Mark Passio on Vegans and Anarchists
I’ve been meaning to write my thoughts about veganism for a long while now but haven’t yet been able to free up some time to do so. I have a whole list of topics that I need to cover and it’s not easy to prioritize. But I was listening to Mark Passio a few days ago in episode 220 of his podcast “What On Earth Is Happening”, and found that his thoughts are very similar to mine.
At the end of the podcast, he took a few calls from listeners and one of them was a woman with whom he briefly talked about vegans and anarchists. The below quote (slightly edited for clarity) starts at around 2:30:00 into the podcast:
You are an anarchist and you are also a vegan. I’m a vegan but I don’t like to use that term because of how emotionally charged it is. I just say I eat a complete plant-based diet. So I know you’re into that way of living too — of not harming animals, leaving the animals alone — and for nutrition taking plant-based whole foods that are in nature for us to sustain ourselves on. And if we do that the right way we can be strong, healthy individuals, thinking clearly, really doing the work. There’s no reason why anybody can’t transition to that form of a lifestyle, regardless of what you want to call it — vegan, plant-based etc.
So obviously working in a university style setting in an urban environment, you’re going to see a lot of younger people who’re vegan. Yet you’re also going to see that total dichotomy — that total social engineered, mind controlled, dualistic dynamic — putting them in total cognitive dissonance, where on the one hand they’re vegan and believe animals should be free and free of coercion and enslavement through what’s being done to them through farming systems. And on the other hand they still believe that government should be in place and human beings should be put on farms called “governments of the world” and kept in a state of free range slavery through the governmental system. How do they, in their own mindset, reconcile this total contradiction in their thinking?
The whole concept of “no masters, no slaves”, is not only that we want to free ourselves from the tyranny that is seemingly ruling us from above, but we shouldn’t be masters over other beings either!
That’s what real freedom is. Being an advocate of true freedom means that you don’t advocate for being masters of species that you consider not as developed or “lower than you in consciousness”. I just think we have to bridge those communities through natural law as you said. The anarchist community doesn’t get the aspect of natural law that applies to animals, and the vegan community or plant-based community often doesn’t get the aspect of natural law that applies to human beings. I just think that we have to resolve that cognitive dissonance in the mental functioning of these groups of people by bridging that understanding through an understanding of natural law.
Once you understand at a deeper level the concept of what I call “the right to life” as it applies to human beings, you eventually come to realize that it doesn’t only apply to humans but to every living organism in the universe. And that is, of course, assuming that you want to be consistent and rational in your thinking.
That’s why I often also refer to it as “the universal right to life”. I’ve also been planning to write a separate post about “the universal right to life” in the future, but if you’re interested, I have a little about it in my post “On Human Nature and Morality: Humans are Intrinsically Good”.
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