![[Discussion] Packaging, Tyres, and the Vegan Blindspot](https://vegantheoryclub.org/pictrs/image/6e37ac77-d90e-4481-9562-4b9441a6a99e.jpeg){kind=link}
If you’ve read my previous post detailing my process of discovering that plastics, paper, cardboard, inks, dyes, glues and ceramics all can contain animal products - not just their excretions, in each of these cases flesh and bones may be used - then you may be remembering an argument vegans sometimes get which is that no one can be 100% vegan. While this is a nirvana fallacy it has got me thinking these last couple months as to what the limit of individual responsibility is.
In the past I have said vegans shouldn’t wear leather even if they already bought it because it is commodification and objectification and a strong psychological indicator that leather as a concept is OK on some level.
But if we extend this logic to the keyboard I’m using to type this, what if the plastic contains traces of tallow used in plastic manufacturing, is that disrespectful to the animals that died? OK maybe you could argue it doesn’t make much of a different now, “maybe”, you say, “the animal flesh content is so low and not even confirmed so the psychological/signalling impact is minimal right” ignoring the fact that turns the victim’s deaths into a numbers game, who die to have their tortured bodies desecrated into the very materials that literally surround our entire lives in this death cult society (most of us at least), so yeah ignoring that this argument says “its OK because its only a little bit of dead animal” what about new purchases?
The other week my mouse broke, I use it with my laptop because I find it much more convenient than the track-pad, and playing Mineclonia is basically impossible without it. But, for most use cases I can get by with a keyboard, I use a tiling window manager so most of my computer navigation is done by keyboard anyway. Anyway my point is, how could I justify paying for what is probably dead animal parts in the plastic, inks, and then the cardboard and inks the mouse comes in. So I tried contacting Razer and Steelseries, Razer was more promising but eventually both admitted they could not answer my question and promised to look into it in the future and provide information on their website (I’ll believe it when I see it) I’ve yet to contact Asus, Logitech and probably a bunch of other manufacturers but at the moment its just more effort than its worth I spent weeks going back and forth with Razer to no avail, and what if Asus and Logitech don’t know either? I know this is a pessimistic way to think and I should just try contacting them because this is the only way things will get better if we just start by asking.
But thats not all, I recently lost my better hairbrush and haven’t even begun looking for a vegan one yet due to lack of motivation, I’m on my last hair bobble and I don’t know any vegan options for that either.
I’m sorry this sounds like complaining and it mostly is but my point is basically the anti vegan point but from the other side: it is hard if not impossible to be 100% vegan, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try right? like individually none of these things justify killing an animal if I stood in front of a pig I couldn’t say I’m sorry I’ve got to crush your bones into black ink to print a brochure manual for my new mouse because its slightly more comfortable than my laptop track-pad, while that is true taken in aggregate this is a very difficult moral principle to uphold,
I’m not asking for permission to buy these things and I’m not going to suddenly become an ex vegan, but I’m angry at this society that they put dead animal parts in so much, that they make people unwitting participants in their death cult, what about for example if I go to a restaurant and restaurants have chairs right? and those chairs are either plastic or they may have leather or non vegan wood veneer or wood glue. Eventually these will need replacing. But wait I hear you say, “that’s not part of what you’re paying for so there is no supply demand relationship there! That’s a choice the restaurant makes independently of a vegan customers choices” is it independent though? lets imagine two restaurants one selling vegan options and one owned by a vegan cooperative, the owners have down their best to source as many vegan materials as they can for their vegan decor, they only use vegan cleaning products even their menu leaflets are printed with soy ink on vegan paper, this is all great but now lets say vegans go to the non vegan restaurant thinking they are only responsible for the things they directly pay for: of course the non vegan restaurant is more popular because it caters to a wider group of people, and within a few years the vegan restaurant closes down: now there’s one less restaurant in the world actually committed to vegan ideals. So through this story I think we can come to understand that although non vegan components of businesses are not practiced for us they are practiced on out behalf, which makes us culpable, essentially washing the blood from our hands for a practice we know is happening on our behalf but we choose to ignore as not out responsibility.
So where am I going with this tangent about restaurants: well given the prevalence of potentially non vegan materials: items like computer equipment, tyres and shipping/packing materials may also technically be non-vegan, and if we can reasonably assume there’s a good chance non vegan computer equipment or tyres were put through use and wore down, then we can surmise that a fraction of any purchase we make goes towards buying new tyres of hard-drives, now if we were making those purchases we would get Michelin tyres https://veganfoundry.com/are-tyres-vegan/ or Seagate hard-drives (contact my simplex for the correspondence screenshots) but since we don’t know what decisions these companies are making and 99% of people aren’t vegan the odds are good that a fraction of your money went to buying new tyres or hard-drives or whatever else that contains animal flesh.
What about this very site even? Despite the owners themselves presumably being vegan are they even aware that the hard-drives may contain animal products? Does me posting this contribute to the ongoing objectification and commodification of animal victims flesh in the plastic manufacturing industry?
I don’t have these answers and I’m feeling totally lost. My only hope is that more vegans will take at least some steps to ameliorate these issues perhaps by contacting companies, I myself will be recontacting the companies that confirmed the vegan status of their products and packaging and asking them if they would include this information on their FAQ pages as soon as I can get the motivation to do that
NB The attached image is the first published book to be certified vegan, so at least I can buy that item with a clear conscience probably haha
Except you can’t by the same logic, because there is no way the raw materials for the book were transported to where they were used, or the book itself was transported to you, without animal products having been involved at some stage of the process. All this stuff was transported by truck, by boat, by plane. By people wearing leather and eating chicken.
