longer have to see how they live or how they die; we just pick up a "good looking" steak at the store without ever seeing the suffering of the animals. And man, a move towards a vegetarian diet doesn't just help animals: it helps people too, so you can't say that I'm just seeing it as pigs and chickens versus humans. Humanity, as a whole, would benefit from a more conscientious diet."

"You're right about that, man. Some five hundred years ago, Leonardo da Vinci recorded his observations from a patient he dissected. The veins and arteries of this particular man were coated with a thick white substance, and Leonardo postulated that this residue had caused the man's premature death. Da Vinci was the first person to recognize the costs of an overly rich Western diet; he actually hypothesized that too much meat was bad for us."

"Wow, man, really?"

"Really."

"That's cool because it was also in this journal that he wrote one of my favorite quotes: 'The day will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.' That's how I've come to see it. It doesn't mean I'm a genius like him. It just means that I see myself as a new type of human. Maybe it was inevitable that, in our development, we ate and farmed animals. But we can evolve beyond that now; our knowledge of nutrition and our supplements mean that we can change. The rest of the planet is not here to serve our needs, and it isn't here to indulge every capricious want either. But you have to admit that's the prevailing attitude, and I think it's an attitude that degrades and insults Life. Life, whether it be human, animal or tree, is beautiful and sacred to me."

"Hey, you made a rhyme," I interrupted with a laugh. And then, after a pause, "I could never give up milk in my coffee, or butter on my toast, or cheese. Fuck! Cheese man! Cheese! Nothing has to die, and I don't want live without it. It's like melted gold!"

"I hear ya. I used to love cheese as much as anybody, and the stinkier the better! Handfuls of gorgonzola and feta! But I didn't see it as something I was giving up, but as something I was moving towards--a more compassionate and healthier way of life. And it's a myth that 'nothing has to die' to make cheese. What happens to your co-worker when they repeatedly fail to make their sales quota? They're fired or retired. Well, what do you think happens to the cows that don't make their milk quota? Do you suppose they live out the rest of their lives in green pastures chewing cud near the ocean? HELL NO! They're sent to slaughterhouse to become food for someone's pet. This is all part of the commodification of life that I find so distasteful." I began to laugh at the animated face of disgust he contorted his muscles into, and thought hard about the indicating that cheese left the flavor of death on his tongue.

"Demian, when I started this discussion I was hoping to . . . . hell. . . .I don't know what I was hoping to do exactly, but it was bullshit. Let me tell you something funny that happened to me the other day at work. I took my lunch break and popped a couple Yves spicy veggie dogs in the microwave. 'Oh I love hot dogs!' One of the women I work with exclaimed. I then told her they were veggie dogs, and she said, 'Oh gross!' at which point I said, 'Real hot dogs are what's gross. I mean, would you rather eat all the lips, assholes and rat shit that comprise real hot dogs? The reason we have Mad Cow, after all, is because they took all the leftover stuff from the dead cows and fed it to the living cows. This is what's truly gross. These veggie protein dogs taste the same, have the same texture, and they're a helluva lot better for you.' She wrinkled her nose and walked away, obviously unfazed by my argument."

"Right man, that's exactly what I'm talking about."

"But here's where I get frustrated! I mean, why should I deprive myself for the greater good when there are so many people who don't give a shit? I could become vegan, but the effect I would have would be canceled out by just one person who eats at McDonalds every day. And think about the oil spill in the Galapagos Islands. Fuck, dude, whatever effect I might have would be negligible compared to the level of that catastrophe."

"You're right. You are absolutely right," he said with a smile, "but does that mean we don't have any moral obligation to rest of life? Do we have any moral obligation to Life, whether that be in the form of other humans, other animals or the environment in general? If the answer is no, then it's pretty cut and dried. We can do whatever the fuck we feel like and not worry about it too much. But I believe people believe we have a moral obligation to life. Some people think it extends to unborn babies. I think it extends to other people and animals, and if more people adapted to a lifestyle (because veganism is far more than just diet) that consumed less animal products, it would reduce the sum total of suffering on the globe, for humans and animals, and that's what concerns me. There may not be many grounds for hope, but if there is any place to find hope, it is in the individual conscience. And I'm not pretending to know everything or have all the answers; after all, it is a core belief of mine that there is not one right way to live. But that doesn't mean that there aren't wrong ways to live, or better ways to live. And hopelessness, as far as I'm concerned, is absolutely the worst way to live because giving up only contributes to the problems."

"What do you think about the Makah?" I asked suddenly, simply out of curiosity.

"That's a tough one man. They're trying to reclaim their culture, and I support that. Some of the Makah feel like hunting whales is a way for them to regain their pride and counter centuries of cultural eradication. I sympathize with that. And when you think of it, five whales doesn't sound like a whole bunch, until you consider they're not the only whale-hunting culture. So, the scale could increase exponentially, and then, before they realize it, they might contribute to the extinction of the Gray Whale they mean to honor. Personally, I think they have the legal right to kill whales. And I don't want to take that right away from them. Ideally, it wouldn't be illegal for them to hunt whales. Ideally, it would be legal, but it seems to me that the best way to honor their spirituality (as I understand it) in the context of today would be to choose not to exercise that right."

"Humph. . . ." I grunted in admiration, nodding in approval at his balance of competing interests.

"Hey, what are you doing tonight?" Demian asked.

"Got no plans," I replied.

"Why don't you come over and let me cook you dinner. It'll be delicious."

"Sure," I said, flattered by the invitation.

"But promise me something."

"What?"

"That we can talk about something else. To be honest, I'm a little burnt out on answering questions about being a vegan. It gets exhausting. I really want to talk about it, and I know I've influenced a few folks just from conversations like these, but man, it gets tiring. I think about a lot of other shit, and I'm a longtime friend of yours and I haven't seen you in a while. So what have you been up to?"

"Oh hell, you know, same old shit. Trying to write, trying to love." Huxley the dog had patiently listened to our entire conversation, but now, as we began to move, she hopped up excitedly; there were new smells to be smelled, and new smells to leave.

"That R.L. Burnside album, Come on in, that you suggested, has really got some great grooves on it. I'm not really into loops, but that was really awesome."

"I thought you might like it," I nodded. "I've got Pedro the Lion's 'It's hard to find a friend' with me. I think you might dig that as well. It's mellow and the lyrics are first rate."

"Awesome," he said. Indeed, it was hard to find a friend, but here was one, and as I looked at him, I reluctantly acknowledged that I hadn't felt so good in months.