VEGANGELICA

Happy New Year!

I haven't posted song lyrics for a vegan song in a while, so I decided to correct that deficit today by posting the lyrics for "Hands Off," which I completed in October of 2012:

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"Hands Off" by Erica (yet another song inspired by MusicBanter! )

Yes, I’m a vegetarian.
My view of the world has changed.
I feel people should be kind to animals.
Now people think I’m deranged.

They tell me,
“It’s our choice and yours is yours.
You should live and let live,”
but as they bite through an animal’s corpse,
I see that’s the speech
a hypocrite would give, saying:

“Hands off our traditions.
Hands off the way we get our food.”
Yet I think, “You don’t keep
your hands to yourself.
Why should I keep my hands off you?!”

Yes, I want civil rights
to end discrimination
and all the sexist, racist, hurtful laws
some rulers like in the nations they run.

They tell me,
“It’s our choice to force compliance.
You should live and let live,”
but as they hate and segregate,
I see that’s the speech
a hypocrite would give, crying:

“Hands off our traditions.
Hands off the way we rule.”
Yet I think, “You don’t keep
your hands to yourself.
Why should I keep my hands off you?
Why should I keep my hands off you?!”

Oh, why do they dish it out, when they can’t take it?
They smash the Golden Rule, but tell you not to break it.
I’m not religious but I think I know what Jesus meant.
It’s so simple: don’t support mistreatment.
Some people get their thrills by being cruel,
but I prefer the Golden Rule.
Treat others like you want to be.
Use your hands peacefully.

Don’t pull your trigger finger.
Don’t give into the itch.
Don’t crush other souls.
Don’t steal from the poor to feel rich.
Don’t take anyone’s life.
Would you want to die by the knife?
Find your inner Gandhi.
Use your hands peacefully.
Use your hands peacefully.
Use your hands
peacefully.

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^ I was reminded of my song when reading the violent lyrics by Earth Crisis for "The Wrath of Sanity," which advocates killing people to get revenge for their hurting animals.

Since killing a person violates the vegan idea of reducing harm to sentient beings, the Earth Crisis song is definitely not supporting a vegan ethical view. In contrast, "Hands Off" is about taming the desire to get one's hands on people who refuse to keep their hands off others.

I've been thinking recently about how most of my lyrics aren't "vegangelical" (someone's clever play on the word "evangelical" used to describe proselytizing Christians), because my main goal is to share the mixture of sadness and anger I feel when people use animals as food and "resources." I'm not simply trying to cause people to decide to become vegan, and I don't want to manipulate them or hurt them. Yet I also realize that if sharing my honest feelings causes people to think more about how they make food choices, I'd be cool with that.

I sometimes hesitate to share my vegan songs, because I don't want to hurt people's feelings. An example of hesitating is when I posted my lyrics for "Hide," which is one of my favorite songs I've written because it is also brutally honest: http://www.musicbanter.com/song-writ...tml#post842154

Yet I'd rather be honest about my emotions than hide them. The truth is that sometimes my frustration over a system in which people are encouraged to discount the worth that animals' lives have to the animals themselves spills out from me as a feeling of aggression toward people...but only the ones with whom I have little emotional attachment.

I know it can be uncomfortable whenever someone you care about disagrees with your choices, because I think most of us want those we love to approve of our every decision. As a vegetarian, I fear that people may not understand that I can both love them and also feel that they support an unjust and unkind practice.

I've had to try to find a way to co-exist with people who don't fully share a basic ethical viewpoint that I have. For example, when my dad was ill and having problems gaining weight, he decided to start eating chickens. Although I didn't feel it was the best choice (for his health and for ethical reasons, because it also wasn't good for the health of the chickens!), I cooked the flesh for him since he could not do so himself, although I did not buy it. While I handled the dismembered chickens (with a fork because I didn't want to touch them; I only wanted to bury them), I asked myself, would I prepare a slaughtered human if my dad requested it? Hmmm.

So my questions today are these:
(1) How do you decide whether to value some other sentient being's life enough not to support the harm and killing of that being?
(2) If being respectful of someone means letting that individual make her or his own choices, what is the respectful way to respond if that individual's choice is to use another sentient being and violate that being's right to self-determination?

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Slappy, thank you belatedly for all your comments and thoughtful questions.

Yes, I think about all these questions you ask and they affect what I write.

