Animal Rights Community Online

[The Lone Reader]

[at least pretend]

The Lone Reader, exactly!

And that was great Panthera!

I think a good way of starting would be getting people to this forum. This is a message board full of such brilliant minds. We need to bring people here and educate them with open arms, and not judgement. I mean, everytime I come here there are about 3 people registered on the board and 50 guests logged in. We need to have these people posting! Every once in a while there will be an issue that strikes their interest and they register to discuss it.

The entire point is opening up a dialogue with both people having open minds. Let's advocate this board on other sites, welcome people enthusiastically, and educate them without berating their beliefs.

[panthera]

[Tourterelle]

I agree that we need to be out there educating people. There are so many different ways to do this and activists come to the movement with different talents.

One important way, far removed from debates and the intellectual approach, is the use of art and culture. As a visual artist and summer street musician myself, I am currently exploring how to get our message across with art. There are already a lot of great materials out there, like the song "Free Me" and the animation "The Meatrix". (Yes, yes, I know theMeatrix is welfarist, but it is still powerful and groundbreaking.) I hope to see more and more.

When we look back on history, we see that a culture's vision and deepest values are always ultimately enshrined in its works of art and other monuments. New movements, like Christianity did in its early stages, adopt the art forms current at the time and begin using them to express their new ideas. As time goes by, the art evolves and its interaction with the new ideas creates something new and directs the consciousness of its people.

Yes I am for artists working to develop as much art as possible to reach people on an emotional level and motivate them to change!

By the way, Malta, I haven't visited your website in quite awhile, but I just absolutely loved your Animal Rights Jukebox and am hoping to get back there when I have the time, so as to learn some of the songs and perform then as a street musician.

[animalrightsmalta]

[Rivers]

BUAV are pretty sound. There have been some rumours about them having been infiltrated, something about P&G, but even if they were, it doesn't mean everyone there is bad. They've got their logo on all of the own-brand toiletrees, cosmetics and cleaning products in Co-Op, a major supermarket chain in the UK. The Co-Op have started mimicking the packaging of well-known and popular brands, same size packaging and very similar properties, apperently. What I don't get is why they still choose to sell the other, animal tested stuff.

[sunkanrags]

[animalrightsmalta]

[marymartin]

On Duplicating Excellence

[animalrightsmalta]

Re: On Duplicating Excellence

[sunkanrags]

[animalrightsmalta]

Me and Erik Prescott already have our blogs reproduced at http://www.animalrightsblog.com/

It's mostly welfarist, and some posts there even support breeding. But that is more of a reason to have our message there.

[Karin]

Re: On Evaluating Welfare

[Gary L. Francione]

It is very important to understand a simple point both as a general matter and as a matter involving the abolition/regulation debate:

When there is a prevailing paradigm, any alternative position must be framed in terms of opposition to the prevailing paradigm.

This is particularly the case when the prevailing paradigm is so entrenched that to challenge the paradigm is likely not even to make sense to the majority of people.

In our culture--indeed, in most cultures--consuming animals is accepted as "normal." Animal use is regarded as similar to drinking water or breathing air--it is something that we do, that we have always done, and that we see as a "natural" and necessary part of our lives. Part of this paradigm of animal exploitation is the theory of animal welfare, which says that our use of animals does not raise any sort of moral concern as long as we treat animals "humanely," and that the moral imperative is to improve this treatment to make it more "humane."

The abolitionist position takes that paradigm head on and rejects it. It asks people to rethink completely their relationship to nonhuman animals. The abolitionist approach maintains that animal use--however "humane"--is not acceptable, and that animal welfare not only fails to protect animal interests in any meaningful way but misses the fundamental point about our not using animals at all.

The corporate animal movement presently promotes the notion that animal advocates ought to focus on making animal treatment more "humane." This approach makes perfect sense to the general public because it is part of the overall paradigm that says that animal consumption is normal, natural, and necessary. Animal welfare is the "default" position.

There is no way for the abolitionist position to shift the paradigm towards abolition without demonstrating why the prevailing paradigm, including the theory of animal welfare, is theoretically and practically problematic. Indeed, the answer to the question, "why should I go vegan?" requires a refutation of the prevailing view that is acceptable to use animals in the first place, and an explanation of why animal welfare fails to address the relevant moral questions at issue.

It is natural for the corporate welfarists and their supporters to claim that challenging the prevailing paradigm is "negative" or "divisive." This occurs in every social movement; those who oppose the prevailing paradigm are characterized as being "negative." This is to be expected. Even some of those who claim to support abolition join with the welfarists in this regard. Such people do not have the first clue about the dynamics of the reaction to challenges by those who accept the prevailing view and default position.

We should always endeavor to educate in a positive manner. But that does not mean that we do not clearly and unequivocally challenge animal use and the doctrine of animal welfare. That is a necessary part of shifting the paradigm in an abolitionist direction.

As far as a "business model" is concerned, that approach helped to turn a fledging rights movement into a welfarist movement in the late 1980s/early 1990s. This is not to say that we should not seek to be efficient. That is a different matter. We ought, as efficiently as possible, to educate ourselves and then to educate others about veganism, which is the first step in shifting the paradigm--developing a critical mass of vegans. We don't need any sort of "business model" to do that. We just need some hard work and creative thinking.

Finally, anyone who says that vegan education is "not enough" must have a crystal ball. There has never been a movement that has been directed at clear, unequivocal vegan education. Let's try that first, and then we will be in a better position to judge its efficacy. Based on my experience as an individual who has been engaged in vegan education for two decades now--without any support whatsoever from the "movement"--I can tell you that my experience is that it is the most efficient and cost-effective way of proceeding.

Gary L. Francione
Professor, Rutgers University

[Tourterelle]