Yes to both your questions Patricia.
Sandra
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed Sep 11 04:42:59 1996
From: "G.GARRARD" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: University of Wales Swansea
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 11:48:38 GMT0BST
Subject: Re: Environment?
Dear Ms Sullivan,
This is an interesting question. Actually, it's not hard to see how
the two issues can be distinguished - for one thing, many indigenous
peoples have held apparently 'biocentric' beliefs while happily
consuming their 'brothers' and 'sisters'. The notion that eating
animals is somehow connected with an intrinsically cruel or
indifferent attitude toward them is really a modern misconception
born of the historical disjunction between conditions of meat
production and consumption. Loving animals both on the hoof and on
the plate would seem entirely comprehensible to people in other
societies, and is a residual element in Euro-American ones. Moreover,
many people (probably all) function happily in situations of
'cognitive dissonance', where various elements of praxis appear to
conflict. Ideologues call this 'hypocrisy', but only because of a
systematic simplification of the complex theoretical and practical
issues involved.
One important contradiction for veggie environmentalists is that
political ecologists like to deploy forms of ecological reductionism
for their worthy purposes - variations of the 'human animal' /
Darwinian thesis - while veggies must stress moral agency (and
therefore discontinuity, or 'human / animal' thesis) in the name of
animal liberation. Of course, there are continuities too - the sheer
environmental destructiveness of the meat industry is a major one -
but you asked how people sustain what are for you contradictory positions.
In sum: i. they may not be contradictory to everyone, ii. your own
assumption that veggie and eco are essential kindred may be partly
mistaken, iii. pretty near everyone holds a mass of such dissonant
views - because life is really like that !
Yours,
Greg Garrard
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed Sep 11 04:47:00 1996
From: "G.GARRARD" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: University of Wales Swansea
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 11:53:28 GMT0BST
Subject: Re: Environment?
Dear Ms Lynn,
A bit hard on the Mongolians, the Innu, and the Lapps, don't you
think ? And the residents of
North Wales as it happens. Or should the US - with all that splendid
arable land - simply feed the world ?
Don't let the utter nastiness and waste of our present flesh-eating
practices blind you to the international and historical problems your
radical view involves.
Yours,
Greg Garrard
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed Sep 11 05:07:04 1996
From: "G.GARRARD" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: University of Wales Swansea
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 12:12:35 GMT0BST
Subject: Re: Gender and friendship. Was Re: kylie and jason (fwd)
Dear Ms Van Brocklin,
The 'personalisation' that you speak of seems from this side of the
Atlantic like a American 'thang' rather than - or perhaps more than -
a gender issue. Lacking a real socialist tradition, American business
has found it worthwhile to enact a bogus 'socialisation' of the
consumer relation. Caring is so much easier when it's rhetoric and
hugs rather than taxation. This oppressive tactic has arrived over here, so
that people from the bank whom I don't know call me 'Greg', and shop
assistants insist on taking a 'genuine' interest in my 'needs' (as a
consumer). Fortunately, the 'mauvaise foi' that allows this radical
disjunction between indifferent economic system and smarmy 'consumer
relations' is too much like hard work for many Brit workers, so the
splendid old tradition of rudeness and indifference in the workplace
exists happily (and perhaps necessarily) alongside such things as the
National Health Service.
Yours,
Greg Garrard
Welsh Socialist Tourism Board
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed Sep 11 08:32:31 1996
Wed, 11 Sep 1996 10:32:45 -0500 (EST)
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Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 10:32:35 -0500 (EST)
From: Tammy Seale TAL 904/487-2231 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: veg. discussion
To: Ecofem <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Posting-date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 10:32:36 -0500 (EST)
Importance: normal
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Before our list discussion once again becomes consumed by the meat
diet/lifestyle v. plant-based diet/lifestyle, I would like to request
that those of you who feel strongly about this go to the archives and
read all of the previous posts on vegetarianism. (please)
Vegetarianism is part of my life, but I would rather that we not
discuss the issue again as this subject comes up on the list every
couple of months. It's time for new stuff.
