ARCO's Abolitionists - A Vegan Forum

I recently saw a movie called "The Story of the Weeping Camel" that takes place I believe in Mongolia. The people there rely on camels for travel and for milk. (I suppose they eat the meat as well, but in the entire movie all I ever saw them eat/drink was milky-stuff.) The area truly would not support crop/veggie growth.

Now, this is the sort of thing where we human beings must use our noggins to make it so that we don't need to exploit animals. Perhaps it was necessary for survival before, but now we have technology. And if need be, there's always relocating to a more hospitable area, which is possible because, again, we have technology.

It does, however, strike me as very sad that when technology invades an area, it seems to degrade its quality. There's a part of the movie where two kids travel to a town, where kids have bicycles and you can buy ice cream snacks and there's a store with a couple of TVs. And it's trashy-looking. Perhaps this is a convention in movie-making and story-telling, to glorify the pastoral and denigrate the urban. But the comparison was striking: the modest, unobtrusive yurts that functioned so well in the harsh climate; the visuals of camels standing/walking around majestically with their hair/fiber blowing in the wind; the brilliantly colored traditional clothing, the sound only of the wind and the occasional plaintive singing of the woman in the movie. As opposed to the ugly soul-destroying chatter of cartoons on the TV and the sight of trashy disposables and leaking refrigerants.

There must be a way to avoid this kind of regressive progress. Would it be through green living, simple but advanced technology, rather than rushing pell-mell into a consumer culture? Also, it would have to be through the residents' own motivation, not by imposition, however well-meaning.

Thoughts?

Hi Panthera,

I think that this kind of situation raises 2 important issues that lead to a quite similar answer.

On the one hand, we have the fact that there are people who do not have a choice, today, to stop exploiting other animals and go Vegan, be it because of political, economical, social or any other reason.

On the other hand, there´s the awful reality of “our” western way of living, with our over-consumption, our pollution, deforestation, conventional-agricultural practices, etc., all of which are an ecological disaster; an ecological disaster that means direct harm to all of us, sentient animals.

I engaged, at the Earthlings website´s forum, in a discussion about native people (specifically those living in Alaska), their views and ways, the necessity of fishing/hunting and the like.

While someone was saying that today, most native people have access to “western” technologies, clothing and even food supplies (which vanishes the “necessity” of killing animals), the environmental damage of our modern way of living compared to that of most of native people didn´t go unnoticed, which lead to the argument about the impact, both on “nature” and animals of bringing our “civilization” to those places. Those defending “hunter/gatherers” said that (quite arguably) bringing our way of life (even if Vegan) would mean more destruction and animal´s killed than before.

We all know that going Vegan, in our western societies, is one the most powerful changes we can do to lessen our environmental damage. But it certainly remains higher than the damage that most ancient ways of life do. So they had a point (AT LAST!)

But soon I realized that all of us were missing the bigger picture; since all of us are living in a (1) environmentally destructive society, where (2) most of the people DO have the choice of living without exploiting other animals, discussing about the possible effects of making the Inuits go Vegan its quite pointless.

I believe that our efforts have to be focused on the +98% of our populations that follow an ecologically disastrous omnivorous or lacto-ovo vegetarian diet; people that have the choice of going Vegan TODAY, saving billions of lives and lessening their ecological damage.

AT the same time, our efforts have to focus on changing "our" current paradigm, "our" current consumption habits, "our" technologies and "our" entire way of living, to make it more balanced with our ecosystems and every animal that shares it with us (i.e. living a truly Vegan consciousness.)

Then, we could worry about bringing a choice to those who lack it, without bringing our destructive system along.
And you are very right. It would have to be through their motivation, as it has to be with everyone else.

Samuel.

Hello to all:

When speaking to others about veganism the question about "hunter-gatherers" (or people that cannot subsist without animal exploitation without outside help) tends to come up from time to time. I say two things about it:

1) I think we should try to bypass it whenever possible. Just redirect the conversation to the points that really matter: the ones that CAN be vegan right away. Almost invariably, the person that asks you that will not be in that situation.

2) Because when the 98% of the population (my friend's statistics up here) that can be vegan actually go vegan, then the others will have more opportunities to do it.

Also, the issue about "our western culture" and all its evils, I don't think they'll end with a vegan world. There are other fights we have to fight for invidualistic, money-centered, consumption-driven, oppressive-based society to change. That means, in the future when other animals are finally given legal rights as persons (and they stop being property) the will still be exploited, the same way we humans are still exploited today, for economic reasons.
A "green-society" won't mean anything until we stop regarding profit as an end.

I hope I didn't stray from the topic to much...

Regards