You exist in a culture founded on the abuse of animals as one of its literal oldest traditions. The societies which preceded the societies which preceded the societies which preceded the society you’re living in were founded on the tradition of abusing animals. Our various cultures have been founded on abusing animals for literally as long as we have records, and many times longer.
There is nothing you can do while existing within this society to entirely separate yourself from the benefits of your society abusing animals. Participation in society currently ensures that you are with any given act no more than a couple steps away from slaves making that act possible. Human slaves, too, not just the four legged ones.
We are in the absolute earliest stages of shaking this unimaginably long tradition. It will be a long battle and society may utterly collapse before that battle is concluded. You cannot make the emancipation of animals something which your happiness hinges on, because it will not happen in our lifetime. This is a battle your great grandchildren will be fighting. All you can do is strengthen the foundation.
To me this sounds like “Buy that leather jacket if it makes you happy” its just a difference of how much animal flesh is in the product and I’m so sick of doing consequentialist maths to make up for societies psychopathic treatment of animals
Then do some research and find a monastery with the type of Jain or Buddhist that doesn’t use any animal products and go join them. Or spend a couple years learning survivalist skills and farming and then go disappear into the woods. That isn’t technically legal but if you choose your location well enough it doesn’t matter because no one will ever find you.
Or stick around with us, accept that this isn’t a fight you can win by yourself, and keep fighting even though it means witnessing the horrors of the system you’re fighting against. You’ve got three options, and you’ve gotta make peace with at least one of them, because being in a constant state of stress and anxiety worrying about what kind of ink was used in your mouse or whether there are animal products in the glue in a chair you’re sitting on is going to kill you eventually. It’s not practical to be that hard on yourself. You have to stay focused on what you can do that actually makes a difference, not just hone in on whatever tiniest wrongs you can attribute to yourself.
Isn’t buying vegan things a type of action though, otherwise whats the point of veganism as a boycott at all, we know that boycotting animal products has got us this far why not take it as far as practicible
Right now the battle is cultural, it’s not as much about direct action. Of course direct action is good and desirable, and by that I mean direct action. Not an individualist “boycott” of animal products, I mean stuff like going out and liberating livestock, halting slaughterhouse and industrial animal farm productions, exposing farmers who violate what meager animal cruelty laws we already have, stuff that actually tangibly extends or improves the lives of animals at the moment. But there aren’t enough of us to shatter this system by force, so we need to build the movement until there are. So the battle is one of culture, of deprogramming the propaganda in which people are steeped and showing them that there is a better, more ethical way.
The only strategic purpose of avoiding the use of animal products in your day-to-day life is symbolic. It is useful in this primarily cultural battle because it shows how the animal agriculture industry propaganda is false. These people grow up being taught by parents, by schoolteachers, by doctors, by media, by every authority they look to that animal products are necessary. That we must eat them to be healthy. That vegans are deluded weirdos who will be sickly and frail until they die an early death. The reason you shouldn’t eat animal products is to prove that wrong. To sow seeds of doubt in the minds of anyone who believes that propaganda and to prime people to consider that animal agriculture may not be so necessary after all.
You have more important shit to worry about. Start with the big stuff and the little details will come together. If we get that far.
Isn’t this just completely ignoring supply and demand, what about the animal slaughter rates in Germany where there’s loads of vegans. I bet it’s easier to find weird vegan things there like a vegan book binder. I agree that the cultural effect exists that youre talking about thats why I think for example if you have preowned leather products you should replace them as soon as possible to avoid the signalling effect that leather is acceptable. I also think that emailing companies about this is not symbolic as it shows there is a demand, like think about michelin recently saying theyre going to make vegan tyres that was the result of market research, and now theres like an exponential knock on effect where we can say to vegans hey only buy these michelin tyres and before you know it all tyres will be vegan by default
Yes
You’re not individually affecting supply and demand. That’s a passive effect of the vegan movement as a whole. Michelin doesn’t care about you, they never asked you what kinds of tires you buy or whether you’d be more likely to drive more if you could buy vegan tires. A bunch of marketing people at Michelin (or working on behalf of Michelin, same thing) decided that profits would be higher if they catered to the growing vegan movement and population. Their research wouldn’t have come to a different conclusion if you had worn a leather jacket yesterday. Your individual decisions do not matter on that scale. Collectives are on a whole other level.
If and when we get to the point that vegans are a dominant enough market demographic that non-vegan tires (for example) are no longer profitable, that’ll be great. But we’re not getting there any faster for your anxiety about what kind of glue is used in the chairs at your local restaurants. You aren’t actively making that happen at all. You can only contribute to growing and strengthening the vegan movement, that collective force which does passively bring about measurable change in the market.
Or, again, you could do some direct action. Run a food not bombs chapter for a while until you’ve got a small collection of radical locals and then go chain yourselves to the doors of your local slaughterhouse until cops or firefighters or whoever cut you loose. Go apply to work at, or volunteer for, or start an animal rescue. Go do something measurable to better the lives of your fellow earthlings instead of self-flagellating about things that are out of your control.
But we are all individually part of a boycott and thats why Michelin tyres exist, if all vegans ignored Michelin tyres and got whatever other tyres then they would probably stop making them, on the contrary if vegans as a bloc only bought Michelin tyres then that would be a strong market signal that Michelin has done a good thing and that other manufacturers should follow