I don't believe that gods or God exist. I cannot prove they don't exist. However, I don't believe they do, because I have seen no evidence for them (that convinces me). I also observe that even if there were gods, this wouldn't answer the question of how existence came to be. How would a god create a universe? How did the god originate? I feel that religious beliefs don't actually answer the fundamental questions they are *supposed* to be answering.

Like you, I am not an enthusiastic supporter of organized religions. I feel organized religions tend to discourage questioning while blurring the line between reality and fantasy, such that followers can no longer reason through flaws in arguments for religion. On the positive side, organized religions can help people come together as communities and do a lot of good. On the negative side, "truth-owning" by an organized religion can inspire people to do great harm, depending on the religion or sect.

I think the design you see in the universe and in life on Earth results from there being natural laws (and why they exist, we don't know) that cause matter/energy to interact in particular ways.

What you may view as design in living beings, I would view as the result of random chance (genetic variation) interacting with environmental changes. An environmental change can lead to non-random shifts in a population's traits because some individuals have preferential traits enabling them to have more children than their fellows, thus passing on those traits to a greater proportion of the next generation.

Although living beings seem very well suited to their environments, this didn't happen purely by chance and yet I see no evidence for a designer or a need to hypothesize one, either, because living beings interact with their environment in ways that promote the propagation of individuals who better fit that environment. This would account for the "design" you see. (Also note that no living being's design is "perfect," just like no car is a perfect feat of engineering. People need glasses. People's bodies lose the ability to function as they age. People end up with genetic mutations that can cause harm.)

Consider any population of living beings of the same species. By chance, those living beings will not all be genetically alike. (For example, radiation damages DNA and biological DNA repair systems aren't perfect, as we can see when people develop cancerous cells.) Now if the environment's temperature changes such that prey travels farther away and our organisms have to travel farther to find food, some of those organisms may have DNA sequences, such as for reduced body hair and increased sweating, that allow them to avoid overheating as quickly during exertion. They may then survive better and have more children compared to the furrier individuals of the same species, who may tend to die out without procreating very much because they were less able to travel far and get food. Eventually, more and more of the descendents in this population inherit the genes for less body hair. (I'm talking about humans.)

Similarly, we humans have the capacity to survive as omnivores, which means we can eat plant matter or animal matter. This probably resulted because an omnivorous diet is beneficial for animals that travel frequently into many different environments. (We humans travel, walking generation after generation from continent to continent!) If there were earlier hominids who could only eat meat (as carnivores), they would be less likely to exploit their environment as well as hominids who could eat a more diverse diet, and so the trait of omnivory would lead to better procreation. Those individuals who were able to be omnivores survived preferentially, passing on the omnivore trait to descendents.

So now we humans can eat almost any organic matter, including other humans. But does the ability to do something mean that we should?

I won't swat at you because you eat meat! I might pin you down, wrench a rib out of your mouth, and throw it across the room...but I won't swat at you!

Yes, animals in nature and human animals can be very cruel to one another as they kill for food (or turf). I wish the natural world didn't allow this and were instead a peaceful, vegetarian utopia.

However, the fact that other animals kill prey does not mean that *I* as a human with a wide range of eating choices must follow the example of predators and kill animals to survive. Humans have a great ability to choose our actions. Living without ever killing and eating a single animal is possible. I choose to follow my conscience rather than follow a lion. Choosing not to eat animals is a very natural thing to do, since I *am* part of nature, and my nature is to have and make choices.

You have known a lot of animals! Mr. Quackers the duck, a squirrel-hunting pot-bellied pig, dogs shnuffling out small prey, and cats like Chester who dropped a mouse-gift on your chest! LOL! My question for you would be whether you feel you must follow their example, or are you free to choose. (Please don't drop a mouse on my chest!!! )

I remember hearing a baby rabbit grasped in the claws of a suddenly swooping crow and carried away into the sky. The rabbit screamed a horrified, human-like cry as she or he was lifted from the grass-nibbling mother and siblings to a certainly painful death. Supporting meat-eating is well and good as long as one is not the prey. I think of how the rabbit could have lived longer and enjoyed her life for many more weeks and months and even years if her life had not been taken from her. Since I can avoid being that crow, I avoid it. I hate feeling fear and pain. I want to live long and enjoy my life. And so I wish that for other animals, too.

I realize there is no way I can stop the pain that animals inflict on each other, but as a human animal I can stop my contribution to that suffering in the natural world. Vegetarianism isn't the only way to be kind to animals, but I feel it is one good way.

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